Nickel and pencing us to death

I was in the store the other day where the cashier had run out of pennies, and was giving out change in nickels to the person ahead of me at the checkout. I pointed out that there were plenty of pennies (and a few coins of a more valuable denomination) in the 'penny jar' which is often found at the checkout counters of small stores. But the cashier wouldn't touch those pennies; apparently using them for any other purpose than providing a cash-strapped customer with access to free pennies needed to complete a purchase is culturally unacceptable. I intended to put a few of those pennies, and maybe even some of the larger denominations, to that very purpose--but as my purchase was being rung up, another store employee returned from a run to the bank, rolls of pennies in hand. I'm sure that bank run cost more than the store saved that day by giving out exact change (an inevitable result of ending all of their prices, already plenty low enough, with the digit 9).

It's been quite some years since I wrote on the upcoming demise of the American penny, and word out now is that not only the penny, but also the nickel, costs more than its face value. Yet the US Mint continues to churn them out, despite my prediction that the Obama administration would see an end to the penny. Well, in the meantime, Canada's penny, which is worth even less than America's, and produced of even cheaper metal, has in fact been pulled from distribution.

So what happens next? If the nickel and penny alike are too expensive to produce--as well as being worth less than a twentieth of what they were a century ago--the next logical step is remonetizing our currency down to the next order of magnitude; perhaps in conjunction with putting the visage of a woman on the new $10 bill.

That's probably the only way it would happen overnight.

Germanwings Flight 9525: The Religious Connection

Inasmuch as I have become a source for research on air disasters, I'm compelled to write about the most recent no-survivors air transport crash. As soon as I heard that the plane descended smoothly into the side of the Alps in clear weather, my only response was, "Islamic pilot." I listened over the next few days to hear the name of the pilot, but when it was finally released, along with the information that the pilot had been locked out of the cockpit (an ironic unintended consequence to post-911 security), the name was not Islamic after all. It appears that mental illness, not religious duty, led the copilot to commit mass suicide.

Indeed, there could be an element of mental illness in all recent mass suicide air disasters. Carrying a parachute could have saved a life in many of these cases, but banning passengers from using cell phones aloft has, in another unintended consequence, limited what can be learned from them.

Apparently the main reason for limiting the use of electronic equipment aboard a cruising airliner is due to their potential drain on the plane's wifi bandwidth--as if a simple cell phone or laptop would be capable of doing such a thing.

Getting back to copilot Andreas Lubitz:  It turns out that his outwardly happy life wasn't so happy after all: his girlfriend, whom he intended to marry, had broken off the relationship. This makes this tragedy another unintended consequence of the decriminalization of adultery: adulterers no longer face the death penalty--but, if they are pilots, their passengers face death all the same.

Why NATO attacked Libya

Obama says that the US needs to fight Ghadaffi because he's killing civilians. How about Bashir, then?

Over the past four weeks, Government of Sudan (GoS) troops and allied militia have carried out a vicious and murderous attack on the people of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudanese state of South Kordafan. This is the very same government that perpetrated genocide in Darfur and continues to carry out devastating attacks on the region. Tellingly, Sudan’s president, Omer Al-Bashir, is already wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur.

The real reason why NATO attacked Libya is that Ghadaffi was trying to take not only his country, but as many as would come with it, back to the gold standard. This was clearly unacceptable to the powers that be: hence, the billion-dollar-a-day military operation to remove him from power.

Tracking down Zerubbabel

Isaac Newton was a genius; no one disputes that. And no matter what he applied his genius to, he made breakthroughs that changed the way things were done. For example, turn a dime or quarter on edge. You will observe a ribbing that goes all the way around the coin. While this serves no purpose today, it was a breakthrough in its time, invented by Newton to end the practice of 'clipping' the edges of specie, a sort of do-it-yourself degradation of the money supply. He came up with this idea when put in charge of the Royal Mint, and ever since then, coins have carried ribbing--as have the tokens that replaced them. Nickels and pennies don't, because they were never made of precious metal.

One idea Newton tinkered with throughout his life (claiming to spend only his 'idle time' on it) was a universal chronology of ancient kingdoms. The unfinished manuscript has once again been posthumously released, edited this time by the same man who brought Ussher's chronology back in print. Inasmuch as it was written before any of the treasures of Ancient Egypt had been opened up by the Rosetta Stone, it could bear editing again by an Egyptologist. And inasmuch as its dates for ancient Egyptian History could be falsified by Carbon-14 dating, this also should be attempted.

But one thing Newton gave to the science of chronology in this work was the technique of dating by generations. It turns out that he didn't originate the idea--it actually underpins much of ancient Greek chronology. What he did was bring Science into the picture, thus drastically reducing dates in ancient history. For example, he set an upper limit of 26 to 28 years for generations in a dynasty, with 18 to 20 years the average length of a reign. Ancients, on the other hand, assumed 33 to 40 years per reign (and in some cases as high as 80 to 100), thus greatly inflating the dates for the earliest monarchs when calculated by generations. Newton was able to conclusively prove that the dates generally accepted for European history get off by up to some three centuries as the inflated generations take us farther and farther back. Modern historians have disregarded Newton's work in this area, to their great detriment.

Calculating chronology by generations is actually an idea I had come up with myself several years ago. I even made a post on it earlier. This post represents my latest thinking.

The Gospels contain two different genealogies of Jesus, the son of Mary. They are so different that people have puzzled for millennia how they can end with the same person. I happen to believe that Matthew's genealogy is that of Joseph, Jesus' common law father, and Luke's is that of Mary, Jesus' birth mother. But regardless, both genealogies share one name in common--or at least appear to: Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel.

Personally, I think this is just a case where two people had the same first and last name--all too common in genealogy. But the interesting thing about this name is that it doesn't really matter: we can use this unique name to date anyone who has it, regardless of how many there were.

Zerubbabel has a very specific meaning in Hebrew: literally, it's sown in Babylon. Now, whether this refers to the individual's conception or his birth, we can reasonably date it to within one generation of 598/7 BC when Jeconiah was taken captive to Babylon. Using this technique relies on only two assumptions:

1) A Jewish father would give this name to his son if he was the first in his family line to be conceived and/or born in Babylonian captivity. The name reflects both the fresh despair of captivity, and a spark of hope for eventual return.

2) The name carries such a negative connotation that it would not be passed on to later generations.

So, let's start with the working hypothesis that anyone named Zerubbabel was born between 586 and 550 BC. Plugging this date into Matthew's genealogy, we find a perfect fit: Zerubbabel was the grandson of Jehoiachin (alias Jeconiah or Coniah), who was born in 616 BC. It's apparent that his first son was born before his exile at age 18, so Shealtiel's firstborn would have been the first in his line to be born in Babylon.

One fascinating piece of information was found on Cuneiform tablets dating to the general time that Jehoiachin was "given a regular ration by the king" of Babylon. It states something to this effect:
Tablet 28122: To Jaoukin, king . . .
Tablet 28178: "10 (sila of oil) to ...Jaoukin, king of Ja[...]
2 1/2 sila to [...so]ns of the king of Judah"
Tablet 28186: "10 (sila) to Jakuukinu, the son of the king of Jakudu
2 1/2 sila for the 5 sons of the king of Jakudu"

I don't think we can identify the men on the third tablet with those on the first two, but at any rate we do know that Jehoiachin had 7 sons, and it's likely that 1 or 2 died young. This is likely the reason why Zerubbabel is sometimes listed as the son of Shealtiel, and sometimes as the son of Pedaiah; apparently a levirate marriage was involved.

But who is Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri in Luke 3:27? He doesn't appear to be closely related to the other one by blood, but, due to the unique historical conditions of the time, must have been in his same generation.

Now, taking that information, we can plug a date into the long genealogy from Nathan (born around 1050 BC) to Jesus (born around 0 BC). The 41 generations would average 25.6 years each--very reasonable when each generation doesn't have to be a firstborn, and an indication that probably none are missing. Plugging Zerubbabel in at 575 BC, we get fore and aft averages of 22.62 and 28.75 years respectively, both of which are still within the normal range.

But trying to fit Zerubbabel into Matthew's genealogy has a big problem: he's only 11 generations back from Jesus, rather than 20. This means an average generation of 52.27 years; way too many, especially since most of these are first- or second-borns. But remember, we already know that Matthew deliberately excluded 3 or 4 generations farther up. So how many can we reasonably say he excluded between Zerubbabel and Abiud--the descendant who follows him on Matthew's list?

Well, as it turns out, 1 Chronicles 3 already gives Zerubbabel's descendants out for 6 generations--and Abiud doesn't make the list. Adding these six to the 11 already listed gives an average generation of 33.82 years--still a bit too long.

If, as Newton showed, we can use generations to fix chronology, we can also do the opposite--by counting the years between Zerubbabel and Jesus, we can show that at least six, and probably about ten, generations are missing between Zerubbabel and Joseph--and likely before we even get to Abiud. UPDATE May 2012 I recently discovered a possible factor in Matthew's dividing Jesus' genealogy into three sets of fourteen: One set getting us to David the King, one set of Davidic Kings, and one more set of exiles down to Jesus, the heir to David's throne. 'DAVID' in Hebrew gematria has the value of fourteen.

Another Vatican abuse case

Got your attention, didn't I? Well, this probably isn't what you were expecting, so calm down.

The Vatican library is about to enter the digital age, apparently--for once--with no help from Google. This is an excerpt from their March 24, 2010 Newsletter:

The digitization of 80,000 manuscripts of the Vatican Library, it should be realized, is not a light-hearted project. Even with only a rough calculation one can foresee the need to reproduce 40 million pages with a mountain of computer data, to the order of 45 petabytes (that is, 45 million billion bytes). This obviously means pages variously written and illustrated or annotated, to be photographed with the highest definition, to include the greatest amount of data and avoid having to repeat the immense undertaking in the future.

And these are delicate manuscripts, to be treated with care, without causing them damage of any kind. A great undertaking for the benefit of culture and in particular for the preservation and conservation of the patrimony entrusted to the Apostolic Library, in the tradition of a cultural service that the Holy See continues to express and develop through the centuries, adapting its commitment and energy to the possibilities offered by new technologies.

Now, what I wish to focus on, and pick apart, is the following phrase: "without causing them damage of any kind." Simply put, this is fallacious thinking, but of a sort that is all to common to mankind, no matter the level of expertise behind such a statement.

Damage is an inevitable part of human existence, extending even to pride, which can be wounded, and feelings, which can be hurt. Nothing in human experience is immune to damage, and damage is so universal that its occurrence can only be limited to various extents; it can never be avoided altogether.

Now granted, leaving a book on the shelf in the darkened room of a climate-controlled library is the best way to minimize damage. Under such conditions, a book can be expected to remain in good condition for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. But that is not why books were written, nor why they are retained. Books are made to be read.

What the Vatican curators hope to accomplish by this digitization project--indeed, what they can hardly fail to accomplish--is to both slightly prolong the life of the books by ensuring that they will hardly ever need to be taken from the shelf again, and to greatly expand the usefulness of the books by making them available to be read virtually, anywhere in the world, and by as many people as have access to the digital files in which their images will be stored.

This is a very noble goal, well worth the time and expense that need only be applied once in order to be effective for a long time to come. But meeting this goal comes at a cost--that of taking the books off the shelf, opening their pages to the light, laying them flat, and then turning each and every page for exposure to a bright flash. This act alone will probably age some of these books more in one day than they have aged in the past one hundred years of occasional but careful use.

This is damage, and it is unavoidable. The only question to be asked is whether this one-time dose of damage is worth it in the long run, and the answer to that question is undoubtedly, "Yes." One last dose of damage now, and the book can go back on the shelf, perhaps never to be opened again. For that matter, the book can be used to kindle the woodfire for the next Papal Conclave, with relatively little loss to the global knowledge of which it has heretofore only been a physical, rather than a virtual, part.

But "without causing them damage of any kind?" It's an unnecessarily lofty ideal, and one that simply cannot be realized. Yet we meet with this sort of thinking again and again. Take for example, the adage that having borrowed or rented an item, you should "return it in better condition than you got it." Inasmuch as any use of an item causes damage, even returning it in identical condition is impossible. To return it in better condition would require that you do something to improve the item while it is in your possession, thus making up for and even reversing some of the inevitable damage. You could, for example, shine a pair of shoes that you borrowed. This would certainly make up for the polish worn away from the tops of the shoes while they were on your feet, but would do nothing for the leather worn away from the soles. And if the shoes were already polished when you received them, all your noble efforts would still result in you returning the shoes somewhat the worse for wear overall.

To take this line of thinking in a slightly different direction, most people assume (or did until a couple of years ago) that their house, as a result of them living in it for a few years, will become worth more than they paid for it--at least if they do a good job of keeping it up. This fallacy is actually based on two different assumptions, in addition the the assumption that it is possible, by taking great pains, to "avoid causing damage of any kind" to an item being used.

The first of these assumptions is that nominal cost is equal to real cost. In this way of thinking, if you bought a house for $7500 in 1940, and could sell it for $100,000 now, your house is worth over $92,000 more than you paid for it. On the contrary, it's worth close to $10,000 less. Had the value of your house kept pace with inflation, you should be able to get $109,425 for it today. Only when all figures are adjusted for inflation do you see the change in an item's real value.

The other assumption is that the only cost of a house is its purchase price. While that may be true for the first few months, a period in which no one expects the value of a house to have had enough time to go up, the fact is that to continue holding on to a house has unavoidable ongoing costs. Many experts recommend an annual spending of 4% of the house's value on keeping it up. Under such a plan, even if your house is still worth $7500 in 1940 dollars, you already spent more than twice what you paid for the house just keeping it looking nice from 1940 up until 1990, and you're now closing in on paying for it the fourth time in annualized nickels and dimes. All this, even if you paid for it in hard-to-come by cash, and had no mortgage expenses during all those years. And don't forget property taxes! To truly turn a profit on your $7500 investment held for 70 years, you'd have to get well over three--quarters of a million dollars for it today: a one-hundred fold nominal increase would still leave you under water in the kind of terms that real investors use.

So, to get back to the original title: What is the Vatican abusing now? Well, if not the English language, at least the science of Economics. While it is less abusive to the delicate manuscripts in the long run to subject them to the indignities of being photographed for all the world to see, it is simply impossible to maintain that it can be done without causing them any damage at all.

Hold on to your gold!

Well, I'm back with another scam that will probably replace all the hits I'm missing from corey.
A few months ago, when the price of gold reached an all-time high--in nominal terms, but certainly not in material terms--I sent away for an offer from Cash4gold.com. I received back an envelope in which I could send unwanted gold jewelry to be appraised. Before I parted with my 14k wedding ring, though, I wondered how much it would really be worth. I went to all the trouble to weigh it and it came out to about 5 grams, or one and a third troy ounces; at $1000 an ounce, that came to $133. Since my ring was 58% gold, I figured $70 would be a reasonable melt value. But gold4cash had its expenses, too, so I figured they'd probably only offer me about half that; maybe only a third.

But I wanted to be sure. So I decided to call them and ask what they were paying per ounce of gold, before I went and sent in my ring. It turns out that they won't answer such questions, "unless we can see it." Ha! The truth is, I would have been lucky to have gotten more than a dollar for my ring, but they didn't want me to know that until they had it in their possession. Because, as in the case of all such scams, their 'free return policy' has enough fine print to make it virtually worthless. Here is a first-hand account of how the scam is perpetrated.

Well, the good news is, cash4gold won't be able to put endless charges on your credit card. But once they have your gold, it's gone. So send for the free envelope if you must. Send it back if you must. But please, don't put anything in it that you think is worth more than the postage you're saving by using their envelope.

A Thought for the Penny

In this blog post I predicted "the demise of the penny coming by the end of a second Obama administration." This is an inevitable result of the demonetization of the dollar, which took place from 1933 to 1971. The only question is, how soon will it happen? Even before Obama was elected, it became clear that he intended to print his way out of this credit crisis, and that spells bad news for the penny.

Well, as it turns out the idea is already starting to take hold. This blog reports on a city that has already tried to abolish it--I don't know how well they've done, but as the entry points out, pennies are no longer legal tender at tollbooths.

Stand by. Right now copper is pretty cheap in terms of dollars, but once that disparity is rectified, the penny is a goner. And it will probably happen overnight.

A System Doomed to Failure

I don't want to overwhelm my readers with more than one post a day, but this one was just too good to pass up. Watch the CNBC anchors scramble for cover after an opening statement by Ron Paul in the House Financial Services Committee Hearing yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW2V50AS7K0

[Zim] Dollars aren't even good for toilet paper

Robert Mugabe has presided over a rate of inflation almost unprecedented in history. In 1980, when he began his reign, one Zimbabwe dollar was worth almost half again as much as an American dollar. Since the dollar itself isn't even worth half what it was then, the Zim should be worth at least $3 by now. But it's lost value much faster than the US dollar has: The government has now had to come out with the $100 trillion-Zim note. At at the current rate of inflation, even that bill will be worth less than 1/1000 of a cent before the month is out.

A placard over a public toilet in Zimbabwe reads:

TOILET PAPER ONLY
To be used in this toilet
No Cardboard
No Cloth
No Zim Dollars
No Newspaper

This is farther than any other fiat money system has gone in terms of digits printed on a bill, but in another way the situation in Zimbabwe is not uncommon.

No fiat money system has ever failed to eventually reach the stages of redenomination and/or hyperinflation. Even the relatively stable US dollar has lost 95% of its value in less than 95 years, and the vast majority of that has been in the past 48 years, since going off the silver standard. Redenomination of the currency is inevitable once the smallest bill--or largest coin--won't even buy a stick of gum. Already the US mint has had to reduce the level of silver, then copper, and soon nickel in the smallest denominated coins--and they have already reached the point of costing more to produce than they are worth (although the present deflationary depression has served to forestall the inevitable). Given the ongoing resistance to eliminate the penny, and the current propensity for denominating fiat money grants in billions or even trillions, the next move will probably be to eliminate coinage altogether--most likely by confiscation.

So prepare to bid good-bye to the contents of your piggy bank. And you might as well get used to the idea of a square of toilet paper being worth more than a million-dollar bill, because eventually it will.

Update January 29, 2009
Taking into account all the redenominations of the past 20 years, the Zim now retains only one sextillioth of its original nominal value. As an indication that the Zim has reached the point of no return, Mugabe's government lifted the last restrictions on usage of foreign currency. Rather than lug around boxes of Zim one hundred trillion dollar notes (February 6 update: these have again been redenominated with all the zeroes removed--but still just as worthless), Zimbabweans have reverted to the world currency of choice, the US dollar. But what currency will replace the dollar once it reaches fifteen digits?