Karl Marx: Vampire Hunter?

Karl Marx: Vampire Hunter?

Did you know that the works of Karl Marx and his followers are full of mentioning of vampires? It has been calculated that Marx used the vampire metaphor at least three times in Capital. For example, in one of the cases Marx describes British industry as “vampire-like” which “could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood too”. Here is another quote: "“Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks".

Marx’s colleague and long-time sponsor Frederick Engels also used the vampire metaphor in his works and public addresses. In one of his works entitled The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels identifies and blames the “vampire property-holding class” as the source of "all the social troubles".

Marx’s and Engel’s perception of vampires corresponds very much to the recent Hollywood film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter directed by Timur Bekmambetov. In the film, based on the eponymous book by Seth Grahame-Smith, the 16^th president of the United States leads a secret life of a vampire hunter searching and destroying vampires. Vampires in the film supported slave trade and intended to start the Civil War to conquer the North and enslave all American population. In his secret diary, Abraham Lincoln writes that those vampires are “virtually everywhere” - layers, bankers, shop owners, in short the bourgeoisie accused by Marx and Engels of blood thirst.

Marx described vampires’ habits, their greediness and their lounging for blood in such a detail that in many cases it crossed the boundaries of the mere metaphor. Although many researchers perceive Marx’s vampires as metaphoric abstract bourgeois bloodsuckers feeding on working people, his knowledge of vampires is very peculiar. In one particular case, when describing Wallachian peasants performing forced labour for their boyars, Marx refers to one specific “boyar” who was “drunk with victory” and who might have been no one but Wallachian prince Vlad (called “The Impaler”) – or Count Dracula himself!

All this is very interesting because the best-known novel of vampiric genre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, did not see the daylight until 1897, the whole 14 years after Marx’s death. Surely, one can place the Marx’s metaphor in the wider context of nineteenth-century gothic and horror stories which were abundant these days, and of which Marx was a huge fan. On the other hand, one might assume that some of the vampire legends were true and Marx and his contemporaries were aware of that.

A time travel paradox

Who of us has never dreamed of time travel? Seeing your own grandfather as a child, correcting mistakes of the past or ameliorating the future – all these ideas can be found in sci-fi literature in a great abundance.

However, there are not just writers who endorse these ideas. Scientists also indulge themselves with plans of building some elaborate time travel device. From time to time the world of science is shaken by the new hypotheses that allegedly prove the possibility of time travel (either to the past or to the future) without contradicting the laws of nature.
One of these hypotheses was presented to the public in 1934 in a story “Branches of Time” by David Daniels. In his book “Time travel and other mathematical bewilderments” Martin Gardner puts this in like that: “The basic idea is as simple as it is fantastic. Persons can travel to any point in the future of their universe, with no complications, but the moment they enter the past, the universe splits into two parallel worlds, each with its own time track. Along one track rolls the world as if no looping had occurred. Along the other track spins the newly created universe, its history permanently altered. When I say "newly created," I speak, of course, from the standpoint of the time traveller’s consciousness. For an observer in, say, a fifth dimension the traveller’s world line simply switches from one space-time continuum to another on a graph that depicts all the universes branching like a tree in a meta-universe”.

It might seem to you that the idea is totally bizarre. However, many scientists, including many respectful physicists, are still obsessed with it. For instance, Hugh Everett III's Ph.D. thesis "'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics" (Reviews of Modern Physics 29, July 1957, pp. 454-462) outlined a meta-theory in which the universe at every micro-microinstant branched into countless parallel worlds, each a possible combination of micro-events that could occur as a result of micro-level uncertainty. The dissertation was commented by John A. Wheeler's who provided a rather favourable assessment in which he pointed out that “classical physicists were almost as uncomfortable at first with the radical notions of general relativity”.

Another extravagant hypothesis that concerned time travel was forged in the depth of theoretical physics. The hypothesis that introduced the concept of so-called “time loops” still encourages many time travel fans. The “time loops” (or “closed timelike curves” (CTC)) concept was most introduced by Kurt Gödel in 1949. The scientist constructed a rotating cosmological model in which one can, in theory, travel to any point in the world’s past as well as future, although travel to the past is ruled out as physically impossible. In such a universe, the distance between particles of matter is unchangeable. Therefore, one can start travelling from any given point in the universe, circle it and come back to the initial point. In another words, the traveller is circling the universe not only in space but in time and his path looks like a spiral span around a cylinder. And because single loops of the spiral might be located close to each other, the hypothesis allows “skipping the spirals” and thence “time hopping”.
Each of these hypotheses is interesting in its own way and yet each of them is full of huge discrepancies and contradictions. From the points of view of orthodox scientists, none of these hypotheses might sustain any serious critics. For many people it might seem that the time travel problem is just another amusing paradox invented by sci-fi writers but the thing is not that simple.

A brilliant Russian astrophysicist from the University of Copenhagen, Igor D. Novikov, who wrote “River of Time”, a book about paradoxes of time travel, explains the possibility of time travel on the basis of the relativist effect when time slows down for the object that moves with relatively high speed. An astronaut who would come back to Earth after a thirty-year travel in a spaceship might find himself more than one and a half century into the future, right in time to meet his grand-grand-grandchildren. Thence, the possibility of time travel into the future was more or less explained by the science. However, the problem with the time travel into the past still remained unexplained.

Thinking of how the possible time machine might look like, physicists draw a model of two black holes with entrances and exits marked by the letters A and B. However, the question that still troubled them was: what would happen if one connects both entrances with a tunnel? Suppose that you can stabilize the walls of this tunnel using some supernatural substance and place the entrance B to some distant star. Therefore, the entrances A and B of both black holes would be located at a unimaginable distance from each other, while the exits would be connected by a relatively short tunnel.

Igor D. Novikov describes that both the diameters of entrances and the “tunnel” might, in theory, be modelled in such a way that the gravitational influence on living beings in the tunnel would be sustainable. The resulting construction would represent a true space machine! If a traveller covers the distance from A to B in the “normal” space and then would come back trough the tunnel, nothing much would happen: some time – say, 10 years, will be spent in route. However, if the entrance A remains still but the entrance B starts spinning around A with an enormous speed, we would end up with a time machine!
In a structure like this, a watch placed in entrance B would lag behind from the watch placed in entrance A. Therefore, the time would flow slower and that would be clearly registered by the observers in entrances A and B.
Imagine a traveller moving from A to the orbit of B. The traveller would find a precise time when the entrance B is in front of him and would plunge into it. After that, the traveller would travel back to B through the “tunnel”. Suppose that the traveller spent 10 years to get to B (in A’s time). However, according to the B time, only 5 years had passed. In B’s time, the start happened at 10th year and by the time the traveller was in B, the watch showed 15 years. However, by that time the watch in A had already counted 30 years. Now the traveller jumps into the whole B; if he could see the watch in A, he would register that the same watch shows the same time as in B, i.e. 15 years after the spin. The traveller quickly passes the short “tunnel” and emerges from the whole A in the same time he started his journey.
However, he started his journey when the watch in A showed 20 years but he came back when it showed 15 years! Thence, the traveller came back before he started in journey – he made a time travel!

As you can see, the physicists like to play tricks. The idea of “time loops” might seem unbelievable to some of you, however time (and science) will show whether this idea might be implemented to build something many people are lounging for – a genuine time machine!

Recommending you a new book on vampires: Emily Welkins' "Till the last drop!"

Dear Followers,

We are glad to announce that a fellow researcher, Dr Emily Welkins, published her book entitled "Till the last drop!" on what she describes as "modelling peaceful co-existence of vampires and humans.

The book is a real guide to vampiric lore (all you need to know about vampires and were afraid to ask, so to speak :)) It is a mixture of a research paper and popular science literatere and it will make you an expert on vampires (and not just the one who knows how to use silver bullets and garlic, but that kind who would be able to juggle (and fiddle) with numbers, quote respectful sources and amuse (and startle) your friends with a deep knowledge on vampyrism.

Read what one of the the readers wrote in her review of the book:

"If vampires were real and were planning their debut or coming-out party,this would probably be the book that they would cite to get everyone thinking about a peaceful co-existence. Maybe they are planning to show up spontaneously. Science and progress these days are far beyond imagination. Artificial blood may be invented soon (then there would be no reason for vampires to hide any more!).

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Till the last drop!", especially because I am a fan of watching vampire films and TV series (I knew all the
book's popular cultural references!). The tone of the book is interesting: sometimes comedic and sometimes dry ... but this balances out well and keeps interest levels high.

I highly recommend this book! Congratulations on a job well done, Emily Welkins!"

We greatly recommend this book to you too!

Best regards,

WS and EL

Lunar phases and crimes: do werewolves exist?

For quite some time now, scientists have been wondering whether there has been any connection between phases of the moon and crime rates. Moon, by some accounts, is massive object in the sky that affects, for example, the cycle of tidal waves or the growth of plants. Some mentally unstable individuals claim to be attracted by the full moon, others experience sleep disorders and anxiety. Artists are fascinated by the full moon and its depiction might be found on many famous works of art (for instance, Van Gough's). There have been many recorded cases of sleepwalking caused by what doctors believe to be the change in moon cycles. For many people the causality is straightforward: the moon attracts the Earth's waters and governs its seas' and oceans' tides and because human body consists of 80% of liquids, why should not the moon attract these liquids too?

There are lots of studies dealing with what is called “the lunar effect”. For instance, Templer, Veleber, and Brooner (1982) claimed in their study that an unusual number of traffic accidents occurred during the evenings right around the full and new moons (although later the same researchers came up with an explanation that during the time period covered in their study a disproportionate number of full and new moons felt on weekends and traffic accidents are always higher on weekends). A study of homicides in Dade County, Florida (Lieber and Sherin, 1972) found an upsurge in killings in the 24 hours before and after the full moon. Other researchers, however, argued that the Dade County researchers employed dubious statistical methods (when the numbers were reevaluated, the pattern disappeared altogether).

Rotton and Kelly (1985) conducted a meta-analysis of 37 studies of the moon's effect on things like psychiatric admissions, suicides and crime (they called it BILE (Belief in Lunar Effects)). The researchers found that the moon accounted for no more than 0.03 of 1 percent of the monthly variation. The results of the BILE study indicated that there was a greater belief in lunar effects in the older participants than in the younger ones. The researchers also determined that belief in lunar effects appears to be based on age and not on social class or education. Another study (Jorgenson, 1981) concluded that persons with an external locus of control were more likely to believe in lunar effects on human behavior than would persons who possess an internal locus of control. Rotton, Kelly, and Elortegui did a follow-up study in 1986 to determine if belief in lunar effect on human behavior was more predominant in police officers and people working in psychiatric areas than among other people. It turned out that police officers exhibited a high belief in lunar effect as opposed to a lower belief by regular people. However, psychiatric care workers did not seem to give any credit to lunar effect. The explanation might be that they were influenced by articles in recent scientific journals regarding research being done in this area.

Most recently, Leflet (2009) examined a correlation between lunar phases, criminal activity and crisis calls. He conducted a study of individuals arrested by law officials and emergency calls made within the St. Joseph, Missouri area for a two-month period beginning July 17, 1999, and ending September 12, 1999. On the basis of the study, he concluded that common folklore concerning the effect of the changes in lunar phase and human behavior is unsubstantiated. However, the study had one limitation: namely that the observation period was conducted for two months, which is a relatively short period of time.

In spite of all that, there definitely should be some connection (and it probably is), however our story twists here to examine a quite more bizarre causality. We would like to look at the available data of crime rates for various countries and by comparing and matching the crime statistics (especially murder statistics) with phases of full moon try to answer the question: Would the existence of werewolves be possible in the world we live in?

Unlike vampires, werewolves are far more primitive creatures by all accounts. They ravish in the depth of the forests, kill animals and people and their bite might turn a human into a werewolf. In addition, unlike vampires who are in that state permanently, werewolves do not differ from humans most of the time. Turning into a wolf (or a beer or a jaguar) is triggered by the full moon and usually happens once a month. According to the most of the accounts described in popular literature, comic books and films, many werewolves do not actually know they are werewolves because their memory is gone every time they transform themselves from their human to their animal form and back (see Jack Nicolson's "The Wolf").

It is not completely clear how they multiply, although the werewolf gene might be transferred by bloodlines (see Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight Saga” for instance). Therefore, for the purpose of this research we can assume that the only way werewolves might strengthen their numbers, is by biting humans and turning them into werewolves. In most of the cases, however, werewolves kill their victims.

Therefore, a sudden surge in crime rate during full moon phases in various countries, controlled by the place of occurrence (forested areas might be the best candidate for werewolves’ appearance), might provide us with a good lead in our attempt to answer the question about the existence of such creatures as werewolves.

We are going to give it a thought (and conduct our research using all available data we will be able to get our hands on) and inform all our blog readers about our results soon.

Keep reading our blog and see you later, alligators (or werewolves)?

The Joss Whedon model and beating the disease

Looks like the disease has passed and we are back to work! Being ill actually made us think about the hypothetical situation in which vampires were real and humans would have decided to develop effective measures to fight this (vampiric) disease. What would have happened?

Well, one possible outcome was portrayed very well in a film called “Daybreakers”, a 2009 science-fiction horror directed by Spierig brothers. In the film some strange disease (a plague) has turned most of the Earth’s population into vampires. Humans lost their war on vampiric disease and became outlaws and human blood (since no substitute was found – ah, where are you, True blood? :)) became scarce (which made it a very desirable commodity – remember the paradox of value (diamonds-water paradox) from your Microeconomics class?). Vampires began to hunt humans and harvested them for blood but almost depleted the resources (we, humans, always do – whether we are turned into vampires or not, it seems). Luckily, the salvation came with one former ragged vampire who calls himself Elvis and who was able to turn himself back into human form after the car crash (we see the Hand of God here, do you?).

Have you ever wondered what would happen if humans turned against vampires as they often do against diseases and succeeded? The concept is not new. The creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (TV series), Joss Whedon (and its spin-off “Angel”), presents the most simplistic, yet the most dreadful “doomsday” scenario of vampire-human interaction (similar to Zombie infection outbreak in other fiction movies, such as “28 days later” or “Resident Evil”). The vampire bites its victim who (in a very short period of time) rises as another undead vampire and, in turn, bites another human victim, and so on. Luckily enough for humans, the world is populated by an unknown (but considerably large) number of vampire slayers (with a girl named Buffy Summers being their most remarkable representative).
Killing a vampire according to the Whedon model is relatively easy: using a wooden stake, a crucifix or a variety of other methods are pretty efficient. The model reveals how unstable the equilibrium between humans and vampires might be.
The initial conditions of the Whedon model are the following: five million vampires, 6 159 million people, there are organized groups of zealot vampire slayers (who kill vampires not just for profit but out of persuasion and in an altruistic attempt to destroy the Evil and save mankind). The model can be presented in a form of a diagram

where H denotes humans, V denotes vampires and VS denotes vampire slayers. H0 is the initial state of human population, kH denotes the exponential growth of human population, v0 is the initial state of vampire population, aHV and baHV both describe interactions between a human and a vampire (with a as the coefficient of a lethal outcome for vampire-human interaction for humans (which is higher this time) and b as the coefficient describing the rate with which humans are turned into vampires) and cV denotes the death rate for vampires (with a much more higher c).

Although the model allows for the stationary solution, the initial conditions of the problem lead to the disbalance in the system. The Whedon model is too unstable to be realistic. Vampires and humans cannot co-exist for a long period of time because human vampire slayers (e.g. famous Miss Summers) exterminate all vampires entirely. The human population recovers from the damage caused to it by vampires and continues to grow steadily.
Even though, the Whedon model’s structure theoretically allows for co-existence of humans and vampires, the laborious vampire slayers contribute to putting the system out of balance by killing all vampires. This outcome is predetermined by the initial parameters of the Whedon model (vampires constantly need to feed, cannot effectively control their blood thirst and attack humans whenever possible). A very important feature of the Whedon model is for the vampire slayers to exterminate all vampires before they do an irreversible damage to the human population and it will fail to return to its initial state and continue to grow peacefully.

Flu season, vampires and diseases

Down with a flu :( Not a very pleasant thing to encounter, that is for sure. We are sure you all know that feeling when you feel terrible, have to stay at home, drink huge quantities of hot tea and you seem to hate everyone and everything (including yourself) for getting sick.

The disease (and watching a superb, all-stars (ah, Gwyneth Paltrow dies too soon but keep coming back throughout the film :)) medical thriller “Contagion” recently) made us to sit down and write some considerations about human population and diseases. Remember vampires from our previous posts? Well, they too can be regarded as a form of a disease (well, sort of). See our recent paper about that to find that out.

Remember how not long ago the world media announced that the human population reached the 7 billion mark? Although already quite high, we think that this figure could (and possible should) have been much higher. Our calculations of projections for human population growth show that there is some hidden factor that comes into the picture and prevents human population from growing exponentially. Tossing wars and natural disaster aside (however gruesome and unfortunate, they cannot be blamed for as major responsible factors), all evidence suggests that there must be infectious diseases that bear the whole burden of responsibility. Throughout its known history, humanity has lost about million people to various infectious diseases and it is still counting.

According to Worldometers, human population has grown considerably in the last two thousand years. The industrial revolution became a milestone for the giant leap in the size of world’s population. By 1800, the population of Earth had reached 1 billion. It had added another billion within 130 years (1930) and the 3rd billion within the next 30 years (1959), 4th billion within 15 years (1974), 5th billion within 13 years (1987), and 6th billion within 12 years (1999). For just 40 years, from 1959 until 1999, the world’s population has doubled from three billion to six billion. And finally, on Halloween 2011 mankind reached its 7th billion, the process that took just 12 years.

Today, the world’s population is growing at a rate of about 1.15% per year. The rate of growth reached its peak at the end of the 1960s, when it reached the level of 2%. The rate of population growth is due to decrease in the next few decades. However, the average annual change in population is estimated to be at a rate of more than 77 million people. It is a widely-accepted concern today that the world’s population will set itself at slightly above 10 billion after 2200.

As seen from the examples above, the world’s population grows at a high rate. The Malthusian law states that small populations typically grow exponentially (especially in the absence of threatening natural enemies). Applying this law to the human population would mean that mankind that lives in a comfortable built environment it has created for itself and is not threatened by any natural enemies will grow progressively and abundantly.

Assume that the world’s population is to follow the exponential growth rate and by the beginning of 2012 will reach 7 billion people. It seems logical to assume that the exponential phase in the growth of our planet’s population started at the moment the first civilizations formed themselves (i.e. mankind stepped onto the certain level of socialization that allowed for the reproduction of the human species regardless the caprices of nature). It was scientifically proven that the first civilizations on Earth were those dating back to around 8000 B.C. (e.g. Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Helenian, Minoan, Indian and Chinese civilizations). Quite curiously, only Indian and Chinese civilizations have remained in existence until today, all others went extinct. This might lead to the conclusion that there was indeed a factor hampering the exponential growth of the human population throughout the ages.

About 10 thousand years ago the population of Earth was about four million people. A simple calculation of the annual growth rate of Earth’s population in accordance with this dynamics yields the number 0.075%. This is 15 times less than the average population growth in 2010. It is obvious that there is some hidden factor preventing human population from the explosive growth. Amongst such factors one can come up with wars, famines, natural disasters and diseases. Even though wards, famines and disasters can no doubt be gruesome and bloody, there are infectious diseases that the world accounts the most victims for. Let us look closely at the history of some known infectious diseases to support our argument with facts and figures.

Human history is full of infectious diseases that would leave tens of thousands and more dead. The diseases were caused either by bacterial infections or by the viral ones and humans can call themselves lucky for not dealing with the most effective killers – the most efficient diseases usually kill their hosts too quickly. And if the disease eliminates a human before it can move on, it will die out itself.
According to Jared Diamond, human history is full of diseases that once caused terrifying epidemics but then disappeared without a trace. The so-called “English sweating sickness” that raged in 1495-1552 and killed tens of thousands but then disappeared without a trace might be one of the examples. Another example might be the “sleeping sickness” (which became known as “Encefalitis letargica”) which appeared in 1916 and quickly spread up in Europe and America. In 10 years the disease killed 10 million people but then vanished completely.

While most of the diseases caused by bacteria can be cured with antibiotics, viral diseases prove to be more dangerous and unpredictable. Viruses are so small that only the invention of electronic microscope in 1943 allowed scientist to take a good look at them. Viruses are inert and harmless in isolation but when put in action they react and multiply quickly. There 5 thousand types of viruses that are known to science: from flu and cold to smallpox, Ebola, polio and HIW. They prove to be very dangerous human killers: smallpox alone killed 300 million people on Earth in the 20th century.

The worst epidemic in history is often called “The great swine flu epidemic” or the “The Spanish flu epidemic”. WWI killed 21 million people in 4 years. Swine flu did the same in its first 4 months. According to Bill Bryson most 80% of American causalities in WWI came from Spanish flu (in some units the mortality was around 80%). Swine flu arose as a normal flu in a spring of 1918 but mutated into something more severe. A smaller proportion of victims suffered only mild symptoms but the rest became very ill and quickly succumbed (their suffering lasted from several hours to several days). The first deaths in the U.S. were amongst sailors in Boston in August 1918 but the epidemic quickly spread throughout to the whole country. Between the autumn of 1918 and spring 1919 549 152 people in total died in the U.S. In Britain, the toll was 220 000 with the similar numbers of deaths in France and Germany. Some estimates put the world toll from Spanish flu at between 20 and 100 million (due to the poor statistics from the Third World).

Therefore, the role of infectious disease is devastating for human population growth. Many sources show that most of the infections diseases might put human population in great danger. Infections spread violently like vampires in our model. If scenarios shown in most of vampire films were real, pretty soon the world would have been taken by vampires (unless some conditions outlined in our paper on a symbiosis of humans and vampires would be established allowing humans and vampires to co-exist peacefully). The only answer was (and still is) quarantine, isolation and (if available) vaccination are a must before most of the population is whipped out by a disease (or humanity becomes an endangered spices according to the IUCN definition).

The role of diseases in human population dynamics and growth cannot be underestimated. Slower growth of human population than the one predicted by our mathematical models might be attributed to the existence of diseases that act as a hidden factor in human population spread over the globe. These diseases, however, might be a good thing because they keep the world from overpopulation and therefore almost sure extinction.

So, be careful and do not catch anything! Hope our disease is not the one from “Contagion” so our recent paper about human population and diseases is not our last one :) We will keep you posted!

Draculanomics

We have always thought that Romania should market Count Dracula better! Not only that most of the people (even the most educated ones, our colleagues economists and mathematicians) immediately link the word "Romania" with the word "Dracula", the long-deceased (and perhaps still undead) "prince of Transylvania" remains the country's best trademark. Just think for a moment: what would be your first association if someone mentions Romania? And it is not just among us, Central and Eastern Europeans. Our Basque colleague has confirmed that everyone mentioned Dracula when she claimed she was going to a conference in Romania.

It is apparent that Romanians are not OK about living with an idea that their national hero and a brave freedom fighter against Turks was a vampire. How would you feel if someone asked you whether George Washington was a mason, a magician and a templar who possessed the secrets powerful enough to enslave the world (we all read Dan Brown ("The Lost Symbol") in our globalized world, right? Tepes really did lots of good for the Romanian struggle for independence and Romanians are proud about their country, their roots, culture and national heroes.

Nevertheless, there are apparently some entrepreneurial individuals who would not have any scruples in exploiting Dracula's name. Take a close look at those souvenirs originating in Romania. Clumsy and kitschy as they are, they are still an attempt to market what has once been sacred. The fridge magnet represents Bran castle and the image of Vlad III "the Impaler". The two keyrings bear the engravings saying "Dracula, prince of Transylvania" and a mention of Vlad Tepes's "official" burial place at a monastery, on an island on lake Snagov outside Bucharest (but if you read Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian", you would know Dracula's tomb is actually in Bulgaria). In fact, Vlad Tepes (or Dracula, if you like) has nothing to do with Bran castle. The place is just said to be connected to the Transylvanian prince, although he barely passed the castle on his maneuvers in Romania. But nowadays all tourists want to go to Bran and take their photo with "Dracula castle". Local souvenir industry slowly adjusts to the demand. Few T-shirts, pots, some postcards - the "Dracula" brand (that is surely worth hundreds of millions) is not exploited to the full. They even wanted to build a Dracula theme park but gave up the idea. Too bad! It could have beaten up Disneyland!

In short, Draculanomics is a new and booming window of opportunity! If you are an entrepreneur (or want to be one) we strongly advise you to consider taking up this niche - you might make yourself lots of money!