The Penny Problem

And now for something completely different!

Pennies.

Currently, America suffers under a debt that we owe to China that is something even Kratos can't shake a stick at - and he's Kratos, guys, from God of War - and this country is floundering awkwardly around insurance rates, inflation, a lack of money in X, Y, and Z, and trying to actually get anything done by what Congress is allowing the government to spend. Sounds gross.

It's not like getting rid of the one-cent piece will spontaneously create money, it actually seems the reverse to that, because, you know, removing a currency seems like removing money.

If economics was that simple...

I'll call this "The Penny Problem", because yeah.

I wrote an essay about this topic for English class at some point, and I still have it on my computer, so it's nice to have all the facts presently displayed in my face as I re-write it to be infinitely more appealing than some un-empathetic third-person thing that looks gross. But regrettably I discovered that some of my reference material is gone, and I needed that reference material!

In particular is a page from the U.S. Mint itself that actually states the production price of individual coins.

But anyways, I'll get to actually making my point.

     - In 2006, a penny cost 1.4 cents to make, and a nickel cost 6.4 cents to make.
     - In 2011, a penny cost 2.41 cents to make, and a nickel cost 11.18 cents to make. (Wing)

Ouch. I used the school database to get a Scholastic article-thing for that first point, but I, and thus, you, can't access that from home.

The Huffington Post page by Nick Wing is actually very useful towards a culmination of facts, if you want to read something you can trust better than a blog page.

Wing continues from the penny-and-nickel cost: "That means the government spent nearly $169 million in 2013 to put $70 million of currency into circulation."

Since 2000, 92 billion pennies have been minted, with 7 billion in 2013 alone, and some plain math means that those 7 billion pennies (70 million dollars) cost almost 14.5 billion cents (145 million dollars) to make, and this is only maybe including the cost of shipping those pennies around.

And honestly, what do most of us do with pennies? Put them into jars, toss them into fountains, loose them between couch cushions...they rarely get spent, and even then, we just tell cashiers to keep the change simply due to the hassle carting that many coins around can be.

The cost of pennies (and nickels) comes from what the coins are made out of: zinc and copper. While the penny is 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, which are both tiny amounts of metal alone, and are expensive. Copper is used in electrical wires, and while zinc itself isn't really used for anything, the simple fact that zinc is needed in pennies is making its price rise. Heck, the copper in pennies alone is worth enough that people melt the coins down in droves to sell copper for more than the coin itself costs!

Seriously, people do that, they really do. It's right here.

But just production prices aren't the only source of the waste-of-space that is a penny. Opportunity costs, the money spent/wasted doing something when work could be done instead, are a huge additional source of mysteriously missing funds.

According to an MIT scientist, Jeff Gore, an average American spends 2.4 hours a year searching for coins or waiting for people searching for coins. The original source for this I also found through a database, sadly, but I've seen it in more than one place otherwise, including Wing's article. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average American wage as being 22.4$ an hour, and additionally, the US population is recorded as 320 million people with an unemployment rate of 6.7% at the end of 2013. With 298,560,000 working people (298.6 million) and the 22.4$ average wage, then roughly $6,688,000,000 dollars - 6.688 billion - is made an hour, and thus the wasted 2.4 hours a year handling coins wastes $16,050,000,000 dollars - 16.05 billion - a year from coin handling.

That's just math, folks. I honestly doubt my own skills in the subject, so call me out if it's wrong.

Now I know that you are statistically unlikely to pay for cash in everything, so you probably don't have this problem of waiting around for people or yourself to count money, but Jeff Gore is an MIT scientist, he very probably took that into account.

With similar math, an average American can make a penny in 1.8 seconds. If you or some other hapless fellow sees a glinting Abe Lincoln on the sidewalk, and you or they take longer than 1.8 seconds to pick him up, then money has officially been lost, because you could have worked 2 seconds longer and made more than what you just did by picking up a face from the sidewalk.

Which just makes my point really, since pennies end up on the sidewalk all the time.

I actually saw one on the floor in school once, and I skirted around it, while glaring, even though I wouldn't have lost anything, since I didn't have a job.

But yeah. You lost money by picking up money.

That sounds really messed up.

Most of the reason for the penny's continued existence is because of the historical significance and also because of an argument that getting rid of the penny rockets prices up a few cents to the closest highest nickel, where something that previously cost $2.02 cents now becomes $2.05 rather than $2.00, due to "corporate greed" or whatever. While yes this will happen in some places, guess what,  here's a secret: because of capitalism, prices will round down so that there are more sales. If a soda at McDonalds cost a $2.05 and right next door it's $2.00, than the cheaper one will sell more.

Even if opportunity costs mean that the cheaper one would cost more due to the time spent, but its unrealistic to assume other people will know that, and then acknowledge it.

For most of us who pay in credit, prices don't even HAVE to round, since digitally, there aren't production costs for pennies; they'll still exist in credit card payments.

But, wait, what about those people who do pay in cash? Typically poorer, they can't afford rounded prices, right?

A study in 2006 found that rounding actually gave consumers money, although not by much, it's not a loss for those people who can't deal with a loss. Furthermore, even without the study, on average, they'll just loose less money, only 19$ annually compared to the $50 due to opportunity costs from pennies. Even with a rounding tax to the nickel claimed, sales taxes are already rounded up, and no one seems to care, so that argument is a bust.

A second argument is that with less pennies, there will be more nickels, which, if you recall, cost 11 cents to make in 2011, and even more now, but the possible loss offset from this isn't even close to enough to overthrow the savings from abolishing pennies. Even a loss here is debatable, since 5 pennies cost 12 cents versus the 11 for a nickel. Penny drives wouldn't be, well, penny drives, but in this case, there will be a gradual reduction of pennies and not, like, a sudden disappearance of them, so donations will still be given.

You could also just donate actual sums of money too.

But...but Lincoln!

Yeah, uh, he's on the $5 bill, some dollar coins, and he has an entire statue of him in D.C., and I was there, it was pretty impressive.

Vending machines don't take pennies, tollways don't take pennies, we keep them so that we don't get change in the first place...out-of-U.S. military bases gave up pennies because shipping the coins over is not worth the price. Even a senator tries to get rid of the penny in the COIN Act in 2006, but failed, obviously, but a senator was trying to do something!

America has discontinued a coin before too, the half-penny in 1857, and at the time, it was nearly worth today's quarter, and yet we have dimes, nickels, and pennies still, and they are worth a fraction of that.

Stop fishing for coins, and fish for a solution.

--Shiizumi Valé/WillowEye10329

Voldemort's Motives: Is He Right?

The answer to this question is "No".

But it's not a solid, definite, unarguable "No".

Anyone who has read the books knows about what Voldemort wants, on a basic level. Exterminate the Muggles, rule at least Britain, subjugate not-Purebloods.

I've already talked about how pure the Purebloods are, but in the future, I'll probably prove myself wrong, or not-as-right, so we'll talk under the basis that Purebloods are generally stronger than those who aren't, but only generally, with lots of room to wiggle around in power levels.

*totally not foreshadowing something*

As I spend unhealthy amounts of time exploring the depths of internet fanfiction, I find this:
[About the old habit of burning those accused of witchcraft in the 1600s and earlier, from the viewpoint of Voldemort.]

"Do you know how to cast a fireproofing charm?
Neither did most of the magical children in the middle ages. Neither do many adult wizards. There have always been many, many more Muggles than magical folk, and it can be dangerous for us if they find out - and it also scares them to know how much more powerful we are...."

While, yes, witches in particular were burned at the stake, as the story of Salem goes - although, apparently, they were actually stoned, but the same idea rather applies here - real magical people might be able to make themselves fire/stone proof, but the children wouldn't, which is perhaps the reason why the Statute of Secrecy was even made, so as protect magical children and magical adults from the perceived despicable Muggles.

But that was over 3 centuries prior to the events in Harry Potter. With the induction of many Muggleborns into the Wizarding society, the mindset of Muggles themselves being entirely bad and prenatally prone to evil or whatever should be gone.

I'm not going to argue my personal beliefs about human nature here, or anywhere, generally.

But it's a safe assumption to gather that initial dislike towards Muggles came from witch-burning practices in the 15-1600s.

In terms of newer ideas about the dislike towards Muggles particularly by Voldemort and Death Eaters...Riddle was raised in a paltry and fairly horrid orphanage, and knew from a young age that he was special among the Muggle orphans, so that's where his hatred came from as a personal opinion.

But other Death Eaters very undoubtedly had such concrete reasons for their dislike.

Or do they?

From the same source:
"[The Ministry of Magic] makes Muggles seem childish and harmless, and they ban useful magic from witches and wizards. And when Muggles do learn of our world, when they don't bother to learn about our traditions or our culture - when they make demands - when they complain that our rituals seem strange to them - when they say this is immoral or that seems wrong - the Ministry races to abase itself before them. They enforce their insanity against our people. They can't give in fast enough...because any one of those Muggles could expose us. So the Ministry scampers like frightened rats under the floorboards, cowers for their approval - and slights the very people it should protect. We, who are the naturally superior beings!" (From Here, close to the very bottom)

If you don't know, Yule, or Yuletide, is a Pagan holiday in the wintertime. We openly know that witches and wizards used to celebrate this holiday due to how there is a Yule Ball in Goblet of Fire which is an obvious nod towards that holiday. Similar holidays are Samhain, the equivalent of Halloween, and celebrating the Winter and Summer Solstices and the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes, with the Spring Equinox perhaps becoming Easter, as the modern holiday is the Sunday after the equinox.

Heck, a few internet sources say that the old Christian Church made Christmas the time it did because it would overlap with other Pagan celebrations:
"December 25th might have also been chosen because the Winter Solstice and the ancient pagan Roman midwinter festivals called 'Saturnalia' and 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti' took place in December around this date - so it was a time when people already celebrated things." (From Here)

Whether this is true or not is debatable, but the time did match up with other Pagan celebrations, and if that is true, it was likely so as hopefully get converts from the Pagans themselves, for having similar holidays. For the record, Yuletide did happen on or near the Winter Solstice, which nicely lines up to right by Christmas; in 2015, the Solstice is December 21st. Samhain is actually on October 31st, and lasts through the night, which fits exactly to modern Halloween. And, for the record, how do we get from the birth of Jesus - Christmas - to, like, trees and lights and presents and fat old guys earning figurative awards for breaking into people's houses? To steal Pagan followers, obviously.

Merry Christmas?

But admittedly Voldemort makes an excellent point here. Muggleborns would be very likely to get confused about the Yule/Christams distinction, especially earlier on, when people were more naturally religious. The cultural difference between those who did and did not grow up with magic, too, would cause complaints, because the entire legal system is different, as is the government, currency, technology, and even lifestyle. Part of the reason people tend to avoid moving out of the country is because of changes in all these things, except the difference here is that suddenly everyone can use magic.

That's like going from America to Britain, and then realizing that they have entirely different words for essentially every word in the dictionary, or that they just don't have computers, like at all.

The former is true, actually. There's some funny comedy videos about the confusion over the word 'sausage'.

So, yes, there's going to be complaints.

Disliking the Muggle culture isn't entirely confounding either. We don't exactly have much enviable when the witches and wizards can Levitate while we are only just starting to be able to do that, with Electro-Hydrodynamic Thrust. (and like, magnets, but that doesn't work very well for hover-boards. A SciShow video about that here!)

Comparatively, yes, Muggle technology still can't completely outshine wizard magic, although, hey, we have electricity, so we can be lazy. And also we've seen the surface of other planets and have stood on the Moon, and I'm pretty sure you can't Apparate to the Moon, just saying. And even if you could, there's no oxygen there, and they don't have space suits, nor any foreknowledge about the lack of oxygen in space...so wizards would explode on the Moon.

But the lack of attention by wizards on that sort of thing doesn't explain it either, since, again, Hermione would know about the lunar landing, as would other Muggleborns.

The facts just don't add up, really. Why isn't there a more warm disposition towards the majority population of the Earth? And no, I don't me to be talking about the majority v. minority power struggles, it's just that the hatred is unfounded, like really unfounded.

While, yes, ideas of Blood Purity rather point towards Muggles being inferior, and that those with magic are in fact, naturally superior, perhaps just this idea itself is just the cause? Wizards do have a history of mis-treatment of non-humans.

Whatever reasons Voldemort and those who support him and even those who don't for the anti-Muggle dogma, I'd hope it's singularly based on the fact that the Muggleborns have modified their traditions. In the end, though, perhaps if they were informed in the first place, or if there was, you know, a Wizarding Studies class for those Muggleborns, rather like there is a Muggle Studies class, then perhaps there wouldn't be complaints in the first place! In the end, it's the wizards' negligence that seems to be the culprit, and it's wizards' negligence that has never fixed the problem.

Or it's just something that we don't know about.

It's alright to dislike them on principle of them forcibly changing your and your life, but Voldemort takes this hatred to a new level. Murder isn't going to fix this problem.

That is all.

--Shiizumi Valé, or WillowEye10329, now signing off.

Harry Potter: Light and Dark Magic: What is the Difference?

What is the difference between Light and Dark magic in Harry Potter? In fact, what IS Light and Dark magic?

This topic isn't explored in the books or the movies or any of the supplementary material, but Dark magic can be defined simply as magic that is used exclusively to harm.

Okay, right, that makes sense. It's the difference between a kitchen knife and a weapon, after all. The regular knife that is used to cut onions can suddenly become the murder weapon in a court case. But wait, hold on, if that's how Light and Dark magic is , with Light magic being the onion-suppressor knife and Dark being that same knife but given prominence in a murder case...aren't they the same thing? If magic in general is a knife, as in, in can kill or can help, then Dark versus Light is how its used.

Alright, but any decent person already knew that, rather like how guns aren't inherently bad or how people aren't just straight up good or evil, and I'm looking at you, Voldemort, you're next.

What do I have to bring to the table, so to speak?

Well, I said that Dark magic is used exclusively to harm, under basic definitions, but according to the books, the Dark Arts include things like Necromancy, Horcruxes, Petrification, and the Imperius Curse (yes, yes, I know). None of those are strictly and directly harmful, except perhaps Necromancy which creates creatures that attack in defense of something. Horcruxes by themselves never hurt anyone, just Voldemort's, whose soul is the sort of soul that would love to kill you.

Although considering that you have to kill someone to make one, that is perhaps why.

Petrification doesn't harm anyone, as evidenced in Chamber of Secrets, and the Imperius Curse can do positive things, like commanding someone to go do half an hour of exercise or to eat their vegetables, even if it is morally dubious.

Also, does it bother anyone else that Necromancy and Voldemort are words, but Petrification and Teleportation aren't?

Alright, so the definition of Dark magic/the Dark Arts is more than a little inflexible, so what?

Time to get into the grit of the non-Dark magic, AKA, Light magic, like the Cheering Charm, the Levitation Charm, and even some lesser known spells like Partis Temporis, which temporarily divides something.

I have one thing to say about the Cheering Charm, and that is that it makes you feel happy, despite how that is similar to the Imperius in that it modifies your emotions or your brain activity, forcibly. It's not Dark simply because it doesn't have any seemingly negative effects, although it, like anything else, can under certain circumstances. You don't see wizards just casting on it on each other all the time, do you? I'm not going to bother with writing out a circumstance for it to harm you, which, hint, would be someone who is suffering from Depression - anti-Depressants not, like, a "be happy" pill - or under shock or something. Actually, I just wrote a situation. Huh.

Onwards!

The Levitation Charm, the Stunning Charm, the Body-Binding Jinx, and other charms and jinxes similar like Tarantallegra - the Dancing Jinx - or the Jelly-Legs Jinx stop, control, or change how the body moves, in this case. All of these can and will forcibly control your movements. You can be levitated off a cliff or a roof, you can be stunned and unmoved to be at the mercy of someone else or animals or the like, you could dance yourself into exhaustion, or be unable to dodge or protect yourself under the effects of these charms and jinxes.

Partis Temporis, despite a lack of information, could likely be aimed at someone, suddenly finding the target divided in half and most certainly dead. If it doesn't affect anything living, or at least sentient, then it can certainly divide houses, broomsticks, or Floo fireplaces, quite easily harming someone, whether dropping debris onto them, causing them to fall from the air, or leave someone stuck in the Floo system for who-knows-how-long, and it's not that hard to aim, so, yeah.

While there are spells that are nearly impossible to harm someone with, like the Patronus Charm, there are also spells that are nearly impossible to help someone with, like the Cruciatus Curse.

Spells that would be considered Dark, like the Bone-Breaking Curse, can be used to save people or harm people. You can break an arm so that someone will have their arm loosened so they can move it from the jaws of danger, or break it to re-heal it if it wasn't healed properly, and so on.

So while the definitions are really inflexible, Dark and Light magic still exist, like with the examples I just gave, Patronus and Cruciatus.

I've read more than a few stories where witches and wizards can be born with an inclination toward Lighter or Darker magic, rather like Dumbledore and Riddle are, we can assume, since people are more inclined to be better at math or art or music than others. Just like how mathematical calculations can make an atomic bomb, they can find the cures for disease or program life-support.

I mostly want to point out how, by the books, what is called Dark Magic is not necessarily "evil", either. While magic can be dark, like the Force can be Dark, from Star Wars, technically speaking, using those spells doesn't make you a bad person.

Snape is very very likely to use Dark magic, because, remember, he became a Death Eater willingly before he became a spy, yet we know he, well, I won't say good, but not really bad intentions. Conversely, James Potter was Light, used Light spells, but was a bully for no reason as a teenager, and suspected Remus of being Voldemort's spy, not Peter although why he would think that when Peter is a rat is a mystery. Maybe idiocy is in the genes or something, because Harry makes some pretty piss-poor choices himself.

While I'm not going to deny that most Dark magic is primarily harmful, strait-out banning it because of that isn't a good idea, nor does it really stop anyone from using them, and forbidding them makes people more curious about it, so banning the Dark Arts probably made the whole issue worse.

I'll bring up another weapon analogy. Magic is a multi-use tool, it can be good or bad. Undeniably Light magic - the Patronus Charm - is simply just the can opener, with the near impossible ability to harm, while regular "Light" magic is more the screwdriver, probably helpful, but can still become a weapon. Regular "Dark" Magic would be more akin to a small knife, while easy to harm, there is plenty of good potential, while undeniably Dark Magic - the Cruciatus, because you can save a life by killing a bear attempting to maul your friend, so even the Killing Curse isn't fully dark - is more akin the rat-poison in the cupboard, made to harm, but can still do good, but never often directly.

A final note: Dark Magic seems to also include old rituals, and many people write stories where other magic forms, like Blood or Ritual magic, are counted as Dark, and while not officially canonical, it falls in line with how the book characters think in respect to the Dark Arts. Often included in these too is celebrating old holidays, like Yule or Samhain, with bonfires and fruit sacrifices, although whether those would legitimately count under the current wizarding mindset is unknown the better question is why, exactly, aren't these old holidays celebrated by Magical Britain anymore?

Shiizumi Valé, or WillowEye10329 on Pottermore, has given her word, now signing off.

Harry Potter and Blood Purity

I'm the sort of awkward teenager that both loves and despises the Harry Potter series. I love the depth and the world and the complex systems and some of the characters (that's actually a lie) and the mythology and story. I hate the decisions that the characters make, the characters in general, and some of the rigid ideas that shouldn't be so rigid.

Like the idea of Purebloods versus Half-Bloods versus Muggleborns, Squibs, and Muggles.

Spoilers are a given.

For the record, both Harry and Voldemort/Tom Riddle Jr. are Half-Bloods. Voldemort/Riddle through his Pureblood almost-Squib mother Merope Gaunt and his Muggle father Tom Riddle Sr. Harry is one through his Muggleborn witch mother Lily Potter neé Evans and his Pureblood father, James Potter.

I'd hope you already know that.

What's interesting is that Riddle - because I hate writing Voldemort every time I'm talking about him - is a Half-Blood for being the descendant of the ruined line of Gaunt/Slytherin, living in poverty, bad inbreeding, shame, and disgust by what few wizards or witches remember them. Merope Gaunt herself is almost a Squib, and believed to be one by her father and brother. Yet, she's still considered a Pureblood, despite not being a "worthy" one, because she loved and had a child with a Muggle, Tom Riddle Senior.
Riddle Junior is a Half-Blood, the son of a ruined witch's ruined family and of a rich Muggle who hated him.
Harry Potter on the other hand, is the son of a well-liked fairly powerful Muggleborn witch and the (presumed) heir to the respected Potter family.

I don't know about anyone else, but that sounds rather unequal.

So what gives?

Actually, the whole magical inheritance thing is an interesting topic.

Magic would be genetic, since magic him/her/itself doesn't choose who can use him/her/it (or else the morally decrepit probably wouldn't have magic). This is obvious considering that there are magical families rather than scattered magicians.

Muggleborns are very likely descended from Squibs who were cast off from their mostly-Pureblood families for a lack of magic. While Squibs aren't magic, they would carry the gene for it, assuming that magic is recessive. The whole understanding for this concept is that magic would be recessive since Muggles outnumber those with magic. Think for a moment, Hogwarts is the ONLY magical school in all of Britain - Harry never got other invitations to other schools, and others are never mentioned, if they exist- and the graduating class is about 50 students, maybe 60 in Harry's second year, since people would be, um celebrating after Voldemort's fall. And that's being liberal.

Anyways, that's a tiny number for populous country/commonwealth/whatever like Britain, and the number of Muggles that would be graduating in a year...I don't know, take a guess. It's likely gigantic.

So magic is recessive, like blue eyes or blonde hair or double-jointedness or heterochromia.

The chances are fairly likely that someone - Squib or a descendant of one who carried the gene, like Hermione's parents, if this is all true - will meet and have children with another who has the gene and thus have a magic child to a non-magic parent.

For the record, I'm a Slytherin, and I've taken the Sorting Test three times - only once on Pottermore, so don't get cranky, the others were just copied over from PM onto the internet. Once I tied at 88% between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. My reasoning for some of the answers were complicated.

Anyways.

If magic is recessive, then every witch or wizard is just as magically pure as any other witch or wizard, which makes blood purity entirely redundant.

Well, not completely, due to inbreeding that undoubtedly happened by Purebloods to remain Purebloods, having children with like second cousins or something. coughcoughSirius'sparentscoughcough.

But doesn't that make Purebloods less pure than the Half-Bloods and Muggleborns they belittle? Perhaps that's why Harry and Hermione are so powerful, despite not having cast a single spell once in the first 11 years of their lives, while Draco Malfoy likely knew how to cast a Levitation by the time he was 6.

Seriously, if you were raising a magical kid, you'd be hard pressed NOT to teach them magic, if you were magical yourself.

But anyways...BUM BUM BUUUUMMMM. I have officially blown your mind. See that stain over there? That's your brain.

Riddle, Harry, Snape, Nymphadora Tonks are all Half-Bloods, yet are either feared, possess a very rare family skill (Metamorphmagi are genetically Blacks), or can scare away a horde of Dementors by the time they're thirteen under immense pressure and without too much practice, and by being a terrible student.

Because Harry is a terrible student.>

Dumbledore and Bellatrix are about the only two Purebloods that we know are intimidating magically. While Alastor Moody, McGonagall, or Shacklebolt are also all good magically, do we know for certain their blood status? Even if they are all three Purebloods, they just might not have the issue with inbreeding or perhaps they do, and we just can't tell because, remember, we don't see them perform super amazing acts of magic.

Hermione Granger is a very strong witch, not only in knowing things that those magically-raised don't know - remember the Basilisk? - but also in casting them. Levitation Charms are the obvious example. Lily Potter was praised for her skill in Charms, but what about her Pureblood husband?

Just some food for thought.

But I'd like to point out, finally, that because most Muggleborns are descended from Pureblood Squibs, they themselves could be heir to an otherwise heirless family line. Or, even better, could reasonably be related to Draco himself. The irony here should be illegal. It probably is.

This is Shiizumi Valé, otherwise known as WillowEye10329 on Pottermore, or just Shiizumi on many various webpages. Go, be sarcastic, and fly free! Spaaaaaaaccceee!