Hakuna Matata

You know what gets people fired up dead elephants. And for this one-time offer I will throw in dead baby rhinos too. Whoa, whoa, whoa where’s he going with this? Hold your zebras (genus: equus). I’m not lion this should be a good blog. Less boaring than last time.

You all remember Cecil

The lion that was shot twice by the Minnesotan dentist. Once by an arrow and again 40 hours later by a bullet ending the life of poor Cecil. That dentist paid $55,000 to kill a lion. I'm not going into whether Walter Palmer is guilty of committing a crime or not, that's not the point. The point is that there's serious money in the trophy hunting industry.

This money is used to protect these animals from poachers. These poachers kill thousands upon thousands of savanna animals each year. These poachers sell parts of these animals across the planet. Making "benign" dentists pay thousands of dollars to animal conservancies to kill the most violent and territorial rhinos on the preserve, that kill other rhinos, is a pretty nice business. This money then gets used to pay for game guards, buy vehicles, and start new conservancies. In some African countries, governments puts a portion of this big-game money into the hands of citizens to create an incentive not to kill the pests, that kill their livestock.

Using money for killing animals to protect them from poachers. This is where I want to go about the marijuana debate. Some people say marijuana should be legalized and that the the tax revenues from its legal sale would pay for any rehabilitation of addicts, its kinda related.  So I'm going to finish this blog with an analysis to see if that's actually feasible.

Let's think about just Colorado, so we have some statistics. Let's assume that every time someone commits a marijuana related offense must go to rehab. Offenses include possession and public consumption, but not DUI, its hard to know how long ago the marijuana was consumed. Its a pretty arbitrary assumption. It'll just give us an estimate to compare to the state revenue from legalization. So, we can look at the number of marijuana related offenses in Denver from the Drug Alliance March. Then I will extrapolate that number to the entire population of Colorado to give me an estimate of people requiring rehab in Colorado.

The population of Denver is 680,000. The number of marijuana related offenses in Denver in 2014 was 1537. So about 0.2260% of Denver's population requires rehab. Colorado's population is 5,457,000. So if Denver is completely representative of all of Colorado, then 12,330 people in Colorado would have needed rehab in 2014, again its just a guess. Each year this number is decreasing, so there would be less than 12,330 people who need treatments annually in the coming years.

To find out how much this would cost, I'll look at the average rehab cost, and multiply it by the number of people that require rehab. The average rehab cost is $4,500 for 3 months. So to pay for 12,330 treatments the state of Colorado would have to take in at least 55.5 million tax dollars each year for all these people to receive one treatment.

For good measure, lets 100% of these pot-heads don't commit any crimes for 3 months but then commit the same crime, go through the same treatment again and are clean for last 3 months of the year. So I'll multiply our 55.5 million by the 2 treatments just to see if this way-overestimate could potentially work. Doing this I get 111 million dollars a year. Looking at marijuana tax data from the Colorado department of revenue, the state of Colorado raked in 135 million dollars from the sale of marijuana.

So I'm fairly certain this plan would work, all the revenue could support a total of 30,000 treatments.

I'm not sure how much these people contribute to Colorado's economy, but I'm fairly certain it would decrease Colorado's productivity if you take more than 12,000 people out of the economy each year. And treatments don't work if the person being treated is hostile. There are a lot of problems with this plan. So even if all of these people aren't treated Colorado, they can still give treatments to people who want them. Doing this, there would be money left over for strict health education programs to keep people from marijuana to begin with.

November

I really want to talk about politics today. The awful decision that has to be made in November. I think it's important enough to talk about. If you have strong feelings about either candidate I would suggest leaving now. I have a couple of questions about the whole race. My goal in this blog will help me and you make a decision about the bad, awful, horrific, oh-my-god-he didn't-just-say that candidate(s). Just for reference I'm a centrist. A sadly confused centrist.

The first question that keeps me up at night is, how can anybody say they support either Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump for president? There really are people out there who support either candidate enough to put signs in their yards. This election shouldn't be that black and white, nothing is. This election season the choice is between a racist, sexist, disabilitist?, supposed successful billionaire and a calculating, ambassador-to-Libya-killing, email-deleter, seasoned politician. If we examine these traits we'll see that they're both bad people.

Let's start with the Donald. His major problem is morals, it doesn't seem like he has any. He conned people into paying tuition for Trump University. The lawsuit went to trial by New York Attorney General but time ran out on the case. He said laziness is a trait in blacks. He said he only wants Jewish people counting his money. He said that the illegal immigrants that are "pouring" over our southern border are criminals and rapists, "and some I assume are good people". He mocked a disabled reporter. He used his foundation money to pay off lawsuits in Florida and was fined by the IRS. He admitted to not paying taxes, but did so within the loopholes in the tax code. Just recently, the metaphoric "straw" for many, the 2005 Howard Stern tapes. Where he told Howard Stern that his own daughter could be called "a piece of ass." And that when you're famous you can do anything. Yeah, he has no morals.

Ahhh, Secretary Clinton. She skirts around the law with a watch-maker's precision. Benghazi. I'm sure you've heard the story.  An attack on the American Embassy in Libya was planned for September 11, 2013, which Clinton knew about. Sensing the growing instability in Lybia, a year prior to the attack, Eric Nordstrom a Lybian security expert at the State Department, asked for twelve additional agents to reinforce the seven that were already there. The director of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, under the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, denied to send reinforcements when they were asked for. This denial unnecessarily risked the lives of seven Americans, four of whom were killed.

And the email scandal. She used a private email server, for all 4 years of her tenure. The emails sent from her server were asked for by the State Department, to review and 30,000 emails were given to the State Department. 30,000 emails deemed personal by her staff were destroyed. And then her server was wiped clean ... what was she hiding? She was investigated by the FBI and found to have improperly stored and transmitted classified documents, which is illegal. She wasn't indited, when there was a case against her (maybe she pulled some strings).

"What does it matter anymore?" This election is vitally important because our next president will likely appoint several Supreme Court Justices. This would upset the balance of power, for one political party. If Trump is elected many of Obama's executive actions will likely be signed out of law, including Obamacare and several environmental regulations that stifle economic growth.

As a little aside, Trump's tax plan according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, would increase national debt by 9.5 trillion by offering tax cuts but not enough budget cuts to social entitlement programs. However, it would also increase our economy's output by 6.9% over 10 years, and add 1.8 million jobs. According to the tax foundation, Clinton's tax plan would increase national debt by 200 billion and would decrease our economy's output by 2.6% over 10 years, putting more than half a million people out of work. Higher taxes means less consumer spending and less growth.

I hope I made your decision harder. It never should be as easy as I'm with her, he's a bigot or she's crooked, I love Trump. My stance is I hate him and I hate her. So go vote, but don't do it blindly.

The Physics of Luck

Many of you who read the blog last week are likely expecting to find out what the scariest elevator on campus is. I wasn't able to pull that through this week. I apologize for the bait and switch. Man. School is really getting in the way of other school, this blog. I have decided to make this blog about bad luck (so much for an introduction  (my attempt at humor to redeem my introduction...inception)).

There is a common quote out there that goes: "Bad luck always happens in threes." Just keep this in mind.

On Monday, we had a paper due. Of course, being the procrastinator I am, I finished it early Monday morning. So I was planning to print it out later in the morning. I get to the Redifer computer lab around 8:40. Login. Open up Google Docs. Download file. Print. And a window pops up, telling me I'm out of paper. *expletive* *expletive* I follow the instructions on the pop up and attempt to buy more paper with LionCash. Turns out, I'm out of LionCash. *expletive* I attempt to buy more paper with my Discover card. Turns out, Penn State doesn't take Discover. *expletive* I email professor Kramer and send it in that way. 

But wait, there's more. I get to Willard by 8:55, 10 minutes to spare. I hit the button to the elevator and ... nothing. I don't know who to call, what to say. So I wait there pathetically, hoping for some miracle. And what do I know, 20 minutes later, a little late for a miracle, two men show up and fix the elevator. I make it to class, albeit late.

If you're one of the next five callers... I leave english and go to physics. Everything is good. Here is where it gets interesting. I go to math, in the Nursing Sciences Building, home to Penn State's school of nursing. They're doing construction and the only handicapped entrance is blocked off. I end up ramming through a door and getting inside. Not to mention the irony of a nursing building not having an accessible handicapped entrance. 10 minutes into class my left foot plate drops at least 6 inches. Now my left leg is dangling, its uncomfortable. But, I'm still able to pay attention during class. Class is over. I start backing out of the aisle. And the foot plate hits the ground. *clank* I wait for about five minutes and some kind person lent me a hand and picked it up for me. I find the main School of Nursing office and see if they have a set of allen wrenches. Luckily for me there was a guy doing construction in that building and he had a set in his truck and kindly reattached it for me.

The moral of this story is "luck" always accompanies "unluck." There is some luck surrounding unlucky events. Like when the elevator didn't work for me (I'll get back to that in another blog). It was an unfortunate event but it was solved by the fortunate event of the people coming to fix it. Same holds true for the foot plate. The unluck of my foot plate falling to the ground was met by the luck of someone being kind enough to pick it up and eventually fix it. Its kind of like Newton's third law:

"For every action [of unluck] there is an equal and opposite reaction [of luck]."

We get so focused on something "unlucky" happening that we continue to look for more unfortunate things. But my theory is that once we reach 3-4 unfortunate things, we think things can't get worse, and then we start looking for the positives.

Yo. Jus' be positive.

No, I'm not Running Out of Ideas

Elevators. They can be kinda creepy. And I would know, I ride in elevators on a daily basis, ethos baby. In this two part series, I hope to first identify what make an elevators creepy and then find the scariest elevator on campus.

I would like to first open up to you about my elevator preferences. I like to ride in Otis elevators, Miami elevators, ThyssenKrupp elevators, and Westinghouse elevators. Once elevators lose these name brands, it gets harrier. Its like name brand cereal. You can either trust Life cereal or Live it Up! cereal. You can either trust Miami or Reliable Elevator Co. Yes, the company is called Reliable Elevator Company. I don't want an elevator company trying to convince me they're reliable. I want to know if they're reliable or not automatically.

1. Name brand recognition

The doors open. The lights flicker. The lights are on. You step inside. You push the button for floor 3. The doors close. Off. On. You see a colorful shoe. Off. Thump. You look behind you. Nothing. On. You have a knife to your neck. There are no Penn State students to attack the clown for you. Too bad you didn't have good lighting. With good lighting you would've pulled the bicycle tire iron out of your backpack and beaten the crap out of the clown... instead of dying.

2. Lighting

"Ahhh! the smell of Newark," said no one ever. The Newark airport is pretty run down, to say the least. Birds flying through the terminal. Plastic bags covering door handles (I'm not really sure why). And really smelly elevators. It smelled of sweat mixed with moth balls mixed with alcohol (NOT GOOD!) Some may argue that a weird smell isn't ideal but it doesn't make an elevator creepy. But you don't know what created the smell.  

Credits to: Vileskogen

3. Smell (and birds)

Anything with intricate gold designs or an iron wrought gate that closes before the doors makes me a little unnerved. It makes me think the elevator is old. No offense to old things, but as things get older they start to break down and not work as well. One thing you want to work well is an elevator. If it doesn't work it could drop you. And you would feel light, light, light until SLAMMMM! You're dead. Which brings me to right to my last criteria for creepy elevators.

4. Design

A jolting experience.  That is not good.  If you're riding an elevator you don't want it to stop suddenly when its time to get off. This is unpleasant at the very least and make you never want to ride that elevator again at the worst. When an elevator does that, I don't know if it will fall all the way down after the initial jerk.

5. Jolts

Yup. There they are.

Given all these things that make an elevator ride unpleasant, you would think I'd be happy with a good elevator ride. But, I have a real elevator phobia about them dropping like the Tower of Terror and unlike the Tower of Terror to my death. Pretty dark stuff you're thinking or "ok we get it you're afraid of elevators, don't be a baby." However, having a transparent elevator in my home to get me to my bedroom, I've begun to trust elevators a little bit more. Hopefully, I'll be able to get completely over my fear by riding the scariest, nastiest, dankest (in a bad way), can't get any worse elevator on campus.

... To Be Continued