Martin Meenagh blog

Corby

Occasionally, the AOL 'Speak Yor Branes' Commments throw up a gem This, from a piece on the Dakken field as seen by the International Space Station; "Mystery" This treasure trove of things, this space-born isle, This energy turned mass, this light bespecked orb, This would-be Eden, failing paradise; This fortress built of Nature by her hand, Against the dark and chilling claim of cosmic cold, This troubled band of souls, this little place, This precious sphere, adrift a vacuous void Which serves in measure as a cell, Within such shell, might form an entity more wise Against the perils of the ‘verse unknown, to act. This blessed plot, this place , this realm, this Earth, This nurse, this teeming womb of living beings, Fear'd by their breed, and infamous in their deeds . With apologies to Richard II

Gold Conspiracies.... The bears are back, courtesy of zerohedge.com. It's very interesting and makes me wonder if there was more to Gordon Brown selling British gold in the way that he did a decade ago. It's also interesting to hear people start talking about SDRs as claims on members' non gold exchange assets, potentially. What is going on? I feel sometimes like we're in the opening scene of '2012', when really, the only thing to suspect is what we see--an utterly corrupt farce recurring all around. Bears are sweary as usual, so don't watch if you get offended by their chilli mouths.

The Vatican and Monetary Unions Earlier this month, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace produced a note on the world economy . I read it in French, because an English translation did not exist, so I may have misunderstood some of it. The main conclusion of what to an 'English speaking economist' was an economics-thin document was that there should be a world economic or monetary authority--in essence, a world public authority--to manage the world economy. The document, in so far as it was reviewed by an economist at all, seems to have been endorsed by Leonardo Beccetti , a left-wing (if not Marxist) professor from Rome Tor Vergata . A distinctive separate voice, which dwelt upon the largely Austrian but sometimes Soviet idea of business cycles is apparent in the first section of the note. Significantly, the head of the Vatican Bank, and a central banker from elsewhere, Gotti Tedeschi, did not endorse the document. Indeed, a few days later, he appeared in the Vatican ne...

BloggerBlock I find it hard to deal with what the media insistently call the 'real' world anymore, and have been taking refuge in Robert Crease's wonderful history of Mathematics, 'The Great Equations' . Well, I write 'taking refuge', but I have been working like a wild man again and those moments of refuge are now few and far between. I'm also confined, more or less to that book, since my kindle is broken and Amazon--whose customer service is the best I have encountered--have entrusted delivery of a new one to the Royal Mail, which sundry incarnations of spastic overmanagement are attempting to destroy through forced incompetence. So, well, here I am, Sunday morning, eggs and sausages finished and what do I encounter? The media, in full flow, in need of a clue wagon. Here's what they need to know; a) The republican nomination for the presidency of the United States involves seven major candidates; Cain, Gingrich, Bachmann, Huntsman, Romney, Perry, a...