Longtime readers of GM\/BM will remember [this post][homeland], where I discussed the formula used by the Department of Homeland Security for allocating anti-terrorism funds. At the time, I explained:
\n>It turns out that the allocation method was remarkably simple. In their
\n>applications for funding, cities listed assets that they needed to protect.
\n>What DHS did was take the number of listed assets from all of the cities that
\n>were going to be recipients of funds, and give each city an amount of funding
\n>proportional to the number of assets they listed.
\n>
\n>So, the Empire State building is equal to the neighborhood bank in Omaha. The
\n>stock exchange on Wall Street is equal to the memorial park in Anchorage,
\n>Alaska. Mount Sinai hospital is equal to the county hospital in the suburbs of
\n>Toledo, Ohio. The New York subway system (18.5 billion passenger-miles per
\n>year) is equal to the Minneapolis transit system (283 million passenger-miles
\n>per year). The Brooklyn Bridge is equal the George Street bridge in New
\n>Brunswick, NJ.
\nWell, according to the [New York Times][nyt] (login required), it appears that I gave *too much credit* to the DHS. They weren’t saying that, for example, Wall Street was equivalent to the memorial park in Anchorage. What they were saying is that the Wall Street stock exchange is equivalent to the Mule Day Parade in Columbia Tenessee; Mt. Sinai hospital is equivalent to an unnamed Donut Shop; the Macy’s thanksgiving parade is equivalent to the Bean Fest in Mountain View, Arkansas.
\nQuestioned about the foolishness of this insane list, a DHS spokesperson responded “We don’t find it embarrassing, the list is a valuable tool.”
\nDon’t you feel safer now that you know how the government is using what they keep stressing is *your money* to protect you?
\n[homeland]: http:\/\/goodmath.blogspot.com\/2006\/06\/astoundingly-stupid-math-bullshit-of_02.html
\n[nyt]: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/07\/12\/washington\/12assets.html?_r=1&oref=login<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Longtime readers of GM\/BM will remember [this post][homeland], where I discussed the formula used by the Department of Homeland Security for allocating anti-terrorism funds. At the time, I explained: >It turns out that the allocation method was remarkably simple. In their >applications for funding, cities listed assets that they needed to protect. >What DHS did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-19","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}