Rough Equivalents Publication Announces Bush's War Funding Request Equals Enough Toilet Paper to Cover California and Texas

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) April 21, 2008 -- When the New York Times and Associated Press reported late last week on George Bush's $108 billion war funding request, Rough Equivalents set out to determine a rough equivalent for that figure. On Monday, the newly-launched publication for odd facts and statistics announced their's: $108 billion could buy enough toilet paper to completely cover the states of California and Texas - and come back with over $878 million in change.

According to Rough Equivalents' calculations, 432,276.393 square miles (or a little over 96.4 trillion individual squares) of Kirkland brand, two-ply, embossed toilet paper would cost $107,121,548,396.55, which is $878,451,603.45 less than President Bush's latest war funding request.

The publication used figures from the U.S. Census for the combined land and water areas of the two states, and based their pricing on the 36-roll packs of Kirkland brand toilet paper available at Costco warehouse stores (currently $17 per 36-roll pack, according to a call to the Everett, WA Costco on April 19, 2008).

Launched earlier this month, Rough Equivalents is dedicated to making numbers fun by doing silly math problems like:

* Calculating the time it takes to drive to the moon in rush hour traffic

* Converting the energy in a gallon of gas into food calories

* Exploring the many ramifications of the phrase "a ton of money"

Then they find silly equivalents for those numbers, such as:

* A round trip to the moon in rush hour traffic = 14.5 feet of watching grass grow

* One gallon of gas = 53.52 McDonald's Big Mac sandwiches

* The manufacturer's suggested retail price of a Hummer H2 = 17.6 tons of money (pennies)

For more information about Rough Equivalents and new odd figures at least three times a week, visit http://www.rough-equivalents.com.

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