-
Pundits Are Wrong About Everything
03 March 2009
Writing about Jonah Lehrer’s book on decision making in The Sunday Times, I didn’t mention the findings of Philip Tetlock at Berkeley. He studied pundits and discovered they were, to a rough approximation, always wrong when making predictions. He took 284 pundits and asked them questions about the future. Their performance was worse than chance. With three possible answers, they were right less than 33 per cent of the time. A monkey chucking darts would have done better. This … More
-
Not the Tamils?
03 March 2009
Somebody just said it wasn’t the Tamil Tigers. Then who was it?
-
Frank’s Fin
03 March 2009
I wouldn’t normally draw your attention to this. But you need to read it because it contains the following:
‘The mechanism functions like a wing to generate a lift force which is directed forward and turned into thrust,’ says Frank Fish, a marine biologist at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. -
More News from the End of the World
02 March 2009
1)Here’s what a recession/slump/depressions looks like.
2)Surreally large number of the day…
3)…and the implications of that number…
4).. and yet, for some reason, the Doomsday Clock still stands at five minutes to midnight. (In fact, I’m rapidly losing my faith in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Their timeline says nothing about the Cuban Missile Crisis when they should have been at one second to midnight.)
5)Fred the Shred will keep his wedge. His home address is… no better … More -
Comment on the Captain
02 March 2009
Captain B calls to, among other things, complain that not enough people are commenting on his blog. This may be because people fear to take him on; his knowledge can be intimidating. So, boys and girls, get over there and tell him what you think about, among other things, Eric Hobsbawm.
-
Danny Boyle via Ray and Radcliffe
02 March 2009
As a result of a horrendous scheduling problem lasting the entire length of my life until yesterday, I always seem to have something to do other than watch Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. This, considering Kurosawa said ‘Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun and the moon‘, was a pretty serious oversight. Anyway, Kurosawa’s right. I am two thirds of the way through and utterly stricken by Ray’s ability to … More
-
For Jim
01 March 2009
More empirical evidence of the reality of climate change. As I’ve said before, it is the empirical evidence, not the climate models, that destroy the sceptics’ case. Even sceptic Frank is beginning to see the light through the medium of James Lovelock, a man I am very proud to call a friend. Jim might even convert sceptic Nige with this question: ‘When did you last sit down on a warm grassy bank in the sun and … More
-
News of Our Leaders
01 March 2009
Catholic contraception is the inspiration for Obama’s Iraq policy – responsible withdrawal.
Spring is round the corner and everybody’s gone Sarkozy Krazy. He recently privately told – Thought Experiments exclusive here – a group of academics that the great thing about being president is the money you can make afterwards, not, he added, that he needed it – flashes flashy watch – now that he was married to Carla. A few weeks ago he said he may not stand for … More -
Gormley and Decisions, Decisions
28 February 2009
In The Sunday Times I interview Antony Gormley and I write about the science of decision making. Links here tomorrow.
Sunday, here they are: Gormers and decisions. -
Clint
28 February 2009
I have never been able to assess works of art in terms of their politics. It always seems like a category error, as in ‘I don’t like Hamlet because I don’t agree with it.’ I’ll make a brief exception in the case of Clint Eastwood’s superb Gran Torino. It is patriotic, but in such an ambivalent way that, if they are paying attention, it will irritate the right; it is liberal but in such a politically incorrect way that, if … More
- Tax Property Now
- Europe versus America
- Frozen Hearted
- John Bolton and the Decline of America
- Bloggery 2
- Ricky Gervais
- Gordon’s Birthday Box
- Milton Keynes Discovered off Moroccan Coast
- The Symmetry of the Contemporary
- RBS Idiots
- Melvyn Bragg: The Mark of the Mother
- The Future According to Google
- Osborne’s Tears for Thatcher
- Tom Waits: Growling Through the Grain
- Bedford Park: The Enchanted Suburb
- The New Ritual of Dying in Public
- Museums: The Price of Free
- Rage Against the Machines
- Mohsin Hamid: Help for the Dislocated Self
- Tony Versus the Philistines
