Gold doesn't do much, it just sits there looking pretty. Not its beauty so much as its inertness gives gold a large part of the value we place on the mineral.
Gold isn't unique to earth by any means. Our moon, which in the early days after formation of our planet was smashed off it and hardened to become a satellite of its mom, is expected to have large gold deposits.
In 1999, the NEAR spacecraft showed that the asteroid Eros holds more gold than has ever been mined on earth. It's a bit out of reach so far.
The largest deposits of gold on our own planet--estimated around ten billion tons of it--are in the rock beneath our oceans. However, no one has yet figured out a way to get that gold out cheaply.
Archeologists believe that gold may have been the first mineral ever mined on earth. Decorative gold pieces have been found in Bulgaria that date back 6000 years, roughly the same time period as the Stone Age.
Going back to the seventh century BCE, gold wire was used to attach fake teeth to those who could afford it. Gold fillings for teeth date back at least to the 16th century, likely to ancient Egypt.
The Inca Empire had one of the largest collections of gold known. When King Atahualpa promised to fill a room 22 feet by 18 feet and as high as he could reach with gold as a ransom to his Spanish captors, they accepted. The Spanish got the gold, but killed the king anyway.
Gold mining got started in the United States after Conrad Reed found a lump of it on his father's North Carolina farm in 1799. The family used the 17 pound lump as a doorstop for three years before a local jeweler spotted it and gave the Reeds $3.50 for it, about one-thousandth of its true value.
Conrad caught on--the lump would be valued around $100,000 today--and decided to begin the first gold mine in the US.
Despite the claim made in the old James Bond thriller Goldfinger that covering a body could cause death through "skin suffocation," it's not true. Actress Shirley Eaton had everything but a small section on her abdomen covered with gold paint. Viewers didn't see the bare patch, but sight of the rest of her covered in gold spurred the imaginations of many young men.
Gold can be pounded to a sheet five millionths of an inch thick. One ounce of it has been drawn into gold wire 50 miles (80 km) long and five micrometers thick, one-tenth the diameter of a human hair.
Because it's virtually indestructible, it's estimated that 80 percent of the gold ever mined is still being used.
Gold has been used to wrap around the Apollo lunar lander and as eye protection on the visor shields of astronauts. It's used as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, via injection. Doctors don't understand yet why it provides an anti-inflammatory effect.
Alchemy is the name given to the study of how to change base metals into gold. Though alchemists from the days of Shakespeare on failed to produce gold, the Soviets actually created it from lead in one of their nuclear reactors. Sort of. Using radiation, they were able to transform lead nuclei into gold. Too costly for too little of the precious metal though.
Though the mining of gold impacts the environment badly by sending cyanide into waterways and nitrogen and sulphur dioxide into the air, the final product is environmentally green. Thin gold sheets cover the windows of some office and apartment buildings to reflect the sun's heat in summer and hold heat inside in winter. That's why the glass seems to be gold coloured.
Australian researchers have found microorganisms that actually consume trace amounts of gold, then poop it back out as larger nuggets. Mining companies want to use the method to replace cyanide.
The USA has the world's largest hoard of gold bricks, but India has the largest amount of gold because of its many decorative uses. About 20 percent of finished gold around today is used as decorative thread in Indian saris.
At this point, finding new sources of gold takes enormous resources. Asteroids, the moon and the ocean floor are too costly to mine. And Indian ladies are decidedly reluctant to be de-frocked just to produce more gold trinkets.
If only someone had thought to ask Goldfinger how he accumulated his gold fortune.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn how their problems of today began and how to help their children avoid having the same or other life problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
(Primary source: Discover, December 2007)
Showing posts with label jewelry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jewelry. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
On Being Truly Original
The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Nicolas Berdyeav, Russian writer, philosopher
Ironically, adolescents, in their drive to be different from the rest of the society they have grown up with, tend to follow a small selection of costume styles, hair styles, jewelry piercing styles and tattoo styles. Trying to be different, they all look the same to an outsider from the same society they are trying to offend (or to be different from).
Young adults find it very difficult to be unlike anybody else because they often have no idea how to be different. They have been conditioned to follow the same patterns as their peers (who tend to be dictated to by industries) that they develop a herd mentality. This changes in college when they tend to diverge due according to specialization and interests.
How does anyone "derive one's consciousness from its primary source?" This is the point where scientists and materialists find their eyes glazing over because the discussion inevitably leads beyond their realm of understanding. Which means, to them, the topic is boring, if not outright fantasy.
However, science has no idea, no concept, of what consciousness is. They could derive it from their concept of the unconscious, but they don't have any idea what that is either. Oh, they have guesses, but they can't prove anything one way or another because they have no way to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested.
Science knows what the human brain is because it can be seen, felt, probed and examined with all manner of specialized equipment. But the mind or consciousness, not so much.
Science believes that we all act out our lives in a state of consciousness and dream in our unconscious. But it can't even prove or disprove whether the reverse is true or false. In fact, no one can prove (nor can they know for certain) that we do not dream our (apparently) conscious lives and live reality in our unconscious dreams (or what convention causes us to call dreams).
At this point, consciousness and mind (as opposed to the brain) are as impossible for science to study as the supernatural, miracles or God.
Ask science what the source is of matter and energy and they will likely point to the so-called Big Bang or some theory that serves a similar purpose. What went before the Big Bang, whether there have been more than one of them going back before the one we know and whether more Big Bangs are in store for our universe in the distant future are matters for conjecture.
Science can't deny that consciousness exists because every scientist has one. But it's neither matter nor energy. The unconscious is even more mysterious because it's apparently the opposite (with the prefix un-) of consciousness, which they can't understand.
Berdyeav and many others claim that these originate with something called the Primary Source. Call it what you like, it's beyond human understanding.
If we try to distinguish ourselves from others according to the values of fashion, occupation, beliefs or organizations to which we belong, we must inevitably deal with the values of other people. If we try to establish our consciousness on the basis that it comes from a source beyond human understanding, we have a good chance of being different, individual.
But that brings inevitable consequences with it. Those who derive their consciousness from the Primary Source don't believe in war, in the sociopathic values of business, in the materialism preached by interminable streams of advertising or in the brainwashing methods practised by most religions.
That makes them freaks. They don't mind that because they understand what distinguishes them from the rabble that doesn't understand them.
They are at peace. They understand and appreciate tranquility. They like and respect themselves. They respect everything else around them (either living or not) as part of a universal whole. They won't destroy. They will help others, but they won't force anything on them.
They are originals in the purest sense of the word.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they have the potential to be self secure individuals, originals rather than followers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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