This Makes My Dolphin Tattoo That Much More Badass

I didn’t know there were dolphins in the East River, much less Newtown Creek:

Dolphins may be among the smartest mammals in the animal kingdom, but how exactly did one end up in Newtown Creek?

Location Scout: Newtown Creek.

I Was Under The Impression That Employers Photocopied Social Security Cards And Driver’s Licenses Before Hiring New Employees

It’s not just on the subway — now the JFK flight tower is also exposing a new generation to future job opportunities:

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating employees at the Kennedy Airport air-traffic control tower for apparently allowing a school-age child to transmit directions to pilots.

Location Scout: JFK.

Is Bette Midler Getting Ripped Off?

City builders testify that the Parks Department’s tree pricing is arbitrary and possibly inflated:

Using one calculation method, the city Parks Department could estimate the price of an oak tree 24 inches in diameter at $15,600. Using another, they could charge an unfathomable $123,500.

Often, the bill falls somewhere in between — and always without explanation.

The City Council plans to vote legislation today that’s meant to clear things up.

. . .

Giving builders the option of planting trees would be a particular boost for the Island, Altman added, because it could help move development more quickly and potentially lower costs. The Parks Department charges $1,900 to plant one 8-inch sapling, and usually takes months to do so; builders who testified before the Council said they pay anywhere between $300 and $500 to purchase the same tree.

The KSM Fire Drill

Just a thought — an evacuation of a court facility following a fire in Lower Manhattan would be a lot more problematic than, say, an evacuation following a fire at the former Stewart Air Force Base up there in Newburgh . . . and I don’t think that’s “fear mongering,” either.

Bloomberg: “Massive Computer Projects . . . Very Seldom . . . Successful”

The CityTime system, an effort to install fancy doodads (read: high-tech punch clocks) in municipal offices that was to have cost $68 million but now is up to $722 million, has been called a “disaster” by the mayor:

“It’s been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful,” said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.

Now imagine that sentence applied to congestion pricing had that been implemented (kind of amazing, by the way, that Bloomberg has kept plugging congestion pricing now that the MTA is having money trouble).

Now there are two aspects to CityTime — one is a paperless timekeeping system and the other is the aforementioned punch clock doodad. It would be interesting to know where the problem is. A paperless timekeeping system theoretically has some positive benefits: it is “green” in the sense that there are no more paper timecards and automating the timekeeping system theoretically means the city needs fewer timekeepers. On the other hand, the biometric punch clocks that unnecessarily agitated desk workers always seemed like a huge waste of money. You only need punch clocks if you’re worried workers are leaving early — instead of babysitting them why not just make sure there is enough actual work to do?

Another awesome tidbit about the punch clocks is that instead of using the actual time an employee punches in and out, the machines instead round up and down to the nearest fifteen-minute increment. So that, say, an employee punches in at 9:07 and leaves at 4:53, that employee will have “worked” a full seven-hour day. Over the course of a work week, that’s 70 minutes free. Brilliant! (And if the employee punches in at 8:52 and punches out at 4:53 the machine will give him or her fifteen minutes of comp time — love it!) The other unintended consequence is that employees are less likely to hang out after five to work on projects. We’ve heard of both scenarios occurring.