Any idiot can drive fast in a straight line

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

So, Katherine works in pharmaceutical sales. One of the greatest accomplishments in this field is to get one of your drugs into regular rotation at a hospital. Basically, once the drug has been accepted by the hospital, smaller practices near the hospital will pick it up. Once it's spread through one area, other hospitals may pick it up soon after. Getting a hospital to accept your drug is no easy process. A representative doctor will get drilled about all the details on a drug for hours on end in front of a huge committee. Kat's father is a cardiologist. By basically his idea, his impetus and his work, he got one of her drugs approved at the local hospital. The hospital was not in her territory, so she knew that some of the credit would naturally fall to the territory owner.

Last night after a hard day of work, she got home and checked her email. Her boss sent out an email to the entire west coast staff including her great great grandmanager. The announcement basically gave 110% of the credit to this other person and practically put Kat down! The wording of the email stated that this other person did all of the work, Kat basically helped the morning of the final presentation (implicating that she was late with the work and lazy) and gave very little credit to her father. Naturally, she was appalled. It's going to be hard to repair all of the damage that single email has done. I suggested it was time to start becoming a backstabbing, credit-grabbing bastard like the rest of her coworkers.

Monday, October 27, 2003

So, I decided to add a car to my list:

The Porsche 911 Carrera.
So, here are the updated numbers:
THE RAW DATA

  350Z
RX-8
RSX
WRX
Evo VIII Carrera
Horsepower 287 250 200 227 271 320
Torque 274 159 142 217 273 273
0-60 Time 5.5 5.9 6.1 5.6 5.3 5.0
EPA City 20 18 24 20 18 18
EPA Highway 26 23 31 27 26 26
Price 32136 29900 26907 28540 30529 68800
Seating 2 4 4 4 4 4
Transmission 6 6 6 5 5 6
Wheelbase 104.3 106.3 101.2 99.4 103.3 92.5
Weight 3188 2933 2775 3140 3263 3020
Wheels 18 18 16 16 17 17
             
Looks 10 9 8 7 7 10
Power/Weight 0.0900 0.0852 0.0721 0.0723 0.0831 0.1060
Torque/Weight 0.0860 0.0542 0.0512 0.0691 0.0837 0.0904



THE NORMALIZED DATA
  350Z
RX-8
RSX
WRX
Evo VIII Carrera   WEIGHT
Horsepower 8.969 7.813 6.250 7.094 8.469 10   0
Torque 10 5.803 5.182 7.920 9.964 9.964   0
0-60 Time 9.091 8.475 8.197 8.929 9.434 10   8
EPA City 8.333 7.5 10 8.333 7.5 7.5   5
EPA Highway 8.387 7.419 10 8.710 8.387 8.387   4
Price 8.373 8.999 10 9.428 8.814 3.911   7
Seating 5 10 10 10 10 10   6
Transmission 10 10 10 8.333 8.333 10   3
Wheelbase 8.869 8.702 9.140 9.306 8.955 10   2
Weight 8.705 9.461 10 8.838 8.504 9.189   0
Wheels 10 10 8.888 8.888 9.444 9.444   1
               
Looks 10 9 8 7 7 10   11
Power/Weight 8.496 8.044 6.802 6.823 7.838 10   10
Torque/Weight 9.507 5.997 5.661 7.645 9.255 10   9
               
TOTAL 574.8 548.8 549.7 540.5 559.2 597.9    
RANKING 2 5 4 6 3 1