Author: VD

A little Christmas humor from The Physics Geek.

Mulder: It’s judging them, Scully. It’s making a list.

Scully: Who? What are you talking about?

Mulder: Ancient mythology tells of an obese humanoid entity who could travel at great speed in a craft powered by antlered servants. Once each year, near the winter solstice, this creature is said to descend from the heavens to reward its followers and punish its disbelievers with jagged chunks of anthracite.

The X-Files. Gone, but not forgotten.

BC wonders: Why do you and so many others claim that we need to tie currency to some metal for value? Your argument seems to be that fiat currency has no basis in fact and has its value assigned arbitrarily. How is the value of the dollar any more arbitrary than the value of gold? Gold has value because people desire it. What happens if some day nobody wants gold? Also, there is a finite amount of gold in and on the earth. By enforcing some kind of precious metal currency standard, you would then be setting an upper limit on value, which capitalism doesn’t recognize. Basically, a gold standard system is no more contrived than fiat currency backed up by nothing more than the promise of a government to not go out of business.

I don’t see any time where people will take a mass of gold in payment for anything, so we would still have some form of paper currency, with some massive pile of metal somewhere in a secured building, where it isn’t doing anything terribly productive at all. And that paper currency would have a value based upon the amount of this metal that the government owns, and if the government goes belly up (one of the arguments that seems to be used against fiat currency) they have all the gold, and the guns to defend it, so you’re technically in the same place anyhow.

Unless you use the other argument against fiat currency, which is that tied to a standard, a government can’t just print more money for some purpose, nefarious or otherwise. Of course, since the value of everything will then be a fixed quantity, there would no longer be any such thing as an upwardly mobile middle class either. I just don’t see or understand any benefit to tying currency (which in itself is not an indicator of value, so much as an indicator of desire) to some metal that some people cherish and others just don’t give a damn about.

The reason that I and many others champion a gold-based currency is that we value human freedom and oppose government tyranny. BC’s first point is irrelevant, because there is no such thing as objective value. Value is subjective, and is independently determined, which is why the first thing a government does in establishing a paper currency is to ban all competitors. An objective value is forced upon many who would otherwise value it at zero. Here, we must accept the the worthless paper debt instruments as valid – you cannot refuse to accept a Federal Reserve Note for any debt, public or private. As to the mass of gold argument, that is silly, as there are already numerous private technological solutions such as e-gold; a government’s refusal to pay its gold debts would likely destroy it as well as its economy. That’s one reason why governments hated the gold standard in the first place.

However, BC does glimpse the real issue. The amount of gold increases very slowly, as opposed to the massive inflationary increases in the money supply which are revealed in the national debt and the M3 money supply – not the fraudulent CPI – and are inevitable in any paper money system. Paper money always fails and becomes worthless in the end, the only question is when the end will arrive. The important thing about gold – or an alternative metal – is that it prevents the steady increase in central government power created by this inevitable inflation. The notion that there would be no middle class without inflation is bizarre – the value point is irrelevant, as above – and the middle class itself developed prior to the establishment of the current fiat regime. In fact, the position of the middle class has been greatly weakened, as only the addition of a second income has allowed most middle class households to remain where they were fifty years ago. (There’s a good study on this somewhere, I’ll try to find it. Basically, the increase in taxes which stem from inflation eat up the entire second income so the disposable income has remained approximately the same. Of course, easy debt has allowed many to live beyond their means, but at a price.)

In short, gold is the ultimate weapon of financial freedom and an important foundation of economic and political freedom as well. The USA has profited greatly by suckering billions of dollars daily out of the poor fools buying our debt, but eventually foreigners will wake up to the fact that they’ve been robbed by the unconscionable counterfeiting. Some factors indicate that this is already beginning to happen. I suspect that we’ll all own million-dollar homes before this comes to pass, though.

I would love to hear your official review of “Return of the King”. I am headed to the theaters this evening and though I’ve heard some hype,… I would love to hear the opinion of an avid Tolkien reader. Insights? Favorite parts? True to the story?

First, it bears repeating again that no one but Peter Jackson could/would have made these films properly. It is tremendously difficult to successfully port a story from one medium to another, and even JRR Tolkien considered his books to be unfilmable. In the hands of a less-skilled or less-devoted director – such as the joker who infamously declared that he didn’t need to bother reading Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers before directing the lousy film version – these movies could have been terrible. But they weren’t, instead they are without a doubt the greatest movie trilogy ever made.

SERIOUSLY, IF YOU WANT TO DISCOVER THESE THINGS FOR YOURSELF, SKIP THE REST OF THIS POST

The Return of the King is absolutely faithful to the spirit of the story. It is reasonably close to the letter, although even 3 hours and 20 minutes did not allow for many details, most small, some large. I found it interesting to learn that Peter Jackson disliked the anticlimactic Scouring of the Shire; I always hated that myself and believed that it should have been a separate, more detailed book. So, the fact that it is left out does not bother me in the least. Nor does the much-discussed omission of Saruman bother me, as subsequent to his defeat at Helms Deep and Isengard, he is largely extraneous to the story. But Jackson does not forget him; he’s not ignored and it’s quite clear why we’re not seeing him in this edit.

There are fewer moments that jar one out of the movie in this third episode. The too-modern bits of dialogue are more restrained, Gimli is less laughable – although he has a mordant line that is quite amusing – and Aragorn rightly assumes his royal persona with believable angst and reluctance. He is strangely weaker in this third film, and yet it is somehow fitting that he is not so much the Man on the White Horse as the man who humbly, but with determination, does what his duty requires of him. Only a true king can comport himself as he does in one of the film’s most beautiful scenes, when like an angel who knows his authority comes from God, he refuses the adulation of the hobbits and honors the Ringbearer and his companions by kneeling to them instead.

As a movie, the great triumph of The Return of the King is that it is a better action movie than most action movies, and yet has more emotional depth and power than any drama or chick flick. Even its horror, though less frightening than a good horror movie, is palpable. This list of likes and dislikes is trivial in comparison with the success of The Return of the King as a fully satisfying conclusion to the epic three-part movie.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE

1. Faramir was one of my favorite characters in the books. He is markedly less noble here, although most of the damage was already done in The Two Towers. His heroism, as well as his admiration for his older brother, does not come across well.

2. Denethor was an epic tragic figure in the books. Here, he comes off as petty and vindictive; a crazy man, not a great man crazed by the loss of his beloved son. The handling of the Denethor-Faramir relationship was probably the biggest disappointment to me, aside from Liv Tyler’s unaccountably tepid Arwen. She’s beautiful, but bland, bland, bland.

3. Horses don’t charge for over a mile. They also don’t charge walled positions. Silly. This happened several times.

4. The Great Sleepless Eye as spotlight. Sauron can see across Middle Earth, but not through a rock right in front of it? What was that? Minor, but very weird.

5. The tiny size of the Army of the West, and the way it gets surrounded. Ever heard of a defensive square, gentlemen? Or better yet, a fighting withdrawal using the seven hills of the book? It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t dramatic. Again, minor, but a strangely inept touch. The same sort of thing happened when Eomer’s riders surrounded Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. If you crowd too much, no one can do anything. What was the point? Yes, they’re surrounded. We get it. Oh, they’re really, really, really surrounded? Come on.

6. Elrond’s reduction in stature. I’d prefer to have seen him remain aloof, even bitter.

7. The siege of Gondor seemed rushed. I thought the siege of Helms Deep came off more powerfully.

8. Aragorn seemed rather lacking in authority when he confronted the dead. He was such a stud taking on the Nazgul and the orcs; I found this a little surprising and disappointing.

THINGS I REALLY, REALLY LIKED

1. The Riders of Rohan were perfect. Theoden’s transformation from deceived victim to triumphant victor was great. His line about being able to enter the Hall of his Fathers without sorrow or shame brought tears to my eyes. I loved Theoden in the books, loved him even more in the movies.

2. I had my doubts about Eowyn. While the actress didn’t quite fit my mental picture of her, she gradually grew on me. In The Return of the King, she comes into her own. I hope we’ll see more of her and Faramir in the extended DVD.

3. The charge of the Rohirrim. Yes, they didn’t fight the Oliphaunts in the books. No, it made little tactical sense considering their superior speed. But holy cats, it was so freaking cool!

4. Legolas rules, again.

5. The devotion to the close relationships of the hobbits. Some may have felt that the ending(s) was too drawn out, but I say no. These four had been through Hell and back, been irreparably changed – even maimed – and a quick Hollywood wave-and-ride-into-the-sunset would have been wrong, wrong, wrong. I never found Frodo terribly interesting in the books, but Elijah Woods did an outstanding job of bringing him to life. By the end, I wanted to weep with Sam.

6. The last fight with Gollum was much better than I imagined it could be.

7. The horrors of war and its effects on the women and children was tremendously powerful in each movie. The grief of the women and children as their men rode out on Faramir’s hopeless charge on Osgiliath was overpowering. Also great was the constant reminders that the men were fighting to protect those they loved. They rode willingly to die, that their loved ones might live.

8. The power of the Nazgul ripping apart the retreating cavalry of Gondor.

9. Grond. It WAS Grond, nightmarish and terrifying.

10. The crotchety old hobbit glaring at the returning heroes, as he did at Gandalf before. There is the unconquerable strength of The Shire. He who refuses to be impressed by the glamour of the great will never lick the boots of a tyrant.

11. The final scene. Sheer perfection. In a hole in the ground….

I hope Peter Jackson does make the Hobbit. For that matter, I hope he tackles Silmarillion one day, that chaotic concoction of invented history. If my books were ever to be made into movies, I wouldn’t want anyone else directing them. He has set the platinum standard for turning literature into cinema. What a tremendous accomplishment. More than anything, I feel a deep and personal gratitude for his tremendous, unprecedented commitment to the epic vision of JRR Tolkien.

I think John Rhys Davies said it best, a dwarf speaking with the wisdom of the Valar. “I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization.”

The Lord of the Rings is truly a saga for its time. 11 out of 10.

Responding to an exclusive yearender DRUDGE dispatch, which presented NIELSEN’s Top 20 BOOKSCAN list of 2003 sales, O’Reilly called the DRUDGE REPORT a “threat to democracy.”

“I mean you can’t believe a word Matt Drudge says,” O’Reilly told the cameras. “Now you’ve got the Matt Drudges of the world and these other people, Michael Moore and all of these crazies, all right, no responsibility… that is a threat to democracy, I think.” O’Reilly warned: “They’ll just spin it and twist it and take it out of proportion every which way.”

So Matt Drudge is now magically manipulating Bookscan numbers? O’Reilly has been seriously losing it for some time now, but he’s going off the deep end here. People may call him a conservative, but if you’ve read what passes for his first book, you know he’s nothing of the kind, except perhaps this new model “big government conservative” of which Fred Barnes writes. Or, as I see it, weak sister moderate bootlicker.

You want extreme? (I’ll give you extreme. You can’t handle extreme.) Ditch the dying dollar and adopt the gold standard. Do it now, before China or the EU does and steals world economic leadership. We rode the dollar hegemony pony as far as it would go, and it was a good run – even a record-setting run in historical terms. But it’s ending.

Also, my Internet service was down for 48 hours. And yes, CONCEPTION. It’s been corrected.

Now, why are you still reading this? Go see Return of the King!

“If I drink water I will have to urinate, and how can I urinate when my people are in bondage?”

– Saddam Hussein

Truth is funnier than fiction.

TE writes: You’re right about the classrooms. When my daughter was in kindergarten she could read, write, add, subtract and do some simple multiplication. I asked the school system about her level when she was going to enter the 1st grade. I was told not to worry, she would sit in the class until the rest of the kids caught up!

Space Bunny points out the telling dichotomy between what public school teachers and educrats say publicly and what they tell parents in private. When they are attempting to cadge more money from an unsuspecting state legislature, they lament that their burden is overwhelming because they lack support from parents. How can they possibly be expected to teach these children anything in eight hours a day when the children aren’t being helped by parents at home? Parental support is vital for learning!

However, when a parent actually does help his child and teaches them reading, writing and arithmetic by daily spending one/eighth the time demanded by the educationists, they tell the parent to butt out and leave the kid to them. How very mysterious!

No, not really. You cannot possibly understand the public school system or the fundamental purpose of the classroom environment if you are still operating under the mistaken assumption that either are designed to teach children a basic foundation of knowledge or to maximize their potential. Both are conceived to hold them back and cripple them, and the latter has been that way since it was first conceived by an elite caste to suppress the more numerous children of the lower castes.

Free your children from intellectual maiming. Keep them out of the public schools.

The annual death count has been released and it stands at 227,385. That’s the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood during its 2002-2003 fiscal year, according to its newly released annual report

Do you believe in Progress? Do you believe that the world is headed in the right direction? Then compare the ongoing American holocaust with some of the other great tragedies of history. Once the consensus is reached that human life does indeed begin at conception, how do you think our society will be viewed by our descendants? As one of the most morally disgusting of all time.

American abortion: 227,385 murders per year (Planned Parenthood alone)

Spanish Inquisition: 17 executions per year

Global witch burnings: 260 burnings per year

French Reign of Terror: 53,200 executions per year

“”We are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, a war without death. Yes, they are very hard, the Americans, they are voracious, they want undivided power over the world.”

Osama? The soon-to-be-late Mr. Hussein? No, try Francois Mitterand, former President of France and an architect of the European Union. That’s what the EU is about.

Wilfox sends the following poem:

The dragon that hid the moon is gone,

The bloodsucker has vanished into the abyss.

Let me taste this day like the ripest of dates,

And come tomorrow to talk about the days to come.

– Jahiz

Saddam Hussein is by no means the last dragon. But it is a joy to see one bite the dust even so. Let us hope that the Iraqi people are more fortunate with their next government.