Well, there goes another hour. It's not like was gonna get anything done today, anyway.

Bruce Wayne has 6.5 billion! And he paid no taxes!!!!!!

busy chillin': that wasn't very funny.

I found it a Curate's Egg: bits of it were excellent.


Bishop: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones";
Curate: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!"
"True Humility" by George du Maurier, originally published in Punch, 1895.


Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate%27s_egg

toejam: Flakeloaf: Not only does the link not work, scrolling in this page acts very strangely.

You may want to upgrade from IE 4.0

I viewed it on IE 9.0 and it was funky for me too.

I note that according to this graph, 65% of the world's total economic production since the beginning of time has been produced since 1980.

Not only does this testify to the rapid growth of the world economy (thanks to 10% growth in countries like China and India and to the value created by the internets (piping, not trucking information and virtual goods and services around), but it is evidence that the denialists who claim that global warming is not happening and who deny the Mann hockey stick are clearly unaware that underneath the Mann hockey stick, there is a bigger and sharper hockey stick (of energy use) which lies on another hockey stick (of production) which lies on another hockey (of human population).

It's simply ludicrous to deny the CO2 hockey stick, and therefore pretty idiotic to deny that the CO2 hockey stick is rapidly transforming the atmosphere into a man-made artifact.

But I digress.

There's lots and lots of food for thought in this thing. I forwarded it to a number of colleagues. I hope they can figure out how to open it.

Oh, well. I should email them all again and suggest they use Firefox. Third time's the charm.

There. I hope that my suggestion that my correspondent's use Firefox or another browser works, because third time's the charm and it would be embarrassing to send a fourth email.

I missed a few things the first time through: for example, the cost of the things in the Bare Naked Ladies song "If I had a million dollars".

The cost of changing cars for a lifetime rather than changing oil is interesting--$3,270,000. I haven't thought about such a luxury, but I did think about the cost of not washing stockings.

At $10 a pair (modest) it is $3,560 a year (a bit more in leap years, of course). At $100 a pair (fashionable), it would be $35,600. I am not sure if you can get knee-length black silk stockings for only $100 a pair nowadays. Seems a bit on the low side, at least if you are buying retail and famous brand names. But I am sure you could get something barely distinguishable at the price, give or take, and it is a small price for a truly rich man or even many of the mass affluent, or middle classes proper.

Since old clothes is one of the perquisites of your butler or valet (if you have a valet instead of, or in addition to, a butler), your gentleman's gentleman could make a tidy sum of money by having your stockings laundered and selling them. In the Blackadder III series, Prince George the Prince Regent complains of never having any stockings. This is because Blackadder is often selling them rather assiduously and possibly before the Prince wears them. The bill is GBP59,000, which would have kept a Lord in style in the early 1800s (when 10,000 pounds a year was very rich). It's odd that the Prince Regent couldn't be more virtuous on his immense Civil List income, seeing as Becky Sharp found it very easy for a lady to be virtuous on GBP 10,000 a year after a period of high price inflation.

Then again, even a poor Prince finds it hard to be virtuous. Just look at Justin Bieber's Baby Momma. No, better if you don't. The subject doesn't bear examinatiion.

And did you notice the cost of the Royal Wedding? Phew! What a scorcher! Well, maybe that's another matter, but it's funny that the Royals spent more on flowers than Paul Desmarais, the Canadian billionaire, spent on his daughters whole wedding (a mere $600,000, many years ago). A bit extravagant, but unlike private weddings, a royal wedding is a public event that brings a lot more into Government coffers than it costs the taxpayer. They made the money back with a large profit, I am sure, even if the Royals weren't out of pocket for a penny.

EWreckedSean: PrinceofFark: This is going to be way over the head of 99% of the Farkers on this site. Very interesting to look at the breakdown. Zerohedge material if I ever saw it.

XKCD is over the head of 99% of people period...

Well, occasionally. Many of the cartoons are not so obscure or geeky. I have a book of XKCD cartoons. The page numbering is, er, somewhat eccentric, which is to say, very geeky. Instead of consecutive integers in the normal manner, some of the page numbers are non-consecutive, irrational or otherwise less familiar numbers. Constants such as pi (irrational and transcendental) and even equations make an appearance. I think this is a charming in-joke and don't worry too much if I don't get all of the references.

A child ought to be able to follow the basic equivalencies in the chart, although it is hard to read the whole chart without moving it around. It would be very impressive printed out on stock paper as a poster. I assume that a printing center (a real printing center, not just a photocopier place like they have at Staples) would be able to print this on a six foot long, four foot high sheet, which would be adequate, perhaps.

Braindeath: I opened the trillions part and felt actual terror looking at the derivatives. Let's go back to raptor equations before I build a bunker and hide it in.

They terrified the grammar right out of you