Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Charts that Will Make You Smart

Again, as I have said before, if you really want to impress the girls at the clubs, you should really just bring your laptop in, crack open Excel and start making charts. Having the latest issue of The Economist folded and tucked in the back of your pocket with "The Economist" logo showing out will help too, but chicks really dig charts.

Plus, charts make you smart. Take somebody who never looked at a chart. Their arguments consist of "well I just FEEL" or "I just think" when there is no substitute for "I know."

Therefore I thought it worth our while to post a bevy of charts I've had stored up in the past couple of months that I haven't gotten around to posting yet. And since I'm off on vacation in a couple days, I will not be posting for a good solid week, so consider this a week's worth of posts.

But before I go on vacation one other request I have is that I've had a GREAT response to Help the Captain Help the Major, supporting my buddy who is returning to the military to go to Baghdad. The idea was to gather a lot of pictures of different folk from around the world to make what would be a nice calendar for him and his detachment to have in their barracks. However, I've received more than 12 photos so I've decided to make a photo album for him instead (HOWEVER, I have received some pictures from some lovely ladies, so if I get 10 more of those, I might make a calendar out of that which our boys in camo would certainly appreciate - plus he's single ladies! ;)

In any case, I expect my e-mail box to be FULL of photos of all you good folk (and maybe some classy 1940's poses from some of the ladies out there) upon my return. My e-mail is captcapitalism@yahoo.com (ensure you copy and paste the e-mail because people keep misspelling it). This is the LEAST you can do to help the Major and his detachment!

Anyway onto the charts;

Chart 1 makes a great case for going nuclear with our power production. Since global warming is the biggest threat to world (even more so than radical Islam) then it only makes sense to go nuclear. Of course the leftists will protest that too, betraying their true incentives; to destroy capitalist economies.


Chart 2 shows what I KNOW to be the true engine of economic growth; innovation and creation. I was surprised the Swiss were so high, not that I wasn't expecting them to be creative, I've just never heard anything about the Swiss before.


Chart 3 shows once again the US spends more than any country on health care. I've often thought about taking health care out of GDP and GDP per capita figures as an adjusted measure for the true standards of living, for I think the majority of the money we spend on health care is wasted. The chart also shows health care taking a larger and larger percentage of the economy. Soon when the baby boomers retire we'll all be working in nursing homes or the medical field.


And chart 4 just kind of jumped out at me. I knew white men were the more prolific committers of suicide, but I didn't notice that black males also commit suicide relatively more as well. Plus the time lag between the two groups committing suicide. Blacks peak in their 20's while whites peak in their older years. Any social scientists that have an explanation for this?


Anyway, enjoy the week all. I'll be out climbing mountains. AND FILL IN MY INBOX WITH PHOTOS!!!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but real men use tables.

Captain Capitalism said...

I'm still wiping up the milk that shot out of my nose.

Anonymous said...

Switzerland has a high-tec engineering industry, just like Germany. Many machines that are used in factories to produce other things are invented and built by the Swiss. That's why nobody has heard of them. You only see the finished product, not the machinery behind it.

Ro! said...

One word.. Swiss army knife :)

About the suicide rate.. must the the social security.. White folks retire and realize they can't live on SS check and commits suicide.. Black folks, if they live to be that old, know how to live on a small ss check

Captain Capitalism said...

Again, not that you're cyncial ;)

Anonymous said...

Check out the roller coaster ride on Van der Leun's American Digest (in the extended entry):

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/006717.php#006717

AG said...

People with knowlage and accurate prediction of hopeless future outcome tend to commit suicide.

Old folk know they have terminal illness which only bring more suffering and horrible quality of life with fatal outcome. Then the logical conclusion is to finish your own life to avoid pain and suffering in future. Also suicide might save money away from hopeless treatment and spare them to your offsprings.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't say global warming is a bigger threat than radical Islam, I wouldn't say it's much of a threat at all IMO. But Capt, did you change your mind on that, I remember from a previous post you had disagreed that global warming was a threat (or were you being sarcastic?).

Anonymous said...

ro! might have something there. You might also throw in life expectancies and Alzheimers. This is purely anecdotal, but my 80 year old father, who has been through all sorts of bad times knows his mental capacity is slipping away. On his good days he vaguely hints about not living too much longer.

That's why I have all the guns.