Some quick chum before I head out to physical therapy:
- From the “Anyone Feel Like A Salami Sandwich?” Department: Slashdot is reporting on an interesting attack on the DOD… by itself. Back in 1969, Walter T. Davey, an aeronautical engineer at North American Rockwell, discovered he was being overpaid by roughly 2 cents an hour, or one-third of 1 percent of his pay. Davey submitted the discovery to his superiors and suggested a simple fix. ‘It was so simple to correct,’ said Davey, a 79-year-old retired Air Force colonel, ‘just change a few digits in the coding software.’ The Project on Government Oversight, which reviewed Davey’s findings last year, estimated the change could save taxpayers $270 million a year. Multiply by 40 years — the length of time since Davey made his discovery — and the figure grows to an astounding $10.8 billion. Legislators ignored Davey’s letters, federal auditors deferred to Congress, and lobbyists ‘descended on it and tore it into a piece of Swiss cheese’ but legislators aren’t eager to challenge the powerful defense lobby about a figure that’s a relative pittance in the overall defense budget — even if it exceeds $100 million annually.
7½c: Give it to me every hour, 40 hours every week, that’s enough for me to be living like a king!
- From the “I’ve Got a Name” Department: We’ve all used TinyURL, I’m sure. Turns out, sites like that are proliferating…. and are being used to track where people are going. Someone comes up with an idea, someone else figures out how to monitize it.
- From the “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” Department: A survey says the French excel at eating and sleeping. Norwegians spend the most time at leisure, just over a quarter of their day, while at the low end, Mexicans spend just 16% of their time having fun. The French? They spend an average of nearly 9 hours a day in bed. Don’t blame the US for this survey… it was done by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
