Interesting article entitled Trust Isn’t Transitive (or, “Someone fired a gun in an airplane cockpit, and it was probably the pilot”) about a recent accidental/negligent discharge in a 747 by a pilot’s gun:

Let’s look at this quote from the article in question, attributed to Mike Boyd: “if somebody who has the ability to fly a 747 across the Pacific wants a gun, you give it to them.” This is a horribly flawed assumption, because it assumes that trust is transitive, when clearly it isn’t.

The reason trust isn’t transitive is because trust is most often based on data regarding the past which allows us to make assumptions about specific competence, quality of performance, and behaviors in the future.

We can assume that a trained pilot, when facing piloty thingies, will act like a trained pilot. WE CANNOT ASSUME THAT A TRAINED PILOT WILL ACT LIKE A TRAINED LION-TAMER WHEN FACING A WILD LION.

Skills from one domain cannot simply be moved from that domain to another

And the great example:

…many pilots will tell you that jet pilots are much more like to die on a motorcycle than they are on a plane, because they act stupid on motorcycles.

Brief article on getting a nonprofit job from the NY Times

Q. What are the biggest misconceptions about switching from the corporate world to the nonprofit world?

A. Many people are surprised to find the hours longer and stress greater than in the corporate world. Brian Olson, who left the private sector for a nonprofit in 2006, found the decision-making process to be unfocused.

“No matter how good a volunteer board is, it’s not the same as a corporate board, because everyone has a different agenda,” said Mr. Olson, who returned to the private sector a year later to be vice president for public affairs at Video Professor Inc., a company in Lakewood, Colo., that sells self-tutorial programs. “There was a purity to corporate life I missed,” he said.

There is value, he said, to “a company just getting the job done based on the needs of the marketplace.”

Makes me think of my friend’s snarky t-shirt idea: “Get a Nonprofit Career: Make a difference in someone’s life. Your own.” or simply “Nonprofit jobs let you feel good about yourself”.

“Limiting the CIA’s interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet…” President W. Bush on his veto of a CIA waterboarding ban. Of course, the Operating Manual for Guantanamo Bay Prison is on the internet too. But then again, apparently Guantanamo isn’t effective either.

Ran across a Slashdot comment that neatly summarizes my evolution of computer preference:

I used to hate Apple for the same reasons that you prefer non-Apple products: I like to feel like I have control and figure out how things work, etc. However I got a Macbook Pro for school to go with my PC I’ve had for ages. The fact is, I don’t use my PC anymore because as much as like messing with things, I’d rather they work 99% of the time and I’m willing to sacrifice the nerdiness and wasted time getting things to work in order to successfully use my comp when I need to. Of course, I was running XP but I cannot deal with it any more. I was trying to use it again yesterday, I don’t know how I used Windows for my whole life until now. Nothing works! Everything crashes, games just choke to the point of hard shutdowns being a requirement despite having enough processing power, RAM, video card power etc (I invested a lot into my system). I just can’t deal with it anymore because I feel like kicking the thing everytime I turn it on. Ideally, I’d move over to Linux and although I’ve tried a few times, it’s always delegated to a secondary OS because it still can’t support everything 100% without tons of excess effort. However Linux at least combines stability with the nerdiness factor, after using Windows for years thinking getting things to work proved my 1337ness, I realized it was just that Windows couldn’t handle shit and I was proving my 1337ness but for no real reason.. getting things to run that a normal user may have trouble with is good, but it’s also pointless. I know this probably reads like a troll but it’s the absolute truth from my perspective and I’m only saying it in response to the parent who has similar views to my old self.

Also to add, I do think Macs, and especially their applications are less likely to crap out than Windows apps—or at least Mac apps are built with much more care and forethought. And when Mac apps do fail, it’s more likely to be a critical flaw than a Windows application where spending 30 minutes mucking about in .dll files or the registry might fix. And at this point in my life, I prefer a soft sigh and moving on rather than than mucking about with what in the end is only a 25% success rate and never involves something mission critical.)

A New York Times article on paying kids based on their standardized test scores:

…a seventh-grade English class was asked one morning if there were too many standardized tests. Every hand in the room shot up to answer with a defiant yes. But at the same time, the students all agreed that receiving money for doing well on a test was a good idea, saying it made school more exciting, and made doing well more socially acceptable.

Sounds an awful lot like the standard beef with millenials: entitlement and “everyone gets a trophy”. Of course, 7th graders are too young to be millenials, so maybe millenials are already in school administrative positions. The eldest (born 1981) would be 27.

I got one of those “write your congress-critter right now!” emails and tried to do so. But apparently Free Press’s anti-telecom immunity form didn’t like me: We’re sorry, but based on your address, you are not eligible to take this alert. This may be because the alert is restricted to particular states or to constituents of particular representatives. Guess I’ll try emailing him direct.

Update:Just got an email saying that Free Press was having some technical issues that are now fixed (PS they use Convio to route representative messages).

Dear Michael Capuano,

Please do not grant legal immunity to telephone companies for turning over our private phone records to the government. This is not an issue of national security but of one of the upholding due process and the rule of law in our great country.

As a patriotic and freedom loving American, I understand that extraordinary measures must be taken when those freedoms are in peril. But such measures must take place legally and through the time-tested methods our forefathers established within the Constitution and our system of laws.

Please do not reward the White House for seeking to overturn the checks and balances of the Constitution and our rule of law. Please do not excuse the unlawful actions of telecom companies in turning over private information without legal cause.

Thank you, Ben Sheldon

.!.

Read a fun article about Breakfast Cereals via a comment on breakfast cupcakes, err, muffins.

Mostly I like the article because of all the industry definitions:

RTEC: Ready to Eat Cereal

inclusions: the industry term for all that extra junk like raisins, marshmallows and honey-coated granola clusters.

and random facts, like this one:

a serving of Cheerios has 10 milligrams more sodium than a serving of Doritos.

.!.

As so often happens in politics, the quarrel between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton came down to a matter of direct objects. Both “reject” and “denounce” are transitive verbs — they act upon a direct object — but the candidates weren’t talking about the same objects. The object of Mr. Obama’s denunciation was Mr. Farrakhan’s opinions, particularly his anti-Semitic comments, whereas Mrs. Clinton was urging her opponent to reject the minister’s support. The thrust of Mrs. Clinton’s challenge was that her opponent was merely highlighting a particular disagreement with Mr. Farrakhan, while still accepting his — and his organization’s — backing.

From an article in the NY Times on Clinton and Obama’s differing arguments regarding Farrakhan. Noting this for it’s interesting perspective that they’re essentially arguing about different direct objects.

Investors aiming to buy stock in Thai Beverages Pcl may have to settle for a bottle of its Chang beer after billionaire owner Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi’s plan to sell shares was blocked for a third time amid protests led by orange- robed Buddhist monks.

The monks and other protesters argued a share sale by the company, maker of more than half Thailand’s beer as well as Mekhong whiskey, would promote alcoholism in a country where more than 90 percent of the 65 million people are Buddhist.

I find myself mentioning this story a lot; primary because the monks have a very strong conception of capitalism and where it morally breaks down: if you let this company go public, it will be their legal imperative to increase their value, which will be done by promoting the consumption of their product, which is alcohol.

And then, the (former) PM’s view:

As the alcohol industry is the cause of many damages to society, as shown by those statistics, it lacks the qualifications to raise funds and list in the stock exchange. Even if, from an economic point of view, it is the source of tax collected from the sale of beer, it’s not worth all the losses it creates.

If you want to insert a parenthesis into an excel formula (for example, concatenating strings into something to export), you want do use double-double-quotes:

"I am ""cool"""

Produces the text string I am “cool”

A useful example is producing email addresses:

=CONCATENATE("""",A2, """ ")