Uncle Albert's Cafe and Ǽ-Theory Bistro

Well there's the classic joke about perfectly good aeroplanes.....
The key language issue is something like the following - "in nearly all cases of death by parachute failure, the Sun rose in the Eastern sky that morning." This is the methodology of countless headlines, fear and hubris campaigns.

- true but utterly bland statement(s)

- suggests to the reader an inference by juxtaposition, but can be defended otherwise on literal grounds.

- generously does not mention the converse proposition "on those days when death by parachute failure did not occur, the Sun rose in the Eastern sky that morning."

- or indeed doesn't adequately encompass the entire truth - "on any given day, a death by parachute failure may or may not occur, the Sun rises in the East in either case."

I read Freakonomics a couple of years ago. My favorite piece was on the logic of drug dealing. As for economics generally - well yes, people do lie and obfuscate. The "unknown unknowns" are in the other guy's head! Given that money can be defined as 'delayed reciprocal gifting', then the trick ( for personal gain ) is to extend-deferment/diffuse-returns/degrade-value. You can analyse most transactions in that format, with banking the foremost example. :-)

Cheers, Mike.

[sarcasm set to turbo]
We have a Royal Commission into last year's bush fires here in Victoria. And what a splendid outing for all the armchair experts it has been. None of whom, alas, had given any timely warning of what they now claim to have known with contemporaneous certainty. Nor had they attempted to intervene at the right moments with key advice on the day. Odd that. And a real shame considering what may have been averted .....
[/sarcasm set to turbo]

Gives the title 'consultant' a bad rep, I'm afraid. One chap who self-designated as a 'bushfire expert' had a beard down to his navel. Anyone who has ever worked on a fire-ground will readily deduce the level of his knowledge from that fact alone!

Cheers, Mike.

It is so spooky. I was just viewing ( for the n'th time ) some episodes of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister last nite. T'is a true gem that never dulls ....

Actually alot has re-surfaced on the first anniversary. Understandably. The whole gamut of responses that one would expect. Not alot of positives. My 'nicest' memory of the events, for what it's worth, was seeing some utterly spectacular helicopter flying skills first hand - the water bombing of a ridge adjacent our house by one of the orange sky-cranes. Amazing machines crewed by amazing people! :-)

Cheers, Mike.

On re-reading I've noticed ( my emphasis ):

indicating that they probably don't know the worst of it! Why emulate physics? They should go for engineering models which are far more helpful in real life. My Dad was a civil engineer for over forty years - my local landscape is littered with the ( excellent! ) works he designed : mainly bridges, roads, watercourses and reservoirs. One has particular memory for me, a ( large for it's day ) header tank for the town's water supply on a nearby hill. As a naughty child I cut my hand on the sharp end of reinforcing wire issuing from concrete form work during it's construction. Those were the days when you could go to work with one's Dad, and yes he did tell me not to go near it! His base rule, well prior to the days of design refinement by computer modeling, was the 'safety factor' approach. Take your best estimate from known data, then pad by a multiple or three. Bear-Stearns could have done with a bit of that. My father virtually never submitted the cheapest quote upon tender, and rarely the most expensive either. Nothing has ( yet ) fallen over though .... :-)

Cheers, Mike.