James/USA pointed me to this interesting article in the NYT (free registration required):
Welcome to the Age of Metrics -- or to the End of Instinct. Metrics are everywhere. It is increasingly with them that we decide what to read, what stocks to buy, which poor people to feed, which athletes to recruit, which films and restaurants to try. World Metrics Day was declared for the first time this year.Since I've spent quite some time squeezing CISV into numbers, I take this as a welcome reminder of the other side of the story. While measuring CISV activity still makes some sense to me, the article also links to areas that are just absurd...
hahahaha