Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Random notes of the day
* It suddenly occurred to me today that I might be some kind of ultra dork because I include a works-cited section in informal blog posts when I quote and/or refer to bodies of works that might be considered references. At the very least I suspect it makes me an academic whore.
* This is precisely why I do not donate to charities of large scale disasters:
Fraudsters steal $1bn of Katrina funds
FEMA Official Casts Doubt on GAO Study
FEMA official comes under fire at Hill hearing on fraud
Over a billion and a half dollars... That's $1,500,000,000 dollars. Just so we're square on the numbers: approximately 1.836 people were killed due to Katrina and there were roughly 484,674 people living in New Orleans. Together that makes about 486,510 people. However, that billion dollars is almost one half of the national AIDS research budget (at least for 2005) which was $2,930,397,000. The international AIDS charity AVERT calculated that 2005 saw roughly 2.8 million deaths due to the HIV pandemic. If budgets were calculated based on approximate number of deaths using ratios and scaling, that means the AIDS budget should really be $2,287,581,699,346.41 or roughly 28% of our ENTIRE NATIONAL DEFICIT valued at $8,380,152,095,212.47. I propose a plan where anyone that saw gain from Hurricane Katrina be sent to sub-Saharan Africa for medical attention and possibly a blood transfusion.
* Is anyone else as scared and irritated as I am of trusted computing and Digital Rights Management??
* I am roughly 24% pure with a weirdness dispersion factor of 33%.
* Tantra is really something I should know.
* I purchased Hitman Blood money legitimately a week ago, and I still haven't sat down to really play it. There are NPCs in a virtual world that need to have a piano wire wrapped around their necks. Why am I not doing that?
* Over the next few days I think I'm going to attempt a more Socratic method of posting. I'm going to try leaving a series of open ended questions to see if anyone is willing to leave comments or thoughts. I used to keep a counter for this page and I know the volume of people that hit it. Surprisingly, very few leave comments.
* This is precisely why I do not donate to charities of large scale disasters:
Fraudsters steal $1bn of Katrina funds
FEMA Official Casts Doubt on GAO Study
FEMA official comes under fire at Hill hearing on fraud
Over a billion and a half dollars... That's $1,500,000,000 dollars. Just so we're square on the numbers: approximately 1.836 people were killed due to Katrina and there were roughly 484,674 people living in New Orleans. Together that makes about 486,510 people. However, that billion dollars is almost one half of the national AIDS research budget (at least for 2005) which was $2,930,397,000. The international AIDS charity AVERT calculated that 2005 saw roughly 2.8 million deaths due to the HIV pandemic. If budgets were calculated based on approximate number of deaths using ratios and scaling, that means the AIDS budget should really be $2,287,581,699,346.41 or roughly 28% of our ENTIRE NATIONAL DEFICIT valued at $8,380,152,095,212.47. I propose a plan where anyone that saw gain from Hurricane Katrina be sent to sub-Saharan Africa for medical attention and possibly a blood transfusion.
* Is anyone else as scared and irritated as I am of trusted computing and Digital Rights Management??
* I am roughly 24% pure with a weirdness dispersion factor of 33%.
* Tantra is really something I should know.
* I purchased Hitman Blood money legitimately a week ago, and I still haven't sat down to really play it. There are NPCs in a virtual world that need to have a piano wire wrapped around their necks. Why am I not doing that?
* Over the next few days I think I'm going to attempt a more Socratic method of posting. I'm going to try leaving a series of open ended questions to see if anyone is willing to leave comments or thoughts. I used to keep a counter for this page and I know the volume of people that hit it. Surprisingly, very few leave comments.
# posted by Chris/Stewy @ Wednesday, June 14, 2006 
