Lecture to myself

Over the past few weeks, I’ve experienced a string of financial and personal set-backs. These setbacks include various major car repair bills, some aches and pains, a minor auto accident (no injuries), and just when I was resigning myself to simply pay the bills and deal with the aches and pains, my iPhone fell out of its holster at the grocery store tonight. I made a call while in the store, then noticed that I didn’t have my phone when I got into my car. I scoured the parking lot with a flashlight, then retraced all of my steps within the store. No phone could be found. The store employees helped out, and then didn’t find anything either. The off-duty cop said to consider it stolen—the crooks remove the sim cards and sell the phones. I was angry tonight, because I was obsessed on the obvious point that some bastard stole my phone instead of turning it in. That is also a rather narrow view of justice, I’ll admit. Who knows what kind of torment the iPhone thief experienced. Maybe he (I’ll assume it was a he) was born into an extremely shitty family and never recovered from that. Not that some people don’t show extraordinary resilience, but these relatively rare exceptions don’t mean that we should expect extraordinary accomplishments from most ordinary people. But I digress. [more . . . ]

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Comprehensive list of cognitive biases

The next time someone mentions that humans are "rational" you might want to refer them to Wikipedia's list of dozens of cognitive biases. How handy to have all of these biases listed in one place. The list includes each of the following biases, each of them liked to specific Wikipedia articles. Decision-making and behavioral biases Bandwagon effect Base rate fallacy Bias blind spot Choice-supportive bias Confirmation bias Congruence bias Contrast effect Denomination effect Distinction bias Endowment effect Experimenter's or Expectation bias Extraordinarity bias Focusing effect Framing Hyperbolic discounting Illusion of control Impact bias Information bias Interloper effect Irrational escalation Just-world phenomenon Loss aversion Mere exposure effect Money illusion Moral credential effect Need for Closure Negativity bias Neglect of probability Normalcy bias Omission bias Outcome bias Planning fallacy Pseudocertainty effect Reactance Restraint bias Selective perception Semmelweis reflex Status quo bias Von Restorff effect Wishful thinking Zero-risk bias Biases in probability and belief Ambiguity effect Anchoring effect Attentional bias Authority bias [More . . . ]

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When does Afghanistan officially qualify as a “quagmire”?

We've now been in Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam, with a similar amount of progress. American casualties are again on the rise, along with the power of the Taliban. The new general in charge, General Petraeus, assures us that he will continue to try to minimize civilian casualties, so long as that doesn't interfere too much with his plans to bomb the hell out of the country. Our rules to protect civilians were a bit too "bureaucratic" for his liking--not that they actually worked, in any case. The now-infamous Rolling Stone profile of General McChrystal has this to say:

In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent[!] from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over. In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S. forces accidentally shot up a bus, killing five Afghans. "We've shot an amazing number of people," McChrystal recently conceded.
The Rolling Stone piece mysteriously left out the next part of McChrystal's statement. Here's the full quotation (emphasis mine):
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

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The chase is on

This video shows a neutrophil, a type of white blood cell, chasing down and engulfing a bacteria in the midst of field of red blood cells. Amazing agility, considering that the neutrophil is a single-celled organism! Visit this post to go one even one step deeper. Or check out "Powers of Ten" for ramping up or down in your search for awe.

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