Thursday, April 1, 2010

Filing - The Final Solution

After having the recent opportunity to visit my tax guy and my legal guy, I find that we all approach our information systems the same way. Each different pile has exactly the information one needs and is a relational system, depending upon where the stack is located and how tall it is.

With that thought in mind, I recall the famous last shot in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", with the camera panning out from the Ark being located in the government storage facility, which is an homage to one of the final shots in Citizen Kane. That's the picture above. Best way to permanently lose something is to misfile it, hence the piles in clear view. Here's the Indy page on it.

During the chase scene at the beginning of the "Raiders" movie, you briefly see a broken crate with the Ark partially revealed. 9906753 was the identifying number used on the crate that held the Ark of the Covenant in the cavernous warehouse of Hangar 51. It is only later revealed in the fourth Indy film, "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", that the Ark had been taken to Hangar 51, a military facility near Groom Lake in Nevada. All this - for four movies - because an adequate filing system isn't available for the Federal Government.

Human nature, I suppose. Otherwise we would never have found the Dead Sea scrolls and the cuneiform tablets scattered all across the Middle East. Which means they were all lost by the folks that were supposed to keep track of them.

Have a great April Fool's Day!

PS you can do this digitally, too. Go to Bump Top owned by Google now.