Fibonacci currency

Today when I consulted a web site having the exchange rates between US dollars and British pounds, I found an interesting relationship. £1 = $1.6131, which is close to 1.619033989…, the golden ratio. This means that Fibonacci numbers can be used to convert between pounds and dollars. This is because ratios between two adjacent Fibonacci numbers converge to 1.619033989, actually (1+5)/2, which is close to 1.6131. The Fibonacci numbers can be obtained by summing successive numbers:0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, and so forth, yielding the series 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…, and successive ones are apart from each other by about the golden ratio. Therefore, approximately we can say:

£8 = $13

$55 = £34

£987 = $1,610

and so forth. This makes it easy to remember the exchange rate. The same thing also happens between miles and kilometers; one mile = 1.609344 kilometers. So approximately, 21 kilometers = 13 miles, and 89 kph is 55 mph. It's not too often that you get help from these numbers in figuring out rates.

How much petrol tax?

I noted today from the Internet that the price of petrol in Great Britain is 54 pence per litre. Further, they said that all but 17 pence is tax. What does this mean in American terms? First, there are 3.78 litres in a gallon, so 54 pence per litre is £12.08 per gallon of petrol. Apply the exchange rate from above (sorry, 208 is not a Fibonacci number) and the result is $3.29 per gallon of gasoline. The actual price in America now is $1.30 per gallon, so we really have it cheap. Further, 37 pence is tax, so the amount taxed is 37 * 3.78 pence or £1.39, approximately. This is $2.25. So the British have a $2.25/gallon tax on their petrol. Our tax is perhaps 25 cents. Hence a $2/gallon tax on gasoline will make us on par with the British. It would also encourage conservation and development of renewable fuels. So why don't we do it? We could cut some other tax to make up for it; perhaps the income tax, creating the principle that a person should be taxed on how much fuel he consumes, not on how much money he makes.

Incidently, I prefer the British word petrol to the American word gasoline for vehicle fuel. This is because it is not ambiguous. Americans shorten gasoline to gas, which can be confused with another fuel, natural gas.

AFLAC Duck Meets GEICO Gecko

By far the best ads on TV are the AFLAC duck commercials. Most ads repeat over and over and over and over again and usually they repeat some form of the message "buy our product". Not so the AFLAC commercials. They show people talking in ordinary life, including insurance needs, and they can't remember a certain name. The AFLAC duck's quack (AFLAC!!) tries to remind them, but they don't hear him. The duck does some humorous things, such as kick tidbits at a park bench back to the feeding person. The GEICO gecko is also good, but not quite. But what I would like to see is for these two mascots to come together in one commercial, such as:

AFLAC Duck meets GEICO Gecko

Scene - in the park

Three children walking.

Art: Oh, Look. A Lizard.

Gecko: GEICO!

Charlie: Ooh! He looks real! (picks the gecko up)

Betty: Euucht!

Art: Betty, isn't he cute?

[The AFLAC duck walks in the background.]

Betty: But what if he bites?

Charlie: Your daddy's supplemental insurance covers it.

Betty: My daddy's what?

[GEICO gecko scrambles around in Art's hands, looking scared.]

Gecko: GEICO!

AFLAC Duck: AFLAC!!

Art: What did the lizard say?

Betty: I think he said gecko.

AFLAC Duck: AFLAC!!! wufufufufufu….

[AFLAC duck runs up to the children and flaps his wings. The GEICO gecko jumps out of Betty's arms]

Betty: Eeeek!

[AFLAC duck fluffs up his wings and starts going after the GEICO gecko. The gecko starts running as fast has he can and looks like Scare City. The AFLAC duck chases the GEICO gecko into the pond, and both disappear.]

Charlie: I didn't know that ducks liked lizards.

Announcers voice: Don't go chasing after geckos. Ask for it by name.

[Scene shows a street vendor with a customer, taking a picture of him holding the GEICO gecko. The AFLAC duck is nearby.]

AFLAC Duck: AFLAC!

[All three of them, the vendor, the customer, and the GEICO gecko, get puzzled looks on their faces.]

[END]

Glory Shortage

In an article "A Pacifist in Wartime", in Style magazine, Jinny Batterson states that "Wars are fought from a perspective of scarcity - be it not enough human labor, not enough land, not enough coal, not enough oil, or not enough glory..." I am aware of most of these shortages, but the one that is new to me is a glory shortage. This is interesting. We all want some piece of the action, some fame, some glory in our lives, and are willing to risk our lives to grab a piece of the glory pie. So even heroic actions are things we desire, so they become just as materialistic as a cellular phone that plays mp3s. And what happens if we can't get a taste of the glory because someone else gets their first? Quite likely, we have a knock-down drag-out fight to get it. And wasn't it Humpty Dumpty (Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll) that said that "glory" meant "a knock-down drag-out fight"? As he says, "a word means exactly what I want it to mean, no more, no less". And we certainly have enough of words that mean exactly what the authors want them to mean in our culture already.

Scare City

We may be running out of oil soon, and out of jobs everywhere at every time. Some experts are telling us, especially from the simplicity folks and the neurolinguistics people, that we have an abundance, that we have all we need before us. It's desire for something we don't now have, that we think it may make our life better, that drives us to buy stuff, causing shortages. When we do that, we live in Scare City (i.e., scarcity), when we should really be doing A Bun Dance (abundance). I would really like to see what this dance looks like, but I imagine some existing dances could serve as a Bun Dance. I got this idea of a Bun Dance from http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/1998/January/0198-23.htm.