Emotional Genius

I am an emotional genius.

No, really. I took the test and the results are conclusive. I score better than 99.9% of other people. And the results are not a fluke. I took the test last year at about this time and got the same result.

Two conclusions spring immediately to mind:

1. I am, in fact, an emotional genius.

2. The test is faulty.

It is hard to deny that some people are more adroit at navigating their way through both their own and other people’s emotions. Take two identical twins. One with autism, the other without. Who would deny that the latter is more emotionally intelligent that the former? Nevertheless, the methods of measuring this difference are still in their infancy. I give you my test results as Exhibit A.

Men and Republicans are more Knowledgeable of Current Events than Women and Democrats, Study Finds.

Pew has a news quiz. You can take it and compare your score to the distribution of scores from a representative sample of Americans. Along with 7% of Americans, I correctly answered 10 of 10 questions, placing me above 93% of Americans.

Among other findings of the study:

People with more education know more than people with less education. (Should we be surprised?)

Older people know more than younger people.

And men know more than women.

The poll also found that Republicans know more than Independents and Democrats.

In April of 2007, Pew did a similar poll and found similar results. A closer look at the data reveal that the difference is mainly at the bottom end of the distribution: there are more less informed Democrats than Republicans, which drags the Democratic average down.

Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high- knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least.

The Future of Film

Here is a list of the movies with the biggest box office from the last 365 days. Let’s see if we can uncover some patterns that will tell us about movies in the future.

3 were comic book franchises ("Batman", "Iron Man", and "Hulk").

4 were superhero movies ("Batman", "Iron Man", "Hancock", and "Hulk").

3 were animated children’s movies ("Wall-E", "Kung Fu Panda", and "Madagascar").

4 were chick flicks (“Twilight“, “Sex and the City“, “Mamma Mia“, and “Marley and Me“).

9 were franchises (“Batman“, “Iron Man“, “Indiana Jones“, “Madagascar“, “Bond”, “Sex and the City“, “Narnia“, “Hulk“, and “Get Smart“. You could also include “Twilight” because, although it is the first in a series, it is based on a series of books with a proven track record. This would bring the total up to 10 of the top 20 movies being franchises. Half.) Movies cost a lot to make. Backers want to see a return on equity. One way to reduce risk is to support projects with a proven track record. Hence franchises.

It is safe to say that more than two thirds have action elements in their story lines. Movies are for showing, books are for telling. The camera likes action -- and so do audiences.

A little more than half did better overseas than domestically. The exceptions were “Batman” (comic book action), “Iron Man” (comic book action), “Grand Torino” (social commentary) , “Marley and Me” (comedy), “Paul Blart” (slapstick comedy), “Taken” (revenge), “Hulk” (comic book action) and “Get Smart” (slapstick comedy). Box office for “Twilight” was evenly split between foreign and domestic. Among those that did better abroad, “Mamma Mia” (76%), “Bond” (70%), and “Madagascar” (69%) were the top three. Both “Mamma Mia” and “Bond” are based on brands that originated in Europe (the Swedish rock band ABBA in the case of “Mamma Mia“). Sure enough, a closer look at the box office receipts of “Mamma Mia” reveal a big return from Sweden.

Looking back, top-grossing animated movies make most of their money abroad. "Cars" is an exception. So is "Toys 2", but that was a movie from more than 10 years ago -- before foreign distribution became a big part in movie revenues.

All of the comic book action films did better at home than abroad. Looking back at the record of all comic book action films, this appears to be the general pattern. Usually, but not always, comic book action films do better domestically than abroad.

“Twilight” was produced by Summit Entertainment, and was its only top 20 showing -- the only film from Summit that has made over $100 million (so far). Expect to see more in the Twilight series from Summit in the future. Readers at BoxOffice Mojo gave it a solid B average.

"Slumdog Millionaire"’s worldwide take was almost 20 times its production budget -- the highest profit-to-production-cost ratio in the top 20. A Best Picture award from the Academy can do a lot for a small budget picture’s bottom line.

The next biggest p-to-pc ratio was from "Sex and the City", which earned nearly ten times its small $35 million production budget. It is unlikely we have seen the last of Carrie and her friends.

How Much?

The graph above shows that inflation has been steady and low for the last twenty years, and that consumer prices have been more volatile in the last ten years than in the previous ten. A striking feature of the graph is the recent downward spike in consumer prices.

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Looking closer at the data -- disaggregating the totals by category -- we find that the downward spike was due to sharp declines in the prices of transportation and energy. This squares with what I have seen at the gas pump. Before I went to China, the price of a gallon of gas was over $4.00. Now, I often seen prices below $2.00.

Behold, a New World that has so little TB in it!

While helping a friend edit a paper on tuberculosis, I found this map over at Worldmapper. It vividly displays TB deaths by adjusting the size of a country to fix the number of deaths. One pattern that stands out is the absence of TB in the West. (Australia is in the "North", yet south of the Equator -- "Western", yet in the East. There is little TB in Australia). The disease is now nearly absent from the New World.

The prevalence of TB is positively a function of distance from the Equator and inversely a function of income. The level of TB in Australia is lower then we would expect. The level in Japan, higher. Given the low levels of income in Latin America, and its near proximity to the Equator, TB is less of a problem there then we would expect. Methods for treating TB practiced in Latin America should be copied in other parts of the Third World.

Tax-and-Spend, meet Borrow-and-Spend

Rasmussen reports that nearly 2 in every 3 Americans think tax cuts help the economy. Only 1 in 8 think they hurt. It is likely that Republicans will keep tax cuts as their issue. This, in turn, should put pressure on Democrats to borrow and spend, rather than tax and spend. (That Democrats will spend is a foregone conclusion. Democrats are at least as likely to spend now that they hold both houses of Congress and the White House under Obama as Republicans were under similar circumstances under Bush. In other words, a dead certainty.)

Thanks to a high propensity to save among Indians and Chinese, the world has been awash in savings lately. This has kept interest rates low without pushing inflation up. Uncle Sam has been free to borrow without paying much of an inflation price in the short term. But as China and India start to draw down their savings to weather the financial crisis, and Uncle Sam gears up his borrowing to over a trillion dollars per year, something has to give. Will we see higher inflation soon? The people pushing the price of gold higher seem to think so. Gold closed at $940 per ounce today, with prices increasing steadily since the election.