Champion cardstacker builds huge capitol with 22,000 cards

says...

if this is the same guy that did the tower of pisa jenga, then he is one cool dude

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

qbert says...

"why is it that the Fed is able to manipulate the money supply such that the dollars you and I work for are cleaved of their real value and inflated at their discretion, with no Congressional oversight?"

Congress must never have a hand in managing the money supply. The whole point of the Fed is its impartiality. If you had guys afraid to put the brakes on the economy just because it's an election year, that's quite the conflict of interest.

The Fed's job is to protect the value of money, above all. This may mean encouraging lending, this may mean engineering recession, but in the end it's just to keep money worth money.

Forget about your bank collapsing, the Fed is there to keep the money itself from collapsing. It's terribly scary to have that power anywhere, so a suggestion to automate the process against inflation, take some or all human error out, that I can understand. But managing the money supply can't be a democratic process, whereby we all get representation in what we want: we'll all say we like money, we want more, ignorant of the intricacies of how money is valued, and to what extent this disbursment is damaging the value of the money. Sometimes recession is the only way to maintain the value of money, to manage inflation; and we would never choose recession, we could never endure such a thing by choice, because it's more tangible than suffering inflation.

The ramifications of a failing currency, like clockwork, are unspeakable violence in the streets, sometimes marked by counter-revolutions into war-mongering barbarism. It's a pretty basic human instinct: if what we have is worth nothing, let's go take what they have.

It's for the latter reason that people are reluctant to start pulling blocks out of the Jenga tower that is the Fed. It's been a long time since worldwide economic hardship precipitated an Italian invasion of Ethiopia, a Japanese invasion of China, and a Weimar Germany in which beer cost 4 million marks per glass (France needed those reparations, because it too was hungry).

This video is crazy. "Do you want your money gaining value every year, or losing value every year?" Well, shucks! Didn't realize it was THAT simple! I WANT MORE MONEY, DOG!

9/11 Mysteries-Fine Art of Structural Demolitions

theo47

says...

Wrong.

First of all, there have got to be thousands of variables as to why each building went down - arguing that each building should collapse in the order they were hit is very linear thinking. (Along those same lines, the Towers are inconceivably heavy structures, not Jenga blocks - given that their internal structures weakening is what caused them to fall, of course they're going to fall in on themselves.) I'm reluctant to debate 9/11 kooks point-for-point simply because most points are quite obvious to me (and I usually have better things to do), or they use some sort of logical fallacy to begin with.

Second, you don't get to just throw stones as a scientist - you have to propose alternate theories to explain a phenomena, or otherwise you're proving you're not really that interested in finding out what happened. To say that some of the alternate notions proposed by conspiracy theorists are completely without evidence, even comical, is an understatement.

I repeat, once again, my assertion that conspiracy theorists are much like religious fundamentalists or people with extreme political philosphies in that they START with a belief, then cherry-pick facts to fit their preconceived conclusions. (It's how the right suckered a grieving nation into invading Iraq.)

Science just doesn't work that way, kids. Until you have facts to back up your theories, and conspiracy theorists, by definition, don't - then it's just wish fulfillment. ("Oh my God, I was right all along! The establishment really is run by aliens/commies/fundies/Jews/midgets!")

Who Left This Hole in the Ground, Mr. President? (8:45)

daphne

says...

The only thing I'm banking on is that tb is a Conservative Republican. It's the "throw in an insult based on something I can't back up" approach that makes me think that.

Leaning too far in either direction topples the Jenga.