About Me and my Experiment

About Me and my Experiment

My name's Phil Hodges. I'm a 30-something Brit living in San Francisco, where I work for a money management firm as lead researcher on a $6 billion investment fund. I earn a little more than the San Francisco 2013 minimum wage of $10.55 per hour (the highest in the nation), or $21,100 a year.

Throughout January 2013 I will be living on minimum wage. There will be a few practical constraints but I intend to keep these to a minimum. At the end of the month, everything I earn and do not spend will be donated to Larkin Street Youth Services, along with any other donations that I can squeeze out of supportive individuals and corporations. The money will support the amazing work that Larkin Street with homeless, runaway and at-risk youth between the ages of 12-24 by providing street outreach and emergency shelter, primary medical care, transitional housing, and job training and scholarship assistance to get kids off the streets.

Please consider supporting Larkin Street at this link, or by using the donation widget on the right of this page.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Imagine – if you can – a world in which I am no longer a paragon of virtue, professionalism, humanitarianism and sobriety



Suspend disbelief for a second and imagine – if you can – a world in which I am no longer a paragon of virtue, professionalism, humanitarianism and sobriety, and am instead looking for cheap ways to get messy drunk.  This is probably difficult but bear with me.

The CDC defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent of above.  As a purely intellectual exercise let’s see how we can achieve this at minimal cost.  For the kids!

We can reach binge-drinking blood alcohol levels by consuming 3 ounces of pure alcohol within 2 hours. I tested a variety of commercially available alcoholic drinks and concluded that the very cheapest way to get three ounces of pure alcohol is through Franzia boxed red wine.

A 5 liter Franzia red wine box can be bought for $8.99 (it remains to be seen whether I can find it for this price in San Francisco), and it contains 13.6% alcohol by volume.  Using the power of algebra, I have calculated that I can binge-drink for only $1.17! (There are 33.8 oz in a liter, so the cost of 3 ounces alcohol = 3 oz x $8.99 / (13.6% x (5 x 33) oz) = $1.17.

Other ways to get drunk for under $2 include:

Kavlana Vodka: 40% ABV, $10 for 1.75 liter. Drunk cost = $1.27
Carlo Rossi Red Wine Jug: 13.6% ABV, $9 for 4 liters. Drunk cost = $1.55
Franzia White Wine Box: 13.6% ABV, $12 for 4 liters. Drunk cost = $1.56
Everclear grain alcohol 190-proof (illegal in CA): 95% ABV, $14 for 0.75 liter. Drunk cost = $1.74
Popov Vodka: 40% ABV, $14 for 1.75 liters. Drunk cost = $1.77
2-buck chuck, Red: 13.2% ABV, $2 for 0.75 liters. Drunk cost = $1.79
MD 20/20: 18% ABV, $3 for 0.75 liters. Drunk cost = $1.97
Monarch Rum: 40% ABV, $17 for 1.9 liters. Drunk cost = $1.99

Just missing out on the $2 cut-off: Natty Ice ($2.44), Everclear grain alcohol 151-proof ($2.82).

Caveat: I am not endorsing binge-drinking or making light of the struggles many individuals and communities have with alcohol abuse.

That said, who wants to join my Franzia party?!



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