Category: Photo gallery

It looks like a lousy year for fall color. Maples that are usually brilliant red at this time are merely brownish orange. However, roses are doing just fine.

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Today’s forecast. I probably should have stayed in bed.

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If you’re wondering my political affiliation is, it’s with the Wet Blanket Movement:

I too have a fervor—a fever, in fact—for political inactivity. I want to be part of a movement that makes electoral politics so boring that rather than having term limits, we’ll need laws requiring politicians to serve their full term. I want to join a party that make politics and government work so dull that political journalists and elected officials dream of leaving their fields for the exciting worlds of actuarial science and telemarketing.

I want to thrown in my lot with others who want to throw a wet blanket over politics and whose desire is to dampen the enthusiasm for all forms of political activity. I want to consort with citizens who are willing to arrest the ardor, dash the devotion, sap the spirit, and zap the zeal from anything that remotely resembles political enthusiasm. I want to create a new party, dedicated to the mastery of the art of anti-propaganda and committed to the conscientious devotion of alert inactivity.

If this is your dream too, then I hope you’ll join me in the Wet Blanket movement.

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Don’t take seriously what the “experts” predict:

The dismal performance of the experts inspired Mr. Tetlock to turn his case study into an epic experimental project. He picked 284 people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends,” including journalists, foreign policy specialists, economists and intelligence analysts, and began asking them to make predictions. Over the next two decades, he peppered them with questions: Would George Bush be re-elected? Would apartheid in South Africa end peacefully? Would Quebec secede from Canada? Would the dot-com bubble burst? In each case, the pundits rated the probability of several possible outcomes. By the end of the study, Mr. Tetlock had quantified 82,361 predictions.

How did the experts do? When it came to predicting the likelihood of an outcome, the vast majority performed worse than random chance. In other words, they would have done better picking their answers blindly out of a hat. Liberals, moderates and conservatives were all equally ineffective. Although 96% of the subjects had post-graduate training, Mr. Tetlock found, the fancy degrees were mostly useless when it came to forecasting.

(Via Steven.)

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Charles G. Hill on tomorrow’s chore:

I will, of course, continue to perform my civic duty. But every year that nothing is done to curb the politicization of Damn Near Everything, you can expect me to perform it with less enthusiasm. If, two years from now, someone hasn’t thrown Barney Frank into Boston Harbor, I’ll consider the entire two years a complete and utter waste.