Day: September 15, 2005

first off, is the man for securing me a ticket to see tom waits at the NO benefit show at radio city. I don’t care if he only plays one song with a bunch of other asshats, seeing him on stage is something i have been waiting years for. it will be worth it. the other bands look like a mix of traditional NO funk/blues (which i will be into) and crap big names to draw people (which i will not be in to).

i need to buy a flask before the show.

unfortunately, due to a meeting i was at, i was unable to secure any tickets of my own. as a result L. will not be coming along, which is kinda a bummer. still, i am uber-psyched about seeing the show.

this meeting i got stuck in really got me thinking about technology. how people are afraid of it. how some people use it effectively, and others use it so ineffectively, it ends up causing more work for people then if they didn’t use it at all. how some age-old axioms for living life apply to tech, and others do not.

mostly, i get to wondering about ROI when i look at big technical problems. is the money spent managing legacy systems spent effectively? is money spent on new toys and gadgets better than a few extra staff who can support an existing system? where do you draw the line between old and obsolete. my line between those two has always been interoperability. however, supporting diverse systems creates a challenge. at the same time, running a unified system makes it very vulnerable to single lines of attack. is that a viable solution not to move forward? if not, how long can you justify “we can’t do this because we are going with a unifies system, and only third party vendors can do that”? at the same time, what do you do when you have a business need handled by a third party that suddenly evaporates?

i miss the pioneer days. i feel like all the risks in tech have been shuffled off to the reservations. the fat buffalo herds of technology profits have been dwindled down to a few roaming clusters here and there. wild bill’s ipod rodeo has turned technology into an apparel item. people are more concerned with brand and appearance than how their gadgets work. the little railroad towns have all moved to india.

geeks have street cred now, if only in their ability to make magic happen.

there are no answers to any of this. i don’t know if tech makes things better or worse. it certainly opens many doors that would otherwise remain closed. at the same time, it creates problems that never existed before.


Number of new U.S. soldiers the Army would need in 2006 to replenish ranks abroad : 80,000[U.S. Army Recruiting Command (Fort Knox, Ky.)]

Percentage of this goal it expects to meet : 9.9[U.S. Army Recruiting Command (Fort Knox, Ky.)]

Percentage change since 1996 in the average recruitment cost per new U.S. soldier : +84[U.S. Army Recruiting Command (Fort Knox, Ky.)]

Number of killed or captured suspects reported so far by U.S. media to be Al Qaeda’s “number 3” man : 4[Harper’s research]

Minimum number of people convicted on “terrorism-related charges” since 2001, according to Alberto Gonzales in April : 200[U.S. Department of Justice]

Actual number convicted on charges related to terrorism or national security : 39 (see page 48)[Dan Eggen, Washington Post]

Number of Iraqi troops that have been “trained and equipped,” according to President Bush in April : 150,000[White House (Washington)]

Number that the U.S. military considers ready to deploy independently : 1,500[U.S. Military Combined Press Information Center (Baghdad)]

Number of members of the Iraqi parliament who worship not only Muhammad but a fallen angel named Lucifer : 3[Verlag Denge Ezidiyan (Oldenburg, Germany)]

Acres in Israel to which a born-again Christian from Texas bought oil-exploration rights in 2000 : 96,000[Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (Dallas)]

Chapter and verse of Deuteronomy that he says predicts his success, because of the phrase, “let him dip his foot in oil” : 33:24[Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (Dallas)]

Number of Palestinian communities that will be surrounded by the new Israel security fence on at least three sides : 53[B’Tselem (Jerusalem)]

Chance that a German says Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is the same “in principle” as how Nazis treated Jews : 1 in 2[Wilhelm Heitmeyer, Institut für interdisziplinäre Konflikt und Gewaltforschung (Bielefeld, Germany)]

Factor by which the unemployment rate among Jewish immigrants to Germany exceeds the national average : 3.5[Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum (Potsdam, Germany)]

Percentage of Germans who say, about the Nazi era, that “one should not always poke around in old wounds” : 60[TNS Emnid (Bielefeld, Germany)]

Selling price in June for a bar of soap allegedly made from the liposuctioned fat of Silvio Berlusconi : $18,000[Galerie Nicola von Senger (Zurich)]

Number of Pepsi products plainly visible in a May TV ad for Arnold Schwarzenegger : 5[Harper’s research]

Ratio of the projected U.S. ad revenue of Google and Yahoo! this year to that of NBC, CBS, and ABC in primetime : 1:1[eMarketer (N.Y.C.)/”Jack Myers Report”(N.Y.C.)]

Amount that the Catholic Church spent in Britain this summer advertising for new priests on bar coasters : $1,100[National Office for Vocation (London)]

Number of New Orleans bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination : 40[Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (New Orleans)]

Percentage of the bars that charged black customers more than white customers : 40[Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (New Orleans)]

Amount recouped by the U.S. government in institutional fraud cases since 1986 : $8,000,000,000[U.S. Department of Justice]

Amount that whistleblowers received as a cut of this : $1,300,000,000[U.S. Department of Justice]

Chance that a U.S. company monitors the emails of at least some employees : 1 in 3[Proofpoint, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.)]

Chance that it has fired an employee for violation of email policies : 1 in 4[Proofpoint, Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.)]

Factor by which the expulsion rate in U.S. preschools last year exceeded the rate in grades K‒12 : 3[Walter Gilliam, Yale Child Study Center (New Haven, Conn.)]

Average amount of sugar consumed each year by a U.S. preschooler, expressed as a percentage of body weight : 149[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta)/U.S. Department of Agriculture]

Estimated total number of tons by which American adults are overweight : 1,180,000[Harper’s research]

Total weight, in tons, of the population of the Los Angeles metropolitan area : 883,000[Harper’s research]

Number of U.S. cities that have agreed to meet the Kyoto Protocols on global warming : 166[Office of the Mayor (Seattle)]

Average number of times each day that aircrafts intrude into D.C.-area restricted flight zones : 2[Federal Aviation Administration (Washington)]

Days it took a Nepali Sherpa in May to crawl the length of Manhattan : 6[L. G. Khambache Sherpa (Brooklyn)]

Fine levied last year on a restaurant in southwest China for serving sushi atop naked women : $242[Kunming Xishan District Bureau of Health]

Percentage of the world’s cell phone users who say they have interrupted sex to answer a call : 14[BBDO Worldwide (N.Y.C.)]

Percentage of newlywed couples who report having had a physically violent fight in the year before marriage : 37[Kenneth Leonard and Julie Schumacher, Research Institute on Addictions (Buffalo)]

Number of Viagra users who have reported becoming blind from the drug : 38[U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, Md.)]

Number of corpses shipped on Delta Air Lines last year : 42,175[Delta Air Lines (Atlanta)]

Amount that Northwest Airlines expects to save each year by eliminating free magazines on flights : $565,000[Northwest Airlines (Minneapolis)]

Amount by eliminating free pretzels : $2,000,000[Northwest Airlines (Minneapolis)]
From http://harpers.org/HarpersIndex2005-08.html