Looking back over human history, rationality has been the anomaly. Being rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense. Much like infectious diseases themselves — beaten back by decades of effort to vaccinate the populace — the irrational lingers just below the surface, waiting for us to let down our guard.
Wired: ‘An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All’ (via Instapaper)
A vast majority of professionals are in “emergency scanning” mode. Their self-management consists of checking for and acting on the loudest immediacies – in email, in the hallways and on the phone. Everything else is shoved to the side of the desk, and to the back of their mind. Because they’re focused only on “priorities”, and are paying attention only to the most intheir- face stuff, everyone else has to raise the noise level to “emergency” mode to get any audience at all. Sensitivity and responsiveness to input are criteria for the evolution of a species; and many an organisation has a nervous system that keeps them low on the food chain.
Where’s the remotest place on Earth? - New Scientist: Fantastic image and an interesting research project.
200 years ago, economists made a prediction, and we got it wrong. “Big deal” you might say. But it was a big deal; a much bigger deal than some piddling mistake like failing to predict a global financial crisis. Basically, 200 years ago economists predicted that long run growth was impossible. That’s the biggest thing in economics you can be wrong about.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Economic growth, the universe, and the meaning of life
While good design practices are valuable, the fact remains that every design decision we make is a guess.
Designing the User Experience at Autodesk: Design Values: Validated Data over Expert Opinion
Better Place envisages a convenient network of charging outlets and battery-swap stations that will be tied together with software that makes it possible for both the system and EV drivers to know in real time the ongoing battery range and charge level. Drivers will be able to call up the nearest battery switching or charging station in a display. Thus, they can plan their route and EV range anxiety will be eliminated.
Electric vehicles the ‘rational choice’ - The Globe and Mail
The committee’s diagnosis was stark: the market, left to its own devices, is failing to deliver. Consumers are not buying energy-efficient appliances or insulating their houses, carmakers are failing to get emissions down and power companies still prefer fossil fuels to greener alternatives.
Energy and climate change: Questioning the invisible hand | The Economist
The Lost Prestige of Nuclear Physics
www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati…
For better or worse, the United States has come to depend on technological progress, and if its continuance as a society in anything resembling its traditional forms is to be assured, technological vitality must be sustained. Nuclear science is so central to the continuum of scientific and technological progress that a failure to restore its stature must bode ill for the long-term future of science and technology in America.
(via Instapaper)
Denmark makes you green with envy - The Globe and Mail
www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opin…
We could learn a few things from the Danes.
What scientists face today is “almost disgraceful … The bureaucrats want to get a hold of the money and ask for business plans. Now do you think that George Smith and I ever wrote a business plan? Not at all,” Dr. Boyle, now 85 and retired, told a reporter Tuesday. “You don’t have time to do that kind of baloney.”
I spend a fair bit of time with a locked-down Windows XP machine. Fortunately, I’m able to install Emacs which provides capabilities that I find quite helpful. I’ve had to reinstall Emacs a few times now. So, for my own benefit (and perhaps your’s) here are the steps I follow:
Download EmacsW32 patched and install in my user directory under Apps
Available from http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html
Set the environment variable for HOME to my user directory
Right click on My Computer, select the Advanced tab, and then Environment Variables.
Add a new variable and set Variable name to HOME and Variable value to C:\Documents and Settings\my_user_directory
Download technomancy’s Emacs Starter Kit
Available from http://github.com/technomancy/emacs-starter-kit
Extract archive into .emacs_d in %HOME%
Copy my specific emacs settings into .emacs_d\my_user_name.el
Is Canada broken?
www.theglobeandmail.com/news/poli…
“We are in a continuous election campaign with no discussion of issues,” observes Ned Franks, a political scientist at Queen’s University and a leading authority on Canada’s Parliament.
If an election is called, I’d really like to ignore it, right up to the very end. But, I know I’ll be reviewing all of the platforms, reading plenty of commentary, and arguing about the issues. This would be much more satisfying if the election was actually important. The Federal government seems to be slowly fading into irrelevance.
Emma is very happy with her new bike and is quite a fast rider.
On our ferry trip across to PEI, we caught the attention of the boat’s captain. He was kind enough to let us visit the bridge and take some photos. The setup is pretty amazing, with many radar screens and blinking devices, but all offset by a tiny steering wheel.
Owen’s enjoying the trip.
Yelled at by the owner of the Inlet Cafe in Mahone Bay for some spilled Owen cheerios. Not family friendly, despite the high chairs and …
Out-of-office messages are set, let the vacation begin! Two weeks on a family road trip to the Canadian east coast.
TheStar.com | Opinion | Cash may never be converted into constructionBut using federal dollars for infrastructure has two powerful political advantages. It gives taxpayers something tangible for their money. And it allows cabinet ministers and government backbenchers to fan out across the country, announcing local projects.
Earlier in the 20th century, governments treated public money with the same puritanical respect that people generally treated their own money in a famously frugal age. It wasn’t that these governments never wasted public money, never misused it. It was that they did everything parsimoniously.
But government waste, though infuriating for taxpayers, is a small thing. The real tragedy lies in the inexorable rise in deliberate spending. In the exponential increases cited by Gordon Robertson, across two or three decades, the most unnecessary spending was entirely intentional, duly instigated by government and duly authorized by Parliament.
Unnecessary government spending is no accident - The Globe and Mail
Owen loves being outside (via Flickr)
