>Precious metals to preserve our vital bodily fluids?
>Isn't talk of the need to return to the gold standard
>a virtually certain indicium of being a crank?
-Please excuse my naiveté, but what is it about mentioning the gold -standard that gets one branded a "crank"?
Well, aside from the humor of continually repeating a policy bromide from the 19th century as the cure-all for modern ills, it's the fixation on any one policy as so important. Cranks are usually identified by their fixation with one idea; on the left, hoary exhortions to a "general strike" as the be-all and end-all of social change have the same flavor (see Sparts).
The gold standard or a general strike might be a useful tool, but the fetishization of any one method, especially when repeated monomaniacally in a social context where it's unlikely to happen in any immediate period, qualifies you as a crank.
-- Nathan