In a comment to Tuesday's post on the deaths in Wexford, Frank McGahon linked to Neil Ferguson's review of Nicholas Taleb's new book, Black Swan. Taleb's basic point is that we're very good at providing narratives for shocking events in hindsight, but that very often they're just down to utterly unpredictable or inexplicable 'black swan moments.'

Anyway, I see that Oliver Burkeman has another review of the book in yesterday's Guardian. I don't think that the point is that the narratives we construct are necessarily untrue. It's more that they cohere around the landmark event and so are not apparent until afterwards. So, the conditions for the First World War were in place when Franz Ferdinand entered Sarajevo. But that doesn't mean that anyone could have predicted that this spark would set the whole thing off.

I like the Taleb's comment about Rumsfeld's famous 2002 unknown uknowns speech (see also here). Taleb had apparently set his thinking out for Rumsfeld's people and so was the inspiration for the speech. But he now says that "I don't want to be advertised as someone who's too close to these people." I'd say. Anyway as Burkeman has it,

"Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" speech made perfect sense. The problem, Taleb says, was that Rumsfeld himself didn't understand it. The black swan way of thinking should have prompted the defence secretary to be cautious about his capacity to predict the future in Iraq. Instead, he fell, again and again, into the prediction trap."

That is, he constructed narratives to explain past events and in his arrogance inferred from that that, being smart enough, he could spot the narratives leading to future events too.

Another lesson that the real gobshites in life are not the stupid people. It's people who are not nearly so clever as they think.

I see that Steve over on Pub Philosopher has a post extolling the punitive regime in Japanese prisons. Apparently, according to an article in The Independent,

"While Japan incarcerates its citizens at less than half the rate of Britain, prison time is notoriously harsh. Inmates are kept isolated and mostly in silence, and forced to obey hundreds of military-like rules. Strip searches are common, as are beatings."

Steve's comment on this is that "perhaps Japan locks up fewer people then the UK because most would-be criminals are shit-scared of going to prison."

Then again perhaps not.

According to this piece on the RTÉ news site, entitled "Figures Show Rise in Abductions," if you live in Ireland you should be very very afraid. Apparently "Garda statistics show that the number of abductions increased by 50% in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year."

The rise in abductions in the first quarter of this year, from six to nine, means that you suffer an appalling 0.00021% chance of being kidnapped. As opposed to the far more acceptable 0.00014% chance in the same period last year.

What an informative headline. I'm heading for my bunker.

MBTs may not be the de rigeur footwear for walkers in the city for much longer if an article in today's Guardian is true. The benefits of supposedly walking like Masai tribesman may be outweighed by the sense of panic one's legs feel when the footwear is removed. Muscles are stretched but these are the wrong muscles apparently. I have always thought the Masais have the most remarkable posture and are so graceful in their movements. Conversely, most non-Masai MBT wearers in Dublin look like they are swaying as they walk in an attempt to maintain balance.

Maybe the key is in the word barefoot.