I have a friend who, with a lot of experience and knowledge has told me to buy gold and silver for the last few years. I also have a lot of friends who don't understand why. I am going to try to explain this. What I am not going to try to do is convince anyone.

Here is a transcript of a conversation I never had with a usano about the value of the Euro and, well, other things. Remember, this conversation never took place.

Back in the 1960s, I read a book titled How to Lie with Statistics. I just thought of the book again after reading some stock market babble such as "the market was mixed". It made me think about how, as long as we base how things are going on a variable, particularly one that can be manipulated by governments or anyone with money, we are just playing a big game.

Take housing values. We are told that houses are worth more today than 10 years ago. Or less. Or the same, it doesn't matter. Why? Because we get told that, at least in the US, in terms of US$.

I recently read (on some strange web site) that the US Constitutional amendment (18th) was not inspired by the Women's Christian Temperance Union but by the petroleum industry. The article stated that all too many farmers were brewing alcohol (primarily from corn) that was used as fuel for their tractors.

I just got a Nokia N900, smuggled into Nicaragua by a friend. I have had it for less than half a day but I want to toss out my first impressions. Wow!

My wife has a 770 and I had an 800 until it disappeared. I want to say stolen but I can't figure out how so disappeared is better. Both were impressive. They are well-built and do what they say they are supposed to do. But, the N900 is a whole new ballgame.

It is the first to be a regular phone as well as a Linux-based computer with WiFi. If you just want a phone, it is too big and has too short a battery life.

I am talking about a video (available on Google Video Google Video and other places that offers historical facts to help you put religious beliefs into perspective. It is not an evangelist video for or against religion. It is just there to make you think.

Both here and in http://www.NicaLiving.com I keep seeing what I would call modern snake oil ads a lot more of the time than I like. They are not tonics and such but all too many have to do with Alternative Energy. And they are probably less useful than snake oil.

A lot of them are about a book or guide, delivered electronically that will allow you to cut your electricity bill in half for only a $200 investment or some similar scheme.

When I wrote about beta 1 I was pretty positive. That is, 10.04 looked good, some things that were problems for me in 9.04 or 9.10 were fixed and while there were some rough edges, things seemed to almost be there.

Well, beta 2 broke some things and now, at RC, more things are broken. The strangest is that my printer was detected on beta 1 automatically. The printer no longer works. I went back to an older system and it didn't work either. I was about to think the printer died but, as a final test, I booted up the 10.04 beta 1 CD on another laptop and the printer works just fine.

At the world climate summit this week, Bolivian President Evo Morales said some things that add to my list of reasons I like him. He clearly has the same kind of sense of humor as I have. That is, one that can be used to make a political point. One that makes me consider TV's The Simpsons as one of the best political programs around.

However, it appears a Presidential sense of humor is not allowed.

The discussion started on NicaLiving about using Windoze vs. Linux. It is the usual uninformed caca. But, we have moved on to applications software. My question, which I want to present here, is why is anyone still using Microsoft Office?

OpenOffice(.org) is an office suite which will look very familiar to users of Microsoft Office but have some significant benefits including:

• Support a true open format as well as Microsoft's proprietary format and quasi-open formats