Monthly Archives: January 2002

General Chaos

Got Oryx?

Great moments in ecological tinkering:
The Wall Street Journal (registration required) reports,
“In the 1960s, the New Mexico State Game Commission enlivened hunting here by importing from southern Africa 38 oryx, the beefy, long-horned cousin of the African antelope. Hunters savored the 450-pound animals' sweet meat and prized their elegant 40-inch trophy antlers.”
Now, there are over 4,000 oryx in New Mexico, and they're overrunning White Sands National Monument and the missile test range. They often are hit by automobiles–some motorists say they charge cars. And the population grows 10% a year. And the Parks department can't afford to remove the 80 or so left on the parkland because it costs almost $200,000 per oryx captured.

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General Chaos

“Enron'd” added as synonym to “dot-conned” in dot.communist style guide

While all the brouhahah continues over the sliminess of the management at Enron, nobody seems to be connecting with the fact that Enron's execs did to its employees and investors exactly what the venture capitalists did with WebVan, Pets.com, and all those other “pure-play” IPO's–build the stock price through hype and bluster, hide the debt, and then cash out as fast as possible and leave the suckers holding the bag, Enron was just more effective at creating an illusion of stability–through lies, deceit, and shredding.

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