This Song Would Totally Be a Hit Today

If only Blake Shelton performed it on "The Voice":

Except that only CeeLo Green would have the guts to do it. Still, that would be interesting, and likely better than many of the battle rounds....

As David Tufte described it:

Odd. A whole song video, sung by Italians, of nonsense words chosen to sound like English.

Made in 1972 by Adriano Celantano, it's a parody of Italian rockers who sang in English even though they didn't speak the language.

The scary thing is that it's not bad at all (if you go in for early 70's bubblegum funk). And you’ve got to love the "harp-syncing".

And who *doesn't* go for "harp-synching" or early '70's bubblegum funk? It's got platinum written all over it!

Penguin Slapping

First, a right-thinking penguin describes their motive for slapping others:

Hippies, of course, being the among the groups of people who who are just a little too pleased with themselves. Speaking of which, penguins putting the slapdown on others would appear to be something that actually happens in nature:

Cultural evolution in action!

The Top 10 Posts at Political Calculations

We mainly ask and answer questions here at Political Calculations, preferably questions for which we don't already know the answer! Today's an exception though, because question we're asking is: "What are the Top 10 posts of all time at Political Calculations?

The answer is below....

1. What's Your Income Percentile?


2. The Distribution of Net Worth in the United States


3. The S&P 500 At Your Fingertips


4. Visualizing the 2012 Distribution of Income in the U.S. by Age


5. What Are the Chances Your Marriage Will Last?


6. The Real Story About Rising U.S. Income Inequality


7. The U.S. Housing Bubble is Back


8. A Primer on Calculating Diminished Value for Insurance Claims


9. Tipping Around the World


10. Triangulating the Deadweight Loss of Cash for Clunkers

Probably the post that we're the most pleased to see make the list is our Primer on Calculating Diminished Value for Insurance Claims, which we developed to help anyone whose car might have been damaged and repaired after an accident recover as much of the full loss they incurred as possible, which they might not otherwise find out about until they try to sell their repaired car years after the accident.

The biggest surprise for us though was finding that the tool we built to calculate the deadweight loss of a government subsidy program to a nation (using the U.S.' "Cash for Clunkers" program as our example) is so popular... in Australia!

We only have an inkling of the kind of crazy crony government subsidy schemes that the Aussies were dealing with under their previous government, but we've been happy to help them quantify just how much they were really dragging Australia's economy down just for the sake of propping up struggling automakers a little longer!

Ironman Robs Bank

Unfortunately, the really elaborate series of multiple bank heists that we were considering participating in was a no go, as the funding for the project fell well short of the minimum needed to make it happen.

But, at least we can still live vicariously through our alter ego, even though if anyone asks, we'll say we were framed!

More of the story here.

Reliving the Big Bay Boom

What happens when 18 minutes worth of a regular Fourth of July fireworks show is compressed into less than a minute when a technical malfunction causes all the fireworks to go off at once?

Depending upon your point of view, it's either the best grand finale ever, or the worst fireworks show ever. In either case, that's exactly what happened in San Diego last year:

It will be interesting to see if San Diego's fireworks show planners recognize the opportunity to take this experience to create a truly spectacular experience this year. Have a great Fourth of July holiday!

Jacked!

This morning, it appears that our e-mail was temporarily hijacked by a spammer, apparently working out of South Korea, between 11:15 AM EDT and 11:30 AM EDT. Our apologies to all those who unexpectedly heard from "us" during the outburst.

You know, it occurs to us that our friends at the NSA likely already know all about it, including who is responsible for the incursion, and quite possibly are directing drones to the offender's vicinity. And if they're not, just what good are they?...

It's Not What You Think....

Want to take a Rorschach test? We've extracted the following illustrations from U.S. Patent 6,612,440 - we'll tell you what it is below the image....

If you saw spectacles looking at a banana-shaped object, you're probably not alone. Or far off, because fortunately for your psychological health assessment, bananas are indeed involved....

What you're looking at is a section view (Figure 2) and an isometric view (Figure 3) of half of a "Banana Protection Device". Because, well, you must store and transport your bananas carefully - even when they've been sliced in half lengthwise. The patent abstract explains:

A banana protective device for storing and transporting a banana carefully. The banana protective device includes a container having a first cover member and a second cover member being hingedly attached to the first cover member and being adapted to store a banana therein; and also includes pad members being securely disposed upon the first and second cover members for protecting and cushioning the banana; and further includes fastening members being attached to the first and second cover members for fastenably closing the first and second cover members together.

No, we're not making this up. The patent really says that.

And at least now you have something to carefully store and transport the cheapest thing you can buy outside of the food court at Costco....

Other Stuff We Can't Believe Really Exists

• It's Not What You Think....


• Inventions in Everything: Soup Bowl Attraction


• Inventions in Everything: Making Life More Difficult


• Inventions in Everything: The Oreo Separator Machine


• Air Shark!


• Markets in Everything: Stormtrooper Motorcycle Suit


• The Bike That Rides You


• One Inventor's Stick-to-itiveness


• High Five!


• Inventions for Everything


• The Best Mousetrap Ever


• An Invention for the True Wine Connoisseur


• Three of Ten Things You Don't Need on St. Patrick's Day


• The Future Just Got a Lot Cooler Than It Used to Be


• The Worst Piece of Design Ever Done


• The Magic Marker of the Future


• Coming Soon, to a Gym Near You!

In Which We're Right. Again.

We've had some fun over the past few days in forcing Seeking Alpha's editors to rewrite portions of our posts to remove our assessment of the intellectual quality of commentary provided by several of that site's more confused commenters to our posts so their feelings wouldn't be hurt, but today, we're just going to rub their faces in it.

Consider this comment from one commenter, who was troubled by one particular passage in a recent article:

You are correct, ironman: "this confuses some Seeking Alpha's commenters"

In fact, I dare anyone to explain "We can observe this transition directly in our chart below as the movement of the daily and 20-day moving average of the change in the rate of growth of stock prices from the red line representing 2013-Q2 to the green line representing 2014-Q1, which corresponds to the change in the year-over-year rates of growth of the trailing year dividends per share expected for each of these quarters."

I'm not saying the article is wrong, just that it's incomprehensible.

What this particularly confused Seeking Alpha commenter found troubling is our verbal description of a chart we provided, in which a black line changes its relative position from keeping pace with a red line to instead converge and begin to keep pace with a green line. As noted on the chart, the black line corresponds to the change in the rate of growth of stock prices, while the red and green lines correspond to the change in the rate of growth of dividends expected for two different quarters in the future.

So it's not like we didn't provide a decoder. It's more that it was ignored....

That was one of the more intelligent comments we saw. Later in the comments thread, we came across this gem from another commenter, who at least recognizes their naivety:

Call me naive, but how do you know investors have shifted their focus from 2nd quarter's dividend rates... to expectations for 1st quarter 2014 dividend rates?

Is this standard knowledge?

Or is it in that first chart that shows dividends moving average compared to stock prices? If so, I see the break upward of stock prices. I don't see anything that correlates or gives a hint that it's a shift in focus by investors to next year's dividend rates.

How do we know? Other than seeing that black line shift from pacing the red line, representing 2013-Q2's dividend rates, to pace the green line instead, representing 2014-Q1's dividend rates? Or any of our previous articles in which we've discussed this quantum-like characteristic of stock prices that are being driven by expected future dividends?

As for being standard knowledge, well, apparently not among Seeking's Alpha's more confused commenters....

But the best was yet to come! Behold the most cortically-subilluminated comment we've seen to date!

Total bafflegab and gobbledygook. As an investor I have not shifted my focus as the author suggests. I am not clairvoyant, but I doubt most investors have, as the author claims. Plus, his insult of commenters to a previous article of his/hers suggest personal insecurity. Author, are you here to educate or to build ego?

For some reason, you are ranked 1 in real estate. Not sure what it means, but it suggests some sort of weakness in SA's rankings. Especially since you have a grand total of 273 followers.

To paraphrase you, it looks like investors have shifted their focus to better authors and empirically supported charts. Best wishes, however.

Thanks to the efforts of Seeking Alpha's intrepid editors, that's a commenter who really had to work hard to get their feelings hurt, as the claimed insult appears nowhere in our articles appearing on Seeking Alpha!

Speaking of which, our articles appear on Seeking Alpha because Seeking Alpha's editors like them and requested permission to re-post them. Since we post anonymously, it's pretty clear that we don't exactly care about ego, and since we're not compensated by Seeking Alpha at all, much less to educate its site visitors, we're not that concerned about fulfilling that function either.

As for being "ranked 1 in real estate" on Seeking Alpha, how cool is that?! Especially since we've only written a handful of articles on real estate in the past year, all in recent months, which means that we've had some sort of impact in generating a migration to better authors and empirically supported charts for that particular topic at Seeking Alpha. Thanks for letting us know - we'd say it's pretty ego-boosting, but then, we still don't care!

Other criticism in Seeking Alpha's comments to our article there was equally off base. Consider this sample:

There has been no mention of a possibility of a correction, market has been on a short term rally since Oct'Nov 2012 and this also must be accounted, so there is a possible correction when buyers through this last rally begin taking profits and fooled people that bought late are screwed.

Hmm. Somehow, this commenter completely missed this quote of ours from our article that appeared at Seeking Alpha on Monday, 20 May 2013:

Now that the pace of acceleration of daily stock prices has risen above the green line on our chart above, we can expect the recent rate of growth to taper off, and even to fall following this period of transition, as there is no fundamental support for stock prices to remain significantly above this level for any sustained period of time, absent some action by the Fed.

Guess what happened on Wednesday, 22 May 2013, around 2:00 PM, after the Fed released minutes of its recent meeting in which the Fed decided that they would not increase their purchases of Treasuries and Mortgage-Backed Securities as part of their current quantitative easing program and would instead continue purchasing them at their current levels....

You have to admit - we were right. Again!

But will the Seeking Alpha commenters who wrote the following be bitter about it? You decide - here's the first comment by a Seeking Alpha commenter who was concerned that someone might base their investments on things we write:

I'm not saying the article is wrong either. It is based on some airy fairy ideation couched as fact. I agree that it is incomprehensible. I am glad it is, for if it made any sense, some poor sucker might base investments based on it. Bleh.

And a second comment on the same vein, where the Seeking Alpha commenter also doubts our ability to anticipate future changes in stock prices:

Unfortunately the article appears to be an prima facie example of the logical fallacy that correlation equals causation. A lot of effort (and reader time) could have saved by just sticking with tea leaves.

Checking the score, that would be one poor sucker doing better than these two particular Seeking Alpha commenters! Except that sucker wouldn't be as poor as these particular Seeking Alpha commenters, even though one appears to count tea leaves among their assets.

There were more comments, but fortunately for our reading experience, they were much more intelligent than the ones we covered in this article today. We'll close by sharing the most honest observation, which we respect:

I am reading a book about cosmology that is easier to understand.

More Seeking Alpha commenters should recognize their cognitive limits. It's not that you're as dim-witted as the above examples suggest, it's more that you don't know what you need to understand to deal with it and aside from this week's break, we're not going to slow down or stop what we're doing to get you up to speed. Just ask a mathematician about Mochizuki's proof of the ABC Conjecture and recognize that you're in the same boat. Fortunately for you however, we've done all our intermediary work live, in real time, online, so you can simply go through our archives to see how we've gotten so far ahead of you.

Yo, Mochizuki! Try this with your guys - it's therapeutic!

We Own #3!

On 30 January 2013, we introduced our tool for determining the percentile ranking of Americans according to their net worth (or net wealth), writing:

We didn't know this until yesterday, but apparently, our "What's Your Income Percentile?" tool is the second most highly ranked result on Google if you search for "household wealth percentile". Which we found out only because someone who works for the Federal Reserve Board came to our site after performing that exact search on Monday, 28 January 2012!

Well, that's not good enough, is it? We want to own the #1 result for that particular Google search and we're going to get it by building a tool that you can use to see how your household's net worth ranks among all U.S. households!

We recently noticed an upsurge in our site traffic, with visitors being drawn to our net worth percentile tool. It turns out that in less than three months time, the tool we developed that day has become the third highest result returned by a Google search for "household wealth percentile"!

Technically, we also own the #2 result, but that's our post as it appeared at Before It's News, which republishes our RSS site feed, and which doesn't include the JavaScript code needed to make the tool functional.

And to think, we achieved all that without the aid of any so-called "SEO experts"!

Instead, we have to thank all those who made their way to our site and who hopefully discovered something they thought was interesting or useful, then shared what they found with others. Our Google search ranking for "household wealth percentile" can be almost entirely attributed to that process of discovery.

We very much appreciate your finding us! And if you know any bird enthusiasts, be sure to let them know about our long-tail experiment with bird perches!

Going Out on the Long Tail

Have you ever heard of the "long tail"?

The long tail is a concept that was introduced back in 2004 by Chris Anderson, who argued that the future of entertainment, and by extension, all business, lies in developing millions of niche markets rather than just a handful of mega-markets. By focusing on capturing the revenues that might otherwise be lost in these millions of niche markets, businesses - and especially Internet-based businesses - can realize larger profits than they could by focusing on selling just a handful of products - the same products sold in large numbers by their competition.

We're going to really put that concept to the test today, because as part of a major shift away from markets and politics and toward really obscure and unexplored topics, as we're going out on the long tail after the consumers of bird perches!

It just so happens that there's a math equation that can help bird owners determine the right size of a perch for their pet birds, which can help them avoid foot-related health issues and their costs:

Larry Nemetz, DVM, an avian-only vet in Southern California, once assumed that all birds within the same species would naturally have the same-sized feet — until he noticed another pattern emerging. "I started seeing a lot of soreness and arthritis in my patients, and wondered what was going on."

Two months of data collection later, he compared results on a spreadsheet and saw the truth — every patient he saw, even ones of the same bird species, had different-sized feet. That meant they all had specific perching needs. Were they on the wrong-sized perch?

That got him thinking further. "How could we come up with a guideline for perch sizes if species alone couldn't tell us anything?" Nemetz, it turns out, was in agreement with other avian experts: A bird's foot should wrap 75 percent around a perch for optimal comfort.

"We're looking for the best, long-term perching figure for pet birds. This may differ from how wild parrots roost, but for our purposes a 65- to 75-percent wraparound figure is ideal." This factors in elements such as secure gripping and foot stress.

So here's the potential long tail opportunity for us. Bird owners who care about their birds will be out seeking to improve their comfort and health by obtaining the right-sized perch for their pets. They might come across the same Bird Channel article in their internet searches as we did in seeking out a wildly obscure topic to take on.

That same search then should turn up the tool we're featuring in this post, which makes it easy to find out what size perches they should buy for their birds. All they would need to do is to enter the indicated information below, and our tool will return the results they need:

Bird Foot Size
Input Data	Values
Length of Bird's Foot [in millimeters]

Approximate Diameter of Perch
Calculated Results	Values
Bird Perch Diameter [millimeters]
Bird Perch Diameter [inches]

If you're accessing this article from a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click here to access a fully functional version of this tool at our site.

We'll next point to Amazon's section on bird perches so the more serious shopping for a particular-sized perch can get underway.

So will our long tail marketing strategy really work? The only way to find out if it really does is for bird owners to buy correctly sized bird perches for their birds through the links on our site! Go for it bird people!...

Image Credit: Avianweb

Previously on Political Calculations

• Astros to Reject American League Transfer - Join SEC Instead


• Identity of Political Calculations "Ironman" Revealed


• No April Fools Today


• InstaPundit Acquires Political Calculations

Nothing Can Rival the Jumping Cat

In all the years that Political Calculations has been around, we've never featured a cat video. Not one. Ever. They just don't impress us.

Until today. Enjoy!

HT: Core77, who says its all about the videography and editing. Oh, and every jump over 183 centimeters is more than six feet above the floor.

Inventions In Everything: Making Life More Difficult

Most inventions are meant to make life easier in some way. Even the Rube Goldberg-inspired contraption for removing the creme filling in Oreo cookie that we featured last week does that, in that it automates what might otherwise be a manual effort. It's a complicated way to do the intended task, but other than to load Oreos in and to unload the creme-filling free chocolate wafers out at the end is the only physical exertion required of the invention's user.

So what are we to make then of the following invention, which has been specifically developed to make a common physical task much more difficult to accomplish (HT: Core77):

Here, the Labyrinth Security Door Chain makes the act of opening a restroom door much more complicated. But why?!

Believe it or not, the Labyrinth Security Door Chain solves a problem, and does in fact make life easier. Just not for the people who will be the most likely ones who will be directly challenged by the invention.

In this case, the people for whom this invention makes life easier are the owners and employees of establishments that serve lots of alcohol-based beverages. It helps them identify those customers who have had so much to drink that their ability to quickly solve the maze and enter the restroom has become significantly impaired, as has likely their ability to accomplish other tasks that might expose the establishment to liability, such as if they attempt to drive while under the influence of alcohol and get into an accident.

That information, in turn, allows the owners and staffs of alcohol-serving establishments to decide how to deal with the impaired customer, where options may range from changing the services being offered to them, say exchanging food service for drink items, to declining to continue serving them altogether and making arrangements for them to be driven home.

You have to admit - it's a simple and relatively inexpensive way to sort out which customers have a greater potential to expose the establishment to the risk of costly liability-related actions.

Inventions in Everything: The Oreo Separator Machine

How much does a guy have to dislike the creme filling in delicious Oreo cookies that he is inspired to devise an invention as intricate as what you're about to see just to accomplish the desired task of removing the creme without coming into direct contact with any of it?

Now that's genius! (HT: Core77)

In Which We Deny Another Request to Remove a Link from Our Blog and Offer Our Regrets

Not long ago, we denied an unusual request to remove a link from one of the articles that appeared on our blog. We now have a better understanding of why we received that strange request, thanks to another oddball request we received to remove a different link from another one of our blog posts.

Hi,

My name is Jonathan and I’m getting in touch on behalf of Medical Billing and Coding. I noticed that you’ve linked to my website on your page politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html with the text "sitting is killing you" and am requesting that you remove the link.

I’m asking this because it’s come to our attention that some of the links to our website have been acquired against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, so it’s important for us to remove links that are harming traffic to our website. Furthermore, by linking to our site, it could be detrimental to your site’s overall traffic, so it will be important for you to remove the link.

Please let me know if you have any questions. If you could email me once you have removed the link that would be great.

Best,

Jonathan Weiner

Ah, yes. Google's Webmater Guidelines, or as so many so-called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) "experts" who claim they can successfully drive traffic to a web site would describe it, their "Bible".

It turns out that the folks at Google just tweaked their search engine's algorithm and revised the guidelines because too many these scummy SEO experts were gaming the system by encouraging other web sites to link back to theirs, offering other web sites and blogs free content like infographics to encourage them to link back to them, regardless of the relevance of the content they gave away freely to the business of their web site.

But now the game is up. Google really wants to provide its users with highly relevant links to encourage them to continue using their Internet search engine, so they worked out how to demote the web sites that engaged in these kind of link schemes to boost their site traffic by boosting their site's Google search engine ranking.

How big a deal is this? Apparently, not getting the same search engine traffic that they used to is driving some of these link schemers to desperation. We've heard back from "Jonathan Weiner" twice since then! The first followup to the original e-mail came one week later:

Hi,

I recently emailed you regarding a link removal request in regards to your website and have not heard back. I’m getting in touch to make sure you received the email and are in the process of removing said links. Please let me know if you haven’t received my first email and I’d be happy to send it again.

And we received a second follow-up one week after that one....

Hi,

Just checking in again about the status of the link removal request I sent you last week. I noticed that your link to medicalbillingandcoding.org is still on your website. My first email was requesting that you take the link down. Please let me know if you’ve done so.

We're afraid that poor "Jonathan Weiner" is just going to have to get used to disappointment in his desperate drive to attract search engine traffic back to his site. And since he's been so persistent, we're opting to respond to his requests publicly, so that others might learn from his mistakes.

---

Dear Jonathan,

We're afraid that we must deny your request to remove all links to your site from our blog, as we are not responsible for your web site's dual declines in its Google search engine ranking and corresponding website traffic. While we're touched that you seem to care about our own search engine traffic, in truth, while we find it fun to see who's reading our blog, we're happy to grow our traffic organically. Whatever search engine traffic we get, we get the hard way - we produce original content and analysis that we hope our readers find interesting and share with others they believe might have a similar interest in our content, rather than engaging in the kinds of linking schemes that Google frowns upon in its guidelines for webmasters.

Second, we would have been able to respond to your request more quickly if you had properly identified the link of the actual article to where we made fair use of the the infographic your site freely entered into the public domain, rather than a link to our archive of posts from October 2011. As it happens, the "Sitting Is Killing You" infographic appeared as an integral part of the content of our blog post Happy Halloween! Now Have a Seat...., which is one of the more fun posts we wrote back in October 2011.

Third, your request to remove links to your site from our article would violate our editorial policy, where we always seek to identify and attribute the source of any non-original content that may appear on Political Calculations as part of our fair use of the material.

In this case, it appears that we owe you an apology, as we identified noted chart porn addict Barry Ritholtz as our source for the infographic in the text of our article, with the link to your site only clear to readers who might either mouseover the image or click through to your site by clicking the infographic image itself, which represents an error on our part, which we regret.

We will therefore be happy to correct our error and add an additional link to your site instead to better clarify that it is the original source of the infographic, which your site's staff writers had actively encouraged bloggers to post on their own sites back when they entered it into the public domain on 9 May 2011.

We are always happy to correct errors like these that appear on Political Calculations. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

Best regards,

Ironman @ Political Calculations

In Which We Deny A Request to Remove a Link from Our Site

We received a pretty unusual e-mail earlier this week from an individual at OnlineDegrees.net. Here is the text, which we'll present in snippets with our responses in between:

G'day,

G'day! How ya goin mate?

Not long ago, Google began reviewing websites for their past linking practices. They are looking for "over-optimized" back-links. What this means is that they are looking for links from one site to another that use the term that most users search for to find particular pieces of information. OnlineDegrees.net is one of these sites under review for bad practices.

Do tell! You've been very bad, haven't you?

While I appreciate your efforts to share our content and give credit where credit is due, I must respectfully request that you remove all links to OnlineDegrees.net from your site: politicalcalculations.blogspot.com

Let's see.... OnlineDegrees.net, OnlineDegrees.net, OnlineDegrees.net.... Doesn't ring any bells - are you sure that we've ever linked to OnlineDegrees.net?

This includes the links found on: politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2010/04/cavalcade-of-risk-102.html

Oh, that one! Where we posted a link specifically submitted by OnlineDegrees.net to the edition of the Cavalcade of Risk blog carnival that we hosted back in April 2010.

That would be the very well-received edition of the Cavalcade of Risk where we shared your content and gave credit where credit was due by assigning OnlineDegrees.net's submission our second-lowest blog carnival contribution rating of Cc3, which is a rating that warns readers against clicking through to the contribution by describing the information at the link submitted by OnlineDegrees.net as being "Way off topic, might possibly make you stupider and also potentially painful".

We're pretty sure then that Google doesn't have a problem with how we've linked to OnlineDegrees.net. But why pursue this now, after more than two years?

We are updating our site to improve content and design, so I hope that you will return to see the information our site provides once this issue is resolved. Please send me an email, letting me know if and when you have removed our links from your site, or if you have any questions or concerns. I very much appreciate your help.

No, we can't say as that we have any questions or concerns. Your request for us to remove the link submitted by OnlineDegrees.net to the 102nd edition of the Cavalcade of Risk blog carnival that we hosted in April 2010 is denied.

And just so that the original post that earned our Cc3 blog carnival rating isn't lost as part of the update to OnlineDegrees.net's content and design, here is the Internet Wayback Machine's archived file of the content OnlineDegrees.net submitted to be included with that edition of the Cavalcade of Risk we hosted.

Thank you,

[NAME AND E-MAIL ADDRESS REDACTED]

P.S. I apologize if you received a request from us more than once. We are being assertive in our efforts to fix this.

We hope our public response works in place of the e-mail response you requested, as we've likewise chosen to be assertive in our efforts to deny your request as we stand by our editorial content.

We wish you the best of luck with your updates to OnlineDegrees.net's content and design. Although we've only ever linked to your site on just two occasions, should we ever disregard our own advice and click through the links we've posted to OnlineDegrees.net, we would certainly welcome improved content and design.

You're welcome,

Ironman at Political Calculations

Quick Math on the Demise of the Trillion Dollar Coin

With their hope for building a Death Star to stimulate the U.S. economy now dashed because of "budget constraints", the only hope left for the people who signed onto the White House petition in support of the project turned out not to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, but rather a radical plan to create change - specifically a plan to mint a one-trillion dollar coin that might perhaps be used to pay for the Emperor's evil endeavors.

Their new hope was to make a special American Eagle Platinum Bullion Coin and simply stamp "One Trillion Dollars" on it, which to us seems really lame. After all, this represented a real opportunity to go onto what we'll call the "platinum standard", so it seemed to us that the coin should be made out of $1,000,000,000,000 worth of platinum. Because that would be extra special!

Using the spot price for platinum of $1,629 per ounce at the close of business on 11 January 2013, we estimate that it would take just over 613,873,542 ounces of platinum to make the coin, which works out to be about 38,367,096.4 pounds, or a bit over 19,183.5 tons.

That seems like a lot, but physically, that much platinum would only occupy almost 21,427 cubic feet of space, just enough to fit inside this modest home design of "rare beauty".

Now, here's where it gets interesting, because all the platinum that has ever been mined on Earth would fit in a room that's just 25 cubic feet in volume. That would leave the U.S. Mint about 21,402 cubic feet of platinum short of what would be needed to do the job properly.

So we find that the trillion dollar coin fanatics plan was never feasible and instead recommend that they should return to their original Death Star ambition. At least that plan stands a better chance of achieving success - especially now that the U.S. Treasury has officially killed their hopes for the trillion dollar platinum coin.

Until then, these stormtroopers of progress will have to go back to their day jobs of repressing the portion of the population that still has free will.

Why There Are Only 12 Days of Christmas

By now, you may be getting very tired of the Christmas carol equivalent of "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round".

We're talking of course about "The Twelve Days of Christmas" song. You know, the one with "five goooooolden rings" and "a partridge in a pear tree".

What most people don't fully appreciate about the carol is just how much stuff is being doled out in the twelve days it spans. Not even PNC Wealth Management, the people who calculate the value of the gifts being given out on each day in the song each year, really get it.

You see, they treat the math as if only one gift is being given out on each of the 12 days, whether it be a single set of 10 lords-a-leaping on Day 10 or 3 French hens on Day 3. But here's the thing - if you pay close attention to the lyrics, many of the gifts are repeated on each subsequent day after being given out.

So instead of just one partridge in a pear tree, the recipient of all this true love would actually have 12 - one partridge in a pear tree for each day the song goes on. The "goooooolden rings" would be pretty cool to get, because you'd be getting 40 of them, which you could then equally divide among the 40 milking maids would would start arriving in batches of eight on Day 8.

Needless to say, this is a lot of stuff to keep track of, which is why we've created today's tool, which you can use to keep track of how many total items have been transferred as gifts through each day of Christmas. Just enter the day, and we'll tell you just how many items we're talking about....

Days of Christmas
Input Data	Values
What Day of Christmas Is It?

How Many Gifts Have Been Given to Your True Love?
Calculated Results	Values
Gifts Given on Entered Day of Christmas
Total Gifts Accumulated Through Entered Day of Christmas

And there you have it. Going back to the title of our post "Why Christmas Only Has 12 Days", we find that after 12 days, the gift recipient in the song has accumulated 364 items - enough for every other day of the year (except for leap years, but don't tell the 10 lords.)

You can get a visual sense of all the gifts given during these twelve days in the following image, which was the inspiration for today's post!

This is our final post for 2012 - we'll see you again in the new year. In the meantime, we'll leave you with the only tolerable version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" that we could find:

Have a Merry Christmas!

Air Shark!

There we were, surfing the web for ideas of what to get a certain 9-year old boy for Christmas, when we stumbled into something that made us suddenly sit up and say "That is so cool!"

That something is the Air Swimmer Remote Control Inflatable Flying Shark. Here's a Youtube video of it in action:

We like it because it combines a boy's love of flying R/C vehicles with nature's perfect predator! And as an added bonus, it echoes some of the more fun scenes from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas special, many of which were excerpted and remixed with appropriate music in the following video preview:

The real preview for the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas special is available here. The episode is simply brilliant, with one of the best twists ever in retelling Charles Dickens' classic Christmas Carol story. Very highly recommended!

And at the very least, we've also answered Mark Cuban's problem of what to get his fellow multi-millionaire venture investors on Shark Tank for Christmas this year!

Furnishings Fit for Halloween

If you were really evil, how would you furnish your home?

Or should we say your lair? Here at Political Calculations, we occasionally ask questions that most people, aside from a handful of motion picture set designers, ever think about asking. Today, that means considering some of the most unusual furniture designs that caught our attention over the past year.

Let's start with lighting, shall we? Sure, you could opt for pitch blackness, but really, if you're going to be effective at being evil, you still need to see what you're doing.

That doesn't mean you can't do it in style! Especially if you opt to install Kelly Lamb's Skull Chandelier in your dining room (HT: Core77):

Next, let's set the mood with a little music, shall we? To us, aside perhaps for a Lady Gaga soundtrack, nothing creates a sense of discomfort quite like this laptop desk with speakers from French designer Claire Marion, who was inspired to add hair extensions to them:

Why no, that's not creepy at all! Not if you're genuinely evil, that is.

Moving on, let's consider your seating situation. Of course, you'll need a chair that sets you apart from all who enter your home, and for our money, you can't do much better than this $30,000 replica of the seven-foot tall throne of swords inspired by the Game of Thrones television series:

That leaves your guest seating. Might we suggest what Barry Ritholtz might use to furnish his own home office, and point you toward the "Mutation" series of foam-bubble inspired chairs designed by Maarten de Ceulaer:

Admittedly, what you gain in style is a price you'll pay in comfort. But, being evil, you probably won't want to advertise the fact that you have any comfortable chairs about in your home. And that's where Matali Crasset's Decompression Chair comes into play - for those times when you need an emergency comfy armchair deployment in your drawing room:

Meanwhile, you might offer to seat your guests in Kouichi Okamoto's aluminum wire Composition Chairs:

Obviously, that chair is for people you like. You'll need something really disquieting for people you don't like. And that's the space where Sebastian Errazuriz "Chicken Chair" will fit into your decor. Because being poised over poultry is just plain creepy:

Finally, you'll need a special piece of furniture that simply encourages your unwanted guests to leave, or that you can use to unconventionally exit them from your domain. Meet Igor Lobanov's Wormhole chair:

Just suggest to your guests that you have the ability to flush them into another dimension, and your problem with unwanted guests will likely go away!

Happy Halloween!

Previously, on Political Calculations

• Happy Halloween! Now Have a Seat....


• Markets in Everything: Scary Chairs to Sit Upon

Markets in Everything: Stormtrooper Motorcycle Suits

As the marketing tag says, "Welcome to a Galaxy where Leather Rules"....

The Star Wars Stormtrooper motorcycle armor is available in both Shadow Trooper Black and Stormtrooper White. Unfortunately, there's no word on when Boba Fett-style armor might become available.

Meanwhile, Core77's hipstomp and Rain Noe offer the following invaluable insights:

Folks, I don't doubt that there's some overlap between the motorcycle-riding and Star-Wars-watching subcultures, but isn't this kind of asking for an ass-kicking? Maybe I've been watching too much Sons of Anarchy, but would you not be worried about a gang of thugs pushing each other out of the way in their haste to get to you, eager to win first boasting rights of "I beat the crap out of a Stormtrooper?"

The real rub is that the helmet isn't an actual motorcycle safety helmet. But I can't say what would be more dangerous—riding around with no helmet, or wearing this get-up to Sturgis.

And no, we're not making this up!