Gride, Crabs and Bribes

You know the sound you get when you scrape YOUR fingernails (not mine, which are non existent) down a blackboard? How it fair puts your teeth (not mine, I don't have any) on edge? One of those sounds that gets really on your wick. Like 'Kagagoogoo' or a nuclear detonation just above your head? But not quite like them because 'Kagagoogoo' succinctly sums up that nauseating sound and 'boom' very loudly will quite suffice for a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb; but 'the sound of fingernails scraping down a blackboard' just doesn't have the same brevity, the same succinctness, does it? It's merely a description and a long winded one at that. Well, fear not! I have the perfect word. Archaic but if enough people start using it again it will re-enter the modern-day lexicon. Become fashionable. The 'in' word. The word is 'gride'. So start using it and reinvent the language!

"Sir, will you please stop griding and put on some Kagagoogoo! Your equations are getting on my t*ts"

Look it up if you don't believe me. And shame on you if you don't believe me! Would I lie to you? Invent stories just for fun? Am I not a penguin? Is the Pope catholic? Does Monica Lewinski smoke cigars?

Talking of ML, did anyone do a DNA test of the dress? I mean, was it really Bill's? After all, with little danger of impeachment, Bill might just have admitted it to avoid Hilary accusing him of impotence these past ten years. Mind you, you'd be impotent if all you had to look forward to was getting into bed, bath, bathroom floor, back seat of the car, airplane toilet, hot air balloon with Hilary. About as much sex appeal as a horseshoe crab.........and that is being unfair to horseshoe crabs. Which, incidentally, I have always found to be mildly erotic in a 'Botticelli's Venus' kind of way.

Which leads me nicely on to the topic of day! Would it be better, and cheaper, to bribe the other side to just put a sock in it rather than fight a war? I was drawn to this realisation by an article in the 'Straight Dope', a service provided to people who have more time on their hands than I do and who insist on asking ever more silly questions. (It started out as a newspaper column, what doesn't, and has now taken over America!).

Now the SD used the Vietnam war as an illustration and, to be frank, I can't be arsed to do the research about the Second World War, which would be the real killer (oh, I know it was). Maybe, one day. So we'll just stick to Vietnam.

Now from the cursory research I've done, the figures for cost etc pretty much pan out give or take a few billion dollars so we'll let those figures speak for themselves. The cost of the war was $140 bn dollar over a ten year period. The population of Vietnam was approximately 40 million at the mid-point of the war. So that equates to about $3,500 per capita per year for the duration of the war. Average earnings for the Vietnamese per year, about $120.

Now, here's where I'd like to issue with the Straight Dope's analysis.

One. You can't include the South Vietmanese in the equation. They could already count on shedloads of US dollars to prop up a corrupt government, see Israel. And nobody wants a war, do they? Especially if you might get shot at....or bombed.....or napalmed. So, tentatively that doubles the pay off to the North Vietnamese to $7,000 per year.

Two. Vietnamese adults have children. Therefore lets argue that 1/4 of the population is below 18. This then gives a figure of $9,300 per year for every adult for 10 years.

A couple could cream $18,600 per year for ten years. Or $186,000 lump sum. Invested at a nominal 5% per annum, this would garner around $9,300 per year WITHOUT depleting the capital. There's a lot of difference between $120 and $9,300, isn't there? That's a 90 fold increase. Would you avoid a war for that?

So why isn't the bribe more common? In fact, it seldom appears at all although it makes sound economic sense.

Quite simple, really. The economic costs don't ever tell the whole story. Politics rears it's ugly head, always. Not counting the advantages to the American political system from dissing on the 'commies', you get the added bonus of the appearence of econimic prosperity due to surge in profits of armanents companies, to name but one beneficiary. The problem is that the 'taxpayer', you, is just building debt that YOU will one day have to pay off through increased taxation. Nice game, if you can play it.

And think of the lives it would save. No deaths, no maimings, no lives ruined because of amputations, napalm. No feet blown off through land mines; no disfigurements due to agent orange; no vets in wheelchairs; no vet alcoholics.

I don't understand why you keep electing these bozos to run countries!