Curiouser and Curiouser!

Amazing numbers.

Independent estimate of the impending war with Iraq (from the WSJ)

• Conflict: $20-80 billion
 
• Peacekeeping: $25-105 billion (five years) 
 
• Humanitarian assistance: $1-10 billion  (Note:  I think this figure is very, very low)
 
• Cost of governance: (civil servants and police force) $5-12 bil.
 
• Reconstruction including oil fields: $10-105 bil.
 
• Aid to allies: $6-10 bil.
 
• Debt claims and reparations: $62-361 bil.
 

This may top the $494 b in current US dollars we spent on Vietnam and the $336 b we spent on the Korean war.  The war in Afghanistan cost the US ~$37 b already and current plans call for spending of $7 b a year for ongoing operations.  In the Iraq scenarios, the high intensity warfare planned for will cost $500 m a day.   In contrast, the US spends ~$10 b a year on development and humanitarian aid.

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

If I do my sums right that could mean as much as $2,434.40 for every one of the 280,562,489 men, women, and, children alive in the United States of America (based upon the population figures from the CIA world factbook 2002).

I hope you like the nice empire you're building, after all, you're paying for it!

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, claims to have invented discussion group software in August 1999. The patent was issued yesterday by the USPTO. [Scripting News]

Well that's nice for him.

A technique we should look at (some time down the road) is Latent Semantic Indexing.  This is a way of getting semantic information out of documents by considering their context (where usual indexing treats each document as being entirely separate).

Example:

A search for Saddam Hussein returns articles on the Gulf War, UN sanctions, the oil embargo, and documents on Iraq that do not contain the Iraqi president's name at all.  In all these cases LSI is 'smart' enough to see that Saddam Hussein is somehow closely related to Iraq and the Gulf War.

That's business 2 community...

Something I have never done before but am interested in persuing now is getting involved with voluntary projects.  I would like to help out with one or more charities who need Knowledge Management (KM) or Information Technology (IT) skills.

Do you know someone who might need me?

Specifically I would like to become involved with one or two projects where there is a shortage of Knowledge Management or Information Technology skills.  Obviously given my bias I would prefer to help out with a KM project (maybe a charity interested in persuing weblogs?) but I will happily volunteer IT strategy skills and IT implementation skills (from advice & recommendations, through implementation and support - including software development).  I haven't thought too hard about how much time I can, or would like, to commit -- I guess I'll worry about that when I need to.

I have come across the Business Community Connections site, which aims to help businesses get involved with community projects, however they have a lot of charities on their books and I'm not sure how easy it is going to be to match up my skills with any of them.  I'd rather short-circuit the process by personal contact if I can.

I'd love to hear from you.

It's official:

Rogue Semiotics is now my 100th RSS subscription.

And to think I was complaining back when I only had about 30!

Do I get a telegram from anyone now that I've reached 100?