ants in the sugar-bowl

In her brave, honest and funny book, The Wisdom of Whores, Elizabeth Pisani kicks a lot of asses and sacrifices quite a few sacred cows “on the untidy altar of Reality”. First-hand facts and elementary maths are there to expose myths such as that AIDS is necessarily “a development problem”. Or that “more premarital sex translates into more HIV”. The myths that cost billions of dollars. And human lives.

more weasel words

From the Weasel Words Website by Don Watson:

networking

To exchange business cards, glances etc. Have a drink, take tea, dine with. Do what’s necessary. (More if it’s agreeable.)

‘2.50pm. Coffee and Networking.’ — Governance seminar brochure.

‘I networked my arse off.’ — Participant in governance seminar.

(Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Clichés, Cant & Management Jargon, page 222)

the fate of gurus

From The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal:

Instead of marching onward with perfect vision, science stumbles along behind leaders who occasionally take the wrong alley, after which it turns to other leaders who seem to know the way, then corrects itself again, until sufficient progress is made for the next generation to either thrust aside or build upon. In hindsight, the path taken may look straight, running from ignorance to profound insight, but only because our memory for dead ends is so much worse than that of a rat in the maze.

Feynman looks at the blueprints

The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out is a collection of Richard Feynman’s short works. Perhaps the most famous of these is his 1974 Caltech Commencement Address on Cargo Cult Science. My personal favourite there is Los Alamos from Below (slightly different version of this lecture appears here).

How do you look at a plant that ain’t built yet? I don’t know. So I go into this room with these fellows. There was always a Lieutenant Zumwalt that was always coming around with me, taking care of me, you know; I had to have an escort everywhere. So he goes with me, he takes me into this room and there are these two engineers and a loooooooong table, great big long table, tremendous table, covered with a blueprint that’s as big as the table; not one blueprint, but a stack of blueprints. I took mechanical drawing when I was in school, but I wasn’t too good at reading blueprints. So they start to explain it to me because they thought I was a genius.