The third arrrrrrrr

Posted by Josh Rosenau on September 19, 2008
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Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Ned Ryun, the nepotistic son of Jim Ryun, a consarrrrrvative runner and formerrr Congressman lately marooned by his crew of Republican seadogs, needs a lesson in arrrrrrithmetic. Arrr nashnul debt be held by:

Japan, China, the United Kingdom and Oil Exporting nations, in that order. You combine all four of those nations? holdings and they have $1.577 trillion of our debt. That?s about 1/8th of our debt. You combine China and the Oil Exporters, and that?s almost $700 billion between the two, or about 13% of all our debt.”

So now 700 billion doubloons is more (13%) than 1.577 trillion doubloons (1/8 = 12.5%). Something be fishy here. I note only in passin’ that Ryun, until recently, was on the crew of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association PAC. If this be the quality of arrrrrithmetic one gets from ye homeschoolers, I ween they’d need more than just legal defense. Perhaps a few pirates can teach them the three arrrrrrrs.

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Comments

  1. #1 mark
    September 19, 2008

    Aren’t most pirates speaking Somali these days?

  2. #2 jason
    September 19, 2008

    oh, joshua, you make me giggle

    jc

  3. #3 bonefish
    September 19, 2008

    Addition evidently isn’t his strong point, either. Last I knew 1 + 1 + 1 + 13 + 26 doesn’t equal 4.

    (I’m just using OPEC and the other 37 exporters, minus the UK and China. Murder. Mayhem. Pirates. arrrrrr)

  4. #4 HP
    September 19, 2008

    Nerd alert: I did some googling, and it turns out that there are 128 reales in a doubloon, and 8 reales in a dollar (pieces of eight! pieces of eight! rawwwk!). Assuming that the ratio of dollars to doubloons remained constant (i.e., no pirate decimalization), a doubloon is worth 16 dollars.

    So, now we can convert dollars to doubloons.

    $1,577,000,000,000 = 985,625,000,000 doubloons.

    $700,000,000,000 = 4,375,000,000 doubloons.

    It’s like they say, “A billion doubloons here, a billion doubloons there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. Arrrrh.”

  5. #5 I am so wise
    September 19, 2008

    It’s Reagan math.