[geeks] Re: [rescue] OT taxes

[Dan Duncan]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> They had an interesting bit on that topic on "The West Wing" a few years
> ago - Christian Slater (?!) was playing the part of a Navy consultant to
> the White HOuse, and mentioned that the ash tray on his desk came from a
> battleship (I think), and it cost $XXX. It was just a plain glass ash
> tray, and the person he was talking to questioned the cost.
>
> He piked up the ash tray, slammed it on the desk, and it broke into exactly
> two pieces.
>
> He pointed out the requirement that the ash tray not shatter, as you don't
> want glass shards flying through the air when the ship is attacked.
>
> As the previous poster said, you can't assume the toilet seat requirements
> are the same as a domestic toilet seat...

This is probably a real story and a real item.  The problem is that
the military often dictates these stringent requirements that don't
necessarily exist together.  They probably asked for a glass ashtray
that was shatterproof rather than just a shatterproof ashtray.  A
tin ashtray would have accomplished the same job.[0]  Other times they'll
have requirements for a hammer of a certain size, weight, strength,
and temperature requirement, or non-magnetic, or nonconductive, or
something weird like that where Sears probably has a Craftsman
hammer that meets 90% of the requirements but won't work.  Now
Sears probably spent half a million dollars developing the hammer
but since they'll sell a ton of them they can sell you one for $30.
If they develop a new model specifically for the military but the
military only needs 100 of them, guess what they get?  $5030 hammers.

A few years back I flew to Guam from Hawaii (and back) on a
C5 (and back on a C-130) all in the same day[1] and on one
leg of the trip the loadmaster was telling us about the coffee
maker on board.  It would brew so many cups of coffee per hour
at a wide range of cabin temperatures and pressures, vibration,
turbulence, g-forces in various directions, etc, and cost tens of
thousands of dollars.

It had never been used.

They carried all the coffee for the trip in those orange
Thermos jugs like the kind they use to dump Gatorade on
football coaches.

-DanD

[0] Sure, but if you can use an existing $5 Walmart ashtray you
won't get the big R&D budget to develop a new unnecessary
product.  Just because they wear uniforms doesn't mean some
of them aren't suits.

[1]  It was within a 24-hour period.  I crossed the International Date
Line twice that "day" and ever since have no fucking idea what time it is

-- 
#  Dan Duncan (kd4igw)  dand at pcisys.net  http://pcisys.net/~dand
# Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.