You might be an addict if...

While reading a CNN article on the breakdown of Greek
society I came across this quote:

"Take Haris Georgatou, for example. A broadcast engineering
technician, he points out one way he's adapted to the new
national concern. After years of spending $15 a day on
coffee, he now makes his own at work."

Oh the suffering! But really, how much coffee do you have to
drink to spend $15 a day? In Greece!

Some quick calculations. The CIA World Factbook lists the
Greek GDP per-capita as $32,100 calculated according to
purchasing power parity. This isn't adjusted for the
shipping-magnate effect. I'll make the further, obviously
unrealistic, assumption that the average Greek works 50
weeks per year and only buys coffee on workdays. If Haris is
at all representative than the average Greek is spending 9%
of his pre-tax income on coffee. With priorities like this,
their financial difficulty start to make sense. It seems the
US isn't the only country with a Columbian drug problem.

Proof that Global Warming Exists!

As you may know, today is Groundhog day which inspired me to perform some calculations. From Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil issues his yearly opinion on whether or not we will have six more weeks of winter. His historical accuracy is 39%, making him far and away one of the most prestigious climate scientists of our time. However, his recent predictions have been nothing sort of chilling.

For those of you unfamiliar with the science, if Phil sees his shadow and then retreats into his burrow, we will have six more weeks of winter. If he does not, then we are in for an early spring. For the first 50 years of the twentieth century the Groundhog predicted spring only 3.5 times, including one partial viewing. However, since then the Groundhog has predicted spring an astounding TEN TIMES! Clearly, we are in for some rapid warming.

To make this even more clear, the image below shows the increasing number of spring predictions. This allowed me to perform a simple linear regression. I'm sad to report that this represents a BEST CASE SCENARIO as the obviously exponential rate of increase in the data means that the tipping point is even nearer. This inevitable extrapolation predicts that winter will be PERMANENTLY six weeks shorter by 2380. Translated, we are losing 2 hours and 42 minutes of winter every year! When will people take this threat seriously?