The Severed Head to Completed school ratio: Metrics of Success in Iraq

via Brad Delong

I found an interesting article today. Apparently this chap called Victor Davis Hanson believes that:

“…the terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose “if it bleeds, it leads” brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.”

So he believes that the media doing what the media has always done counts as being allied to terrorists? I think this sort of statement just goes to prove my theory that key members of the U.S. ruling class are being affected by Soviet mind control. Already they are convincing America that the free press is the enemy of freedom while destroying the economy of the world's greatest capitalist nation by forcing the government to cut taxes and run massive deficits. Getting America to bog itself down in the Iraqi equivalent of Afganistan was a stroke of genius. And I don't even have to mention their sucess in getting the American President to drink vodka in private.

But anyway, back to the article that Hanson wrote. That’s an interesting metric he’s got going there. He apparently he believes that the utility of one completed Iraqi school is equal to or greater than the disutility of one severed head. Gee, and who says the Americans have no way of telling if they are winning or losing in Iraq?

AMERICAN OFFICER: How many severed heads* did we find in the street this month corporal?

CORPORAL: Three sir!

OFFICER: And how many schools did we complete?

CORPORAL: Four sir!

OFFICER: Excellent! We’re winning!

*That is heads severed with sharp pieces of metal, not blown off by explosions or sliced off by flying shards of glass, with no pieces of torso attached and with the head still at least 90% intact.

I find it hard to believe any Iraqi kid could have a normal school life in a place where they find even single severed heads lying in the street. Over here parents pull kids out of school simply on account of poisonous snakes being found on the oval. I think even a single severed head would result in more kids being pulled out of school than a whole mess of limbless reptiles. Unless Victor Davis Hanson thinks the following type of conversation is common in Iraqi:

MOTHER: How many severed heads can you see on the street today, Achmed?

SON: Just one, Mama.

MOTHER: Okay, you can go to school today, but if you see more than one extra severed head on the way, you come straight back home, you hear? Three severed heads is just too many.

Land seized to build Bush Presidential Library

via Marginal Revolution

The Southern Methodist University of Dallas has used eminent domain to seize land to build the Bush Presidential library. Local residents are outraged. "They took over a square yard out of my vegetable patch!" says local retiree Eleanor Digby. "What do they need so much land for?" The University's director of land seizing stated at a press conference today that, "We needed such a large amount of land to ensure that the disabled could access the Bush Presidential Library. We feel it is very important that all Americans will have the opportunity to browse through a Michael Crichton novel, My Pet Goat and The Hungry Caterpillar."

Fun in Nigeria

Let's see, in 2004 oil companies paid 27 billion U.S. dollars to Nigeria and Nigeria has about 130 million people. That's a lot of people, you know. It's Africa's most populous country. Anyway, 27 billion dollars divided by 130 million is about $208 U.S. dollars a year for every person in Nigeria. That might not sound like much to us rich bastards in the first world, but since the average Nigerian lives off just a few dollars a day at best, it's quite a lot of dough. Or at least it would be if the average Nigerian actually got it. But for some strange reason a lot of the money seems to be spent on luxury cars, military equipment and deposited in overseas bank accounts, none of which really helps the average Nigerian. Funny that. It's almost as if the people who make up the Nigerian government aren't entirely trustworthy. But I'm sure there must be a good reason why not much oil money seems to be getting to the people. Maybe the government entered the wrong pin number three times and the national ATM ate their cash card? Anyway, to avoid such problems in the future, wouldn't it be good if the oil companies, and by oil companies I mean Shell, did something like give the money directly to all Nigerians instead of giving it to the government? They could give each and every Nigerian $100 a year and put the rest into indexed personal investment funds which will pay dividends but the capital can't be touched because they'll need that when they run out of oil. But what about the poor government, you cry? How will they get money? Well they can do what most countries do, which is tax people. In fact, if they had to get their money from taxing people then they might actually do things that encourage people to make more money instead of just whacking them around the head with a truncheon.

Conflict of interest? I see no conflict of interest here!

HEALTH MINISTER SNUBS VOODOO - SUFFERS SHARP STABBING PAINS

Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott is confident that church-affiliated groups will deliver professional abortion guidence to women facing unwanted pregnancies.

He further went on to say that he believed that temple-affiliated groups would deliver good advice to women about what sort of pork to eat and that mosque-affiliated groups would give professional advice on just what style of bikini to wear to the beach. Several Voodoo-affiliated groups have said that they were insulted that they hadn't been approached by the Minister and asked to offer professional advice to women on how to deal with relationship break-ups.

Whittington apologizes for being shot

Today Harry Whittington apologized for being shot by Dick Cheney. In further news Pearl Harbor has apologized for placing itself beneath falling Japanese bombs and Poland has admitted that when it saw those Nazi tanks coming it should have just jumped out of the way.

It's not a plot by the CIA!

Cheney's hunting accident was a terrible tragedy, mostly for the person who got shot. But one good thing about it is that it might demonstrate to certain conspiracy minded people that the U.S. government finds it very hard to cover up a severe wounding, let alone mass murders or other bizarre inccidents. If they can’t cover up Cheney’s accident how likely is it that the U.S. government is capable of pulling off all the X-Files stuff they are often accused of, running from covering up alien landings, faking manned moon missions and keeping a division of Soviet troops inside a disused salt mine in Utah? I’m much more worried about U.S. government anti-conspiracies where they tell everyone in the world what they are going to do, such as invade another country without a proper rational, deny that global warming exists, insist that deficits don’t matter and so on.

Skeptics' Circle

The Skeptics' Circle is back and I'm in it! Pretty cool, huh? Well, when I say "I'm in it," I mean a blog post of mine is in it. I don't mean I have performed a Kurzweil like uploading of my personality and now exist as a web based sentient lifeform. That's what I'm doing next week when I sell my xbox.

The Adventures of Dead-Eye Dick

I’ve been thinking about designing a computer game. I mean, just look how much money they made with Halo where you get to shoot aliens. Just think how popular a Dick Cheney computer game where you get to shoot lawyers would be. And just like an action hero he already has his witty trademark phrase, "Go f&*# yourself."

The first level can have him shuffling through the White House shooting away patches of Clinton's semen which he can detect with his cyborg spermovision. Then he can go on to shoot hippy protesters, his own credibility, Hans Blix, the budget, people who mention his five Vietnam deferments, the reality based community, poor people and so on. But some people will no doubt be disapointed by the fact that he doesn't shoot gay people.

Although Dick moves slowly, his special ability which prevents anyone from knowing he has shot someone for 24 hours will give him the edge over his enemies.

As Dick progresses through the computer game he can collect various power ups: a pacemaker, leg vein surgery, thicker glasses, a sock puppet with unlimited presidential power, the fat of an unbaptised baby and so on.

I plan to call it, “Dick Cheney: Undisclosed Location – But Probably the Neck.” What do you think?

The Ballad of Deadeye Dick

This is the story of a man named Cheney,
An American VP who wasn’t very brainy,
Seems one day after shooting at some food,
He shot in the neck a 78 year-old dude.

Nearly killed him that is, bird shot, hurt a lot.

Well the next thing you know the guy is in intensive care,
But nobody knows just why he is there,
He’ll survive thanks to his recuperative powers,
But they didn’t tell the press for 24 hours.

Kept it mum that is, they didn’t tell, kind of smells.

Now some blame Dick but that isn’t really right,
Even though the guy he shot was in plain sight,
Blaming the victim is one defence,
But Dick blames it all on bad intelligence.

Like Iraq that is, WMD, nothing to see.

RU486? No I'm much younger.

I see the senate thinks Australian women should be allowed access to the abortion drug RU486 and doesn't think the Health Minister should be allowed to keep it for himself as his special plaything. Now I think the senate has been a little hard on the Health Minister for wanting to keep it all to himself. They just don't seem to understand his situation. You see he's Catholic so he's not allowed to use a condom when he gets it on with chicks. It would make baby Jesus cry. (Although why God lets baby Jesus watch the Health Minister get it on is beyond me.) But, if he just happens to have all this RU486 laying around in his pad and the honeys just happen to take some, well then it's their sin and not his. This way the big guy will still be able to get to heaven.

Anyway, the Health Minister had to take this particular drug out of the hands of the usual bunch of doctors and health care experts, you know, those losers who normally decide which drugs are safe for Australains and keep it under his own personal control in the interests of women's health. He said so himself. So I'm wondering why he didn't care about women's health for all those other drugs that he left in the control of the usual bunch of wankers? Why didn't he protect Australian women from those drugs that treat breast cancer? And why didn't he protect them from the ones that lower cholesterol? Why did he follow the dangerous course of leaving them in the hands of a bunch of qualified experts? Was he just too lazy to protect women from all these drugs? And why does he only seem intersted in protecting women from medical treatment? Why isn't he protecting men from medical treatment too? I demand the Health Minister protect my health too by making drugs for men his own personal fiefdom! I demand the Health Minister protect me from testicular cancer drugs the same way he protects women from RU486! My balls are on the line here and if that's something he can't handle he should step down in favour of someone who's willing to take things in hand.

ETHANOL – But more politely this time.

Australia’s first petrol sniffing treatment centre will be opened in South Australia this year. Now do you see why I’m concerned about the government subsidising ethanol production? And you think petrol sniffing is bad now!

But is burning ethanol for fuel in cars really a bad idea? Not as such, no. But I do think that the government subsidizing ethanol production is a bad idea. This is basically giving a little bit of money from all Australians and giving it to just a few companies and a tiny amount will be temporarily given to farmers all over the world as demand for what ever crops will be used increases. For example if the demand for sugar goes up because the government subsidizes ethanol, then Australia will export less sugar, which will push up the price of Cuban sugar and European sugar beat. I wouldn’t mind if the government funded some ethanol research as the results of scientific research can increase the sum total of wealth of all humanity but subsidies for one sector of the economy tend to just move wealth around and often isn’t very efficient at it.

But isn’t ethanol greener than petrol? Shouldn’t the government give it a tax break because of that? Um, yeah… sorta. This is actually a difficult topic. Motorists in Australia pay a petrol tax when they fill up, which acts as a defacto carbon tax and encourages fuel conservation and the purchasing of fuel-efficient cars. But farmers don’t have to pay most of this tax, so a lot of the fossil fuel that gets used to create ethanol isn’t taxed at a high rate. If we had across the board carbon taxes then the cost of the carbon released would be built into the price of the ethanol. But until we get a consistent, logical carbon tax I guess the government will have to look at how much CO2 is released producing ethanol and give it a tax break based upon how green it is and lower that tax if ethanol producers lower the amount of CO2 they produce. Of course this means the government should put a lower tax on imported Brazilian ethanol as it will probably be greener than Australian ethanol. I wonder how that would fly politically?

Okay, so if the government doesn’t subsidize the building of ethanol plants, should private companies invest in ethanol plants in Australia anyway? That’s a tough one. Would I be willing to invest my own money in an ethanol plant? Hmmm… Well recently Brazilian ethanol has been selling for about the same price as oil. Now that’s pretty impressive, because you can use ethanol directly, you don’t have to refine it. On the down side ethanol contains less energy than oil. One litre only has 68% the energy of a litre of petrol. The actual product cost of one litre of petrol in Australia, before any taxes or distribution costs, is roughly 60 cents. One litre of Brazilian ethanol costs roughly 50 cents, but has less energy. The ethanol energy equivalent of one litre of petrol costs about 72 cents. And although ethanol will be more expensive to transport and distribute because of its bulk, when you consider the environmental benefits of ethanol that’s a pretty good deal. It’s obvious that the price of oil doesn’t have to increase by much to make Brazilian ethanol a good deal even if environmental effects are ignored. (However, as the price of oil increases, the price of ethanol will tend to increase as well as they substitute for each other.)

But can Australia produce ethanol as cheaply as Brazil? I see no real reason why not, with regards to using sugar cane, as sugar cane is the easiest crop to convert. (Of course we should consider if it would just be cheaper and easier to import ethanol from Brazil than to make it ourselves.) However, there are apparently plans to use sorghum to make ethanol and sorghum only produces as much ethanol as maize and maize has always been very expensive to convert into ethanol in the United States and has never really been able to compete with Brazilian sugar cane. In the U.S. they keep out Brazilian sugar cane ethanol with a tariff. (Whereas environmentally unfriendly oil has no tariff, pretty stupid, huh?)

So if the price of oil is only going to go up then it may not be a bad idea to invest in a sugar cane ethanol plant in Australia. But I would be very wary of plans to turn sorghum into ethanol. I don’t see how that could compete with sugar cane ethanol. For one thing sorghum is grown inland whereas sugar cane is grown near the coast, closer to population centres and ports. My guess is that oil prices will have to be very high before sorghum becomes an economical source of ethanol.

I think that even if current oil prices don’t go much higher we could see people slowly shifting away from oil use over the next decade. For example I wouldn’t be surprised if “plug-in” hybrid cars that get part of their energy from the electrical grid are soon produced in Japan. Electric cars may even start to become popular before too long. It is possible that government money spent on ethanol production may just delay the introduction of these technologies.

So basically to sum up, I think tax breaks for any environmentally friendly sources of energy are a good idea, and taxes on sources of energy that release CO2 are a good idea. But I don’t think the government should try and pick one form of technology, such as ethanol, and give it special support.

The Great Asteroid Mining Con

There are some people who think that mining asteroids is a good idea. And not just for building things to use in space, but to ship metals to earth to sell. They say things like, “The metals in the near-earth iron asteroid Amun are worth 20 trillion dollars.”

But is the current market value of metals the proper way to value an asteroid? Wouldn’t it make just as much sense to say that since I can buy meteorites for 25 cents a gram on e-bay, the market value of the asteroid is 25 cents per gram? And since it weighs 30 billion tons, therefore the asteroid is actually worth 7,500 trillion dollars? I mean that’s using the market price, isn’t it? And while these asteroid mining enthusiasts like to tell you how much money Amun is supposed to be worth, they never tell you how much a similar amount of earth dirt is worth. Well according to my calculations 30 billion tons of earth dirt is worth over $1,700,000,000,000,000. Which makes a ton of dirt worth about $57,000. Not bad, hey? Might be a good idea to run outside with a shovel.

But wait a minute, you say! How can plain earth dirt be worth that much? Well it’s quite simple. You see 99.9999% pure silicon sells for about $200 per kilogram and the earth’s crust is 27.7% silicon. Of course it’s only worth that much after you have removed and purified the silicon. Before that the dirt is only worth as much as dirt. But counting an asteroid as being worth what it would be if all it’s substances were refined, purified and sold at today’s prices is pretty much just as stupid.

To really test how much the asteroid is worth, let’s assume that there is a hole in the space-time continuum in your bedroom cupboard that not only allows instantaneous transportation of material from this asteroid, but it delivers it in conveniently sized chunks. Ignoring its novelty value, how much could you sell this asteroid material for on earth? Well the answer to that is simple. You could sell it for about $300 U.S. per ton because that’s what scrap metal sells for these days and an iron asteroid is basically a big chunk of stainless steel. The good news is there are plenty of scrap metal dealers around so you won’t have to lug it too far to trade it for cash. This means that even with zero transportation costs and assuming that thirty billion tons will in no way push down today's current high prices, then at best the asteroid Amun is worth about nine trillion dollars, not 20 trillion.

But wait a minute! Some people say asteroids are supposed to be chock full of valuable metals such as platinum which currently sells for about $33 a gram! Couldn’t we just extract the platinum and forget about the steel? Well there are some problems with this. You see on earth there’s all sorts of geological activity, mostly involving water, that can concentrate ores and metals. But iron asteroids don’t have this activity. They’re just chunks of a busted planetoid’s core. As a result, precious metals aren’t going to be concentrated but are going to be evenly spread throughout the damn thing.

But some iron asteroids, perhaps one in fifty, contain 30 grams of platinum per ton or more! On earth 30 grams of platinum per ton would be equal to moderate to high grade platinum ore, so if your chunks of asteroid had this much in them, surely you could sell them to someone who owns a platinum refinery for a good price? Well, probably not, because I don’t think they’d be very impressed by the fact that the platinum is inside a block of nickel alloy stainless steel. That could increase the cost of extracting the platinum considerably. Most things become harder to extract once they’ve been placed inside a solid hunk of steel. A platinum refinery wouldn't pay as much for it as a scrap metal dealer.

Some people say that weightlessness in space will make refining stuff like platinum easier. Well I challenge everyone in the whole wide world to name one thing that is easier in weightlessness, and you’re not allowed to say, “Floating in the air.” I can’t think of anything at all that becomes easier in zero gee. There is a reason why the space shuttle toilet cost twenty-three million dollars, you know. But what if I’m wrong? What if it is easier to refine metals in weightlessness? If only there were some way to mimic weightlessness on earth. If only there were some sort of substance in which things could float. Just for the sake of the argument, I would call this imaginary substance a liquid. If only we could convert say platinum ore into some sort of magical liquid solution when we refine it. Wait a minute! That’s what they actually do in platinum refineries! Several times in fact! Freaky, hey? But even so, extracting platinum from ore is a very expensive and difficult business, despite the weightlessness offered by this incredible stuff called liquid.

Then there’s the argument that we have to go into space and mine asteroids now because the earth is running out of metals. Well this just isn’t true. A couple of hours drive from my house there is enough copper in the ground to supply the earth for maybe a couple of hundred years. But nobody is extracting it because the ore is so low grade it would take a hellacious amount of energy and effort to refine it. The more energy it costs to extract, the more the copper is going to cost. The earth might be running out of cheap and convenient high quality deposits of some metals, but it’s certainly not running out of metal. In the future we may have to pay extra for the energy to extract metals from low grade deposits, but it’s still going to be easier to extract copper from ore that only has a few kilos of copper per ton than it’s going to be to extract copper from asteroids that have only grams of copper per ton.

Now some people say that the costs of mining asteroids don’t matter because once we start it will all pay for itself. All we need to do is send a few robots to an asteroid and they will then build more robots and solar energy collectors and mining equipment and rocket ships and so on. Well, tell you what, you give me access to the same technology, you send your robots to an asteroid and I’ll send mine to say the middle of Western Australia. Then we’ll see who makes the most profit. Now you might say that my robots will have a disadvantage because it’s harder to use solar energy on earth than in space on account of things like clouds and night and bird poop, but my robots will have the advantage of being able to use wind power, or burn coal, or use geothermal energy, or dial up the local power company and get connected to the grid. All of these options are a bit tricky in the depths of space. I’ll also have the advantage of being able to drive out there with my spanner set and fix ‘em if something goes wrong. Also, you would have to waste a lot of time building and powering your rocket ships while I could spend my time building things people actually need, like robo prostitutes. Then there’s the fact that I can respond to changes in demand as they happen where as your stuff might spend years just being transported to earth.

Anyway, in conclusion I would like to say that asteroid mining is a pretty sucky idea. Now it’s probably just dandy for getting resources for use in space itself, but there just doesn’t seem to be any point in lugging stuff all the way from asteroids to earth.

Astronaut killed in effigy - NASA scientists take hint

An empty space suit with a radio transmitter was released from the International Space Station today. The suit is programmed to transmit greetings in six languages, send tempreture and battery power readings, and to scream in pain when the suit starts to burn up in the atmosphere

The White House apointed director of public relations for NASA said today that, "This suit might be empty, but NASA scientists better realize that the next one we send to sleep with the fishes might not be unless they stop coming up with lies about the existance of global warming." Under futher questioning the White House apointee denied that he was making threats and said that NASA employees were perfectly safe provided that they, "Make sure they keep their filthy spaceship away from God and use the word theory when referring to the earth being round."

Boys only classes - Wot a good idea.

The Liberal party in South Australia plans to introduce Boys only classes if they win the state election. (Note to Americans: Here Liberal means conservative.) This is supposed to help the boys. Well I think this is a great idea because it will prepare them for the many male only workplaces that exist in Australia today.

Now I'm not sure if they realize this, but introducing boys only classes also means they will be introducing girls only classes. Now this is intolerable. Without the deadweight of these stupid boys who need special boys only classes the girls are going to way outperform the boys. So I suggest that while the boys are in their boys only maths classes the girls can go learn how to bake cakes, just like back in the good old days. That will create equality. In the good old days we had plenty of boys only classes and life was perfect then. Unless of course you were a woman. Or drafted. Or black. Or sick. Or foreign. Or an abused child. Or poor. Or... but the point is that despite all the poverty, disease and discrimination, things were better back then because they just were.

The Liberals also plan to introduce more sports to help boys. That's a good idea. I mean just think of all those kids who were good at football at high school and went on to high paying infomation technology jobs while those computer nerds they used to beat up at school went on to become stuck in low paying semi-skilled manual labour.

The Liberals say that women are no longer disadvantaged and so they will take money from women's groups and give it to men's groups. This is a great idea. I mean our tax money is not to be used where it will do the most good, it's to be used as a political football. Instead of making a case that more Australians would be better off if the money were distributed differently we'll just pull an opinion out of our arse and decide which Australians to help based on that. What a great idea. I mean every year women bilk money out of the medical system that men never see. It is blatant sexism that men don't recieve government support for things such as pre-natal care, childbirth, or ovarian cancer. And just because I'd rather die a painful death than examine my own scrotum for cancer doesn't mean I don't deserve equal treatment. Women have been hiding behind their wombs for far too long.

I completely agree with the Liberals when they say that women are no longer disadvantaged. Just look at the way women dominate parliment and I think Australia has had far too many female Prime Ministers and just look at how many high paid CEOs are women. It's time to redress the imbalance and the Liberals are on the right track to do that. I for one know that when I was in school we had to study far too many of Shakespere's plays that were written by women.

Why Brazil is energy self-sufficent

A lot of Americans are currently amazed at the fact that Brazil is apparently energy self-sufficent. I'm not quite so amazed for the following three reasons:

1. Brazillians don't use as much energy as people in the first world.

2. Compared to first world countries Brazil is poor. It's harder for them to import large amounts of energy.

3. It rains a lot in Brazil. Unless there is a drought they get about 88% of their electricity from hydroelectric power.

Of course, Brazil actually imports about 2% of its electrical power from neighboring countries, but that's pretty close to being self sufficent.

Unfortunately some Americans think that it might be a good idea to copy some of Brazil's ideas, no matter how difficult they may actually be to apply. Producing ethanol to burn in cars is one of these. I wouldn't be surprised if producing ethanol has cost Brazil more money than just buying oil would have. Only now that oil prices are so high does it have a chance to be profitable. But Brazil has advantages in producing ethanol that most other countries don't have and one of these advantages is huge amounts of land where magnesium ions dominate calcium ions in the soil. About the only crop that can grow in this type of soil is sugar cane which means that a lot of farmers are stuck producing sugar cane, and sugar cane is the easiest crop to turn into ethanol. America thinks it can turn corn husks into ethanol. Good luck America. While this is certainly possible, I don't think it would be as cheap and as environmentally friendly as actually say increasing the fuel efficency of American cars.

P.S. In Australia you can often spot magnesium rich soils by the presence of wattle trees. Or, possibly in Queensland, sugar cane.

I assume you are reading this because you have infinite time

My friend gave me another book to read. You know, the friend who lent me Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future. Well I think I'm starting to notice a pattern here. This friend is only giving me books to read that require me to assume 20 different things before breakfast before their arguements make sense. In much the same way I hate being in a room with more than three people I can't stand arguements that require more than three assumptions. Actually make that two assumptions and they have to be clearly aknowleged as assumptions for the purpose of speculation. My friend is doing this to try to get me to assume things! Well I don't assume, thank you very much! Wait a minute! Now I'm assuming that my friend is trying to get me to assume things! My head hurts.

Anyway, I get to the top of page two in this new book and it says that death gives time meaning. That, "Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it." Gee, what an assumption. Did he even think of asking some immortals if time meant anything to them? What? There are no convenient immortals around to ask? So this author is making an assumption that can in no way be checked? What cheek! Well I guess we'll just have to do a thought experiment then. If you found out today that you were immortal and someone tried to shoot you through the head a few times to prove it, would your time suddenly become meaningless? Or would you enter party mode, secure in the knowledge that no matter what risks you took you'd never screw up enough to die? It must be nice to know that whatever your mistakes you have forever to make them up.

Indeed, many humans seem incapable of realizing the fact that they are likely to live for eighty or more years, let alone eternity. Just think of how many teenagers have lost perfectly good teeth showing off or in a stupid fight or both? Even if we all became immortal tomorrow I doubt many people would appreciate it on more than an intellectual level, even if they managed to get hit by a bus every second week. Humans just aren't made to lose appreciation of time, even if they did get an infinite amount of it dumped in their laps. I even have trouble convincing myself that too much caffeine today will make it hard for me to sleep tonight.

And what is the name of the book? I'm not telling you that! What if the author gets mad at me for mocking his assumptions? He might come around and knock my teeth out with a baseball bat and I'm planning on using these pearly whites until I'm at least eighty.