Why you should be an optimist

If you haven't heard of Matt Ridley aka the Rational Optimist then you've missed out on a different point of view to that promoting the fashionable doomsday du jour.

Ridley articulates very well, I think, why we should all be optimistic. His views on this topic align very well with my own. Even though there are rocky days ahead and almost certain financial doom and gloom, when you take a thirty thousand foot view of things for the long term one must conclude that humans will yet again defy the doomsdayers' predictions and work things out.

Imagine how miserable it must be to live life thinking that CO2 is going to make the planet uninhabitable and is already responsible for fire, flood, earthquakes and whatever other natural disasters that used to carry exactly that name until a generation grew up largely uneducated about how the world works - and uncaring, to boot. And uncaring that it's important that they know.

Who seriously thinks that when the oil eventually becomes uneconomical to produce - which is many hundreds of years away - mankind won't have transitioned to something like nuclear to fuel society?

Who seriously thinks the world is going to get to the point that it can't feed itself?

As I said, it would be a miserable life indeed.

Matt Ridley's presentations should be played to all 14-15 year olds in school. It would inspire them and get them to focus on the big picture.

If you like the video then send it to your 'miserable' friends so that they can find a reason to turn their thinking around.

2011 highlights and lowlights

With 2011 now behind us what were the highlights and lowlights that historians will write about?


It's a big field to choose from but I'll take a bit of a crack...


Highlights


The deaths of Kim Jong Il, Colonel Gaddafi-Quddafi-Kaddafi and, of course, Osama-Usama bin Laden. It's a shame that we couldn't see off the Brothers Castro and Robert Mugabe, as well, but at least we have that to look forward to in the next year or so.


Kim Jong Il has been replaced by his son, surely the fattest North Korean in fifty years, who will no doubt continue to build the socialist utopian dream. I wonder whether inner city, latte drinking, Chardonnay sipping, Gaia-loving greenies recognize that the implementation of all of their policies would pretty much lead to a North Korean state?


Colonel Gaddafi-Quddafi-Kaddafi was caught hiding in a drain and executed on the spot by some overenthusiastic supporter of freedom and democracy. Note the use of sarcasm at the end of that last sentence. The mad Colonel's last thoughts must have been how he could have been so stupid as to voluntarily reveal his WMD program and give up its development in return for a lifting of international sanctions. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago and they asked who Gaddafi was, which you have to admit is a bit surprising, especially when the someone is in their thirties. I replied that he was the dictator of Libya for 42 years but that they took him out and shot him. The question then came, what for? For taking people out for 42 years and shooting them, I replied. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I hope the family and friends of those he murdered aboard Pan Am 103 can be somewhat more at peace now.


I wrote about the death of bin Laden when it happened, describing him as a truly evil bastard and that the wind would be knocked out of the violent extremists' sails. That has pretty much happened and while it will still take a generation for the true believers to get too old/die out, as it has with ETA, for example, the Islamist terrorist threat is now pretty well contained. That it means we have to take off our shoes when going through airport security or have our genitals groped when visiting the US is bin Laden's real legacy.


It's too early to say whether the Arab Spring will turn out to be an Arab Winter. It's more likely that in a few years' time things will pretty much be the same as they were before the uprisings but with different faces adorning placards in the town square so I'm not calling that as a highlight.


In cool things that happened, the world's first artificial organ transplant was done, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells.


Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith was awarded the Victoria Cross for various acts of conspicuously lunatic bravery in Afghanistan.


The Qantas dispute was an undoubted highlight. In what must be the left wing cage fight of the century, unions representing a large number of Qantas workers were left red faced and blustering when the company's gay, progressive left wing CEO, Alan Joyce, called their bluff and grounded the airline stranding hundreds of passengers getting ready to board their aircraft and inconveniencing thousands more who had to put off holiday trips. Hopefully, Qantas can maintain its independence from union control when the case is arbitrated before Fair Work Australia.


Lowlights


The loss of Christopher Hitchens. No death of a public figure has hit me as hard as did that of this man whose greatness came from his ability to defend Western civilization from its enemies, both within and without, and call out evildoers regardless of their political affiliation. He was a Marxist from an early age and we never knew, as he somewhat wisely avoided discussing the matter, whether he had given up on that odious ideology or was one of these people who would defend Marxism because it 'has never been done properly'. He was also a famous atheist who wrote God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, the title of which somewhat gave away the contents hidden therein. I reckon that in a contest between Religion and Leftism the latter would be by far and away the more potent and destructive poison. He had a way with words that will forever elude the 99.9% of us who hack things out on a daily basis. But it wasn't just his choice of words or defence of free speech and free thought and free living that was the attraction - he was a self described bon vivant, after all - it was that he was, simply put, fascinating. I reckon he could talk about second century Mongolian yurts for hours and keep his audience enthralled and amused as he sat at the front of the theatre unashamedly smoking and sipping from a tumbler of ubiquitous Johnny Walker Black Label. Vale, Christopher Hitchens.


There are other people whose loss we can mourn. Vaclev Havel was a great man at an important time of world affairs as Communism finally fell apart under its own ideological momentum, but he made 75 and his time was past so we remember and thank him for his deeds. Dick Winters, the great wartime officer whose heroic deeds and quiet manner were so brilliantly portrayed in the terrific mini series, Band Of Brothers, passed away at the ripe, old age of 92. In the same category of quiet bravery we also put Nancy Wake whose ability to elude German capture led to her being called the White Mouse. On the shoulders of such great people better societies are built. Steve Jobs also succumbed to illness. His legacy will be getting designers to better understand the human-machine interface providing access to computing and the Internet to many people who were previously unable to cope with it all - and I'm talking about the elderly, mainly, as well as the very young who can do with an iPad at age 3 or 4 what they would normally have to wait another 5-6 years to do on a standard PC.


The Japanese Tsunami. That 20,000 deaths and many more maimed and inured could be so quickly forgotten in the media's rush to scare the world about the non-existent nuclear threat at Fukushima or to blame it all on man made global warming highlights both the intellectual ineptitude of today's media as well as its abrogation of anything remotely resembling moral thinking.


Anders Breivik's massacre of 76 people in Norway. It wasn't just that he calmly boarded a train after setting off the bomb in his first attack and then travelled to where he would continue his killing spree but that he seemed so happy about it all and completely unrepentant. In many ways he was very similar to our own psycho, mass killer Martin Bryant. Naturally, the media pounced on a few paragraphs in his 1000 page 'manifesto' to decry him as a right wing, Christian extremist. That he also included many left wing statements in his manifesto and was never a churchgoer seemed to be missed in the media's race to apportion blame to its ideological opponents.


The Australian government probably had its worst year ever. Bowing to its extremist green coalition partner the Labor Party introduced a super profits tax on mining (the only sector of the economy holding the country up), a carbon tax (to attack the rest of the economy) in spite of a solemn promise not to do so, and new workplace legislation (in case it missed any big business with the previous two). These three things are already severely weakening business confidence and their impact will be felt for a generation, as that's how long it will take to pay back the financial mess we've been put in. What happens if China goes through a downturn is anybody's guess but it won't be pretty. I don't mind having an ideological fight over what the government should spend people's taxes on but I do get cranky that our current crop of political leaders have learned nothing from the social democratic spendathon that has wrecked Europe.


There are other things that could make the list - the Queensland floods and Western Australian fires, the ongoing nitwittery of spending somewhere between $40 and $100 billion on a broadband network, the political to and fro over illegal boat arrivals while hundreds of people continue to perish as a result of Labor's weakening of our immigration laws, and the replacement of a good and decent Speaker of the House, Harry Jenkins, with an immoral, drunken boob in Peter Slipper.


Apparently, we're all doomed anyway. According to Mayan prophesy the world is due to end in December 2012. Does anyone else see the irony of the Mayan's supposed ability to forecast the end of the world this year but inability to forecast their own demise a thousand years earlier?

Predictions for 2012

With Europe on the brink of financial collapse, the USA spending itself into perdition, China's manufacturing contracting and the rest of the emerging economies in various stages of expansion and contracting what can we look forward to in 2012?


Here are my predictions for 2012. Some are big, bold and brave and some are a bit obvious. We'll see how I go in a year's time.


Europe


The pressure on the banking system is now so great that it's hard to see how they can get through 2012 without some sort of financial ruction. The ECB has recently introduced a scheme in which it will lend money at around 2% to banks that are having trouble raising capital. At the same time as it has made 200 billion Euro available European banks have actually deposited 250 billion Euro with the ECB at a 0.5% rate. What does that tell you? That interbank lending is completely broken and they'd rather get near zero interest rates from the ECB than much higher rates by lending to other banks, which they don't trust. Part of the problem is that banks are not forced to mark assets to market so their balance sheets are completely false. If forced to mark to market a large number of banks would be insolvent.


Prediction 1: A number of large, well known European banks will go belly up in 2012. Their governments will engineer mergers with other banks in the same way that Lehman Bros was.


The infamous PIIGS are in even worse shape now than they were a year ago so the outlook for them is somewhat grim. Whether the technocrats that have been installed in Italy and Greece by the Euro elites can undo the rot remains to be seen. What is clear, though, is that there is a major attempt by European politicians to avoid the situation in which any country leaves, or can leave, the EU. Greece's problems are simply a matter of social and political corruption. People have come to expect an easy ride paid for by the government lavishing wages and entitlements on them that they have not earned. For its part the government has simply borrowed and borrowed - especially once it joined the EU and could borrow at the same rate as Germany - and paid off its constituents and cronies. There are no innocent parties in Greece in that regard. Spain is simply suffering from the excesses of democratic socialism taken to their logical conclusion. Government borrowing in order to pay for a plethora of social programs has really killed their economy. Youth unemployment is something like 50% and their housing market crash makes what happened in the US look like a walk in the park. Italy, on the other hand, can get its house back in order with some reasonably simple financial discipline. I was listening to John Mauldin a few weeks back and he highlighted that in France there are around 35,000 drivers (chauffeurs) for public officials in a population of 65 million. With a few million less people that number in Italy is 160,000 and that if they simply got rid of 75% of them then it would take care of 25% of their deficit. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it.


Prediction 2: No country will leave the EU in 2012.


USA


Given that it's an election year Mr Obama will pull out all stops to get re-elected including doing things that will boost his standing in the short term but hurt the United States subsequently. The Republican field of presidential contenders is probably up to the normal standard of years gone by but because we live in such difficult times people are looking for a strong Reagan-like figure and there simply isn't one there. It's odds on that Mitt Romney will take the nomination and enter what will be one of the most contentious, negative election races in US history.


The US Fed will respond to any quantitative easing by rolling out another round themselves in order to maintain an exchange rate of around 1.3 to the Euro. QE3 could happen in 2012 but it's not a prediction.


Prediction 3: In one of the closest races in US history Mr Obama will be elected to a second term.


The validity of the election result will be questionable given the Democrats' penchant for voter fraud and there may be grounds for appeal in certain electorates.


Prediction 4: Republicans won't have learned to correct the type of fraud that saw Al Franken steal his seat in Minnesota and we'll see repeats in 2012.


Prediction 5: The stock market will end 2012 up 20% so the Dow at around 14,500.


China


Chinese manufacturing is in a contraction at present due to demand for their products from Europe and the USA falling. Inflation, which has been a problem (and was exported to China from the US), is now coming under control so the government will need to look at ways of keeping their export machine going.


Prediction 6: The Chinese will re-peg the Yuan to the US dollar. This will increase their export competitiveness but will force the US to consider countermeasures in the form of quantitative easing and that will lead to an inflation problem again down the track.


Australia


Australia will continue to look like it's doing well while at the same time the foundational strength of our economy is stripped away by the most incompetent government in our history. Fair Work legislation will really bite in 2012, industrial disputes will hit a 10 year high, business investment will slow in the 2nd half due to the dual impacts of the insane Carbon Tax and Mining Tax, and the government debt will top $250B (a staggering number when you consider it was zero in 2007 and is due nearly 100% to ill-disciplined spending).  The Reserve Bank will be forced to reduce interest rates in order to keep our dollar from appreciating too much against those other countries that are in the process of money printing. In an environment of rising inflation that could spell trouble for the Australian economy in 2013. All of which makes the next prediction pretty simple.


Prediction 7: The next election will be called early, probably in the last quarter of the year.


Other Comments


With many governments increasingly unable to fund themselves they will turn to the only source of funds left that they can access - pension funds. This will be a disaster, of course, but I expect that governments will force pension funds to invest a percentage of their assets - say 25% - in government bonds. If this happens then make sure you have many, many assets to fund your retirement, as you won't be able to rely on your pension maintaining its purchasing power.


Precious metals will continue their volatility in 2012. Gold is heading up and now is a good time to be buying. The current drop in prices is a result of raising cash to meet margin calls and, while there might be some slight downside still to go, I expect gold to top $2000 by year's end. Silver is a bit more problematic but I think that there's at least 10% in it and maybe more so I'll call $35 and see how I go.


Hope everyone has a terrific 2012. Remember to focus on your health and happiness first, as without that you're nothing!


Update: Prediction 8: Nothing will change in Syria. Assad will not be forced out now or anytime soon.


Update 2: Prediction 9: There's a fair chance that if any other regime is going to fall in the Middle East this year then it'll be Iran.

Making some changes...

As regular readers can tell, I'm making some changes to the blog including the layout and new url.

http://ker-plunk.blogspot.com will still work but the main address has changed to www.jacklacton.com

(Nothing Follows)

Things I don't understand

OK, how does this happen?


Shane Warne & Liz Hurley??!!

Or this?


Sean Penn & Scarlet Johannson??!!

But THIS is something I do understand.


George Clooney & Elisabetta Canalis...

What happened to his hand?

By the way, this is a photo of a young George Clooney...

...proving that for those of you that have kids who look like they were beaten with an ugly stick...there's hope for them yet.

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Mulling...

There's a lot going on.

I should probably consider a return to blogging.

(* Considering *)

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Returning soon...!

In news that may or may not excite you depending on your point of view I shall be resuming blogging in the very near future.

Has anything interesting happened in my absence?

Thought for the day

If the leftie health police are so concerned about the effect of advertising on children (and the rest of us) then how is it that 99.9% of people who work in advertising are lefties?

(Nothing Follows)

Reciprocating the LGF ban

Given I've been banned by Little Green Footballs, I've removed all links to LGF.

When Charles Johnson bans people like Tim Blair then you know he's lost the plot.



The list of people banned by LGF is actually quite impressive.

Charles has gone David Brooks and decided there's more money to be made by attacking his own side than maintaining what people thought were his principles. Perhaps those were a charade, as well?

Anyhoo, proud to be banned.

I'm in good company.

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Banned by Little Green Footballs

Somehow or other, your erstwhile correspondent Jack Lacton has managed to get himself banned by Little Green Footballs.

For those of you who are regular readers of Charles' site and mine this might come as somewhat of a surprise given how close our views are on most topics.

Dennis Prager describes LGF as 'one of the most important sites on the web' and I agree. Charles' exposure of the Dan Rather phony Bush document and doctored Israeli missiles photo were extremely important. Hopefully, his vigilance can expose more fraud in the future.

Charles has a pretty much fair minded view of all topics and calls a spade a spade even if it's against his own side, which I also do, as for example in my recent post on the Australian opposition's emissions trading policy.

He and I agree on about 90% of topics including that Pam Gellar is a nut, as is alternative health 'expert' Jenny McCarthy. The nirthers are simply 9/11 troofers rebadged and the Republican cause is not helped by having people like Judge Andrew Napolitano and Glenn Beck feature so prominently on Fox. He also has a lot of fun with the Ron Paul supporters, as do I.

Charles understands that creationists dressed up in the Intelligent Design cloak are not only a threat to the Republican Party but also to Christian values in general, as when people reject ID they also reject Christianity, values and all. This will come at a massive cost to a fabric of society that is already being damaged by a myriad of left wing, activist groups.

We disagree on Climate Change. Charles seems to accept the so called 'consensus', which I put down to him not having delved into the issue in any great detail. He even provided a link to the anti-science climateskeptics propaganda site recently, which seeks to disprove all of the arguments put forward by we supposed deniers. He might like to spend some time at WUWT and Climateaudit to get a real look at the fraud behind the 'consensus'.

The thing that I think I got banned for was giving this post a minus on the LGF post rating:



Is this photo funny?

Not especially.

Is it clever.

Nope.

But is it racist?

Here's where I thought that Charles had gone too far and why I gave it the thumbs down.

This is only racist if you only see President Obama as a black man and not as a regular human being.

Consider, is the following picture racist?



If not then why not if you're using the same standard as the Obama picture?

Hitler is one of the most evil people to ever walk the earth. He was a white man. Why isn't it racist to put Bush's head on his body?

The answer is that his race had nothing to do with it.

The comparison is with the evil and not with the race.

The Obama photo comparison is with witch doctor-ism, not the fact that the witch doctor is black.

So, anyhoo, banned by LGF.

I used to think it was just the foul mouthed left and over zealous Ron Paulians that managed to get themselves banned. Maybe Charles thinks I'm one of them or part of the Gellar, Belien, Spencer unhinged crowd?

I still visit LGF every day and suggest you do also. Prager is right about it being one of the most important sites on the web. It's just a shame that I can't post comments or articles there anymore.

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Boost performance of your Windows XP system

I don't know about you but it seems that over time my trusty Toshiba laptop (with beautiful 17" 1680x1050 display) has slowed down significantly and to the point of massive frustration.

I did give myself a performance boost a couple of months ago by exorcising Norton 360 from my machine but even with AVG running it has issues, especially when I have multiple applications running, which is most of the time.

Anyhoo, I wondered whether there was a setting in Windows XP that would give me a performance boost. I hadn't looked before but am happy that I did, as my system is running at least 100% faster than previously.

Here's the change I made...

Right click on My Computer and select Properties so that the following screen comes up:



Then select the Advanced tab:



Hit the Performance button and the following screen comes up:

You can see that it's on the default setting "Let Windows choose what's best for my computer".

Simply select the "Adjust for best performance option" as per below:

Press OK and it's all done.

What this does is turn off a lot of the screen rendering nicities, as you can see from the final image - the ticked options are now all unticked.

My background changed when I did this but all I had to do was restore it to what I had previously and it was fine.

Loading Office, browsers, running my database software is now at least twice as fast.

I'll be doing some tests later on to see how much time my database analysis takes with the changes. I've already done some small tests and it's much better.

Try it yourself.

If it doesn't do anything for you then you can simply reverse the selection.

(Nothing Follows)

Best safety poster ever

Nothing to add, really...

....c'mon...who wouldn't swap lives with Hugh Hefner...?

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Beware of inexpensive office shredders

So a colleague at work decides that we need a paper shredder in our new office.

It's true.

Our office was sans shredder and thus incomplete and unfulfilled in its officeness.

He sees one in the local ALDI store at the quite reasonable price of $69. It's sold under the brand OfficePro. We don't need to shred heaps of stuff and it looks OK what with terrific features like confetti cut and separate slot for CDs and credit cards so he buys it.

Here's the front cover of the box:

(click to embiggen)

He takes it out of the box, sets it up as per the instructions and places it on the floor next to the fax machine.

Wanting to test his new toy he turns it on, grabs a bit of paper and sticks it in the top.

The noise that emanated from the thing sounded like this:

Actually, it sounded much like a duck, having pissed off Saddam Hussein, being fed through a tree shredder at Abu Ghraib.

It certainly was unexpected, especially given what is clearly stated on the side of the box:

Having not read the instructions he then decided to see how many bits of paper it could handle so he grabbed 10 or 12 and stuck them in at which point it became necessary to work out how to use the reverse function.

A quick perusal of what passed for a user manual indicated a maximum of 7 pages at a time.

Clearly, in China they have much thinner paper than the 80gsm of standard office paper. 5 pages is more like the limit.

Well, at least the motor is durable if not quiet. Right?

Not according to the separate piece of paper found in the instruction manual.

How good is that, eh?

A whole two minutes of shredding before getting a 30 minute break.

It must have a labour agreement with the auto unions.

So a shredder sold under the brand OfficePro and featuring a "durable quiet motor" turns out not to be suitable for an office and has neither a durable nor a quiet motor.

I wonder how long it will last?

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OK. After that little aside I should be back regularly!

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last week.

My time was taken up by an unforeseen situation that has worked out fine.

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Jaaaaaaaack's back...!

Heeeeere's Jack!



...it seemed appropriate.

Hope your Christmas and New Year break was peaceful, you added less than 3kg and are able to keep your New Year's Resolution for more than a month.

So who can expect to feel Jack's Wrath in 2009?

Obviously, the Climate Faithful will continue to be exposed as the charlatans and fascists that they really are.

Everyone who proposes government intervention in markets as the answer to the financial difficulties facing the world.

Terrorists and their soulmates on the left.

By the way, the word 'soulmates' brilliantly describes the relationship between terrorists and the world's left.

People have tried to understand why the left provides such succor to the bastards who killed hundreds in Mumbai, terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and make excuses for Al Qaeda's atrocities in Iraq.

What ideology do they share that creates such a partnership?

The fact is that they are both totalitarian ideologies that seek to create a better world through the agency of government - one religious using terror and the other political using cultural institutions against the population.

Thus, they are soulmates.

It's a word that our side should use when discussing the left's positions.

i.e. Instead of "Hamas and their supporters on the left" use "Hamas and their soulmates on the left".

It's not only more accurate it's more powerful.

Good luck to everyone in 2009 in what I predict will be the most tumultuos year for many decades.

(Nothing Follows)

Taking a break over Christmas

I'm taking a break over Christmas so regular posts will resume in the new year.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and took the time to add a comment.

Have a great Christmas holiday.

(Nothing Follows)

Beast Bought

Been away for a couple of days picking up some new wheels .

Model: Mercedes MY2002 ML55 AMG.

Engine: Big V8

Sound: blob blob blob

Economy: Minimal

Environmental impact: High

Comfort: High

Features: High

0-100km/h: 6.8s

Fun factor: High

I've owned a BMW M3 and Mercedes CLK55 AMG in my time, which I was unwise enough to buy new, and they were both outstanding vehicles.

My advice for young players - buy luxury cars second hand.

(Nothing Follows)

Unskilled and unaware of it

The paper Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments by Justin Kruger and David Dunning of Cornell University should be mandatory reading for all students at about year 10 level.

If more people understood that they didn't understand a particular subject then perhaps the church of global warming would have many fewer parishioners.

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. (Miller, 1993, p. 4) In 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight, with no visible attempt at disguise. He was arrested later that night, less than an hour after videotapes of him taken .from surveillance cameras were broadcast on the 11 o'clock news. When police later showed him the surveillance
tapes, Mr. Wheeler stared in incredulity. "But I wore the juice," he mumbled. Apparently, Mr. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing one's face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to videotape cameras (Fuocco, 1996).

We bring up the unfortunate affairs of Mr. Wheeler to make three points. The first two are noncontroversial. First, in many domains in life, success and satisfaction depend on knowledge, wisdom, or savvy in knowing which rules to follow and which strategies to pursue. This is true not only for committing crimes, but also for many tasks in the social and intellectual domains, such as promoting effective leadership, raising children, constructing a solid logical argument, or designing a rigorous psychological study. Second, people differ widely in the knowledge and strategies they apply in these domains (Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989; Dunning, Perie, & Story, 1991; Story & Dunning, 1998), with varying levels of success. Some of the knowledge and theories that people apply to their actions are sound and meet with favorable results. Others, like the lemon juice hypothesis of McArthur Wheeler, are imperfect at best and wrong-headed, incompetent, or dysfunctional at worst.

Perhaps more controversial is the third point, the one that is the focus of this article. We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine. As Miller (1993) perceptively observed in the quote that opens this article, and as Charles Darwin (1871) sagely noted over a century ago, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (p. 3).

In essence, we argue that the skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain—one's own or anyone else's. Because of this, incompetent individuals lack what cognitive psychologists variously term metacognition (Everson & Tobias, 1998), metamemory (Klin, Guizman, & Levine, 1997), metacomprehension (Maki, Jonas, & Kallod, 1994), or self-monitoring skills (Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982). These terms refer to the ability to know how well one is performing, when one is likely to be accurate in judgment, and when one is likely to be in error. For example, consider the ability to write grammatical English. The skills that enable one to construct a grammatical sentence are the same skills necessary to recognize a grammatical sentence, and thus are the same skills necessary to determine if a grammatical mistake has been made. In short, the same knowledge that underlies the ability to produce correct judgment is also the knowledge that underlies the ability to recognize correct judgment. To lack the former is to be deficient in the latter.

Do yourself a favour and read the whole thing.

(Nothing Follows)

Sharkey the dolphin performs last trick

Sad news from Orlando, Florida, today that Sharkey the dolphin has died while performing aerial tricks due to a mid-air collision.

Who knew that the life of a performing dolphin could be as dangerous as that of the Blue Angels or Red Arrows and that mid-air catastrophe was only a bad jump away?

A dolphin has died after colliding with another dolphin while performing aerial tricks at a US marine park.

Sharkey, a 30-year-old dolphin, died after the accident on Saturday at the Discovery Cove park — a sister property to Sea World in Orlando, Florida.

About 30 visitors were standing in a lagoon while the dolphins did tricks, but something went amiss when the two mammals leapt from the water and collided mid-air.



The second dolphin did not appear to have been injured, but was being monitored, Discovery Cove spokeswoman Becca Bides said.

"This is a very unfortunate and very rare incident," Bides said.

It was the first accidental death of a dolphin since the park opened eight years ago.

Located across from SeaWorld, Discovery Cove offers visitors the opportunity to swim with dolphins, rays and tropical fish.

Park officials are reviewing their dolphin training protocol "to ensure that even such a random incident like this can't occur again," Bides said.

Vale, Sharkey, and thanks for bringing so much enjoyment to so many people.

That last paragraph has got me, though. Officials want "to ensure that even such a random incident like this can't occur again"...how does one prevent random incidents?

(Nothing Follows)

I've been tagged

Darren at Right On The Left Coast has tagged me, the bastard. Answering the questions is OK but finding 5 people to send the tag onto is a challenge. I'll get him back somehow! PS - you should stick that one on your list of blogs to view daily.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Preparing to acquire another IT company and merge it with my own.

2. What are the 5 things on my to-do list for today?
I have to do things? Go to work, prepare a tender, submit it, interview someone, go for a beer.

3. Snacks I enjoy
Cheezels. Sour Cream & Onion chips. Fruit Tingles. Jelly Babies.

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire
I'd spend my money sitting on the beach drinking Crown Lager, chomping lobster, chatting up the beach beauties and picking the sand out of the crack in my arse. The rest I'd waste.

5. Three of my bad habits
Talk too fast (unless I'm public speaking, presenting etc), eat too much crap food, immediately forget the first names of people I've just met

6. 5 Places I have lived
Moscow, London, Washington DC, Nairobi, Rangoon to name a few...

7. 5 Jobs I have had
Only had 3 job types: programmer (part time in a government department when I was going through uni), senior manager in Information Technology (my own company for 15 years), currently general manager of a professional services business

Now that I've got that done who should I tag?

Darren, I'll get back to you on that one...!

(Nothing Follows)