The Bleat is in New York:

That's right! LIVE from New York!

Inasmuch as I’m not dead when I’m writing it. This of course is not being posted on the days written, because I don’t feel like telling everyone that I’ve left the house for a while. Unlike Dave Barry, who is content to tell everyone he's on a book tour because no one knows where he lives, and because he has a gator-invested moat and a security staff and a panic room with pnuematic access to a subterranean monorail, I don't broadcast my absences from Jaspewood. This alsso means I will have nothing to say about current events this week - like this Limbaugh thing which is breaking; my gut says guilty. I am also sure that upon hearing the news, Al Franken spronged sufficient wood to knock the table over. In terms of his credibility with his followers, I think Rush just had his Aimee Semple McPherson moment. The faithful will be divided. Short term? His 4Q ratings book is going to rock.

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One of Steven Den Beste's readers comments on how Nazi Germany was all America's fault - according to the idiots.

Sparkey of Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing remembers how Russia saved the American bacon in WWII - according to the idiots.

Critical Mass has a series of posts about how idiots stick together to defend themselves against the competent. (I'll note at this point that my two-thirds of a degree was in Computer Science at an engineering university. Even then, we knew what liberal arts degrees were good for.)

Porphyrogenitus has an excellent post on the issue, noting that turning on the light may make cockroaches scurry for cover, but it doesn't actually deal with the problem. Por' is so dismayed with the ongoing Rise of Incompetence that he is considering closing up shop and moving to Mexico.

Flit, meanwhile, points us to Accuracy in Academia, a group devoted to exposing the idiot wherever** and however he may manifest himself.

Victor Davis Hanson leads a review of the blight of idiocy in American universities at NRO; unfortunately, not only is the web version of this a scanned copy of the print version, but the web designer has set the wrong dimensions for the scanned image, rendering it almost illegible.

What is to be done about this? I have one suggestion. There seems to be far less of a problem in those areas of study that are actually useful for something, science and engineering, mathematics, accounting, and so on. It's the worthwhile-but-not-immediately-applicable fields that have suffered the worst of the infection.

When I was studying at Kenso Kindy*** science and engineering students - the majority of the student body - were required to pass a certain number of liberal arts subjects in order to graduate. The aim, it seems, was to produce a more well rounded engineer, one who could make polite conversation at the dinner table. There was much grumbling among the students over this, because the opposite was not true; that is, liberal arts students (we in Australia simply refer to these as "arts" students) were not required to pass any practical subjects.

I think it would make a huge difference to the value of a liberal arts education if this were to become a requirement. Every history or English major, every student of political science or "women's studies", should be required to take and pass a certain minimum number of courses in mathematics, science and engineering.

Of course, we know now - as we knew then - why this isn't done: They'd all fail. But I don't see this as a bad thing.

* Said bloggers mostly refer to these individuals as Leftists, but what they really are is idiots. The problem is not so much one of political leaning - though that is often how it expressed - but of incompetence.

** Within academia, anyway.

*** That is, Kensington Kindergarten, a.k.a. the University of New South Wales, located in Kensington, Sydney.

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Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Moind's Fourth Postulate

The degree of certainty in one's level of competency is inversely proportional to the actual level.

Corollaries:

1. The hopelessly incompetent are absolutely certain of their abilities.

2. The competent always have sensible doubts, precisely for the reason that they can realistically assess the situation.

3. The incompetent never realize they are incompetent, precisely for the reason that they lack the competence necessary to discern the difference.

4. The work of the incompetent tends to be superficial and bombastic. By extension of Corollary 3, they are completely unaware of this and usually regard their work as profound and important. The converse also tends to be true: those who regard their work as profound and important usually have an unrealistic appreciation of their abilities (or lack thereof).

5. The incompetent tend to hire people like themselves, since, for obvious reasons, they do not find their own kind threatening. Moreover, they usually confuse the sensible doubts of the competent (see Corollary 2) with a bad attitude, and the overconfidence of the incompetent (see Corollary 4) with great promise.

6. The competent are only tolerated because they are needed to perform all the necessary tasks that the incompetent regard as beneath them, but which are, in reality, beyond their ability.

7. The truly gifted don't even think about any of this. They just do their thing. The converse, however, is far from true.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:29 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The less practical blamed spirits, or when that failed to satisfy, other people.

Today, illness is well on its way to being a historical field rather than a practical one, and the most likely problem we are to have with any large predator is getting it out of a Harlem apartment without hurting it. The problems we have today are almost entirely of our own making. Occasionally, the forces of nature remind us that they are not in fact, tamed, and blow over a few trailers or collapse a building or two. Sometimes this involves loss of life, which is sad. But it is a rare news item that is news for any reason other than its effect on humanity. A comet colliding with Jupiter is still big news, and I'm glad of this, but it is short-lived compared with the latest celebrity divorce or murder trial.

So, if our problems are of our own making, why are we doing this to ourselves? When we have most of the tools to make this world a paradise, why is one-third of it a pest-hole, and another third a slum?

I can see three reasons. The first is error. We all make mistakes. We are human, and as humans we are flawed. Whether you are religious, and believe that God made us as imperfect vessels with free will, or you are not, and recognise that two pounds of grey gloop driving ten stone of meat and offal is not a recipe for arithmetic precision, it is an observable fact that humans make mistakes. We get things wrong. We screw up.

Mistakes will be with us until the day when we are no longer human, because they are part of what we are. We can, and do, minimise our mistakes, and the impact they have; we make plans, take precautions; we practise, we train; we are careful. And when we make a mistake, we try to fix it. Of course, that doesn't always help...

But mistakes are a known factor, and we deal with them. They cannot explain most of what is wrong with the world, not on the large scale.

The second cause of trouble is what I will call evil. Some people have trouble with this word, considering it too simplistic a judgement for something as complex as a human being. But when we consider a figure like Hitler, or more recently, Saddam Hussein (and even more so, his sons)

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Moind's Fourth Postulate

The degree of certainty in one's level of competency is inversely proportional to the actual level.

Corollaries:

1. The hopelessly incompetent are absolutely certain of their abilities.

2. The competent always have sensible doubts, precisely for the reason that they can realistically assess the situation.

3. The incompetent never realize they are incompetent, precisely for the reason that they lack the competence necessary to discern the difference.

4. The work of the incompetent tends to be superficial and bombastic. By extension of Corollary 3, they are completely unaware of this and usually regard their work as profound and important. The converse also tends to be true: those who regard their work as profound and important usually have an unrealistic appreciation of their abilities (or lack thereof).

5. The incompetent tend to hire people like themselves, since, for obvious reasons, they do not find their own kind threatening. Moreover, they usually confuse the sensible doubts of the competent (see Corollary 2) with a bad attitude, and the overconfidence of the incompetent (see Corollary 4) with great promise.

6. The competent are only tolerated because they are needed to perform all the necessary tasks that the incompetent regard as beneath them, but which are, in reality, beyond their ability.

7. The truly gifted don't even think about any of this. They just do their thing. The converse, however, is far from true.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Well, not literally. Back in February, after a few months of blessed non-employment (just as it was moving from extended holiday to out of work), I was offered a job with a company I had previously worked for. This job, Job X, involved a certain amount of system administration, web mastering, network tweaking and so on. Only a short-term thing, but once things were sorted out, I would move on to Job Y, which involved producing complex analyses of very large data archives. Since those data archives were not yet available, there was plenty of time for me to work on Job X while they were prepared.

Which was all well and good, until management decided that they were unhappy with the person performing Job Z, and started looking for a replacement. Since I had previously performed Job Z myself, I was the perfect candidate. And since I had the most critical parts of X under control by then, and the databases for Y were still not available, I was not exactly overworked at the time, and it was hard to avoid Z even if I had wanted to.

So I took on Z, which turned out to be in something of a mess. I started sorting out the mess, and handling new Z-related projects as they came down the pipeline. There was a fair bit of work involved, but I was dealing with it and things were getting easier.

Then the databases for Y arrived. Suddenly I had more work than could reasonably be done, and all of it was needed now. Suffice to say that there was rather less blogging time for Pixy.

The worst of it seems to be over now, and as I move into blessed October, I hope to be bringing you more of the anime reviews, funny news items, and incoherent rants that a few of you were accustomed to.

Also, thanks to the wonders of percussive maintenance, I have fixed the light bulb in my microwave.

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No, I won't tell you who.

Yes, I'm a big meanie.

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Alas, my snooze button only gives me five minutes. I really should do something about that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:13 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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On my way home from the salt mines this evening, I dropped in on my friend Richard, who owns a book store. (Dymocks on the corner of Pitt and Hunter streets in Sydney.) I was looking for a copy of Kushiel's Chosen, the sequel to Kushiel's Dart, the latter having been my bedtime reading material these last few nights.

Normally I avoid long fantasy novels; it's a rare author who can hold my interest for eight hundred pages (much less ten volumes of eight hundred pages each). But when work gets particularly hectic, I sometimes find it hard to get to sleep, because my mind is still buzzing hours after my body has left the office. During one particularly wearing project I read the entire Recluce series, something I wouldn't contemplate when my brain was functioning normally.

As I was saying, for the past week my sleeping pill of choice has been Kushiel's Dart. This book - I don't know how many of you have read it - this book has the same strange attraction as a road accident. You know that you don't want to look; you know what you will see if you do look, and you know that you won't like it. But you have to look anyway, just to have your fears confirmed.

Kushiel's Dart takes place in an elegantly conceived world, with most of the story occurring in a version of France called Terre D'Ange, the land of angels. The D'Angelines are literally descended from angels, and consider themselves something of a breed apart from normal mortals. More beautiful and longer lived.

Though, I must say, rather less intelligent.

The well named Eight Deadly Words in story-telling are I don't care what happens to these people. That's not quite the feeling Kushiel's Dart inspires. Rather, it is a case of I would quite enjoy seeing the villains of the piece being disembowelled and buried upside down in a nest of fire ants. As for the heroes, well, they all need to be whacked upside the head with a clue-by-four, and then sent off to trade school so they can become good and useful members of society.

Post-hole diggers, perhaps. Latrine attendants.

The story is told by Phedre, a masochistic whore sold into slavery by her parents. Her role in the tale is almost entirely passive; she is tossed about on the sea of events and rarely takes a hand in anything. Even when, late in the book, she makes a heroic bid to get a vital message through to a besieged town, there is little sense of excitement or adventure. And she is promptly captured anyway.

The book has been described as erotic, but if you find some of the sex scenes in Kushiel's Dart erotic, then you are a very disturbed individual. The whips, well, those were bad enough, but when Phedre finally gets together with Melisande and the Warning: If you are easily squicked, stop reading now. I mean it! scalpels come out, well... Ugh.

If I had written this book, it would have been about six hundred pages shorter, because Phreddie would have driven a stake through Mel's heart right after that scene. Or possibly even before. Maybe that's why I'm not a best-selling author. Or maybe it's because I haven't finished writing my first book yet.

Well, anyway, I never claimed to be able to resist a good train wreck, so I went to look for Kushiel's Chosen. I didn't spot it immediately, because someone neglected to inform the people stocking the shelves that Card (Orson Scott) comes before Carey (Jacqueline).

What I did find while I was browsing, though, was a copy of A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, in the wonderful Fantasy Masterworks series, and - completely unlooked for - a new Terry Pratchett novel, Monstrous Regiment.

Well, that goes straight to the top of my to-be-read pile, of course. And since I have nothing planned for the weekend other than setting up a blog or two, maybe a forum, and a little light house keeping,* I may as well go get started on it now.

See you all in the morning.

* Trim the wick, clean the lenses, sound the foghorn, that sort of thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:13 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Which is as it should be, given the architecture of Movable Type. MT is strongly biased in favour of fast, low overhead reading, whereas the writing - adding new posts, and, unfortunately, leaving comments - can be very CPU intensive.

If you've noticed that leaving comments on MT-based blogs is rather slow, this is why: when you leave a comment, MT is forced to rebuild any pages containing the post that you are commenting on, which may include the main index, an individual archive entry, a category archive (which can get quite large), and one or more date-based archives (daily, weekly, monthly). Even if the only change to those pages is to say "3 comments" instead of "2 comments", MT needs to pull all the appropriate entries from its database, and reprocess those entries according to their respective templates (which amount to a complete programming language). It doesn't help that MT is written in Perl (not the fastest language in which to do this sort of thing) and is a CGI application (so none of this can happen in the background).

On the other hand, it handles 35,000 page views in a day with perfect aplomb.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:54 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Did I mention that I hate SPEWS? I did? Good.

I also hate spammers. Which I hate more varies from hour to hour, but I'd like to see both groups dragged off in chains to build aqueducts in Albania or something.

I will now resume my usual quiet seething.

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