Risk assessment, weasel style
Rick Rostrom commented on the last post that Al Gore’s statement about the relationship between reason and fear — while garbled as only Algore can — was based on some real research. Indeed it is.
Specifically, imaging of the brain has recently taught us that the pathways from our emotion gland to our logic lobe are much larger than the pathways leading back the other way. From this (near as I can figure it) Al deduces that it’s easier to frighten people into thinking than it is to think people into being scared.
This is why stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to handle facts (not you Rick — I know you know Al knows nuffink). Analogies about pipelines and highways and streams can only get you so far, and then they drop you over a cliff into a kettle of fish. The “size” of a neurological connection doesn’t necessarily speak to how “easy” it is for information to move. It is likely to have entirely different implications. Say, speed.
Like, I’m a hell of a lot more frightened of getting cancer (logical; there’s a lot of it in my family) than I am being crushed by a grand piano falling from a great height. But if I see a Steinway hurtling toward my head, I’m going to need to jump sideways really, really fast. And then figure out how the fuck a crane got in here, with the low ceilings and all.
I have worked with people who assess risk for engineering projects. They scoff at what they believe is the emotional, irrational way people evaluate personal risk. There’s a sort of math makes it science prejudice about sticking with pure probabilities and leaving sphincter-clenching horror out of the equation. But is that really more sciencier?
Okay, you’re like a willionty-jillion times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. So why do people sweat flying in a way they don’t sweat driving? Wellll…most of us have personal experience of traffic accidents; they range from the truly fucking awful to the merely annoying. A plane wreck, on the other hand — son, you’re going to die. And before you do, you’re probably going to see it coming. Good and hard. Trapped in a small metal box. With a bunch of screaming strangers. And your pants on fire.
Yeah, I think even Spock would add that into his risk evaluation alongside pure numerical probability.
So, how likely a thing is does have to count the most. But other factors do and should count, as well. How horrible it would be. Whether you could prevent it. How predictable it is. How much warning you’re likely to have.
Have you heard the argument that terrorism should be WAY down in our list of priorities because the death count is so small? That there is some serious stupid masquerading as science. Terrorism adds human malice into the equation: a bunch of somebodies aiming all their brainal capacity at sneaking past every safeguard to do something of maximum horror, pain, visibility and surprise. I want a buttload of resources thrown at that creepy shit no matter how much more likely I am to be hit by lightning.
Emotional considerations are a kind of a logic. Thinking is not the opposite of feeling. They can elbow each other out of the way, but they aren’t two different states of the same element.
And poor old Al Gore, who thinks he can use the one to prop up the other, doesn’t have either on his side.
July 9, 2009 — 7:33 pm
Comments: 29
Objects in history may be smaller than they appear…
Yes, you guessed it. In the complex and sophisticated iconography of sweasel.com, this diagram illustrates Gordon Brown getting his ass kicked in the European elections.
And an historic kicking of ass it was! We sat up and watched the regional count. Everybody knew Labour would do badly, but this here debacle was a fucking Greek tragedy of an ass-kicking: the worst Labour has done since 1918 (founded: 1900). The worst a party in power has done in a national election EVER.
Labour lost Cornwall for the first time in decades. They came in sixth. Below the Cornish National Party (Uncle B describes as ten nutters in a pub). This after coming in lower than the Monster Raving Loony Party in St Ives last week.
It was epic.
And meaningless. For now, anyhow. Labour doesn’t have to call an election until May next year, and (from a cravenly political point of view) they’d be nuts to do it any sooner. They’ve got the power, and a year is an eternity in politics. Gordon Brown has dug his heels in and nobody in his camp (so far) has the stomach to give him a push. David Cameron of the Tories is way out front, but he’s still the Lindsay Graham of British politics (now with added Greenie!). The fringe parties are still…fatally fringe-y.
And this was the European election. Voting in this thing is like getting to choose between being smacked upside the head or elbowed in the crotch (hence the pathetic turnout).
Still, Labour got its ass kicked! And it was a hell of a thing to watch.
June 8, 2009 — 8:19 pm
Comments: 16
Take one down, pass it around, 645 snouts in the trough…
So! Michael Martin has stepped down — the first Speaker of the British House of Commons to be forced out in 300 years. Yes, chillun, that is a very big deal.
Corruption, money; the usual. But there’s a whole nother undercurrent here that you and I, Yanks that we be, are apt to miss.
Did you realize Tony Blair is a Scot? Yup. So is Gordon Brown. So are many of the ‘New’ Labour stooges, butt-munches and ass-wipes they brought to power with them in the last twelve years. There’s a huge sense in which the NuLab triumph has been the political ascendancy of Scots over English.
There’s awfully bad blood there, still. There are huge differences in history, in attitude, in economics. The closest thing in the States would be the urban/rural divide, with the Scots playing the role of resource-sucking inner-city welfare queens. Labour stuck a giant funnel in the South and has spent a decade siphoning resources to the North.
Now the Speaker of the House of Commons is a special role in British politics. Much more so than our Speaker, he is supposed to be apolitical. Even-handed. Fair. A peacemaker and judge. He keeps order, decides who speaks. Knows his historical shit. Wears silly britches and gets a special fru-fru apartment. He is known as the First Commoner of the Land.
The Speaker is elected by the whole House, but there’s a tradition that the office should shift back and forth between parties, regardless of which is in power. The last Speaker — who, by all accounts, did an excellent job — was Labour. So this one should really have been Conservative.
But the Blairites, carried away by the throbbing size of their majority in 2000, laughingly dropped a turd on Parliament. Michael Martin is a Glaswegian son of a sailor and a cleaning lady. He left school at fifteen to work sheet metal, but he aspired to higher things — union thug. From union thuggery, it was a short hop to government.
Electing this man Speaker was like making a Teamster roustabout your Miss Manners. He was a gift to the South, and the label said fuck you, snooty English beeyotches. He performed exactly as you’d expect.
This expenses scandal is big and important and touches all the parties. Martin’s resignation is neither the solution nor the end. But the sight of this porker in the trough, up to his hamhocks and squealing for more, was just too much for anyone to bear.
Even some Labour MP’s got on the bandwagon, but the leadership is madder than hell. The question is, will Labour — still very much in the majority for a little while longer — have the brass balls to shatter tradition and force a third Labour Speaker on the House?
May 20, 2009 — 9:00 pm
Comments: 10
Stupider than tacky, or tackier than stupid?
Did you see this on Drudge this weekend? Remember the thing where Hillary gave the Russian foreign minister a toy button that was supposed to say “reset” and in fact said “overstress”? Apparently, some in Russia aren’t absolutely positive it was an accident.
See, this is why you don’t let amateurs fuck around with this diplomacy stuff: there are some paranoid nutjobs with serious power out there. I read somewhere the State Department was pissed about this one. They’ve got tons of proper Russian speakers on staff (duh), but Hillary’s people don’t take advice. I thought she was smarter than that. I really did.
The wrong word? Stupid. Not writing the word in Cyrillic? Tacky. Actually, scratch that — the very idea of giving a foreign minister a toy reset button is prima facie tackier and stupider than fucking up the execution.
Seriously, can you believe the low-rentiness of these people? I thought the smarty pantses were in charge now. College boys. No more Texas goobers embarrassing us on the world stage.
So, what do heads of state give each other? Well, whatever it is, you can bet your ass it would look good in a museum. Gordon Brown gave Obama an ornamental penholder carved from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet. Like that.
What did Obama give Brown? Twenty five DVD’s. Oh. So. Tacky.
DVD’s that won’t play in Britain? Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid. Deeeep stupid.
And her Maj? Giving the richest woman in the world an iPod? Stupid. Putting your own speeches on it next to the Great Moments in History? Tacky. Un-fucking-beLIEVABLY tacky. Britney Spears has a better feel for the tasteful and appropriate.
There’s more to sophistication than putting Dijonnaise on your arugula, sport.
May 11, 2009 — 7:43 pm
Comments: 21
Count Chocula, Hannibal Lecter, James Earl Ray: not welcome in Britain
If you aren’t watching the current British government walk in little circles pee its pants, you’re missing a sweet schadenfreude-y treat. Yesterday’s boob move: revealing that 22 people have been banned from entering the UK in the last nine months. Sixteen of them were named.
Why is that retarded? Wellll, for one thing, there was no particular reason to release that list now. In fact, there’s no practical reason to release it at all. What do we look like, border agents? Why tell us?
For another — eh, go read it. I can just hear the Home Secretary shrieking, “for chrissakes — it’s all Pakistanis and Palestinians! Quick everybody! Think up some evil Jews or Christians or something!”
So they rounded out the list with people who — as far as anyone knows — had no plans to visit Britain.
Think about that — a no-fly list that includes people who didn’t intend to fly. And it took them nine months to think of 22 of them? I mean, if you’re talking purely hypothetically and you have the whole fucking world to choose from, couldn’t you come up with A LOT more than 22 dangerous evil assholes?
And would Michael Savage make your list? Dude. Michael Savage. He’s a rude, mouthy jerk, but come on. He was just sitting in his bathrobe yesterday morning, innocently being his own rude, mouthy jerk self, and bam — some government officially lumps him in with the father rapers and mother stabbers, forbidden by name to travel somewhere he didn’t want to go.
Sue. Sue like the wind!
The Home Office was obviously so desperate to include Righties to break up the monotony of Islamic splodey dopes, they included a pair of Russian skinhead murderers who won’t be out of Russian prison for ten years. A no-fly list that includes people who couldn’t fly if they wanted to and would automatically be rejected as ex-felons in the distant, unlikely possibility that they ever can.
Really, at this point, aren’t you simply making a hypothetical list of the general kinds of things that piss you off?
May 6, 2009 — 7:46 pm
Comments: 18
Eh. He is still risen…
Well, we’ve had a gay old time this week, haven’t we? Making fun of Obama ‘n’ shit?
But now it’s back to wholesome Sussex housewifeblogging for me! For now, anyway.
Why? Because it’s not yet time.
Obama is America’s dreamy new blind date. Took her out to the classy restaurant. Told her she’s beautiful. Oh, it’s all candlelight and heaving bosoms at the moment.
I’ll get back to you when he does a runner out the service entrance and sticks her with the bill.
Of course, there’s a Supreme Court shitstorm coming. And the inevitable red-on-red rumble, now that Democrats control the whole enchilada.
And have I mentioned how British politics has taken a turn for the stupid?
May 1, 2009 — 6:42 pm
Comments: 21
More Whitehouse Foto Funnies
Still having fun with the official Whitehouse Flickr stream. I love this picture. It’s so WTF?
They don’t seem to bear any relationship to each other. Or reality. They’re like lawn ornaments or something.
What happened here? Did they pencil in “putting practice on the White House lawn” for 11? Or was it just spontaneous? You know, hop up, dash out of a meeting and putt, putt, putt? Is there a flunky off-camera holding their coats? Did someone set this up purely for a photo-op? And why?
Lots of the pictures in the stream show Obama and Biden together. Call me crazy, but I’m guessing they don’t really do all that much palling around. If they were smart, they’d keep Mad Uncle Joe in a box and just trot him out for pictures. And putting practice.
Obviously, they aren’t that smart.
April 30, 2009 — 5:42 pm
Comments: 33
Holy shit! Narcissist much?
Whoa! Check out Obama’s signature. I don’t know what a handwriting expert would make of it, but you can take it from a graphic artist (um, that would be me): this is a signature that has been practiced and practiced and fussed over and tinkered with until it’s just the way he wanted it.
This guy filled pages in his notebook with this during Homeroom. And probably Algebra class, too.
This is the John Edwards’ Poofy Bouffant of signatures. And I don’t think it’s an accident that the “O” and the “b” make a sort of Popey orb thing, do you?
Obama’s a lefty, too — I mean, he is left-handed — which makes this even more a labor of love. Lefties have to hover-write to avoid blotting their own copy.
And check out the pen. All the recent guys had their own personalized pens (which they give away after bill signings), but did the others include the president’s signature? I couldn’t find a picture of Dubya’s pen (it was a Cross), but I found Obama’s pen’s coming out photo shoot.
To be fair, it does look a bit like Bush signed his documents “GERBIL.”
April 29, 2009 — 5:39 pm
Comments: 44
As a matter of fact, yes — this *is* why I went to art school
And yes. I do feel better now. Thanks for asking.
April 28, 2009 — 4:30 pm
Comments: 63
Mao Zedong was a poopy head
Looks like the Chinese are getting stroppy again about people mocking Mao. I think that’s our cue to mock Mao, don’t you?
We know tens of millions died in Mao’s famines. Have you ever wondered if it was the passive incompetence of Communism, or whether he was an actively genocidal nutball? To examine the question, I mucho recommendo the book Hungry Ghosts. My copy is in a box somewhere, so I’ll pull this together from memory as best I can. And I’ll try to be brief.
Mao adored science. He was sure science would lift China to world dominance. Unfortunately, he had NO fucking idea what science was. He’d imprisoned most of the real scientists, anyhow, so he just took his best guess:
Communism + enthusiasm = science!
Mao believed nature actually worked on communist principles; that rice plants should be grown as close together as possible, since plants would cooperate, not compete. The propaganda rags of the day claimed elementary schoolchildren were making dramatic genetic breakthroughs in their school gardens during recess; that crops grown with communist methods were so thick, kids were photographed walking across the tops of the wheat stalks (it later came out they were standing on a bench); that it was unnecessary to build new roads when everyone in China would soon have his own personal airplane. Students declared the decimal point bourgeois and demanded the right to place it anywhere they liked. Oh, it was going to be Emerald City, man.
In short, the whole country went bugfuck crazy under Mao’s direction.
But, you know, when your boss is a nutcase who gets annoying people killed, you do your best not to be an annoying person. Provincial governors began to vie with each other who could promise the most balls-out insane wheat production numbers. Using Mao’s methods, you can produce twice as much wheat? Well, we can produce ten times as much! Oh, Yeah? Well, we can produce thirty times what we did last year! And so on. Anyone who didn’t play the game was out.
Beating the West at wheat growing (not really China’s crop) and steel production were Mao’s two biggest obsessions. But “steel production” isn’t what you think: you know, digging up iron ore and smelting it and shit. Oh, no. Peasants were made to build these makeshift furnaces in each village in which they melted down their own tools and utensils and hinges into useless lumps of mongrel metal. I am so not shitting you. AND, when they ran out of firewood, they burned their own furniture and doors to keep the fires going. AND, their best and strongest workers were drafted to run the furnaces (the ones that weren’t already working on wild-ass crazy projects like building earthen dams that would crumble to bits in no time) so that the fields were neglected.
And then, quite coincidentally, China had a bad growing season. Periodic regional famine is historically common in China, but this one — few tools, few workers, desperately wrong-headed stupid farming methods — was set to be a hum-dinger.
But when harvest time came around, Mao gathered his deputies and said, “okay — pony up!” (I paraphrase). And they’re like, “what?” And he goes, “you guys promised me a hundred times the grain we produced last year, so let’s have it!” And they said, “oh! Um. Sure, boss.”
But of course, they couldn’t scrape together half what they’d produced the year before, let alone a hundred times. So they came back to Mao with the only possible explanation: those bastard peasants are hiding it from us!
And, of course, the poor bastards were hiding some. The soldiers had come around again and again rounding up what little food they had, so of course they hid what they could or starved outright. If the peasants were caught hoarding food, they were taken to camps, or beaten to death on the spot. If they didn’t hoard food, they starved or ate dirt and died of stomach cramps. Ttwenty or thirty or even fifty million of them. All the while Mao was giving away food to friendly communist countries and letting much of the rest rot in warehouses. Because they had a hundred times the grain they needed, don’tcha know.
So! Was Mao a drooling bumpkin retard or a homicidal nutcake psycho? Do you know, I still have no idea.
April 17, 2009 — 8:03 pm
Comments: 30