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Chris Powell: Gold market manipulation: Why, how, and how long? (2014 edition)
Remarks by Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
German Precious Metal Society and the Foundation for Liberty and Ratio
Hotel Bayerischer Hof, Munich, Germany
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Thank you for coming here tonight even though I can speak only English. I'm afraid that when it comes to German I don't know scheisse.
Maybe I have an excuse. Mark Twain tried very hard to learn German and wrote afterward that German should be classified with the dead languages because only the dead had the time to learn it.
Still, I'm really glad to be here, since at least many of you speak English as well as German and since I've just come from London, where hardly anyone speaks English.
For the first 48 hours I was in London the only person I heard speaking English was the hotel desk clerk, and she didn't seem too happy about it. The first time I heard English on the street it was from a guy who recognized me as an American rube and asked me for money.
Yes, in London only the panhandlers speak English.
... Dispatch continues below ...
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But seriously, folks -- You didn't come here for my travelogue. So here goes.
* * *
Most financial journalism and most academic teaching maintain that gold is at best a quaint antique. But gold not only remains money but may again become the best and most important money. Even more than this, gold is in fact the secret knowledge of the financial universe, a secret desperately concealed by central banks.
Gold already is so important that Western central banks -- particularly the U.S. Treasury and its Exchange Stabilization Fund, the Federal Reserve, and allied central banks -- rig the gold market every day, even hour by hour, to control and usually suppress gold's price.
Why do Western central banks rig the gold market?
It's because gold is a powerful competitive international currency that, if allowed to function in a free market, will determine the value of other currencies, the level of interest rates, and the value of government bonds. Gold's performance is usually the opposite of the performance of government currencies and bonds. So central banks fight gold to defend their currencies and bonds.
The problem is that the tactics of central banks in their war against gold affect far more than gold; they affect markets generally and eventually destroy markets generally. This destruction of markets now has a name, a name used even by former members of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. That name is "financial repression."
There is much academic literature confirming gold's influence on currencies, interest rates, and government bonds throughout history. Prominent in this literature is the study written by Harvard University economics professor Lawrence Summers and University of Michigan economics professor Robert Barsky and published in August 1985 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a study titled "Gibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard." As with all the documents I'll cite today, the Summers and Barsky study is posted at my organization's Internet site, GATA.org:
Summers went on to become deputy treasury secretary and then treasury secretary of the United States and president of Harvard University and recently almost became chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, so his study with Barsky about gold's influence on currencies, interest rates, and bond prices may be good authority. The Summers and Barsky study implied that governments could achieve their ideal of low interest rates and strong government bond prices by controlling the price of gold.
As it turns out, controlling the currency markets long has been the most efficient mechanism of imperialism. There is much history of this as well.
Rigging the currency markets was the primary mechanism by which Nazi Germany expropriated occupied Europe during World War II. Expropriation by force of arms was actually only a small part of the Nazi conquest.
The rigging of the currency markets -- that is, the gross distortion of exchange rates in Nazi Germany's favor -- turned every citizen of an occupied country into an agent of the occupation every time he used money. This currency market rigging directed all production in the occupied countries into Nazi Germany and blocked any return flow of production. It enabled Nazi Germany to run without consequence the same sort of fantastic trade deficit run in recent years by the United States.
The United States learned all about the Nazi expropriation of Europe through currency market rigging because it was documented by the November 1943 edition of the U.S. War Department's monthly intelligence letter, Tactical and Technical Trends:
Nazi Germany's manipulation of currency markets is also described in detail in the 2005 history "Hitler's Beneficiaries" by Gotz Aly:
How do Western central banks and particularly the U.S. government rig the gold market?
They used to do it conventionally and in the open by dishoarding their gold reserves at strategic moments, and then by dishoarding their gold reserves regularly, more often, even every day, as the United States, United Kingdom, and seven of their Western European allies did during the 1960s through a public operation called the London Gold Pool. The London Gold Pool held the gold price at $35 per ounce until it collapsed in March 1968 under rising demand that drained the U.S. gold reserve from 25,000 tonnes down closer to the 8,133 tonnes officially reported today:
After the collapse of the London Gold Pool the United States and its allies regrouped to decide how to rig the gold market surreptitiously -- not just with dishoarding but also with the so-called leasing of gold; with the purchase and sale of gold derivatives, including futures and options; and, more recently, with high-frequency trading undertaken through investment houses that are happy to serve as government's intermediaries in the gold market, since they can front-run government trades. When the rigging is done surreptitiously like this, much less central bank gold has to be dishoarded and the dishoarding that is done has far more suppressive influence on the price.
But Western central bank market rigging goes far beyond gold.
In an essay published in 2001 and titled "The Debasement of World Currency -- It Is Inflation, But Not as We Know It" --
-- the British economist Peter Warburton discerned that central banks were using investment banks to issue derivatives throughout the commodity futures markets to siphon away money that was seeking a hedge against inflation. That is, derivatives divert money from the hoarding of real goods, hoarding that would drive up consumer price indexes and make inflation even more obvious to the markets and the public. Most of these derivatives are essentially naked short positions that cannot be covered.
Warburton concluded that the prerequisite of a hedge against monetary debasement would have to be some asset that was not attached to a futures market, since anyone with access to enough money can control any futures market, and central banks have access to infinite money. Inflation hedges Warburton suggested included farmland and clean water supplies. For as the saying goes: "The futures markets are not manipulated; the futures markets are the manipulation."
This market rigging by central banks and their agents explains the great disparagement of gold today: that, despite its tremendous price increase over the last 15 years, gold has not kept up with inflation since the metal's last great rise around 1980. Somehow no one who disparages gold asks why it has not kept up with inflation. The answer is that gold derivatives have created a vast imaginary supply of gold for which delivery has not been demanded, since most gold investors choose to leave their gold purchases on deposit with the bullion banks that sold them the imaginary gold.
As a result the world now has a fractional-reserve gold banking system that is leveraged in the extreme.
Yes, all commodity futures markets have created paper promises of supply that could not be covered by real product and have been settled in cash. But most commodity markets are for goods that eventually are delivered and consumed to a great extent.
Gold is different, for gold is not consumed but rather hoarded, as a means of exchange, as money, even as most gold purchased in the futures markets is never delivered at all but rather left on deposit with those financial institutions that purport to sell it.
This system has produced a very disproportionate amount of imaginary, elastic, but undeliverable supply, even as people buy gold precisely because they assume that its supply is not elastic, that its supply is limited to total past production plus annual mine production.
That assumption is a terrible mistake.
While the principle of most gold investment analysis is "You can't print gold," "paper gold" can be printed to infinity just like regular government currency -- and indeed it has been printed practically to infinity.
You can get an idea of the vast imaginary supply of gold by reviewing the incomprehensibly huge gold and interest rate derivative positions attributed to the U.S. investment bank JPMorganChase in the reports of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.
These derivative positions are almost certainly not JPMorganChase's own positions at all but, as GATA consultant Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics in Toronto has written, rather U.S. government positions arranged through MorganChase:
As John Hathaway, manager of the Tocqueville Gold Fund, wrote last month:
"The modern-day central banker trades with counterparties that are giant commercial banks with derivative books of disturbing scale and complexity. It seems impossible that these commercial exposures could be constructed and maintained without the knowledge and complicity of the official sector. For example, Deutsche Bank, already a defendant in a thousand lawsuits, claims derivative exposure that is 20 times the gross domestic product of Germany and five times that of the entire Eurozone. It is not a great leap to suggest that central bank traders and their megabank opposites -- spawn of the same gene pool, schooled in the same institutions, career paths intertwined, frequenters of the same conferences, and just a speed-dial away -- are ideologically indistinguishable and intellectually and morally corrupt in equal proportion."
After all, the U.S. Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund is expressly authorized by law, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, as amended, to trade secretly in all markets, including the gold market, on the U.S. government's behalf. And the law expressly exempts the ESF from answering to anyone but the treasury secretary and the president:
Gold market expert Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group testified to a hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on March 25, 2010, that the ratio of "paper gold" to real metal in the so-called London physical market may be as high as 100 to 1:
In January 2013 a report by the Reserve Bank of India estimated the ratio of paper gold to real gold at 92 to 1:
CPM Group's Christian described the manufacture of "paper gold" in his essay "Bullion Banking Explained" published in 2000:
Some international investment houses are on the short end of this enormous leverage and are existentially vulnerable to a short squeeze. It is not likely that they would put themselves in such a position without assurances of emergency support from central banks -- and indeed the investment houses have received such assurances many times in public statements by central bankers.
For there are many official admissions of gold market rigging.
These include statements by four former chairmen of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Arthur Burns, and William McChesney Martin); the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee; declassified U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and State Department records, including one that cites the necessity for the U.S. government to remain "the masters of gold" --
-- statements by central bankers from other countries, including three officials of the Bank for International Settlements; and documents from the BIS and the International Monetary Fund.
For example:
-- In testimony to Congress in July 1998, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan declared that "central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise." Thus Greenspan confirmed that the purpose of gold leasing was not what was usually claimed -- to earn central banks a little money on their supposedly dead asset in their vaults -- but rather to suppress the monetary metal's price:
-- In January 2012 former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker admitted to the German financial journalist Lars Schall, who is here tonight, that central banks need to suppress the gold price to stabilize exchange rates at what he called a "critical point":
Volcker already had written in his memoirs that in 1973 as a U.S. Treasury Department official he advocated gold price suppression:
-- In 2009 a remarkable 16-page memorandum was discovered in the archive of the late Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin. The memorandum is dated April 5, 1961, and is titled "U.S. Foreign Exchange Operations: Needs and Methods." The memo is a detailed plan of surreptitious intervention by the U.S. government to rig the currency and gold markets to support the U.S. dollar and to conceal, obscure, or even falsify U.S. government records and reports so that the rigging might not be discovered. This document remains on the Internet site of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis:
For safety's sake it is also posted at GATA's Internet site:
-- In a letter to President Gerald Ford in June 1975, Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns reported a secret agreement with the German Bundesbank to obstruct market pricing for gold. Burns wrote to the president: "I have a secret understanding in writing with the Bundesbank, concurred in by Mr. Schmidt" -- Helmut Schmidt, West Germany's chancellor at the time -- "that Germany will not buy gold, either from the market or from another government, at a price above the official price of $42.22 per ounce."
Burns added, "I am convinced that by far the best position for us to take at this time is to resist arrangements that provide wide latitude for central banks and governments to purchase gold at a market-related price."
The Burns letter is posted at GATA's Internet site here:
-- In June 2004 the deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, Oleg Mozhaiskov, told a conference of the London Bullion Market Association in Moscow that he suspected the United States of suppressing the gold price. Mozhaiskov mentioned the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, the only words he spoke in English, though at that time GATA had never knowingly had any contact with anyone in Russia:
-- A president of the Netherlands Central Bank who was also president of the Bank for International Settlements, Jelle Zijlstra, wrote in his memoirs in 1992 that the gold price was suppressed at the behest of the United States:
-- William R. White, the director of the monetary and economic department of the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of the central banks, told a BIS conference in Basel, Switzerland, in June 2005 that a primary purpose of international central bank cooperation is "the provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful":
-- The Bank for International Settlements actually advertises to potential central bank members that its services include secret interventions in the gold market. Here's a slide from a PowerPoint presentation the bank made to prospective central bank members at BIS headquarters in Basel in June 2008:
-- Indeed, according to its annual report last year, the BIS functions largely as a gold banking and gold market intervention service for its member central banks. On Page 110 of the report the BIS says: "The bank transacts foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers, thereby providing access to a large liquidity base in the context of, for example, regular rebalancing of reserve portfolios or major changes in reserve currency allocations. The foreign exchange services of the bank encompass spot transactions in major currencies and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as well as swaps, outright forwards, options, and dual currency deposits (DCDs). In addition, the bank provides gold services such as buying and selling, sight accounts, fixed-term deposits, earmarked accounts, upgrading and refining, and location exchanges."
The only point of central banks trading in gold derivatives is to affect the price. See:
-- Secret gold market interventions by the BIS have been going on for a long time. A long article in Harper's magazine in 1983, based on a seemingly unprecedented interview with BIS officials, disclosed that the BIS was constantly intervening in the gold market in secret:
-- Perhaps most incriminating is the secret March 1999 staff report of the International Monetary Fund that GATA obtained in December 2012. The secret IMF report says Western central banks conceal their gold swaps and loans to facilitate their secret interventions in the gold and currency markets:
Some records of surreptitious intervention in the gold market by Western central banks are quite current. The director of market operations for the Banque de France, Alexandre Gautier, told the London Bullion Market Association's meeting in Rome in September 2013 that the French central bank trades gold for its own account "nearly on a daily basis" and is "active in the gold market for other central banks and official institutions."
Speaking again to the LBMA, meeting last month in Lima, Peru, Gautier said central banks lately have been managing their gold reserves "more actively," and the slides he presented indicated that this more active management is undertaken mainly through gold swaps, a mechanism of surreptitious market intervention. In what appeared to be a reference to the recent clamor for gold repatriation in Germany and Switzerland, Gautier cautioned his co-conspirators at the LBMA that what he called "auditability" is "becoming a crucial issue" for central bank gold reserves.
-- The recent participation of the United States in gold market manipulation was confirmed by a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Kevin M. Warsh, in a letter written in September 2009 denying GATA's request for access to the Fed's gold records. Warsh wrote that among the records the Fed was refusing to show GATA were records of gold swap arrangements between the Fed and foreign banks:
In commentary published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2011 Warsh wrote about what he called "financial repression" by governments. "Policy makers," Warsh wrote, "are finding it tempting to pursue 'financial repression' -- suppressing market prices that they don't like." Warsh added, "Efforts to manage and manipulate asset prices are not new."
I later reached Warsh by e-mail and asked him if he had learned about "financial repression" through his service on the Federal Reserve Board. I also asked him if he would identify the asset prices under manipulation by policy makers. He cordially wished me a nice day.
The government of China knows all about the gold price suppression scheme and isn't afraid to talk about it.
The U.S. State Department diplomatic cables obtained by the Wikileaks organization and published in 2011 included cables from the U.S. embassy in Beijing to the State Department in Washington that were translations of reports from the Chinese government-controlled news media. These translations included stories and commentaries about gold price suppression by the United States.
For example, the Chinese newspaper World News Journal wrote: "The United States and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the United States in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency. China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries toward reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the renminbi."
So not only does the Chinese government know all about the gold price suppression scheme -- the U.S. government knows that China knows:
Many people in the gold business in China also know about gold price suppression by the U.S. government and its allies.
For example, thanks to GATA consultant Koos Jansen, now market analyst for Bullion Star in Singapore, last January GATA published the remarks of the president of China's gold mining association, Sun Zhaoxue, to a financial conference in Shanghai, in which he said gold price suppression is U.S. government policy to maintain the dominance of the U.S. dollar in the ongoing international currency war:
And last December GATA distributed commentary by Zhang Jie, deputy editor of the Chinese publication Global Finance and a consultant to the China Gold Association, who said the U.S. Federal Reserve manipulates the gold market to protect the U.S. dollar's standing as the world reserve currency. Zhang said:
"Through continuous gold leasing the gold in the market can be circulated and produce derivatives, creating more and more paper gold. This is very significant for the United States. Gold leasing is a major tool for the Federal Reserve and other central banks in the West to secretly control and regulate the gold market, creating gold credit derivatives and global credit conflict":
The U.S. government's public archives are actually full of records documenting the government's longstanding objective of removing gold from the world financial system to maintain the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
Perhaps most descriptive are the minutes of a meeting at the U.S. State Department in April 1974 between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his assistant undersecretary of state for economic and business affairs, Thomas O. Enders.
The meeting addresses the growing desire among Western European countries to revalue their gold reserves upward, thereby increasing gold's role in the international financial system and threatening the dollar's status:
Secretary Kissinger asks: "Why is it against our interest to have gold in the system?"
Assistant Undersecretary Enders answers him.
Mr. Enders: It's against our interest to have gold in the system because for it to remain there it would result in it being evaluated periodically. Although we have still some substantial gold holdings -- about $11 billion -- a larger part of the official gold in the world is concentrated in Western Europe. This gives them the dominant position in world reserves and the dominant means of creating reserves. We've been trying to get away from that into a system in which we can control. ...
Secretary Kissinger: But that's a balance-of-payments problem.
Mr. Enders: Yes, but it's a question of who has the most leverage internationally. If they have the reserve-creating instrument, by having the largest amount of gold and the ability to change its price periodically, they have a position relative to ours of considerable power. For a long time we had a position relative to theirs of considerable power because we could change gold almost at will. This is no longer possible -- no longer acceptable. Therefore, we have gone to Special Drawing Rights, which is also equitable and could take account of some of the less-developed-country interests and which spreads the power away from Europe. And it's more rational in ...
Secretary Kissinger: "More rational" being defined as being more in our interests or what?
Mr. Enders: More rational in the sense of more responsive to worldwide needs -- but also more in our interest. ...
So there you have it. Whoever has the most gold can control its valuation -- and implicitly the valuation of every currency -- and thereby create the most "reserves," the most money.
Of course money is power and infinite money is infinite power. The interest of the United States, at least as it was perceived at that meeting at the State Department in April 1974, was to dominate the world through the power over money creation and currency valuation.
Documentation continues to be discovered. A few weeks ago the founder of the market research company Nanex in Illinois, Eric Scott Hunsader, called attention to documents filed with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by CME Group, operator of the major futures exchanges in the United States.
In its filing with the CFTC, the CME Group reports that it is giving volume trading discounts to central banks for trading all major futures contracts in the United States -- financial futures, metal futures, and agricultural futures:
In its filing with the SEC the CME Group reports that its customers include "governments and central banks":
The CME Group letter to the CFTC justifies secret futures trading by central banks throughout the currency and commodity markets as a matter of adding "liquidity" that will benefit all traders. But "liquidity" here is actually an ocean, for central banks can create infinite money, and no ordinary investor can trade against a central bank.
That central banks and governments are secretly trading all major futures markets in the United States signifies that central bank intervention in markets is now likely comprehensive -- that there really are no markets anymore, just interventions, that the main objective of central banking now is to prevent markets from happening at all,and that the market economy that has been the engine of progress and democracy has been destroyed.
This is the financial news story of the century.
GATA has sent all these documents to major financial news organizations throughout the world. But no mainstream financial news organization has yet reported about them and what they mean.
There are many, many more records about the Western government policy of gold price suppression. They are posted in the "Documentation" section of GATA's Internet site --
-- but the records located by GATA are almost certainly only a small fraction of the documents that exist.
These records are not mere speculation and "conspiracy theory." They are the records of decades-long Western government policy conducted almost entirely in secret.
But there is nothing wrong with the word "conspiracy" here.
Conspiracy occurs when people meet in secret to decide and pursue a course of action.
For example, it was conspiracy when the central bank members of the European Central Bank met secretly over the last 15 years to formulate all four editions of their Central Bank Gold Agreement and said they would continue to meet secretly to plot their policy toward gold:
It also was conspiracy when the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, consisting of representatives of the central banks and treasury departments of the major industrial nations, met secretly in April 1997 at the BIS in Switzerland to coordinate their secret policies toward the gold market:
Indeed, even in nominally democratic countries, government itself is often conspiracy. Government is conspiracy whenever it functions in secret. How can any serious market analyst or journalist disparage the term?
Then there is the evidence of market action itself.
GATA also has exposed gold market manipulation by examining trading data, most notably in a study by our late board member and market analyst Adrian Douglas showing that the gold price during trading in the London market went down steadily for 10 years even as the world gold price went up steadily in that time. Anyone buying gold on the opening of the London market and selling it on the close every day over the last decade would have lost a huge amount of money even as the gold price rose steadily:
GATA consultant Dimitri Speck, who is here tonight, has written a whole book compiling the data of gold market manipulation, "Secret Gold Policy":
That is, the London Gold Pool of the 1960s suppressing the price continues to operate today, only with different mechanisms.
In the last several years attacks on the gold price have become frequent and obvious, like the strange dumping of paper gold in the futures markets on April 12 and 15, 2013, where the nominal equivalent of maybe a quarter of annual gold mine production was sold in two days even though there was no special gold-related news. Many similar dumps are undertaken at particularly illiquid times as some entity with access to seemingly infinite money tries to pound the gold price down for psychological effect.
Even on October 1, 2013, as the U.S. dollar index broke below 80 and the government of the world's only superpower, the issuer of the world reserve currency, was incapacitated and half shut down by political turmoil, the gold price suddenly fell by 5 percent under an avalanche of futures selling, sometimes at a rate of many thousands of contracts per second.
These overwhelming attacks on the gold market out of the blue are almost certainly incidents of government intervention. Nothing else can plausibly explain them.
Indeed, central banks refuse to explain their involvement in the gold market.
In 2009 GATA sued the Federal Reserve in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking access to the Fed's gold records. Technically we won the case in 2011, as the court ordered the Fed to disclose one record, the minutes of that G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee meeting in April 1997.
The Fed was ordered to pay GATA court costs, which it did.
But the court allowed the Fed to conceal all its other gold records:
Since that time GATA has peppered Western central banks with specific questions about their gold activities, which is something financial journalism, mining companies, or any ordinary investor could do. The central banks largely maintain a guilty silence.
For example, in July 2013 the Bank of England reported on its Internet site that it was vaulting about 1,200 tonnes of gold less than it had listed in the bank's annual report in February. GoldMoney research director Alasdair Macleod called attention to this. It raised suspicion that the departed gold had been used in the smashing of the gold price three months earlier. So GATA asked the Bank of England to explain the discrepancy.
The Bank of England replied only that the data posted on its Internet site for the public was "deliberately non-specific." But that data had been fairly specific, and had given a number vastly different from the number published in the bank's annual report. Sensing its vulnerability, the Bank of England concluded its brief statement arrogantly and defensively: "The bank will not be offering any further comment on this matter." See:
The specific questions that GATA has put to central banks without receiving answers are posted at our Internet site and remain available to any serious financial journalist or gold investor:
As long as central banks refuse to answer some basic questions about their involvement in the gold market, it must be concluded that they have much to hide.
Why does all this matter? How might it end?
It matters because the rigging of the gold market is the rigging that facilitates the rigging of all markets -- part of a much broader scheme by which a secretive and unelected elite in the United States and Western Europe controls the value of all capital, labor, goods, and services in the world -- controls the value of everything and thereby impairs or destroys all markets and democracy itself everywhere and obstructs humanity's progress.
This is an utterly totalitarian and parasitic system. It is also just the latest manifestation of the everlasting war of the financial class against the producing class, only it is hidden well enough that the producing class hasn't yet figured it out.
This system might end in various ways.
First it's a question of world politics at the highest levels.
The system may end at the insistence of the developing world with an official worldwide revaluation of gold and gold's formal restoration to the international monetary system and the demotion of the U.S. dollar.
The system may end when one country pulls the plug on it, exchanging U.S. dollars and government bonds for more gold -- real metal -- than is available, or when ordinary investor demand exhausts supply, which is more or less how the London Gold Pool ended in 1968.
Or the system may end as part of a plan by the major central banks to avert the catastrophic debt deflation that now threatens the world.
For example, a study in 2006 by the Scottish economist Peter Millar concluded that to avert such a catastrophic debt deflation, central banks would need to raise the gold price by a factor of seven to 20 times in order to reliquefy themselves and devalue their currencies and society's debts generally:
In May 2012 the U.S. economists and investment fund managers Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky published a report speculating that central banks likely are already redistributing gold reserves among themselves in preparation for just such an upward revaluation of gold and gold's return as formal backing for currencies:
The current system's end is an arithmetical question, a question of how much real gold is retained by the central banks participating in the price suppression scheme. Some metal is always draining away to support the gold derivatives system, and it seems lately that more is draining away every year than is being mined. How much do the gold-suppressing central banks really still have left? How much gold has been put into the market through swaps and leases?
Central banks refuse to say. For since the control of gold is the control of markets and the control of the valuation of everything, the amount, location, and disposition of central bank gold reserves are state secrets far more sensitive than the amount, location, and disposition of nuclear weapons.
The end of central bank market rigging is a question of education and publicity, a question of whether central banks that are not part of the gold price suppression scheme and investors alike will ever realize that as much as 90 percent of the world's investment gold, supposedly being held in trust for its owners, has been, to put it politely, oversubscribed. That is, the gold may not exist. If there is ever such a realization and delivery is demanded, gold will rise to multiples of its current price.
While that prospect excites gold investors, will governments let them keep the resulting extraordinary gains, or will governments impose windfall profits taxes or even try to confiscate gold?
If the gold price soars, will governments let mining companies keep taking metal out of the ground at current royalty rates? Will governments even let private companies keep mining gold at all?
On the other hand, if there is no general realization of the fraud of "paper gold" and central bank intervention in markets, gold price suppression and the destruction of markets generally may go on forever.
Central banks are formidable enemies because of their power to create infinite money and debt. But that power is not their biggest advantage in the gold suppression scheme and the scheme to defeat markets and democracy generally.
For the scheme cannot work without deception, surreptitiousness, and misunderstanding.
And therefore to be overthrown the scheme needs only to be exposed, since when people realize that a market is rigged, they will not take the losing side of the trade.
That's why the biggest advantage of central banks here is not their power of money and debt creation but rather the complicity of the financial news media and the gold mining industry itself.
Mainstream financial journalists will not press the vital questions. Indeed, the first rule of mainstream financial journalism is: Never put a critical question to a central bank and report the inadequate answer. The second rule of mainstream financial journalism is that the first rule goes double in regard to gold.
The journalistic questions for central banks could begin very simply:
1) Are central banks trading secretly in the gold market and other markets, directly or through intermediaries, or not?
2) If central banks are secretly trading in the gold market and other markets, directly or through intermediaries, does this trading have policy purposes or is it just for fun?
3) And if this secret trading does have policy purposes, what are they and why are they too being kept secret?
Then the answers from central banks could be compared with the documentation GATA has compiled.
As for the gold mining industry, it seems unaware of the monetary nature of its product and the way the price of its product is suppressed. Further, the gold mining industry has been intimidated by its governments and its bankers, all agents of central banks, and has consented to die quietly.
Will any of this ever really change?
I think it will eventually. Some central banks are growing suspicious of what presents itself as the gold market and are steadily accumulating gold reserves. And of course here in Germany your citizens campaign has induced the Bundesbank at least to claim that it is gradually repatriating your national gold reserves. Your citizens campaign has caused enormous trouble and embarrassment for the bad guys and has inspired similar movements in other countries. I salute you.
But will any of us live to see the defeat of totalitarian central banking as it is now practiced? I don't know. Sometimes I can only get apocalyptic about it, with a little help from the American abolitionist poet James Russell Lowell:
Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.
In this struggle we are up against nearly all the money and power in the world. But the Ascent of Man should continue, and if we're doing the right thing we can hasten that ascent a little. We are all working to advance the ideals of democratic, transparent, and limited government, of fair dealing among nations and people, and, really, to advance individual liberty and the brotherhood of man, which, in the end, are what the monetary metals are about.
If you'd like more information about this issue or help in locating any of the documents I've mentioned, please e-mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thanks for your kind attention.
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text: In walks Mae White, little 4'9 80 lbs Cuban cock swallower. She was a pint sized slut that ate Bootleg's cock while getting full on stuffed by Sam's fat dick. The guys took turns skull fucking her like a good bitch 'til she dropped her belly contents all over the mat. If you like seeing a petite little fuck doll get railed, this is the scene you want to see.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
What does "Share the Road" mean to you and me?
Who: Me and the driver of a plum Dodge Caravan minivan. When: Last Saturday morning. Where: The corner of Kings Village Road and Mt Hermon Road, Scotts Valley, California.
I was running errands last Saturday morning and preparing for a right turn from Kings Village Rd. The right turn lane is about 11 feet wide. Me and my bike take up roughly three feet. The Dodge Caravan behind me is 79 inches; with the mirrors the minivan uses up 8.5 feet of lane width. 8.5 + 3 = 11.5 feet, so even if we're touching there's clearly not enough room in the lane for us to ride side by side. And besides it's stupid to pass in a turn.
So I position myself smack in the middle of the lane for the turn and queue up behind the car ahead of me.
The driver behind me then guns her engine, moves left to pass then cuts right with me right next to her, pushing me into the curb!
I squeeze the brakes to avoid becoming road pizza, then pull around to the driver's side window to explain (politely) that she should wait until it's safe to pass. Her smug, snotty response? "Bikes are supposed to share the road."
Anybody who cycles with traffic in America learns pretty quickly to ride defensively, and it's no surprise to us that many motorists have little understanding of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, which is the law of physics that explains why a car can't occupy the same space as a bicycle. Most of us realize that we share the road with a few idiots, shrug our shoulders and deal. I'm a big believer in politely cooperating with other traffic and I yield right of way where appropriate, but when there's no space in the lane, I'm going to assert my right to be there through my position.
Last Saturday's "Share the Road" incident was on my mind during Thursday night's Twitter Bikeschool discussion when Martha from El Paso, Texas asked "What are you doing to raise awareness to share the road?"
There were many good answers, but some of the responses affirm my belief that cyclists are sometimes our own worst enemies. A number of people responded that they wear helmets to affirm road sharing (huh?). There was a big emphasis from several on safety education for cyclists, with somebody in Akron even tweeting that he reprimands badly behaved cyclists. Visibility was another big theme in road sharing, which I don't understand. Safety and visibility are good things, but the driver last Saturday clearly saw me, she just didn't care that I happened to be in the lane. The visibility arms race does not promote road sharing. I wear a yellow jacket and equip my bike with bright flashing lights, but less conspicuous cyclists should not be blamed when a careless motorist fails to share the road and causes a crash.
My response to Martha's question? The "Share the Road" message doesn't work. It's time to abandon it in favor of this message.


text:
HOUSTON and LONDON, May 28, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- LyondellBasell (NYSE: LYB) today announced that Doug Pike, Vice President Investor Relations, will address investors at the Deutsche Bank Global Industrials & Basic Materials Conference in Chicago on Wednesday, June 4, 2014.
Webcast Access:
A live webcast can be accessed at www.lyondellbasell.com/investorpresentations on June 4 beginning at 4 p.m. ET. The webcast will be provided in Flash and Windows Media formats.
A webcast replay will be available June 4 after 6 p.m. ET until June 11 at 11 p.m. ET on the LyondellBasell website at www.lyondellbasell.com/investorpresentations.
Additional Information:
Slides related to the webcast will be available within the Investor Relations section of the company's website: www.lyondellbasell.com/investorpresentations.
Related Disclosures:
Required reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures and any other applicable disclosures (including the slides) will be available at the time of the presentations and afterwards at www.lyondellbasell.com/investorpresentations.
LyondellBasell (NYSE: LYB) is one of the world's largest plastics, chemical and refining companies and a member of the S&P 500. LyondellBasell (www.lyondellbasell.com) manufactures products at 55 sites in 18 countries. LyondellBasell products and technologies are used to make items that improve the quality of life for people around the world including packaging, electronics, automotive parts, home furnishings, construction materials and biofuels.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140416/75605
SOURCE LyondellBasell


text:
Winter and Raven - Khaki Anorak
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Let's Save Thousands 7/30/22
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text:
The Sundance Film Festival has launched the careers of myriad household names in the film industry – Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Darren Arronofsky – to name a few. Established in 1978, the festival, shepherded by film legend Robert Redford, has meant many things to those who have made the pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, for a glimpse at artful filmmaking at its most raw and energetic – a buying opportunity, a source of inspiration, a place to find your audience. It's also become a training ground of sorts for artists to hone their craft.
Since 2003, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded a $20,000 cash prize to the director of the best film at Sundance "to focus on science or technology as a theme or depict a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character." In so doing, they reward and encourage more accurate science in future mainstream projects by inspiring budding talent toward stories inspired by all aspects of science, technology, engineering, and math. In the past, films that have been so honored include Max Mayer's quirky romance Adam, Werner Herzog's gripping documentary Grizzly Man, and Alex Rivera's intense sci-fi thriller Sleep Dealer.
This year a finely drawn character piece, directed by first-time filmmaker Mike Cahill, took the top honor from Sloan –Another Earth. The film centers on a woman played elegantly by Brit Marling (who also co-wrote the piece with Cahill). The protagonist of the story derails her life when she accidentally causes the death of one man's entire family in a car accident. The exquisitely drawn and simply powerful drama delivers relatable characters in Marling, and an enjoyably glowering William Mapother, who spin a wrenching web of grief mixed with great character beats.
The science in the film serves as a critical tool in the exploration of the metaphysical theme within the storyline.Another Earth appears in an orbit clearly visible to the naked eye from our Earth. The planet's inhabitants appear to be exact replicas of those on our planet. But have they made the same mistakes? If not, are they happier in their lives? If they are living exactly the same lives, could there be someone in that other world who is the same as our main character? If she could meet her counterpart on that other planet, would she be able to forgive herself for causing the horrible accident?
The film's sci-fi elements propel the plot and explore the characters while creating an intact world with specific and understandable rules for the audience. For all of these reasons, as well as a well-told story and great characters, Another Earth is an engaging and interesting Sloan Award recipient that presents scientific ideas in a way that sparks the imagination of its audience.
For a list of all the Sloan winners, click here.


text:
Is an All-Female 'Avengers' Movie in the Works?
Could the women of Marvel's Avengers be headlining their own film?
Black Panther star Danai Gurira recently stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show to address the long-brewing rumors that an all-female Avengers movie is in the works, saying that, at this point, it's just hearsay, but that doesn't mean it's not a possibility.
"I think it is a rumor, but the cool thing is that it's showing there's this hunger for that type of thing," explained Gurira, who plays Wakandan warrior Okoye in the franchise. "I know that the awesome Brie Larson is filming Captain Marvel as we speak, so these things are starting to happen, and I think it's really exciting because it shows that yeah, of course, it's time we start seeing the perspective of the story come exclusively from women."
Demand for a female-fronted MCU feature has been building since last November, when Guardians of the Galaxy's Karen Gillan shared a behind-scenes shot of Marvel Studios' 10-year anniversary photo shoot on Instagram featuring Tessa Thompson (Valkryie, Thor: Ragnarok), Zoe Saldana (Gamora, Guardians of the Galaxy), Pom Klementieff (Mantis, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow, Avengers), Evangeline Lilly (Wasp, Ant-Man and the Wasp), Larson (Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel) and Gurira (Okoye, Black Panther).
Afterward, followers were so on board with a potential all-female flick that the group, at the suggestion of Larson, took the idea to Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige, who responded favorably.
"It is an embarrassment of riches," Feige told Vulture of the concept in February. "Even watching the audience at the Black Panther premiere respond to Lupita, Letitia, and certainly Danai in their action sequences … Of course you can make a whole movie about that!'"
Elizabeth Olsen, who portrays Scarlet Witch, told Variety more recently that the entire thing was "blown out of proportion" by the media, but from the sounds of it, it wouldn't take much convincing to get the project greenlit.
"Magic happens when women do their thing," Gurira told DeGeneres.
Avengers: Infinity War, the latest Marvel installment, hits theaters on Friday, April 27.


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The Sole E35 elliptical trainer from Sole Fitness has been described as best in it's class in 2023, and is rated for users up to 375 lbs. This is my updated 2023 review, and as always, you can trust me to get down to the nitty-gritty details, and and bring you the truth. To begin with, Soles Fitness is one of the best known 'up and coming' fitness brands in North America 2023 – and the rest of the world. And for a good reason, at that.
❤ Get $100 off the Sole E35 treadmill, plus shipping is free, here >>
🥳 Hold onto your hats because our blog post just got a snazzy upgrade! We've sprinkled it with the most freshest facts and figures (updated prices) around. It's like our post went to the data salon (yeah) and came out looking pretty fabulous. Get ready to be the life of the party with our latest and greatest info. Dive in and let the good times (knowledge and fun) roll! Here's to a fantastic 2024!
Sole Fitness is best known for providing a good variety of fitness equipment now used at many hotel establishments around the world. Though, it was the growing popularity of that equipment that eventually made Sole Fitness start manufacturing that same set of equipment for home use. And, since they've started selling their home-based fitness equipment, their popularity has only continued to get more prevalent.
Last Updated on: November 15, 2023 (price and inventory updates)
Sole Fitness is best known for their treadmills—in fact, they're known to have manufactured and distributed six unique Sole Fitness brand treadmills.
Though, they're not just a treadmill company. The company also sells both exercise bikes (8 models) and elliptical exercise machines (7 models). Elliptical machines, in particular, are known to give a workout that are said to help workout most of the upper body and the lower body. And, of course, being designed for a gym environment, Sole Fitness' elliptical machines are some of the best around. For other options have a look at Bowflex M6. Also, don't miss this years biggest discounts on Black Friday 2023, November 24 (all week sale but limited inventory).
Update 11/15/2023: Black Friday 2023 is here. Buy Now, Pay Later with a low promotional rate with Citizens Pay now available on the Sole Fitness elliptical product line. ✅ See best price and check availability.
The Sole E35 Elliptical – What Is It?
So, what is an elliptical machine anyway? And, how do Sole Fitness elliptical machines stand up against the average one?
To start, an elliptical machine or trainer is a stationary exercise machine that's mainly use to simulate walking, running and/or stair climbing without placing excessive pressure onto the joints.
Due to this, it lessens the risk of the user experiencing impact injuries.
That makes elliptical machines some of the better machines to use for people who can't exercise using traditional equipment, since it places little impact onto the body and its joints.
Many elliptical machines offer a non-impact and cardio-based workout.
You can change the intensity of that workout, too, using the controls of the device to change the speed and resistance of the machine, if you wish.
As mentioned, elliptical machines not only provide a cardio workout, but they also workout the upper and lower body, particularly if they're designed to handle both types of workout. That makes them good exercise machines for people who may want to use treadmills, but need something that's less physically exerting on their joints.
Sole Fitness elliptical machines or, rather, their Sole E35 Elliptical machine, offers a gym quality workout within the confines of their high quality elliptical machine.
The way this particular elliptical machine is designs helps place less stress onto the user, while providing them the control they need to make their workouts less physically exerting on their joints and more customized to their preferences.
Updated Model
The Sole E35 elliptical has a new feature installed in it. This is the capability to use Bluetooth.
With Bluetooth, you can easily transfer information from the elliptical to your smart phone. If you have an iOS device or android device, then you can easily send information from your elliptical to your phone and then integrate this information with whatever fitness app, for example MyFitnessPal, you are using. This will make it easier for you to keep track of all your fitness information in one place.
You can also use this mobile app to operate your elliptical and set it as you want.
Sole E35 Reviews – What People Like
Well, can you tell me more about the Sole E35 Elliptical? How does it work, according to current Sole E35 reviews?
According to many Sole E35 Elliptical reviews, the Sole E35 Elliptical trainer is considered 'a great ride.'
That's pretty much thanks to the technology that's used within this elliptical machine, the type of technology that's made this machine one of the better workouts in the Sole Fitness catalog.
"I've recommended your brand to several of my friends and you can be sure that when it comes time to replace our elliptical or add another piece of equipment to our gym Sole will be the only name we consider. Thanks for building a great product and standing behind it." ~Robert and Stephanie T. (Co website)
Much of its great performance is backed by its technology.
The technology used in this Sole Fitness machine is probably headed by its 'quiet drive system,' which helps provide the machine with natural and fluid motions as you operate the machine in both forward and reverse movements.
That quiet drive system uses the machine's rather heavy 25-pound flywheel; coupled with the machine's high gear ratio, it makes the machine feel incredibly smooth to operate.
The power incline, too, also contributes to its performance, allowing you to use several different points of resistance and adjust your positions to further enhance your cardio workout. The Sole E35 Elliptical's ramp can be adjusted to as low as 0 degrees and as high as 30 degrees, so you have a good choice in angles to help you effectively target most of the major muscle groups of your lower body.
According to a Sole E35 review from those who have used the Sole E35 Elliptical at home, it's pretty much a great alternative to similar gym quality machine that do cost too much to, well, bring home.
That's thanks to the features that make the Sole E35 Elliptical a 'breeze to ride.'
(2-month owner Sole Fitness E35 elliptical machine review from Liz): Still awesome. I've lost count of how many hours I've put on it now, but I'm still absolutely pleased. I cue up something on Netflix and the workout's done in no time. The occasional squeak from the tracks is easily remedied by wiping it off and applying a little of the provided lube. I still can't get over how quiet it is. – Liz R. (Amazon cust.)
Of course, we can't talk about a cardio workout machine without mentioning another notable feature—its advanced sensor systems. The advanced sensor systems comes in the form of several built-in pulse sensors that help monitor your heart rate and pulse during workouts.
There's even an on-board interactive program that helps display all of that activity.
E35 Elliptical Features
That sounds great! So, can you tell me if the Sole E35 Elliptical is easy to use or not? And, what are its best features?
Well, there's one thing you need to know about the Sole Fitness E35 elliptical machine: it's pretty easy to use on a regular basis.
That was an opinion shared by many people who have already purchased the elliptical machine and now have it as a part of their homes—or, home gyms, for that matter.
Many of the features included with the Sole Elliptical E35 are responsible for making it so easy to use as an elliptical machine. The included fingertip resistance and incline controls are said to help make 'changing workouts easy without breaking the machine's workout focus.'
Since it also features oversized food pedals (with a 2-degree inward tilt, at that), you won't feel like your knees and ankles are absorbing too much stress from your workout.
Be Aware – What I Didn't Like
If you are doing very high-intensity workout the Sole E35 cross trainer may make some minor noise.
And, in my experience with these types of machines, unless you buy a very expensive, gym-quality unit, they all move a little and make some noise at high-workout intensity. If you want gym-quality, buy gym quality and expect to pay much more.
And, with that said, I like to add that that is basically to be expected from these types of elliptical and that the noise level is really VERY low. And it's really only a potential issue if you are doing really high-workout intensity training.
As mentioned, the cardio-tracking features and tools of the Sole E35 Elliptical make keeping track of your cardiovascular activity much easier than if you were to track it with similar machines.
This isn't the easiest machine to assemble, though. Some people who bought this machine have said that it can take up to four hours to get everything assembled.
So, while you won't immediately use this machine out of the box, it's still worth using after you get everything up and running.
Sole E35 Review – Verdict and Overall Thoughts
The best feature of this elliptical machine is the fact that it's durable.
Many people of different weights and heights have used the E35 Sole Elliptical with success, as the machine is built in a way to sustain most weights up to 375 pounds. With a weight range so large, it's pretty much the perfect elliptical machine for most average consumers.
Does that mean you should buy the Sole Fitness E35 Elliptical machine?
Well, that's entirely up to you. If you want an elliptical machine that's proven to withstand heavy use and provide results, the Sole E35 Elliptical may very well be exactly what you're looking for.
Get the Sole E35 Elliptical model MSRP (suggested retail price) $1,599.99, now $1,499.99 – "Rated Best In Class 2023" for quality and value. Free shipping available in continental U.S.A (curbsite delivery).


text:
Sections of Books on Vedic Maths
"Vedic Metaphysics", Bharati Krsna Tirthaji, 1979 (discourses given during his visit to the West in 1958). Chapter XII
"The Crest of the Peacock", George Gheverghese Joseph, 1991. Pages 243-249
"Multicultural Mathematics", David Nelson, George Gheverghese Joseph, Julian Williams, 1993. Pages 62-4, 106-118
"Maharishi's Absolute Theory of Defence", Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Pages 302-395, 611-634.
Modern Science and Vedic Science, 8. Muehlman, J.M., 1998. Maharishiís Vedic Mathematics in elementary education: Developing all knowingness to improve affect, achievement and mental computation. Pages 37-101.
N.B. this is a 65 page summary of a Ph.D. dissertation by the same author.
"Ancient Indian Mathematics", T S Bhanu Murthy, 1992. Chapter 2.


text:
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Hello everyone - I know it has been a long time since I have posted in this neglected space, but I hope you will all head over to our new blog (where I post regularly, honest!) and share in our most exciting news!
Ryan and I were engaged on Christmas Day...and I am the happiest gal in the world! Read all about it here ...
Merry Christmas to all, and best wishes for a beautiful 2012.


text:
Phasor, like Craft, is a demo running on a custom minimalistic ATmega88-based demo platform. But it generates a composite video signal (PAL) instead of a VGA signal.
- lft_phasor_presentation_and_cam_1280x720 (Presentation video with demo, 1280x720, 70.1 MB)
- lft_phasor_capture (High quality capture by Barta Zoli, 720x576, 475.8 MB)
- Linus Akesson - Phasor (Soundtrack, MP3, 3.9 MB)
- lft-phasor-src (Schematics, firmware binaries and source code, 80.1 kB)
It was my contribution to the Console / Real Wild compo at Breakpoint 2010, and ended up on 2nd place. Here's the Pouët page for Phasor.
Sorry for the low quality camera rip, but the composite signal was too lo-fi for the recording equipment at Breakpoint. They made a heroic effort, trying to filter the signal through all sorts of hardware, but to no avail. It works well with every CRT and TFT monitor I've come across, though. If anybody replicates the board and manages to record the signal, please let me know!
How does it work?
The composite video signal is a strange beast. Back when television was black and white, an analogue voltage was used to represent luminance (light intensity), as the electron beam swept across the TV one line at a time. 0.3 V represented black, 1.0 V represented white, and the voltages in between represented shades of grey. Horizontal and vertical sync signals were added in the form of brief pulses of 0 V, i.e. "blacker than black".
Since then, colour has been introduced by adding a small sinusoidal variation (technically not a phasor, but that's where I got the name from) on top of the black and white signal. The amplitude of the sine wave corresponds to colour intensity, or saturation. The phase of the sine wave is used to encode hue. Equivalently, you could say that the colour information is quadrature modulated in the sine and cosine components of the wave, and those components correspond to U and V in the YUV colourspace. The frequency of the colour wave is fixed at 4.43361875 MHz (because, somewhat simplified, this was determined to be the frequency that would interfere the least with old black and white equipment).
Two tricks
In this demo, the microcontroller is clocked at 17.73447 MHz, exactly four times the frequency of the colour carrier wave. In other words, four clock cycles per "colour pixel", and in those four cycles one has to generate a sine wave with controlled amplitude, phase and constant offset. First of all, there is no chance of generating a smooth sine wave, because the CPU is limited to a maximum output resolution of one sample per clock cycle. But even this is not really feasible to do entirely in software, except for very basic visuals, such as a bunch of static colour bars.
But the effort can be cut in half thanks to a loophole in the PAL encoding scheme. In PAL, the phase of the colour signal is inverted on every other line (PAL = Phase Alternate Line). This is quite clever, because it causes transmission errors to affect saturation rather than hue, and the brain is more sensitive to errors in hue. At the receiving end, a PAL TV or monitor compares each incoming pixel with the one above it, and uses a sum and difference formula to determine the correct colour. The vertical resolution of the colour information is effectively halved because of this. But this redundancy enables a really neat hack: By transmitting different values on odd and even raster lines, it is possible to get away with generating pixel data at every other clock cycle, which is only half the nominal rate.
This is what the signal is supposed to look like, if the time dimension is reduced to four discrete time slots (corresponding to four CPU cycles):
Cycle | Value on odd line | Value on even line |
1 | Y + U cos(0) + V sin(0) | Y + U cos(-0) + V sin(-0) |
2 | Y + U cos(π/2) + V sin(π/2) | Y + U cos(-π/2) + V sin(-π/2) |
3 | Y + U cos(π) + V sin(π) | Y + U cos(-π) + V sin(-π) |
4 | Y + U cos(3π/2) + V sin(3π/2) | Y + U cos(-3π/2) + V sin(-3π/2) |
Simplify the expressions:
Cycle | Value on odd line | Value on even line |
The monitor first separates Y from U and V using bandpass and notch filters. Then it expects to get roughly the same U and V from vertically adjacent pixels (unless there is a sharp colour change in the image at that exact spot, in which case there will be unwanted artifacts), and applies a sum and difference formula to reduce transmission errors:
Cycle | Value on odd line | Value on even line | Sum | Difference |
The sum and difference columns are sinusoids with amplitudes proportional to U and V, respectively.
My demo transmits a signal that would result in very different U and V values on each line, and relies on the sum and difference formula to make sure that the monitor displays a single, solid colour.
Cycle | Value on odd line | Value on even line | Sum | Difference |
As you can see, the sum and difference columns are still sinusoids with amplitudes proportional to U and V. And that's how to get away with emitting pixels at half the nominal rate.
The second trick is that toggling between two voltages can be done with the help of one of the timers inside the ATmega88. The circuit below consists of two emitter followers in parallel.
Each transistor tries to force the voltage at the emitter to be 0.7 V below the voltage at the base. But they can only pull the voltage upwards to a higher level. The upshot of this is that the output voltage will be 0.7 V below the highest of the two input voltages (Out = max(VA, VB) - 0.7).
The diodes allow two microcontroller pins to independently pull each input down to 0.7 V, causing the other input to be "chosen" by the emitter followers. Timer 1 in the ATmega88 can be configured to generate a two-cycles-high, two-cycles-low square wave on one output compare pin, and its inverse on another output compare pin. That way, the software only has to provide the two input values (four bits each, conveniently the high and low nibbles of PORTD), and the timer, diodes and transistors will work together to create a square wave, oscillating between these two voltages automatically. Of course, the software still has to transmit different values on odd and even raster lines and keep in phase with the timer, so timing is crucial. But we get just enough support from the hardware to get by without having to spend all cpu cycles generating the colour wave.
The reason for going with Timer 1 rather than Timer 0 is that the output compare unit of Timer 0 is sharing pins with PORTD, and I wanted all eight bits of PORTD to go into the DACs. But Timer 1 is the only 16-bit timer on the chip, and I needed a raster interrupt to occur every 1135 cycles. Fortunately, 1135 happens to be an even multiple of five, so I'm using Timer 0 to generate interrupts every 227 cycles, and letting the software disregard four out of five of them.Music
Sound is generated during the horizontal blanking periods. That gives a sample rate of 15.625 kHz. Of course, only the really timing critical part (waveform generation) is performed during the horizontal blanking. Melody, rhythm, amplitude envelopes, arpeggios etc. are handled by a playroutine which gets called once for every video frame, during vertical blanking.
There are four sound channels in total, each with its own fixed waveform. The waveforms are 4-bit triangle, filtered variable pulse, unfiltered variable pulse and white noise. The filter is a two-pole non-resonant low-pass filter. The noise is generated by means of a 15-bit shift register. The volume of each channel can be individually controlled.
This is how it all fits together, hardware-wise. If you are interested in the physical layout used on the breadboard, you can find it along with firmware and source code near the top of the page.
.---__---. + 10uF (to programmer) --- RESET | | PC5 ---[ 2K ]----------+---|(----- | | .-[ 1K ]-' Audio GND --[ 2K ]-+-[ 2K ]--- PD0 | | PC4 ---[ 2K ]-+--------. GND --- .-[ 1K ]-' | | .-[ 1K ]-' `--------+-[ 2K ]--- PD1 | | PC3 ---[ 2K ]-+--------. VCC VCC --[ 2K ]-. .-[ 1K ]-' | | .-[ 1K ]-' \ GND -[ 442 ]-+ `--------+-[ 2K ]--- PD2 | | PC2 ---[ 2K ]-+--------. C\| B | .-[ 1K ]-' | | .-[ 1K ]-' |---+------[ 442 ]-+--+----------[ 2K ]--- PD3 | | PC1 ---[ 2K ]-+--------. E/| | | | .-[ 1K ]-' / | GND --[ 2K ]-+-[ 2K ]--- PD4 | | PC0 ---[ 2K ]-+-[ 2K ]---- GND | | .-[ 1K ]-' | | | | | VCC | | GND | | | | | | | | GND | | AREF (n.c.) | | | 22pF | | --------+ | | GND -||--+- XTAL1 | | VCC Video | | | 17.73447 MHz [ ] | | -- GND | | | GND -||--+- XTAL2 | | SCK ---- (to programmer) | | | 22pF | | | | `--------+-[ 2K ]--- PD5 | | MISO --- (to programmer) | | VCC --[ 2K ]-. .-[ 1K ]-' | | \ | GND -[ 442 ]-+ `--------+-[ 2K ]--- PD6 | | MOSI --- (to programmer) E\| B | | .-[ 1K ]-' | | |---|-+----[ 442 ]-+--+----------[ 2K ]--- PD7 | | OC1B --------. C/| | | | | | / | | (n.c.) PB0 | | OC1A --. | VCC | | `--------' _|_ _|_ | | /_\ /_\ | | | | | `----------------------------------------------------------' | `------------------------------------------------------------------'
If you want to learn more, I suggest you dive into the source code, starting with video.S and main.S. The compressed data tables are generated by pack.c.
I am very grateful to Barta Zoli from Hungary, for building a replica of the circuit, making a high quality video capture and allowing me to share it here. You can find it in the Download section above.
Posted Wednesday 7-Apr-2010 13:58
Discuss this page
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for what people (other than myself) write in the forums. Please report any abuse, such as insults, slander, spam and illegal material, and I will take appropriate actions. Don't feed the trolls.
Jag tar inget ansvar för det som skrivs i forumet, förutom mina egna inlägg. Vänligen rapportera alla inlägg som bryter mot reglerna, så ska jag se vad jag kan göra. Som regelbrott räknas till exempel förolämpningar, förtal, spam och olagligt material. Mata inte trålarna.
Thu 8-Apr-2010 20:46
Sun 2-May-2010 03:54
Sun 2-May-2010 04:08
Sun 2-May-2010 04:21
Sun 2-May-2010 08:23
Sun 2-May-2010 09:15
Sun 2-May-2010 10:29
It is remenber me the 80's years demoscene: 64Kb are enough to the music in .MOD file and the animation like the yours. Amazing!
Sun 2-May-2010 14:29
Sun 2-May-2010 14:45
Thank you for sharing this.
Jeroen Tel and Rob Hubbard would be proud!
Sun 2-May-2010 22:07
Wed 5-May-2010 04:00
Wed 5-May-2010 23:37
Linus Åkesson
Fri 7-May-2010 16:25
No, unfortunately it won't work on NTSC, since it doesn't do phase alternation. You'd only be able to get the subset of colours where U = V.
Tue 11-May-2010 11:17
Thu 13-May-2010 18:33
Fri 21-May-2010 10:45
Sat 22-May-2010 17:35
Fri 28-May-2010 12:52
Thu 3-Jun-2010 00:19
I rebuilt your Phasor circuit, and recorded it's output into a very nice mpeg file. I'd like to send it to you, so please remove my E-mail address (*@freemail.hu) from your spam list.
Regards, Zoli
Linus Åkesson
Sun 6-Jun-2010 13:43
I rebuilt your Phasor circuit, and recorded it's output into a very nice mpeg file. I'd like to send it to you, so please remove my E-mail address (*@freemail.hu) from your spam list.
Regards, Zoli
Please try this address instead: firstname.lastname@example.com
Tue 8-Jun-2010 16:05
lft wrote:
I rebuilt your Phasor circuit, and recorded it's output into a very nice mpeg file. I'd like to send it to you, so please remove my E-mail address (*@freemail.hu) from your spam list.
Regards, Zoli
Please try this address instead: email@example.com
I sent a link via dropbox, please open that letter.
Wed 23-Jun-2010 21:16
I really aspire to reach a level you are at.
If I make eagle schematic files of this like last time will your consider posting them?
Fri 25-Jun-2010 22:42
Fri 9-Jul-2010 11:00
Sat 10-Jul-2010 19:40
Wait, I just realised it's in an R-2R ladder arrangement with the 220ohm resistors. There's actually plenty of room in the stripboard layout to replace each 442 with a pair of 220s in series, so I'll do that instead of sourcing resistors out of E48. :D
Thu 15-Jul-2010 07:49
And just as quickly realised that I was thinking of the Craft schematic instead of Phasor's. Oops! :)
Anyway, I just finished building it, and it works beautifully! Thanks lft!
Sun 25-Jul-2010 03:13
This is an IBM AT that some guy has playing full motion (60fps) video.
Mon 26-Jul-2010 10:04
Such a great project! Keep up the amazing work.
Post protected by LBackup
Wed 11-Aug-2010 07:15
Wed 11-Aug-2010 23:32
As I was on LCP 2009 I was totally amazed by your piece of music. Now that I, one year later, checked you up in more detail, I must say your work is brilliant.
Sun 19-Sep-2010 20:01
The output analog switch is a nice twist. With the timer it keeps everything in sync which would be really hard otherwise - I was previously convinced no extra work could be done in the limited time. I now know that if it looks right on screen, then it *is* right. What else matters?
First time I saw microcontroller PAL encoding was Rickard Gunee's Pong project a few years ago which was quite interesting too.
Thu 28-Oct-2010 02:32
muy bueno¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
Sat 22-Jan-2011 05:42
Your music in this was really good and was wondering if you can make this with out the video output but with an impressive sound output only and that other people can make and preform music on it.
Thanks for all the good work,and do you have Ubuntu Linux like me?
Thu 24-Feb-2011 15:39
Keep up the awesome work! (and please don't sue me ^.^)
Sun 16-Dec-2012 04:27
I tried to open your ift-phosor-src but I can't seem to open it.
After extracting using 7Zip the file shows an extension of "file" and that seems to be wrong. can you put the files in another format or post to Github or Google code?
I am very keen to have a look at your code and files as what you have achieved is amazing.
PS - Where did you get the crystal?
Denis in Oz
Fri 7-Jun-2013 11:58
Mon 8-Jul-2013 14:28
I just started expirimenting with arduino this year and I've done some cool stuff...like emulating the atari 8bit floppydrive with it and loading emulator rom files from an sdcard on my real atari.
I just took apart some tv set-top box and it contained an AtMega88 on the controller board....was thinking about doing something cool with it, but looking at this makes me think IT CAN NOT GET ANY COOLER.....except making a game out of it.
Sun 10-May-2015 20:20
Mon 21-Mar-2016 08:08
Sun 14-Aug-2016 13:39
A 10 X 10 grid of white lines and three colored square
blue green red at the center of the vertical.
atmega 128 atmega8 atmega 16 in stock
Tue 26-Sep-2017 20:24
Linus Åkesson
Wed 27-Sep-2017 21:48
1icri wrote:
While looking in the source, I noticed the song is supposed to end on bar 112 (around line 34 in music.S), but the song goes on for 134 bars and the story sequence for 136 bars. Am I overlooking something simple or is this an error in the given source files?Look at music.S again. It's reading from the song table. An entry is either a track number (0..95), or a transpose setting (96..127) followed by a track number. As a special case, a transpose byte that indicates no transpose (in the middle of the range, i.e. 96+16) marks the end of the song.
Thu 28-Sep-2017 21:50
lft wrote:
Look at music.S again. It's reading from the song table. An entry is either a track number (0..95), or a transpose setting (96..127) followed by a track number. As a special case, a transpose byte that indicates no transpose (in the middle of the range, i.e. 96+16) marks the end of the song.Kasane Kona
Tue 30-Jul-2019 18:01
Fri 7-Aug-2020 00:13


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text:
UPDATE: City responds to investigation
The City of Fernie has released a statement following Technical Safety BC's investigation into the tragic ammonia leak at Fernie Memorial Arena.
The City said they are committed to the health and safety of their employees.
"As a City we value and are committed to the health and safety of our employees and community members. The ammonia leak, and the subsequent loss of our valued colleagues, is one of the most tragic incidents to happen to our community. We still feel their absence deeply," said City of Fernie Mayor Mary Giuliano.
"Despite working with an approved certification for our system at the time of the incident, today's report points to opportunities to further improve safety standards for arena refrigeration plants, not only for Fernie but for communities across British Columbia so no one else will need to experience a similar tragedy."
The City highlighted several findings of the report, including that their staff were trained to the highest levels available in the industry, that they were working with approved certification for their system at the time of the incident, and that there was no evidence to indicate that anyone was aware of any safety risk associated with the continued operation of the chiller. The City added that, "Technical Safety BC compared our maintenance plan and contract to others in B.C. and determined it was consistent".
In their statement, the City of Fernie did not comment on a section in Technical Safety BC's report which states that the City of Fernie delayed replacement of the cooling plant, which the agency says was pivotal in the development of this incident.
In October 2010, seven years prior to the incident, the City of Fernie received a recommendation from their maintenance contractor to replace the curling system brine chiller due to its age. Analysis of evidence gathered during the investigation identified a series of key decisions during this seven-year period that contributed to the incident.
Potential influences of these decisions were identified, including:
A. facility management and organizational priorities;
B. failure to include safety risk criteria from aging infrastructure risk assessment;
C. operational management structure;
D. employee capacity and turnover;
E. incomplete maintenance planning; and
F. an industry practice of run-to-failure or run-past-failure for brine chillers.
I. Failure of refrigeration system equipment
II. Operational decisions that contributed to the incident
III. Impact of inadequate ventilation and discharge systems following the incident
"The City of Fernie initially scheduled funding to replace the curling brine chiller for 2013. This funding was deferred to 2014 and then deleted from further financial planning," read the investigation report by Technical Safety BC.
"At the end of the 2016/2017 operating season, an ammonia leak was detected in the curling system, indicating a potential failure of the chiller. A decision was made to monitor the leaking chiller in the summer of 2017, followed by a decision to put the leaking chiller back into operation on October 16, 2017. Available evidence did not indicate that there was an awareness of any safety risk associated with the continued operation of the chiller by any parties involved.
"The decision to operate the leaking chiller is pivotal in the development of the incident. Once the leaking chiller was put back into operation, additional actions and decisions were a response to cascading failures and were beyond the scope of training and situational awareness of those involved."
Aging cooling system behind Fernie's fatal ammonia leak needed replacing in 2010: report
The decision to operate a leaking chilling plant is what caused the fatal ammonia leak at Fernie Memorial Arena last October, according to Technical Safety BC.
Formerly the BC Safety Authority, the organization announced to a crowd of journalists in Vancouver on Wednesday that in the summer of 2017, ammonia was found in the brine of the chilling plant, which appeared to be leaking through a 2.2mm by 0.2mm hole along a corroding welded seam.
On Oct. 16, the refrigeration system was put back into operation in coordination with start of the curling season.
Technical Safety BC said that in 2010 a maintenance contractor recommended to the City of Fernie that the cooling plant needed replacement. A decision was deferred to 2014, and was eventually dropped from capital plans. By 2017, a hole had formed in a chilling tube, which released ammonia into the brine upon startup.
The group explained they did not discover any evidence that staff understood the safety risk that this 2.2mm hole presented.
Asked if staff were to blame for this incident, Technical Safety BC said their investigation does not look at or consider terms such as negligence.
A break down of the investigation:
Technical Safety BC's investigation took place between October 2017 and July 2018, and looked at the factors that contributed to the ammonia leak.
The agency inspected, tested and analyzed the refrigeration system and components at Fernie Memorial Arena to determine the equipment that had failed.
It also identified relevant organizational and operational decisions that may have contributed to equipment failure.
Technical Safety BC then inspected and tested the ammonia detection, alarm, ventilation and discharge systems.
Its report is divided into three areas – equipment failure, operational and management decisions, and post incident ventilation of discharge.
Equipment failure
Technical Safety BC director of risk and safety knowledge Jeff Coleman said the refrigeration system used at Fernie was typical of many in the industry.
"Ammonia was detected within the curling brine system during routine maintenance and testing in the spring and summer of 2017," he said.
"Our investigation later found that the ammonia had leaked into the brine through a small hole in a tube within the curling system."
The hole, measuring 2.22mm by 0.2mm, was located on a corroding welded seam.
In spite of the hole, the chiller was returned to operation on October 16 – the day before the incident.
"Shortly after returning to operation, ammonia leaked into the brine and was then released from the brine solution into the mechanical room through brine expansions tanks," said Coleman.
"This led to an ammonia alarm at 3:53 a.m. on October 17.
"In response to the ammonia leak, the brine system and curling chiller were isolated and the refrigeration and brine systems shut down."
Coleman said this shut down configuration was significant for two reasons.
"One, liquid ammonia was isolated within the curling chiller and two, the brine system was isolated so that expansion and ventilation of the brine was impeded.
"Ammonia continued to leak into the brine over the five hour period that followed.
"As the leak continued, ammonia concentrations rose within the brine close to the hole and the temperature of the brine in the chiller increased.
"This temperature increase led to elevated pressures within the brine system and chiller."
However, the brine system was not designed to withstand this amount of pressure.
Coleman said rising pressure within the brine system eventually caused a pipe to burst within the mechanical room at the arena.
"The coupling separation suddenly depressurized the brine system and caused the ammonia and the brine in the piping to rapidly release into the mechanical room," he said.
"As ammonia was released, it quickly expanded within the room reaching estimated concentrations that are considered well above rapidly fatal."
Operational and management decisions
Coleman said that in October 2010, seven years prior to the incident, a City of Fernie maintenance contractor recommended replacing the aging curling chiller as it had "reached the end of its estimated service life".
"The City of Fernie scheduled funding to replace that chiller in 2013," he said.
"In 2013, the funding for the replacement was deferred to 2014 then subsequently deleted from capital plans.
"In the years that followed, the curling chiller replacement was represented as an objective rather than a scheduled expense."
Ammonia was discovered in the brine of the chiller in the summer of 2017, indicating a leak within the chiller.
Coleman said at that time, a decision was made to monitor the leaking chiller, which as put back into operation on October 16.
Technical Safety BC found that once the chiller was returned to operation, additional actions and decisions associated with the shutdown configuration were a response to "cascading failures and beyond scope of training and understanding of those involved".
"While the equipment failures originated from a small hole that occurred in chiller two, Technical Safety BC has concluded that the cause of this incident was a decision to operate that leaking chiller," he said.
Coleman said there were many contributing factors that led to the decision and condition of the equipment.
These include insufficient hazard awareness of leaking chillers and ineffective maintenance of aging equipment, and are summarized in Technical Safety BC's report on the incident.
The Free Press team was live on Facebook to broadcast the news conference at 11 a.m. MDT, 10 a.m. PT.
A look back at last October:
On October 17, 2017, three workers - 59-year-old Wayne Hornquist, 52-year-old Lloyd Smith and 46-year-old Jason Podloski - died after being exposed to ammonia at the Fernie Memorial Arena.
This sent the surrounding area into a lockdown with a state of emergency declared and nearby homes forced to evacuate.
In the days that followed, authorities tried to piece together what happened at the arena while residents mourned the loss of three prominent members of their community.
About one month after the tragic event, hundreds attended a community memorial, honouring the three men and their families. A prayer vigil was also held.
Lloyd Smith was remembered for his passion and his smile. Smith, who was the director of leisure services at the City of Fernie was also a father, paramedic and pilot.
In June of the following year, a walking trail was named in honour of Wayne Hornquist.
Born and raised in Fernie, Hornquist spent 25 years as Chief Facility Operator for the City of Fernie, where he was known as "The Wizard" among his coworkers. His passions included hiking and gardening.
On Tuesday, July 24 - nine months after the arena tragedy - Technical Safety BC, formerly the BC Safety Authority, announced it would release the findings of its investigation into the gas leak.
The report will provide an overview of the incident, the scope of the investigation and key findings regarding contributing factors, as well as recommendations to prevent similar incidents from happening again.


text:
The Arizona Republic reports that Governor Brewer has vetoed SB 1467, citing vagueness in defining "public right-of-way".
That said, the definition is somewhat vague. A.R.S. ? 9-461 defines "right-of-way" as "any public right-of-way and includes any area required for public use pursuant to any general or specific plan". Somewhat circular reasoning.
Naturally, all the anti-rights folks (both on-campus and off) are focusing on unexplained statements (( For example, "Guns have no place in school!", without explaining how it's fine for people to carry guns on a public sidewalk on any non-campus street in the state, but is somehow worse to have the same people carrying the same guns on a public sidewalk on-campus. )), emotional claims, and irrelevant refererences to the incident where Congresswoman Giffords and others were shot (( It's already illegal to commit murder and attempted murder, yet that law didn't seem to stop the shooter. How are stickers declaring a campus to be a "weapon free zone" going to be any better? Criminals would ignore them; only the law-abiding would obey those rules.)) as that incident and empowering the law-abiding to lawfully carry, if they choose, on public areas of a campus have essentially nothing to do with each other. Go figure.
The Arizona Republic also provided some interesting information:
Brewer's office was inundated with calls about the bill.
Between April 7 and April 13, the Governor's Office of Constituent Services received 904 calls, letters and faxes in support of SB 1467 and 951 in opposition to it, a Brewer spokeswoman said.
It's rare to get actual quantitative information about support/opposition to a bill. While it's unlikely that the absolute number of support/opposition letters had any direct bearing on the governor's decision, it's still nice to get some numbers of what was received by her office. Although I oppose the governor's veto, the fact that this information was released is a good thing. Well done!
In addition, the governor vetoed the absurd "birther" bill that the legislature sent to her desk. Again, well done. The fact that such a bill was not only proposed, but actually passed out of the legislature is quite embarrassing and reflects poorly on the state and the legislature.


text:
Minimal order amount: 3 lb
The final price of this product is to be determined upon delivery because each unit has different weight. Therefore the check out sum will not be exact if you have chosen any of the products with undetermined weight.
The sum will be confirmed by phone prior to delivery.