Lobbyist

On PBS there is a Moyer & Company promo in which a woman laments that we (the American Everyman) don’t have a lobbyist working for us in Washington, D.C.

I did a search and found out at http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby that there were 12,655 Federal registered lobbyist in 2011 with combined expenditures of $3.31 billion dollars. (You’ll find a lot of interesting information at http://www.opensecrets.org)

Lobbies by definition are special interest groups whether they are the American Association of Retired Persons ($15 million spend in 2011http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023726&year=2011), Pfizer Inc. ($1 million spend in 2011 http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H04) or The National Association of Broadcasters ($13.9 million spend http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000000202&year=2011, and on and on and on. A lobby’s business is looking out for their own issues.

The United States once experimented with a group of multi-issue lobbyists. The thought was that one person could look after the interests of a diverse group of people. So our population was divided up and assigned lobbyists. These multi-issue lobbyists were called Senators and Representatives. Apparently that experiment did not work out as expected. But maybe it’s time to reset that idea of representing a diverse group of people.

George W. Parker

Big Data

I came across an article on BBC.com this morning http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17682304 that redirected my entire morning. In it Dr. Mike Lynch⁽¹⁾ stated:

“Today, thanks to technology's mass appeal and accessibility, on a daily basis we collectively produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and the growth rate is so high that 90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone. The value of this information to organisations who want to keep ahead of the curve is huge.”

Here is the part that stopped me cold: “…90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone.”  Emphasis is mine.

“…90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone.” Where in the world did that statement come from? So I went word searching

The first thing I found  was an unattributed promotional piece on IBM’s site http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/ excerpted below. (Please note that the noun “information” is “data” here. And IBM can help you with your “big data.”): 

“What is big data?

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data. “

Next up was http://bigdatalowlatency.com/ which lead to another IBM quote: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/files/us__en_us__smarter_computing__ibm_data_final.pdf  Here again the noun in use is “data” not “information. (And IBM can still help you with your big data.)

 

I found a few more references to that IBM 90% data statement which I won't bore you with. Nowhere else did I find the word “information” used.  If Dr. Lynch had used the word “data” instead of “information” I would never have run along this tangent as there is a big difference in my mind between data and information.

Dr. Lynch has shown us that just because you have data doesn’t mean you have information.

⁽¹⁾ Dr. Mike Lynch OBE is founder and chief executive (CEO) of Autonomy, and executive vice-president (EVP) of HP Information Management. Autonomy, part of HP since October 2011, makes software that processes human information, or unstructured data, including social media, email, video, audio, text and web pages. From BBC.com

Required Reading, The Hunger Games?

When I was in high school our required reading included classical literature. Now it’s The Hunger Games. My son had to read it, I had to buy it, so I read it. It was okay. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I would suggest some alternative reads.

Here are some quotes lifted from Wikipedia about The Hunger Games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games

“… Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) names the major themes of The Hunger Games as "government control, 'big brother', and personal independence".^[13]”  I would suggest reading 1984  by George Orwell. If you want to check out “Big Brother” go to the source.

“The Capitol makes watching the games required viewing.^[12] The theme of power and downfall, similar to that of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, was pointed out by Scholastic.^{[14] “}  Again I would suggest going to the source, Julius Caesar  by William Shakespeare.

“Donald Brake from The Washington Times, as well as Jessica Groover from the Independent Tribune, states that the story has Christian themes,…” If you’re looking for Christian themes then go for Moby Dick  by Herman Melville.


I want to point out that The Hunger Games is published by Scholastic, the ubiquitous school publisher. Do you think big publishing has taken a sales lesson from big pharma and are calling on the local dispensers (In this case librarians and English teachers.)  to push their wares? Schools all ready receive a percentage from their sponsored Scholastic book fairs. Are they just taking the next step?