Exasperated Calculator: Star Trek & Economics

[A Clockwork Planetarium](http://watchismo.blogspot.com/2007/08/out-of-this-world-richard-mille_22.html). Simply beautiful design. All the gears and cams exposed to show the true workings. There’s something about analogue devices that I suspect means they’ll never completely go away.

Need to make your PowerPoint presentation more annoying? [How to embed YouTube videos in your next presentation](http://lifehacker.com/software/video-demonstration/embed-youtube-clips-in-a-powerpoint-presentation-292182.php). Please, for the love of humanity, use this only for good, not evil. The golden rule of PowerPoint: if you don’t need it to make your point, don’t use it. Less is more. See the presentations of [Larry…

An early theme in the election is the Union links of the ALP. But [do we care about unions?](http://clubtroppo.com.au/2007/10/10/union-power-polling-and-electoral-campaigns/): 41 per cent of those polled in 2004 said unions had too much power, down from 82 per cent in 1979. And 72 per cent say big business has too much power.

If you invested $50,000 in Apple ten years ago [today you would have $1 million](http://bucknerd.blogspot.com/2007/10/big-apple.html). That’s a return of 2,273 per cent. Apple is, by the way, on track to surpass IBM quite soon. Who would have bet on *that* five years ago.

From the [Marginal Revolution comments](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/10/from-the-commen.html): >Do relative status and income matter more than absolute? If this were true, then most immigration would be from rich countries to poor countries. No further comment needed…

[Wal-Mart’s total area is larger than Manhattan Island](http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/10/walmarts-total-area.html). Of course, Wal-Mart’s [total turnover](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart) of $350 billion is actually only around a third of New York’s Gross State Product, so it’s actually a far less efficient use of space than New York City.

[Boom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_barrier). Chuck Yeagar breaks the sound barrier.

The [new Star Trek movie has a budget of $150 million](http://www.darkhorizons.com/news07/071012a.php). As Dark Horizons points out, this means it will need to make twice as much money as the most succesful Trek film to date in order to start making any profit at all. Or, put another way, about eight times what [the last movie…

There’s been a lot of speculation about how prominent Costello will be in the coming election campaign. The [team](http://liberal.org.au/team/) page of the official Liberal party site splits the front bench into three groups: Prime Minister, Treasurer and ‘Other Cabinet Ministers’. Costello was also [out of the gates early](http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/costello-eyeing-victory/2007/10/14/1192300586315.html) in election comment. It all suggests that…