Spring [1] and I also ended up talking about economics and the gold standard. I had just finished reading The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Peter Bernstein and I learned that the Gold Standard was only around for aproximately 100 years. Before that, gold was actually circulated as coins, and it was recently that paper money backed by gold was employed in the West (although it had been going on for centuries over in China). So we were chatting about that, and about economics in general (for instance: get cancer? GNP (Gross National Product) goes up. Car crash? GNP goes up. Volunteer? GNP drops).
Nerdness knows no bounds.