Speaking of gold coins, I was reading that the reason they put little grooves on the outer edges of coins was to keep people from shaving metal. Another reason perhaps, they don't make coins from precious metals any longer.
Yeah but if you shave enough copper and nickel you eventually end up with copper and nickel worth a significant value (which is to say, a lot copper and nickel).
If you look on a tenner it says "Bank Of England. I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten pounds" Once upon a time you could go into the bank of england and get yourself ten pounds worth of gold, not anymore, though I expect they'd give you two fivers.
When it gets really interesting is when the guy’s chickens won’t be ready for market until December but he wants to make sure that his five chickens will still be worth one pig:
The chicken guy sells an OPTION to trade his chickens for gold in December at an agreed price (the current price of one pig). He also buys an OPTION from the pig farmer to buy one pig in December (at the current price of one pig). If the price of chickens fall between now and December, he can still sell at the agreed (higher) price. If the price of chickens rises, he can let the OPTION lapse and sell at the new (higher) price, thereby making a profit. Similarly, if the price of pigs increases, he can still buy at the pre-arranged (lower) price, but, if the price of pigs falls, again he can let the OPTION lapse and buy at the new (lower) price. This is called HEDGING his bets.
[%sig%]
We actually did this in Economics, Dan. They now hand you back a tenner. If you are really, really persistent (do you reckon I was?) they give you a government bond with the face value of £10. As you normally have to pay commission to buy gilts, this is not actually a bad deal at all. But you have to be very, very, very persistent.
The Options thing is how Al-Qaeda got very rich indeed off September 11th. Here's the very simplified example of how it works :-
A month ahead of time, they agreed to sell General Motors Shares to a businessman for $2 a share - at that time, the shares were $2.20 a share. Good deal for American businessman, bad deal for the Fundamentalists, right? Only, the agreement to sell only states that they have to sell a hundred thousand shares on that day, Sept 15th, for a set price of $2 and that the businessman has to buy them. They don't actually have to buy any shares until the day before. By which time, the share price of everything dropped and the shares only cost Al Qaeda $1.75 each. The businessman is locked into his contract and has to fork out way over the going rate, for which Al Q make 25 cents a share. And they did this with millions and millions of shares, borrowing all the money on short-term loans.
It was a masterpiece of financing. If I sound full of admiration, I am, but only for the intricate mind of the financiers, not the way they brought about the collapse in the stock market.
And Emma, yes hairdressers are very sensitive to thoughts - all telepathy works via split-ends you know, so hairdressers are more attuned than anyone else. All those sweepings are all choked-off stray thoughts that never got into the ether.
These were FUTURES trades which must mature at the agreed price. Where such trades can be very profitable (or very expensive, dependant on which side of the trade fence you're sitting, just ask Nick Leeson) is that you can buy such a trade with very little money. This is called LEAVERAGE.
I don't know the details but when the South Sea Bubble crashed the head of the French mint had the bright idea of printing money (for which he had no gold reserve) in order to boulster up the economy. It didn't work.
Here's one which sounds stupid, but nobody can actually answer :-
1. As any fule kno, the only manmade object you can see from space is the Great Wall of China.
2. This wall, no matter how long it is, is not a mile thick at any point. So while it is long, it is not all that thick.
3. If you take any section of the wall (which you can see from space) there must be less actual surface area than a really dense city.
4. So how come, if you can see a section of the Great Wall of China that is ten miles long, but not a mile thick from space, you can't see New York?
(And the supplemental question that this always deteriorates into - who are best, Chinese or Romans?)
I bet you there isn't one person alive who can answer that question properly which must surely make people sit and wonder exactly what they are doing to people in the name of 'mental' health !
>> ....and why do hairdressers, when told "just an inch off all over please?" get a manic look in their eyes are start chopping away in a frenzied manner?
Why can't they do as they're told? <<
Having had my hair cut but once since last summer I ventured into a barbershop a couple of weeks ago. The 'barber' turned out to be a tattooed woman with a faghanging from her mouth. As I sat in the chair she said,'what you want me to do with this lot then?'
'Take 2" off all over', I replied.
She sniffed, ran her comb through my hair and snipped a bloody big bit out of the middle. It fell in my lap and was at least 3" long. I looked up at her in the mirror and she could see the anger in my face. 'I ain't measuring it', she said, sniffed again and carried on cutting. The bitch will never have me in her chair ever again. I now look like your average short-haired old man.
I read recently (can't remember where) it's a myth about the Great Wall. You can't see it from space. But never having been into space I have no idea if that's true.
And here's me.. thinking garage music was music created in a garage!
Anyhow-
When you say goodbye to someone in a public place.. and then have to say goodbye to other people in the same place.. which involves having to pass by the first person you said goodbye to (after saying goodbye to the second group of people).. why do you want to find a different route out of the building in order not to spoil the first goodbye?
Why are all busdrivers angry bastards?
How long is 'just a sec'?
What is a misnoma? (and why can't it be someone who nostalgically recalls gnomes?)
What happens if there is NO grass on the other side?.. or maybe there is.. but it's actually blue.. or less green.. or turquoise?
How come the glow from streetlights always seems to follow you?.. why doesn't it get distracted and follow someone else? ..or just stay still?
Where did the term 'O.K' come from?
What does avant garde actually mean?
Why do people in urban places clean their shoes?
Is it better to burn out or to fade away?
[%sig%]
No, Flash, in the end we were offered a theory that it might work because protein is an appetite suppressant and people on the diet actually consume less calories (essentially they are on a low calorie diet :) : nonsense!
I reckon that Atkins will turn out to have been right all along and the so called ‘scientific studies’ will prove to be virtual publicity stunts.
I’m convinced that there would be no ‘mystery’ if dieting wasn’t a multi-billion pound industry and if scientists could actually take the time to look into it rather than rubbishing the diet because it proves they don’t know what they are talking about.
As for the ‘Laws’ of Thermodynamics - can a bee fly yet?
"At various times, [during history] similar calculations have been applied to living creatures, with bizarre results. It has been ‘proved’ that kangaroos can’t jump, [and] bees can’t fly. … The main message that biologists have derived from these exercises has been a deep scepticism about the relevance of physics to biology, and a comfortable feeling of superiority, because life is clearly more interesting than physics."
– Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, & Jack Cohen in "The Science of Discworld"1, page 33.
Garage music used to be an offshoot of house music, Dub, slightly dirtier and funkier house (house before it went deep, handbag or trance) but it then stopped being that and became an offshoot of jungle music, slowed down and with a ska two tone influence. Alternatively, and a lot simpler, it is like Craig David. Like an English R & B.
why do we say 'left tenant' when it's written lieutenant and everyone else says it as its written?
as a kid we had to read "The Moon is down" aloud in class and EVERYONE pronounced it 'leftenant' without any prior discussion. I felt like I was the only person in the world who didn't know some big piece of common knowledge.
But we don't say "Here are two weeks pay in lef of notice"
I rather like it, it makes me cringe when I hear Loo-tenant Kowalski or whatever in an American war movie. (In my war movie experience, Loo-tenant's are usually Polish and more often than not, Charles Bronson)
Pages