TJ, I was taking a peek at Kitco to see whether I should be preparing to gloat as QCOM nears another lapping of the Aztecs and I noticed that Platinum is now solidly over $1000 an ounce.
Gold is solidly above $500 an ounce.
So, I got to thinking about my proton removal system for lead [to upgrade to gold] and figured that it would be as economic to move gold to platinum.
I thought I'd check out thallium, which hangs out one step closer to the real money than lead. chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu It used to be cheap, but clever engineers have turned the stuff into very useful products. Decades ago it was used as a cheap insecticide, which no doubt helped damage my brain in my youth as insecticides were sprayed around enthusiastically on our food supplies - it being more important to stop bugs eating the crops than to worry about details like brain function.
Now... <In 1965, the U.S. Governmentissued regulations prohibiting the household use of thallium-containing rodent poisons and insecticides because of theirextremetoxicitytohumans, resultingin a significant declineinthallium consumption. By 1973, all retail sales of thesechemicals had been banned in the United States. Althoughthallium consumption declined sharply as a result of the lossof these markets, the decline was offset to some extent byincreases in the uses of thallium in electronic applications,chemical synthesis, and such minor uses as components forsolders, low-melting alloys, low-temperature thermometers,and optical glasses. During this period of transition in theend-use sectors, the published domestic producer priceremained at $7.50 per pound through 1980. In 1981,ASARCO Incorporated, the only domestic producer ofthallium and thallium compounds, stoppedproduction. From1981 through 1988, the price of thallium metal was basedupon information obtained from import dealers. By 1988,thallium prices had risen to $80.00 per pound ...
Since 1989, numerous patents have been issuedfor and reports have been published on the preparation ofhigh-temperature superconductor compounds containingthallium. In 1993, one U.S. company joined the InternationalSuperconductivity Technology Research Center, a 46-member superconductivity consortium based in Japan. As amember of this consortium, the company now sends twoscientists to the Center to conduct research on its newlydiscovered thallium compounds that superconduct at hightemperatures. The use of radioactive thallium compoundsfor medicalpurposes incardiovascularimagingtodetect heartdisease has also increased steadily since the early 1980’s.With the advent of these newer and potential safe uses forthallium, the demand for higher purity thallium metal, eitherin research or practicalapplication, has increased. Consistentwith the greater need for high-purity thallium and the lack ofpublishedorotherwise available producerordealerquotationsfor thallium metal of any purity since 1988, the price ofthallium metal has been based upon the metal price listed inretail supplier catalogues. The price of 99.999%-purethallium granules has risen steadily from $250.00 per poundin 1989 to $580.00 per pound in 1998. This price increase,an average of about 15% per year, reflects an increase in theretail price, but this increase is higher than the rate ofinflation. To some extent, the price increase is probably theresult of a greater demand for high-purity thallium.>
They are still pricing it per pound rather than per ounce, but it is up from very, very cheap. No wonder it is popular in the Arab world as a poison [supposedly].
So, it's back to lead. But my target is now Platinum, not gold.
I note that proton removal is an extremely valuable activity with a doubling [more or less] of price for each proton removed. I wonder why nature has arranged proton removal as being so valuable. Why isn't there as much platinum as lead? Why were the technical uses of thallium ignored for so long? Are there great uses for lead which are being similarly ignored? Are all protons created equal?
It must be simple and cheap to get protons to pop out of such crowded conditions and emigrate to, say, silicon, to get it to move from not being a real metal to really metallic if not Heavy Metal or Metallica. Being a semi-conductor must be like being bisexual - not really one or the other, acting according to prompts at the time.
I think I will start collecting lead. Which I used to do as a youngster, come to think of it. It fascinated me how I could collect the stuff from here and there [lead head nails, old roofing materials and now street gutters are full of little lead weights which go on wheels to balance them] and melt it down to make ingots. And, of course sinkers for going fishing, which was my main motivation.
I did not know how poisonous lead was, so suffered substantial brain damage from getting lead really hot over a primus in our shed [to stop the wind blowing the flame around outside and anyway, it's traditional to do things in the shed, other than set off explosives]. When I think of how much brain damage I've got, I'm amazed I'm still alive.
Instinctively, I must have known that lead is where the action is, but lacked the knowledge of quantum physics needed to push protons around and twist wave functions to my purpose and stir gravitons to run backwards. Now, I am hot on the trail.
First, I should corner the market on lead. Then get those protons hopping out into silicon, or maybe carbon [coal is common and easily made into carbon].
Meanwhile, look at the gains you missed on thallium. Gold was positively prosaic and platinum pathetic.
Mqurice |
