I loathe pigeons. “Skyrats,” I call them, and I annoy ’Pong by chasing them into oncoming buses. But yesterday we found a pigeon struggling to walk because its legs had become entangled in string or something — and we tried to catch it to set it free. Why did we bother? Logically, it’s inconsistent. What does that say about us?
Mute sheep means beastility goes unpunished
A man who was accused of having sex with a sheep has walked free because the animal was unable to testify. Under Dutch law, bestiality is not a crime unless it can be proved the animal didn’t want to have sex.
“Billionaire denies building secret sex lair”
Yep, that’s got to be the headline of the day, and I don’t understand why the Snarky Platypus didn’t find it first.
America’s 160th richest person, a billionaire who made his money from the 1990s hi-tech boom, has been accused of planning to build a “secret and convenient lair” underneath his California mansion dedicated to drug-taking and sex with prostitutes…
Kenji Kato worked for Mr [Henry] Nicholas as an assistant for seven years and alleges the tycoon ordered him to provide balloons filled with the laughing gas nitrous oxide for guests at parties held by the businessman. Guests’ drinks would be spiked with powdered ecstasy pills, he alleges.
Well, there goes my plan to write a couple of serious essays today… Thanks to Marc Andreessen for the tip.
Saturday Night at The Duke
It’s 8am, a crisp winter morning. 11C outside. I drag a battered flannelette shirt over my t-shirt — a shirt that’s now 12 years old, I remember.
I bought it at Gowings when I first came to Sydney, and it’s still wearable, more or less. Where will I buy everyday clothes now that Gowings is gone?
The shirt smells of smoke. Why is that?
It’s not the acrid stench of cigarette smoke, but the dusty odour of burnt wood. Eucalyptus. A bushfire? Ah, no, I remember now. Sitting by the open fireplace at The Duke Hotel… red wine… the memories flood back as the coffee kicks in…
Quote of the Day, 31 July 2007
Overheard on King Street South, Newtown, on Sunday afternoon: “No, they’re not lesbians, they’re just two fat chicks.”
Remember the Dunning-Kruger Effect!
I’ve just stumbled across something which helps explain a lot about the world: the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.
Manifestations include:
- incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
- incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
- if they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
This certainly applies to a news story I stumbled across today: Texas has appointed an anti-intellectual creationist as the head of their schools board. A school head who thinks education is a bad thing?