excerpt from my Sent folder: the Hitchens unit

You know, we could really get into the spirit of modern administration and come up with a way to measure the influence of public intellectuals. Perhaps the scale could be based on the Hitchens unit, one Hitchens (h) being the amount of public mindspace occupied by Christopher Hitchens in one year. I could then say that in the most recent fiscal year I delivered 0.02h, down, alas, from the previous year’s 0.035h. I could also articulate a Five-Year Plan for getting annual delivery up to 0.1h, with my really long-term goal being the achievement of a lifetime score of 1h.