※SpinalGap24 ※

Because of the crisis in the world today that is
causing people to worry about stocks, bonds, loans,
credit, inflation and the value of money several of my
close internet friends (and a few of my everyday
friends here) have been talking to me about their own
financial situation. A few are asking for advice.

Contemplating all of this I realized very few
understand any of this at all. So, here, as short as
I can make it, off the top of my head, are some
answers, and, some good advice.

LESSON ONE

For thousands of years as a human culture would
develop and a government to oversee that culture would
get established those in power realized that something
would need to be created to act as a symbol of the
effort placed through labor into the production of
"goods", and, that symbol would also need to represent
the value of those goods produced by that labor.

Money is a created thing. From nothing, a ruler says,
this symbol represents your value. Use this symbol to
declare your value is promoted by the ruler.

The rulers would then cause these symbols to be mass
produced. When the rulers bought things or ordered
people to work for them they would "pay" for these
things with these symbols. Thus these symbols would
filter out into the hands of private persons. Those
citizens would use the symbols themselves. Bartering
for labor or for goods was replaced with symbols of
worth.

Rule #1 - Money is just a symbol, and, what gives it
power is the belief by those using the symbols that
they have a firm value.

Rule #2 - When this belief gets stressed out because
of trouble touching the lives of the people within a
given culture these symbols of worth change in value.

Rule #3 - When a society fails so do these symbols
fail. Eventually every monetary system from history
eventually failed and those money symbols became
worthless.

Rule #4 - Eventually the symbols used today as money
by every varied culture on earth will fail and become
worthless.

The question today that needs to be asked by everyone
is this. How do I protect myself from financial
failure? What are the things I can do to help insure
when symbols of worth are in trouble because of events
within my culture that I also will not get into
trouble?

I will try to simplistically explain the truth
everyone needs to know and also reveal an ancient
hidden secret of how someone can easily secure their
economic future. (hint - DO NOT GAMBLE - INVEST IN
SOMETHING THAT IS NOT JUST A SYMBOL)

Morning dear friends,

I enjoyed the sunlight of yesterday, and the sunbeams coming off kiki's Lisboa blog, as today is truly and utterly...cloudy here.

I've to have a busier day than expected, with a neck scan later this morning, and an in depth look at the 'workings of my spine', so I'm told. This is fine, but I become fearful when doctor's jump from one thing to another like this, as it becomes an avalanche of emotion for little me, the patient.

I keep on having dreams of my childhood in France, with my late Grandfather taking care of me...indeed I now realise in the sobering light of day, that my dream contained all my dearly departed family members, some of whom I still cannot bring myself to admit have 'gone.

Have a lovely day dear friends.

Love,
Ed
xxx

PS: I must give credit to Norwich City's wonderful victory last night, winning 1-0 at Southampton brings to 10 the number of unbeaten games we've had.

A farmer built an entire mock castle behind a screen of hay bales and lived there concealed for four years to evade planning regulations, officials said on Friday -- but it may be torn down anyway.

Robert Fidler hopes to take advantage of a provision of planning law that allows buildings without planning permission to be declared legal if no objections have been made after four years
But Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in Surrey is not impressed.

"It does not count because the property was hidden behind hay bales," said a spokeswoman. "No one knew it was there."

The council wants the building near Redhill some 30 km south of London to be demolished, along with an associated conservatory, marquee structure, wooden bridge, patio, decking and tarmac racecourse.

"It looks like a mock-Tudor house from the front and it's got two turrets at the back," the spokeswoman said. "I understand there is also a cannon."

The couple would have been unlikely to get planning permission as the farm was in "green belt" land where building was restricted, she said. A hearing takes place in February.

Fidler's wife Linda told the Daily Mail newspaper the children grew up looking at straw out of the windows of the house and that they kept their son away from playschool on the day his class were due to do paintings of their houses.

"We couldn't have him drawing a big blue haystack," she said. "People might ask questions."

Planning inspectors had been called to the site by concerned neighbours shortly before Fidler took the hay bales down in summer 2006 but had not seen the house.

"When the inspectors went there, all they saw was hay bales and hay bales on agricultural land are not that unusual," the spokeswoman said.

"I think the neighbours thought there might be something going on but it is difficult to tell, isn't it?"

Being in here, sick, week after week, I get these phrases hurled around time and time again...

This won't take a minute. (The minute hand is a two-ended sword)

I beg your pardon. (If it be royal, then no, you may not!!)

It's certain that it may rain. (It's definitely probable and quite likely that you're just about going to be right.)

I wasn't going to say anything, but... (In my hour of silence, let me say...)

Act your age (But time passes so fast, how can I??)

I told you so (But only when I wasn't around eh??)

I don't wish to change the subject, but... (Is this a question of subject matter??)

Why can't you be more like (---)... (Oh if only

Is that all you've got to say for yourself? (Unless more magical words have popped-out, yes, that is all.)

I'm hopping mad... (I'm in stitches~~ ~~)

Now, I don't know how to tell you this, but... (Oh well, if you don't know how to tell me, then how can I listen?)

Are you sure you've done this before? (Well, now you come to mention it, I'm having second thoughts)

I'm having second thoughts about this. (Are you sure you've done this before??)

I hear you now, as I had hoped for so long
a hearts enclave seemed but a dream away
until today wakened the spirit in me
a touch of reassurance for memories to play;
a hazy sun's disportment where my hopes lay strong,
motherly nature is my axiology for living everyday

Like soft Anglian winds and broad skies
lasting forever, endlessly playing upon my mind
fields stretch like buntings from emotional bows
here is the last place I ever expected to find
overtly free is the blood with an element of surprise
for you gave me light in our worlds intertwined

'why' need not ask any more questions of truth
for the meaning is imbedded into life and death
both answer to all or nothing, and we between
so what does it take to summon a last breath
only a mother can bestow upon us eternal youth
so when such days shall pass, I wait with bated breath.

© 2008wensum24

Body: A thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy Sunday to you all,

It's sunny, clear, and very mild outside here in Norwich.
While listening to Liverpool's astonishingly abject display against a beautifully spirited Havant & Waterlooville I noticed a 'fall' in my own health too.
Sorry to continually write about my cursed health, but overnight I needed emergency assistance due to the damaged stomach lining and related problems. During the night it felt like a one foot needle was passing through a place that should only pass water, and nearly knocked me out...I was sweating like crazy and in extreme pain, and thankfully help came an hour after the symptoms begun. I'm all tubed up now, being monitored and have no idea where I am, or what it is that happened. The hours after 11pm do not register right now.

Well, I surely wish you a great day, and happy wishes to you all.

Love,
Ed
xx

Linkin Park: "What I've Done"

Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Is there something under the surface that we have missed, or have we not evolved enough to 'unearth' what we always have felt is life 'out there'?

Do you believe there is something, as yet, beyond our comprehension?

I think it is a classic case of the mind 'stretching' itself, when we enter into such thoughts of an area we have never discovered; the universe rather like our own brains, so much apparently there, but as yet unused, unseen, unknown, undiscovered...

astronomers think they've discovered a whole lot of nothing. In the constellation Eridanus, near Orion, some 10 billion light-years from Earth, there appears to be a vast expanse of empty space, completely devoid of matter--no stars, no planets, no black holes, no gases, not even any dark matter. It's almost a billion light-years across, more than sixty times larger than any previously known cosmic void.

The void's discoverers--Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota, his collaborator Liliya R. Williams, and his graduate student Shea Brown--already knew the region was unusual because cosmic microwave background radiation (ubiquitous faint radio waves left over from the big bang) appears much weaker there than elsewhere in the cosmos. Then the team's analysis of data from the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico eliminated the possibility that the region's microwave signal was being obscured by radio waves from nearby galaxies: there are just too few "radio galaxies" in the vicinity to do the job.

The remaining possibility was empty space, which could also weaken the signal--thanks to the effect of omnipresent dark energy. Rudnick's calculation of the void's colossal size is based on the apparent weakness of the radiation. (Astrophysical Journal)

Hello friends,

My little phone has been sounding the tune of sales for one week now, without more than an hour's break, I get repeated recorded sales from somewhere or other, the first of which 'stole' a great chunk off my credit. I have got so tired of this type of thing that I don't bother answering anymore, why can't they leave me alone.

WHEN I SAY I'M BROKE...I'M BROKE

A little old lady answered a knock on the door one day, only to be confronted by a well-dressed young man carrying a vacuum cleaner.
" Good morning, " said the young man. "If I could take a couple of minutes of your time, I would like to demonstrate the very latest in high-powered vacuum cleaners."
"Go away!" said the old lady. "I haven't got any money!" and she proceeded to close the door.
Quick as a flash, the young man wedged his foot in the door and pushed it wide open. "Don't be too hasty!" he said. "Not until you have at least seen my demonstration." And with that, he emptied a bucket of horse manure onto her hallway carpet. "If this vacuum cleaner does not remove all traces of this horse manure from your carpet, Madam, I will personally eat the remainder."
The old lady stepped back and said, "Well I hope you've got a damned good appetite, because they cut off my electricity this morning."