Skip to main content

Thoughts VIII

A. If you try to squeeze too much blood from a turnip, you'll end up with a truly pissed off turnip.

B. If what you crave most in life is politics, you will surely receive it.

C. What is the most resilient substance on earth?  Kids.  It seems that no matter how terrible the parenting, many kids grow up just fine.  There is a counterpart for good parenting.

D. I like the dawn - the dawn of a bright day.  I think because dawn is a state of becoming.  It is fleeting and changing and harbors good things to come.   From Marcus Aurelius (121-186 AD) we have "Each day provides its own gifts."

E. Ok, you have a piece of bread.  You want to make toast.  For my toaster, it takes about three minutes, golden brown and tasty.  The question is at what point does the bread become toast.  Certainly before the three minutes elapse, but certainly now right away.  But when?  

F. We can count - better than ever - but are rapidly forgetting what to count and why, what is worth counting and why.   We are generating exabytes of data and handing it over to data mining programs hoping for a fortuitous discovery - a magic bullet. 

G. Much of what we have today we owe to science.  We have become dependent upon science, almost as a drug, to fix problems and chart our course.  Enter the pseudo-scientist, armed with models and statistics and promoting personal models of reality with proofs irrefutable to all except experts.  The proofs accepted, diluting the true proofs, there is created an emotional dependency.  It is addictive and is slowly poisoning us all. 

H. Remember this: We can have big bad data,  which is ominous.  We can also have bad big data, which is disastrous - not the stuff dreams are made of but cesspools of garbage from which serious decisions will be derived. 

I. Many people that use PowerPoint presentations have neither power nor a point.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Behavioral Science and Problem-Solving

I.                                       I.                 Introduction.                Concerning our general behavior, it’s high about time we all had some understanding of how we operate on ourselves, and it is just as important how we are operated on by others. This is the wheelhouse of behavioral sciences. It is a vast subject. It touches our lives constantly. It’s influence is pervasive and can be so subtle we never notice it. Behavioral sciences profoundly affect our ability and success at problem-solving, from the elementary level to highly complex wicked problems. This is discussed in Section IV. We begin with the basics of behavioral sciences, Section II, and then through the lens of multiple categories and examples, Section III. II.     ...

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

  Uncertainty is Certain G. Donald Allen 12/12/2024 1.       Introduction . This short essay is about uncertainty in people from both secular and nonsecular viewpoints. One point that will emerge is that randomly based uncertainty can be a driver for religious structure. Many groups facing uncertainty about their future are deeply religious or rely on faith as a source of comfort, resilience, and guidance. The intersection of uncertainty and religiosity often stems from the human need to find meaning, hope, and stability in the face of unpredictable or challenging circumstances. We first take up the connections of uncertainty to religion for the first real profession, farming, noting that hunting has many similar uncertainties. Below are groups that commonly lean on religious beliefs amidst uncertainty.   This short essay is a follow-up to a previous piece on certainty (https://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2024/12/certainty-is-also-emotion.html). U...

Robin Hood and Cliven Bundy

  Actor Herbert Mundin, playing Munch in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood (starring Errol Flynn) is charged by Prince John's troops of slaying a royal deer in the royal Sherwood forest.  The punishment is death.  Though the events of this film are a portrayal of events dating to the 15th century, they became by the 19th century a "robbing from the rich for the poor" theme so often depicted in other film genres. The William Tell legend is another. The plot is simple.  A poor man desperate to survive tastes the forbidden fruits owned by the authority, and is condemned. I would love to hear this event debated on the current TV news shows.  On the one hand, Munch would be a champion in service to his family.  On the other hand, his legal rights are restricted by legal authority. so, the argument would proceed.  Legal scholars cite statutes chapter and verse, while others would root for the common man.  Fast forward to 2014. Parallels ...