Whatever floats your boat

This feels like a prisoner exchange in any action movie.

But like (almost) everything I do, I figure that demographics are important for analysis.

The largest applicants for asylum in Australia are the Chinese, followed by the (former) citizens of Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Makes you wonder if these asylum seekers knew that they would cause that much controversy - which would lead to more bureaucratic red-tape - they would pick another country to go to.

P/s: The United States (256,710) and France (185,850)  are apparently the top picks for the refugees, and the applicants for those countries vastly outnumber that of those applying to Australia. Hmm, must be some geographical reasoning for these type of flows..is there a possible gravity model study for this type of things?

P/P/s: But apparently the most accomodative people are the Swedes, who now live with 3 refugees for every 1000 people.

Star Wars day?

I actually didn't know today was Star Wars day, when I was struggling to think of what to write.

Anyway, i'm a bit shocked with the gross earnings data for these movies. I kinda always have a soft spot for RoTJ, and obviously not so much for the later movies with way too much CGI and bad Natalie Portman lines.

Regardless, its important to remember that it takes 3 (or more) Star Wars movies to match the same gross earnings as Titanic!...Makes you wonder which movie spawns more crazy fans out there.

One decade of terror, apparently

Some lazy post-Osama research.

From Google Ngram. Data is % of how many books are written on that subject

How to tell when you're winning the war on terror...

When people start writing about you, compared to the U.S. President who declared war on you.
(Green line: George Bush; Blue line: al Qaeda; Red line: Osama)