This is for all my former colleagues … As usual Scott Adams’s Dilbert cartoon strip gets it in one in the last two days …
I feel for you guys still having to suffer this nonsense!
For All My Former Colleagues
All posts by Keith
Bad Guy Think
© Scott Adams
A couple of excellent, if slightly cynical, quotes from Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) in an article in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday 5 June on why one should invest in companies you hate (sic).
CEOs are highly skilled in a special form of lying called leadership.
Every investment expert knows two truths about investing: 1) Past performance is no indication of future performance. 2) You need to consider a company’s track record. Right, yes, those are opposites.
Religion and Sex
“Religion** is bad for your sex life”, at least according to Dr Emily Nagoski. And she should know as she’s a college health (and sex) educator in Massachusetts, with a doctorate in Health Behaviour and Human Sexuality and other degrees in counselling and psychology. What I like is that she holds very firm and forthright views and isn’t afraid to air them. In what she calls “my most offensive post yet” she says why she believes religion is bad for your sex life and how it is that she cannot choose to believe and have any faith. Here are a few snippets:
Religion** is bad for your sex life. I don’t mean it doesn’t help, I mean it’s actively destructive […]
[…] religion is bad both at the individual level and at the cultural level. Individually, it results in inhibitions, shame, fear, guilt, bias against others, and acceptance of gender-based stereotypes. Culturally it results in the oppression of women and sexual minorities […] and the obstruction of the scientific study of sexuality.
But the worst thing about religion is that it makes it okay to just believe shit because you want to. No religion, no matter how liberal, escapes that.
[…] I think faith/religiosity is an innate part of human psychology. I think human belief in an invisible family in the sky is either product or byproduct of evolution. However, it is, for no apparent reason, NOT an innate part of MY psychology […]
I know that the experience of faith is both real and important for lots of people, and I know it offends them when I discuss faith as a form of self-delusion, but I genuinely don’t understand, plain old don’t understand […] how a person can CHOOSE to believe in something.
They choose to believe it because it makes them feel good. And I think this characterizes MOST people. I think MOST people are able to believe more or less anything they like the sound of. Indeed we’ve made a virtue of it. Just BELIEVE. It’s The Secret, ya know. […]
[…] most of the work I do related to religion involves trying to untangle the knots religion has knit into a person’s sexuality. In my experience, in 90% or more cases religion has caused some form of damage to a person’s sexuality […]
Which is sort of interesting in that it says what I have wondered for many years. Mind I wouldn’t go so far as Emily, I think — at least not a stridently. And just because I don’t believe any any form of overarching deity(s) (I just don’t need them, or anyone, to decide my morals for me) doesn’t mean I would deny such a crutch to anyone else.
No, what was interesting for me was that someone who should know, and should be in a position to see, has the courage to say that religion has an adverse effect on sexuality and thus by implication on other taboo areas of health.
But do go and read the original post in full for yourselves. It’s interesting even if you don’t/can’t agree with it. And there is a (surprising good natured) discussion in the comments too.
** By religion Emily means ANY and ALL religions.
Adams Complexity Threshold
The eponymous author of the Scott Adams Blog (yes, that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert) a couple of days ago wrote a prescient piece about complexity. It’s worth reading the piece, including the comments, in their entirity. But here’s a taster:
The Adams Complexity Threshold is the point at which something is so complicated it no longer works.
The Gulf oil spill is probably a case of complexity reaching the threshold. It was literally impossible for anyone to know if the oil rig was safe or not. The engineering was too complex. I’m sure management thought it was safe, or hoped it was safe, or hallucinated that it was safe. It wasn’t possible to know for sure …
It’s our nature to blame a specific person for a specific screw-up, but complexity is what guarantees mistakes will happen and won’t be caught …
Complexity is often a natural outgrowth of success. Man-made complexity is simply a combination of things that we figured out how to do right, one layered on top of the other, until failure is achieved.
And from the comments:
I think government has a lot to do with adding complexity. Some failure happens and those in charge feel they have to earn their constituents votes by “doing something.” This usually results in regulations that work as well as the Maginot Line stopped Hitler …
Humans just can’t leave well enough alone. When (insert anything here) works perfectly the human race will re-refine it into incompetence. Why? Because eventually, no matter how incredibly efficient something is there’s always some Wag out there insisting it could be better. Even though there’s no rational reason to tinker with it, eventually people buy into the need for “continuous improvement” until the entire thing collapses …
“In simplicity is power.”
Why is it that so few can see this? Oh, sorry, Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome.
Driving through the Forest
Here’s another experimental photo. This is a montage of a series of (disconnected) shots taken from the car while driving down the A11 through Thetford Forest near Elveden. (And no, I wasn’t driving!)
You’ll want to look at a larger version and it looks better viewed on black.
Queen's Beasts at Kew
You’ll probably want to look at this in a larger size.
We went to Kew Gardens last week, with an American friend who was staying and had a free afternoon to do something different. While there I fulfilled by wish to photograph the ten Queen’s Beasts in front of the Palm House. The beasts represent the genealogy of Queen Elizabeth II. They are (from L to R):
• White Greyhound of Richmond
• Yale of Beaufort
• Red Dragon of Wales
• White Horse of Hanover
• Lion of England
• White Lion of Mortimer
• Unicorn of Scotland
• Griffin of Edward III
• Black Bull of Clarence
• Falcon of the Plantagenet
These aren’t great photos, so I’ll probably redo them next I go to Kew.
And there’s a bit more about the Queen’s Beasts on Wikipedia.
On Wild-Life and Adolescence
I’ve just finished reading My Natural History by Simon Barnes. Barnes is the award-winning Chief Sports Writer for the Times as well as a great wildlife enthusiast and ornithologist who has travelled the world in search of both sport and wildlife. He is erudite, as befits one who is so hugely well read, and a fan of Anthony Powell’s Dance, often working Powellian references into his sports writing.
My Natural History is written in Barnes’s light, forthright and eminently readable style. In 23 short chapters it tells the stories of significant moments in Barnes’s fifty-odd years in all of which he finds a wildlife connexion – many indeed being centred around wildlife. The tales vary from great achievements (mostly of the wildwood; always understated), through great loves to the occasional disturbing poignancy. It is short, light, bedtime reading, and no worse for that for it could easily be sub-titled “How to be a Success without any Effort while Remaining Interesting and Human”.
As a example of his insight be writes this apropos his (no, anyone’s) adolescence:
Does that [an idealistic, youthful vision] sound frightfully adolescent? Well, so it bloody well should. We were bloody adolescents. Why do we sneer at adolescence? Why, when we look back in maturity at the wild notions and the demented hopes and the illogical beliefs and the ephemeral soul-deep passions of our adolescence, do we feel it our duty to sneer? Or apologise? Why do we not instead believe that adolescence is not a cursed but a blessed period of life: a white-water ride down the river of time. These rapids are not a place to spend a lifetime, but they are an essential transitional process if you wish to be an adult with any kind of life, any kind of passion, any kind of meaning. True, the stuff we came up with was half-baked: but then neither it nor we had been in the oven for terribly long. We were celebrating our newness, our rawness, celebrating the irrefragable fact that life was all before us: for us to change, for us to be changed irretrievably by.
Pink Spire
Pink Horse Chestnut, originally uploaded by kcm76.
Just to brighten up a dull and wet bank holiday Saturday, here’s a spire of Red Horse Chestnut (probably Aesculus × carnea) flowers.
Quote: Furry Animals
I like small furry animals – as long as they’re tasty
[Lisa Jardine]
Martin Gardner, RIP
Martin Gardner, scientific skeptic and maths puzzler has died at the age of 95. Although maybe best known, at least in scientific circles, for his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American, for me he will be remembered for his The Annotated Alice which has gone through several editions and numerous reprints; it remains one of my all-time favourite books.
There are short obits here and here.
And you can find all his books available on Amazon.