– only a few words today, and with a pencil (with yours) – … why this deep grief, where necessity speaks – can our love exist but by sacrifices, by not demanding everything. Can you change it, that you are not completely mine, that I am not completely yours … look upon beautiful Nature and calm your mind about what must be – love demands everything and completely with good reason, that is how it is for me with you, and for you with me – only you forget too easily, that I must live for myself and for you as well, if we were wholly united, you would not feel this as painfully, just as little as I would – my journey was terrible … Esterhazi had … the same problems … now quickly to the interior from the exterior. We will probably see each other soon, only, today I cannot convey to you my observations which I made during these few days about my life … my heart is full with so much to tell you – Oh – There are moments when I feel that language is nothing at all – cheer up – remain my faithful only darling, my everything, as I for you, the rest is up to the Gods, what must be for us and what is in store for us. –

your faithful ludwig –

Monday evening on 6 July – You are suffering, you my dearest creature – only now do I realize … the only days when the mail is delivered to K. – you are suffering – Oh, wherever I am, you are with me, I talk to myself and to you, arrange that I can live with you, what a life!!!! as it is!!!! without you … as much as you love me – I love you even more deeply, but – but never hide yourself from me – Good night … Oh God – so near! so far! Is not our love a true edifice in Heaven – but also as firm as the firmament. –

Good morning on 7 July – while still in bed my thoughts turn towards you my Immortal Beloved, now and then happy, then sad again, waiting whether fate might answer us – I can only live either wholly with you or not at all, yes I have resolved to stray about in the distance, until I can fly into your arms, and send my soul embraced by you into the realm of the Spirits – yes unfortunately it must be – you will compose yourself all the more since you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never – never – O God why do I have to separate from someone whom I love so much, and yet my life in Vienna as it is now is a miserable life – Your love makes me at once most happy and most unhappy – at my age I would now need some conformity[,] regularity of my life – can this exist in our relationship? – Angel, … be patient – only through quiet contemplation of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – be calm – love me – today – yesterday – What yearning with tears for you – you – you my life – my everything – farewell – oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your Beloved L.

Forever thine

forever mine

forever us.

(Ludwig van Beethoven, Bohemian spa of Teplitz on 6/7 July 1812, likely never sent)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

–Charles Dickens, 1859, regarding the 1775 French adventure with hyperinflation that lead to the Revolution

From the Roman empire, pre-French Revolution, pre-World War II Germany, whenever governments get a taste for printing free money, they send their citizens on an exciting ride called hyperinflation. But of course, that won’t happen this time…

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=BASE

The above chart was published by the St. Louis Federal Reserve. Wow, that’s a lot of printing in just two years. To put that in historical perspective, here is the money supply for the past hundred years. That fun little jump at the end, oh let us not concern ourselves with that. We’re only getting started.

St. Louis Federal Reserve Monetary Base 1917-2011

http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/chart-of-the-us-money-supply-1917-2009/

Soon after 1971, when all governments of the world used fiat currency, the temptation to print debt-backed paper money would not be resisted. We are told that inflation today is under control. It is only certain goods whose value is increasing, not the devaluation of the currency. Certain goods like food, energy, housing, and metals. What’s left?

http://crs.org/emergency/global-food-crisis-faq.cfm

The pattern seems to be the same, whether just before the fall of the Roman Empire, pre-French Revolution and seventy years earlier, the Weimar Republic in the 20s before Hitler, Hungary in the 40′s, Chile in the 70s before and during Pinochet’s coup, neighboring Argentina and Peru a decade later, Angola, Yugoslavia, Belarus, and Zimbabwe today, or Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and the United States tomorrow. In the past, governments set price controls. Today we set ‘inflation targets’, print more money to grant loans and bail out banks. We inflate at consistent rates until the debt becomes greater than domestic production and deflation sets in, then devalue fiat currency. Maybe we’ll learn from Iceland and let the banks and their backers fail, but recent history on both sides of the Atlantic tell a tired old story.

Notice, if you will, the 80% drops around 2008, the year the housing bubbles collapsed, M3 money (no longer published in the United States) contracted, and M0 money printing reached over 350% in the United States. In other words, bad money (debt backed fiat) deflated, prices dropped, and the central banks began printing money to bring prices back up. While looking at the identical patterns of these commodity prices, ask yourself, did they all become less valuable, or is the value of fiat (dollars and euros) money itself manipulated?

http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/crude_oil.html

Platinum ten year price (notice the exact same 2008 drop)

Palladium 10 years

Rhodium (rare precious noble metal)

Whether because of dwindling supply, higher demand, instability in the middle east, you can’t deny that the price of oil suspiciously matches ‘real money’ namely gold. We are told that the dollar, yen, and euro are not loosing value, only that food, oil, and gold are improving. I suspect Gold did not take as large a hit as other commodities because bankers have be buying up gold as a hedge against fiat collapse.

http://www.goldprice.org/spot-gold.html

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”

–Thomas Jefferson

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/06/update-real-house-prices-and-price-to.html

The US housing prices increased 900% since the seventies and increased 100% before crashing almost as low in the past ten years.

Quantitative easing (money printing) is used to avoid deflation or when inflation is below target. Japan has been in a deflationary gridlock for decades. With a 0% interest rate, the central bank can not give money away! The United States has reached the peak of credit. Considering there is more debt (M1, Principal + Interest) than money (Principal), then without producing more debt, the money supply will necessarily collapse. Since the central fractional reserve banking system (Federal Reserve) can not loan more money to people (or countries like China) who don’t want it, the US Fed has recently tripled the amount of dollars in circulation to devalue the currency. Since the Fed can not force producers to create goods that consumers know they can obtain at lower prices later (price deflation), the Fed attempts instead to create a situation whereby consumers accept more debt and recklessly spend in fear that their savings will evaporate (70% devaluation – or 30% of the value tomorrow for money earned today).

Wages are not going up, indeed some people are losing their jobs, record high numbers can not find new jobs and are foreclosing on their homes (deflation) while the prices of basic requirements (food and energy) are going up (inflation).

Since the terms inflation and deflation no longer refer to monetary inflation (printing money) and since necessities such as energy, food, and metal are excluded from official price inflation calculation, one must assume that inflation and deflation today refers to wages. For why else would the Fed announce concerns over deflation, when clearly prices are going up! …at least in markets not propped up by toxic debt (housing).

The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand — a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers. Likewise, the economic effects of a deflationary episode, for the most part, are similar to those of any other sharp decline in aggregate spending–namely, recession, rising unemployment, and financial stress…

The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost… Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and, hence, positive inflation… a central bank should always be able to generate inflation, even when the short-term nominal interest rate is zero…

The Fed has the authority to buy foreign government debt … this class of assets offers huge scope for Fed operations because the quantity of foreign assets eligible for purchase by the Fed is several times the stock of U.S. government debt…

–Ben Shalom Bernanke, 2002 (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve as of 2006)

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boardDocs/speeches/2002/20021121/default.htm

Germany 1923 Deutsche Mark 1 Billion

Hungary 10 million Pengo

Nicaragua 10 Million

Turkey 5 Million

Yugoslavia 10 Billion

METAR (METeorological Airport Report) describe the current conditions as observed by the weather tower at an airport. These are reliable, updated frequently, although incredibly terse. Similarly, TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) report the coming conditions including trends and temporary changes typically for the next twelve to twenty-four hours. The format takes a little getting used.

I’ve compiled a number of reports for a select few cities in the north Atlantic and compressed them into a format the plays nicely with mobile telephones. For the benefit of humans, I’ve prepended the Metar decoded. Let’s check out the balmy Kangerlussuaq (Søndre Strømfjord):

Metar


BGSF 071750Z 04005KT 5000 -SN OVC035 M11/M12 Q1008


BGSF is the airport code (ICAO) followed by the time of the report at UTC. The first two digits represent the day of the month (in this case the seventh) while the next four are the hour (24-hour) and minute (Z refers to Zulu or UTC), thus 17:50.

The next three digits refer to the wind direction (the direction from which the wind comes) over 360 degrees, where 0 is north, 90 is from the east. The next two digits is the wind speed in knots (hence KT). Two knots is roughly one m/s. So 04005KT is roughly 2.5 m/s wind from the northeast. Sometimes you’ll see a G which refers to gusts, so 27020G30KT means 10 m/s gusting to 15 m/s from the west.

The next four digits refer to visibility in meters. 5000 means 5 km visibility. 9999 is typically used for visibility unlimited or at least 10 km.

Then there is the weather type, precipitation, etc. A minus (-) means light while plus is heavy. There are a huge number of codes. Just a few, SH showers, SN snow, FG fog, DZ drizzle, TS thunderstorms, BR mist, RA rain, and many more.

The next zero to many describe the layers of clouds. Scattered, broken, overcast, etc followed by the number of hundreds of feet. Why we mix metric with imperial, I have only guesses. OVC035 means overcast layer of clouds at 3500 feet.

The next numbers refer to the the temperature. The M means minus (below freezing). After the slash is the dew point, the temperature at which precipitation should be expected, or at least 100% relative humidity.

The number with a Q is the barometric pressure in millibar (mbs).

Sexy sexy made up of plexi disasters
Pushing and pulling conservative rolling
Unlike plastic, easier to see through
Just like glass with no ring
Softer and sadder you sing
Sexy sexy do your thing
Learn to be shy and then you can sting
Plexi, plexi bend don’t shatter
Once your broken shape won’t matter

Your breaking your mind
By killing the time that kills you
But you can’t blame the time
When its only in your mind

Quickly quickly grow and then you’ll know
It is such and awkward show to see
And everyone you wanted to know
And everyone you wanted to meet
Have all gone away
Well they’ve all gone away

And now you’re
Breaking your mind
By killing the time that kills you
But you cant blame the time
When its only in your mind

I dag er det Alexs fødselsdag,
hurra hurra hurra,
han sikkert sig en gave får,
som han har ønsket sig i år,
med dejlig chokolade og kager til.

Hvor smiler han, hvor er han glad,
hurra hurra hurra,
men denne dag er også rar,
for hjemme venter mor og far
med dejlig chokolade og kager til.

Og når han hjem fra skole går,
hurra hurra hurra,
så skal han hjem og holde fest
og hvem der kommer med som gæst
får dejlig chokolade og kager til.

Til slut vi råber højt i kor,
hurra hurra hurra,
gid Alex længe leve må,
og sine ønsker opfyldt få,
og dejlig chokolade og kager til.

mp3
mp3

(hover over for English translations)