Thursday, February 28, 2002

COLD safer than HOT New theory shows that high performance needn't mean high risk. 27 February 2002 " ... calculated how to design a system to optimize performance and almost eliminate the probability of ruinous events. They call this design principle 'constrained optimization with limited deviations', or COLD. Surprisingly, a COLD state can completely remove the danger of total ruin while sacrificing only a few per cent of the average yield relative to a HOT state." ... [more] 3:09:10 PM    comment  []

Ways to Disagree Agreeably or Nobly Attack the sin, not the sinner. Attack the position, not the person holding the position. Adopt a good-humored bantering tone. Reverse the polarity: Adopt the mask of a Fool and praise Folly (Erasmus, The Praise of Folly). Adopt the mask of a Knave, and exalt Vice (Swift, "Modest Proposal"). Write a parable about a bushel basket, or a seed, or a broomstick, or some other common object; leave the reader to figure out the meaning. Write a fable about mice or a frog. Write a fairy tale about Puss and Boots. Pass along a folktale about Coyote, Fox, or Br'er Rabbit. Give the Vice a name, such as Sporus, and savagely attack the fiction -- leaving the reader to speculate about the real target. Create a cast of characters and celebrate vice in all its forms; score it to the tune of "An Old Woman Clothed in Gray," and call it an Opera (Gay, The Beggar's Opera). Change Macheath to Mack the Knife  and call your critique of markets The Three Penny Opera. Confess the sin you attack, make yourself the prime instance (Rousseau's Confessions). Write an allegory, about Duessa or Archimago, leaving the reader to tie it to proper names (Spenser, The Faerie Queene). Write a mock epic in praise of Dunces (Pope, The Dunciad). Celebrate a Fool so affectionately as a Mock Epic Hero that the reader joins the writer in loving the victim, (Dryden, "MacFlecknoe.") Write a tale of your Travels, depicting current vices as comic figures in outlandish fictional countries (Swift, Gulliver's Travels). Keep conspicuous silence (Cordelia in Lear). Speak truth out of love in madness (the Fool in Lear). Refuse a required gesture (the Christian refusing to place pinch of incense on the Roman altar, and dying for that act of insubordination). Leave the disagreeable truth lying about, where it is likely to be found. Act surprised when it is discovered. Offer a servile and tansparently stupid misinterpretation. Place the disagreeable truth in a subordinate clause, preceded by the word not. (To the Unconscious a statement and its opposite are one and the same). Tell a joke, embodying the disagreeable truth. ("Only joking, Sire!") Affirm a falsehood falteringly. Go to the limit of insult, and then further, and then further still, until the rancor turns to camaraderie ("Playing the Dozens," Flyting Contests in Beowulf, the mutual insults preceding the Epic Bouts in the WWF). Be moderate: Moderation is the mid-point between two extremes. Link to two sites, at either end, and choose them carefully. (Pick, for instance, a weak site to the right, a strong to the left.) "The moderator always wins." Link to a number of sites, while posing as the referee. (Doc Searls is a master of this, long may he avoid being trampled in the melee.) Damn with faint praise. Hesitate dislike. Pose as Jesus, eschewing only martrydom. Condemn a writer's views while imitating his or her prose style, or vice versa. Invoke an author by using his or her key phrases, but never mention the author's name, nor link to the site. Take the miscreant across your knee, and beat him or her soundly until the pain turns to pleasure. Let the evil-doer count the strokes and kiss the rod when done. (Our preferred strategy here at WB, we find that the clients learn to love it, and remain obsessed with spanking the rest of their natural lives.) Of course, you can also try irony and sarcasm (The Legacy of High School -- yeah! right!).   ... [original posting] via Wealth Bondage 11:00:05 AM    comment  []