Club409

Oh I meant to mention the one scene from Bourne Legacy: the workplace violence scene. I thought it was really well executed (hmm i really did not intend a pun). It really does give the impression of something horrible happening. The cadence and rhythm for it were kind of how I would guess an actual incident would go. I think we're all led to believe there will be screaming and running and I think sometimes our plan for a situation like that would effectively be "i will hear the screaming and see the running i will run in the direction everyone else is running" which may or may not be that bad of a strategy (btw first rule of surviving a life or death scenario is to just DO SOMETHING) but now a couple shots rang out and it's just quiet. What should I do now? Oh there goes a couple more shots hmmm still deciding what to do. I would guess most people would simply shut down but if they were expecting the silence and pauses they'd be more apt to act. I would say that in the interest of emergency preparedness it would not be a waste of time to watch that scene if only to feel that tempo so it doesn't surprise you. Not sure if the statistics back me up but these things seem to be getting more common every year.

End of the Road - How Money Became Worthless: It's on Netflix and I watched it because I'm a fan of Peter Schiff and he's in it a good bit. So what it is is a documentary describing the historical context and consequences of the US dollar being the world's reserve currency and the impact of releasing the dollar from the gold standard. Do you know what fiat currency is? Or the difference between currency and money? This will explain that. It also describes the effect the currency and the Federal Reserve has on inflation and public debt. So in that aspect it's very informative. It predicts there will be a currency crash in the future. But you do have to watch it with an eye of it being a commercial for gold later in the documentary. I'm sure everyone they interviewed would make some money somehow if you decide to buy gold as an investment. 3.5 out of 5 bullions (bullion is a weird word). Probably would have been 4 out of 5 gold teeth as an investments if it hadn't gotten so commercially at the end. I stopped watching it at the last 10 minutes to be honest.And now my opinions on the gold standard: The thing about being on the gold standard is that gold is a finite resource which I don't believe our economic capabilities are. So on the gold standard you can only make so much money because only so much of it exists. But this does put a hard limit on policies that lead to inflation: government spending and money printing. So if the policy makers were disciplined enough we shouldn't need the gold standard. But of course this is not the case so we get inflation and public debt. I think the appropriate level of growth exists in between the gold standard and the level of spending/inflation we have today but I don't have any good ideas how to put us there. Oh well. But the gold standard is just so uncool. It'd be like paying your bar tab by check. Or with gold coins. Actually that would be cool.

i'd like a few of those small burlap sacks full of ye olde coins that i could toss down dismissively on a table whenever i needed to pay for something

the hell? disney buys lucasfilm for $4 bil and says star wars episode 7 should be out in 2015 hopefully they can keep george lucas as far away as possible and as a reminder: disney bought marvel last year for near the same amount so i'm expecting some pretty wacky crossovers pretty soon (fingers crossed for jar jar iron man)

The Hobbit: First Strike - None of the previous LotR movies really did anything for me. It's kind of fun watching the spectacle and everything but once again the part that I enjoyed the most was just looking at the pretty scenery mountains and forests and such. I remember in the third grade we listened to the book on vinyl in class and I remember the imagery that came up when Bilbo meets Smeagle for the first time. The scene in the movie matched my mind's eye pretty closely so that was cool. 3 out of 5 pocket handkerchiefs (I know how you feel Bilbo). OK HERE COMES ENDING SPOILERS. The freaking deus ex eagles rescued the day again and once again you gotta ask why didn't they take the eagles for the whole journey.