Residua

RELENTLESS DOMESTICATION

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:33:00 +0000

As I often wonder, why are humans the ugliest species on earth? And now I think I have a plausible answer: domestication. Millennia of relentless domestication.

Addendum (February 5, 2012)

I am well aware that I am repeating myself. And often. Which only goes to show how important domestication happens to be in my mind. For the incredulous, it is enough to remind them of America today. As I write, many young men of African origin are loitering in jail. A good number of them will perish young. Few of them will procreate. That is domestication at its most virulent at this point in time, but similar examples can be found throughout history. The best of men have been perishing either in war or in jail for the last ten millennia or so. That is, ever since the last ice age. Civilization equals domestication, and domestication is mostly about the removal of men who could not be civilized quickly enough by the standards of their fickle kings and queens. As most women would readily admit, such men are among the least ugly, too. Come what may, if they were only available for a tumble!

FOR THAT WEEK

admin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:47:04 +0000

Saturday. While in Zagreb, this was the day when I would go to buy The Economist. And the day when I would bang out my first letter to the editor for that week.

A SINGLE WEEK

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:49:18 +0000

Having lost faith in the winter, I am glad to see it back. And it is back in earnest. I only wonder how long it will stay. All things considered, a single week?

THE KAHNEMAN FALLACY

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:28:03 +0000

Browsing through Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow,[1] I came across two related sections that attracted my attention. Both deal with planning associated with construction, a subject close to my heart. The first section deals with the “planning fallacy,” and the following one concerns its mitigation.[2] As an example of the former, he offers the Scottish Parliament building, which ended up costing nearly eleven times the original estimate. A big boo-boo, no doubt. But then he mentions that original estimates are often low so as to ensure that the project gets through the initial assessment process. In addition, he points out that contractors love low estimates because they make money on subsequent additions. In short, the so-called planning fallacy looks like a combination of something that is better called the “planning ruse” and tacit collusion between planners and contractors. By way of mitigation, Kahneman argues that the best way to get a good estimate is by collecting data on similar projects and their ultimate costs rather than original estimates. This results in a planning contingency or budget reserve for all the unforeseen events. However, he also adds that contractors love such contingencies, which they are liable to get hold of as the project evolves. The mitigation therefore hardly deserves its lofty name. It could be called the “mitigation ruse” instead. Once again, it smacks of tacit collusion between planners and contractors. Unfortunately, Kahneman remains oblivious to these two problems with his own argument. Together, they can be dubbed the Kahneman fallacy. And he is a winner of the Nobel prize in economics, of all things.

Footnotes

1. New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011.

2. Op. cit., pp. 249-252.

STRAIGHT DOWN

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:37:56 +0000

I dreamt that I saw a helicopter falling from the sky. Maintaining its hovering position, it came straight down. And it fell quite fast. It was dawn or dusk. The place looked like Boston. The helicopter fell behind a row of brick tenement buildings. It appeared I was in a tall building a couple of blocks away. I remember expecting a huge explosion, but there was none. I could not see even a fire from the place where the helicopter fell. When I woke up I remembered that I had once seen a short sequence of a helicopter falling someplace in America. It was not falling straight down, though. It went from side to side and wobbled a great deal. And I saw it strike the roof of a brick tenement building before it fell to the ground. Once again, there was no explosion. There was no fire, either. Anyhow, I was a bit disappointed with my dream, which struck me as a simplified version of a scene I have actually seen on a screen.

TO BECOME HISTORY

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:06:57 +0000

Facebook’s stockmarket debut has been in the limelight for a while. And so I feel sorry for the Central Intelligence Agency. It is on its way to become history.

“TALIBAN CAPTIVES DISPUTE U.S. VIEW ON AFGHANISTAN WAR”

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:47:29 +0000

Thus The New York Times based on close to thirty-thousand interrogations of some four-thousand Taliban and other captives in Afghanistan. They think they are winning in spite of America’s claims that the war is drawing to a close. That is, that America is winning. Well, who is actually winning in Afghanistan? This would be a wonderful question for The Economist, which poses a slew of such questions for the entertainment of its readers around the world. I bet the mighty newspaper’s readers would go with the Taliban, as well. And by a wide margin.

BLESSED BY SUSAN BLACKMORE, AGAIN

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:22:36 +0000

Susan Blackmore is back nearly a year since her last “visit” to my mind (“Blessed by Susan Blackmore,” February 16, 2011). Her name has been ricocheting around once again, and I feel no less than blessed by her. By her wisdom, that is. For she has taught me how not to fight ideas or projects that come my way. That is, how not to choose among them. All I can do is mull each of them over, write a few words about them, and let all of them float away. And this is precisely what I have been doing for years. Not for nothing has my magnum opus gotten such a prophetic title! I was lucky that her wise advice came my way at the right moment, I guess (“The Ultimate Rebellion,” October 21, 2006). One way or another, I feel eternally thankful to her. Amazingly, there is no-one else who has ever elicited such emotions from me, with the possible exception of my mother (“My Own Guru,” December 9, 2000). Hey, what a wonderful thought! My two gurus, and both of them women!

HOW TO PROTECT WILD DEER

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:00:39 +0000

Master Dogen (1200-1253) tells a story about how a wise abbot chose to protect a wild deer. The monks at his monastery had encouraged the deer to eat grass in their garden. They were astonished when their abbot asked them to strike the deer and drive it away. “Why would you frighten away the poor deer? Where is your compassion?” They pressed for answers. The abbot replied: “When a wild deer becomes too tame around people, it will surely be killed by the next hunter.”

From James Austin’s Selfless Insight: Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2009, p. 198.

ATAVISMS

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:49:00 +0000

Spotting some puffed-up pigeons, I figured that they, too, get goosebumps when cold. But their feathers give more warmth when they trap more air. Bah, atavisms!