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Robert Shortt
This morning.
Host of the next CRASH.
Via RTÉ:
RTÉ News is pleased to announce the appointment of Robert Shortt as its new Economics Correspondent [replacing Sean Whelan who becomes the station’s London Correspondent] Robert has been a reporter with RTÉ Prime Time for the last ten years.
He will be responsible for reporting and providing analysis of economic issues across RTÉ News’ television, radio and digital platforms.
Mr Shortt said:
“I’m absolutely delighted to be offered the chance to report on the economy at this critical juncture. Brexit, the challenge of combating climate change and the housing crisis are all issues forcing change and big economic dilemmas. I can’t wait to get started.”
*cough*
Earlier: Everyone’s A Critic
Pic: RTÉ
A Great Idea
at
Family Guy and Simpsons animator Lucas Grey’s concise and superbly edited illustration of a section of Barack Obama’s speech at the 2012 Associated Press Luncheon in which POTUS rips the notion of ‘trickle down’ economics a new one.
It’s very good.
The number-loons at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University economics blog have done some number crunching in an attempt to figure out the logistics and financial cost of actually building a 140km diameter steel Death Star. They figure the Earth contains enough iron for 2 billion of the things.
Now the bad news.
Scaling up to the Death Star, this is about 1.08×1015 tonnes of steel. 1 with fifteen zeros.
But, before you go off to start building your apocalyptic weapon, do bear in mind two things. Firstly, the two billion death stars is mostly from the Earth’s core which we would all really rather you didn’t remove. And secondly, at today’s rate of steel production (1.3 billion tonnes annually), it would take 833,315 years to produce enough steel to begin work. So once someone notices what you’re up to, you have to fend them off for 800 millennia before you have a chance to fight back. In context, it takes under an hour to get the steel for (the British aircraft carrier) HMS Illustrious.
Oh, and the cost of the steel alone? At 2012 prices, about $852,000,000,000,000,000. Or roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP.
The second Death Star was 900km in diameter. So that’s even less of a runner.
Damn.