Thoughts, rants and ideas.

I don’t think I’ve ever made a secret about my total, total hatred for Second Life. A virtual reality thing, it seems infested with furries, assholes, paedophiles, and other such tautologies. I can’t stand the damned thing, and it gives virtual worlds a bad name. What makes this even worse is that according to this screenshot I got off their homepage…

…over a MILLION dollars is spent every day buying things that – and this is important – don’t actually exist. Some people apparently make a living on this damned thing, but that doesn’t particularly concern me. The point that matters is the number of different and more worthwhile ways I could find to spend over a million dollars. So I’ve produced six monetary endeavors which are arguably considerably better ways to spend around £580,000. The first three are going to appear today, and the next three when we get round to thinking of them.

I.

Now, the world’s cheapest Smart Car appears to cost £6850. This means that for that money, you could buy 84 Smart Cars. Now, at this point we need to note that I really dislike Smart Cars, for the fairly important reason that anyone driving one of those things instantly looks like a complete tit. So rather than driving these 84 Smart Cars or anything so mundane, I’m going to pile them into a pyramid.

According to the wholly un-user-friendly Smart Car homepage, the height of these cheapest cars is around 1.54m, or 5’1. Seeing as only human height is really measured in feet, I don’t see the point of the second measurement unless they intend to transform into robots like in that shitty car advert with the dancing Optimus Prime or something.

Anyway, I now need to work out how many layers this pyramid will be. The highest layer will be a single car, then three, then six, then ten, and so on working down the layers. Conveniently, this means we can construct a pyramid containing exactly seven layers of Smart Cars, to a total height of a staggering 10.78m!

This should look something like the picture below:

II.

The next thing we could do with such a relatively vast amount of money is cover a lot of paper with some moths. Yes, even that is more worthwhile than spending money in Second Life, as far as I can see.

Right. A piece of A4 paper has an area of about 623.7cm squared, a wholly pointless fact which I suggest you all try and slide into conversation over the next few days. According to Wikipedia (which is always right), the wing area of an Atlas Moth is 400cm squared, or thereabouts. This means that each piece of paper has about 1.55925 moths on.

N.B.: I in no way condone the chopping up of moths in order to fit the exact fraction o’ moth already mentioned onto a specific bit of paper. Seeing as the amount of money we have is going to buy considerably more than a single piece of paper and one damn moth, obviously I intend to spread the moths around the paper. Also, if someone actually did this, I wouldn’t be sure whether I should laugh or cry. Possibly a dose of each would be in order.

On the fantastic site that is eBay, you can purchase 2500 pieces of paper for £17.99, working out at £0.007196 per piece. You can also buy an Atlas Moth – inexplicably – from the USA, including postage, and with a frame (which is discarded) for £11.297 or so.

We could potentially recycle the frame, but this would make the calculations far too expensive. Plus, while recycling places want you to visit them; I doubt they would appreciate a delivery of over twenty thousand transparent cases at once. Anyway.

£11.297 x 1.55925 = £17.615 for the moths on each piece of paper. Add that to the piece of paper each moth-and-a-half is on, and you get £17.622 for each paper + moth-and-then-some. With a total budget of the aforementioned £580,000, we can cover 32,913 pieces of paper with around 51,000 moths.

Last but not least, this takes up a terrifying area of 13,165,329cm squared, which amounts to a square of moth-filled paper 36m along each side.

THAT’S A LOT OF MOTHS.

I have yet to find a use for such an endeavor, but at least it doesn’t involve spending the money on virtual frog sex or whatever it is Second Lifers buy.

The biggest advantage to this scheme I can find is that rather than wondering what’s eating all your clothes, you know EXACTLY where the buggers are. Even if they are dead.

With that said, that is a pretty spectacular moth.

III.

To finish off today’s financial tirade, a third scheme has been concocted. With the £582,000 we didn’t waste on Second Life, we are instead going to see how much of the Severn Bridge we could construct…

…out of Jam doughnuts.

The official site says:

”Total volume of concrete required: 320,000m cubic”

Which is mighty useful and all.

Next, I figure a jam doughnut is going to be around 9x9x4cm or so, coming out at 0.000324 cubic metres. Each one – apparently – costs 50p, so I could afford 1,160,000 jam doughnuts! Quick calculation suggests that with my vast riches I can purchase an incredible 375.8 cubic metres of PURE JAM DOUGHNUT. That’s easily enough to fill a house of reasonable size with jammy goodness.

More importantly, how much of the bridge can we construct? Alas, since jam doughnuts suck, only a mere 1/851 of the Severn Bridge.

Hardly worth the effort of buying them all, really.

Join us when I can be bothered for three more UTTERLY WORTHLESS ways of wasting money!

In other news, work has now begun on some NEW SEXY CONTENT for the Story of WTF. Stay tuned.