What dimensions or very few people understand is that gold is an element chimba. And not because it looks nice, or what is or is represented. It is because in reality is a very rare, with properties very crazy. For starters, I pray that will not rust, then the yellow glow that distinguishes it from other metals is perennial. Is more ductile and malleable metal of all, to the point that you can make paper gold (well, just like the aluminum paper), and is a surprisingly dense, weighs 19 times more than water. A common rock, so that they become an idea, weighs at most 4 times its volume in water. It is also one of the best conductors of nature.
If that does not impress you, do not worry, rather thankful it's not as nerdy as me. But from there you can explain the fascination and obsession that people have felt throughout history for this metal. Because, in all, gold is a very small (Or at least not as low as uranium, diamond, platinum and other oddities). There is gold all over the world and across cultures is important. There were those who on account of its density and its inability to metal oxide treated him divine. So I do not even try to quantify its importance *. From artisans to scientists, all have to do with that metal, and everyone have been used to one thing or another.
Gold has the ability to touch the souls of men. In my opinion, one of the most sublime images of literature is when Colonel Aureliano Buendía, tired of wars, politics and betrayal, he returns to Macondo to produce gold fishes for sale, as he did in his youth. And when I saw resold elsewhere, bought them, the melted and re-manufactured, for resale. It makes me almost as formal as the cacique Golden Guatavita sinking forever.
Despite all this, gold is a fucking metal. Cursed hundreds of times throughout history, is at the same time a metaphor for how big and unfortunate that we can be as a species. For the value, gold crazy people into believing that it is better than other things that are around, and makes them insignificant. There is nothing more disastrous to believe that one thing is worth.
curse to see this live and direct, but not go to the mining town. Input, the mining towns are horrible, I know the first thing I look cool. Urban planning is zero, the cultural life of the people there, and popular culture says they are people of "thugs, drunks and whores." And what happens is that people forget that it is a people because they are so knowing they have gold concentrates. The sad thing is that if the urban part these people are a disaster in rural hand what it feels is shame of species. A gold mine is not an innocuous hole in the ground. A gold mine involves deforestation, soil removal, landscape modification, mercury and poison in the water and other perversions of the so-called modern civilization.
There are cases where this damage is so great, so irreparable and so ingrained that it becomes part of the culture of a people, for the sample, in Segovia, Antioquia, there is a stream called "The cyanide ". When I said that I felt an emptiness in my stomach ... What you do with him?
course this is only an example. Living in Colombia, you know that things come to such an extent of absurdity, that's not the worst example of environmental and social crimes of gold. "The cyanide" flows into the River Catfish and is located in an area where gold mining companies make big environmental and government controls, legal mining.
If this is legal, I leave to your imagination the implications of illegal mining. But I tell them that includes rivers in the Choco ** so polluted that all the fish died and just bathe in them, skin irritation, mines in the Bajo Cauca exploited by neo-paramilitaries and make that concentrations of mercury in water are the largest in the world, and rivers of the Pacific region with the seats completely destroyed, full of retro-dredges and excavators, spiced with violence and lawlessness that's become hotbeds social. These are known disasters, because in some way are stories that cover the media. But until 2 years ago, none of this was known, and still going on. Want to imagine what happens at this time and no one knows? I do not.
If this is legal, I leave to your imagination the implications of illegal mining. But I tell them that includes rivers in the Choco ** so polluted that all the fish died and just bathe in them, skin irritation, mines in the Bajo Cauca exploited by neo-paramilitaries and make that concentrations of mercury in water are the largest in the world, and rivers of the Pacific region with the seats completely destroyed, full of retro-dredges and excavators, spiced with violence and lawlessness that's become hotbeds social. These are known disasters, because in some way are stories that cover the media. But until 2 years ago, none of this was known, and still going on. Want to imagine what happens at this time and no one knows? I do not.
Despite this, we are booming mining. And instead of worrying about the destruction of water sources, disease and heavy metal poisoning species and population, deforestation and related social problems in Colombia believe that the worst thing that can happen is the "Dutch Disease." There are 2 giant mining companies seeking licenses in drinking water sources of Tolima and Santander, and there are those who celebrate the mining locomotive and investor confidence. And to make matters worse, these projects are located in wilderness areas of the moors **.- But do not talk. If I start, not finish. I can not describe what you mean to me. Rather go to a close with, and think if that is worth less than the string on the neck, or the component of a cell phone, or a gold reserve of any nation.
could argue that as gold is so impressive and serves both society that need to be gold mines. Still, all computers require components of gold and the world as we know it would not work without it. But it is not always the case. Only one tenth of the gold is used as well. 50% of world production is used in jewelry, which is not strictly necessary for the survival of humans, and 40% is a chimera gold titles, although once used to support currencies in this moment only because people think it is worth. And sadly for the world is better than the curse that left the mines in all parties. Already have enough gold Cadillacs, bullion in vaults of never going out, and can be used for better things to speculate and make the stock market operates.
not buy gold, sounds like a Birdbrain but try not to. And tell your friends, family and acquaintances to not buy. One swallow does not make a summer, but at least it is off the top of the crime of complicity. If you can not have no gold, only one thing to have gold in your home, and try to be as significant for what it represents, actually worth. The world we have come to that gold worth, no wonder why. This is the root of our people curse Macondo.
With her terrible practical sense, she could not understand the business colonel, who changed the fishes for gold coins, and then became the gold coins in fishes, and so on, so I had to work every again as more sold to satisfy an exasperating vicious circle
Ursula (as well as all of us) was trapped in the game. But it is possible to get out of there and remove the curse, as did the Colonel. He was able to love gold and it was in itself, and what made him, rather than for power or wealth that the metal represented. The Colonel was able to leave the evil spell and see the value of Gold probably knew it was worth much less than the landscape with stones that looked like dinosaur eggs, where he passed the river with fishes, these real self, which were so new they had no name, and had to point the finger to refer to them.
* Actually I tried out a paragraph and not endured horribly corny and erased
RioQuito ** About once wrote something. You can read it here
*** To see something concern, read this article empty chair on mining in wilderness areas, there are maps that freeze the heart
**** More pictures of mining in Dagua here
