It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it . . . Read more →
Author Archive: Hostile Witness
People I Thought Were Dead
James Arness – actor Doris Day – actress Yvonne DeCarlo – actress Lady Bird Johnson – U.S. first lady Art Linkletter – TV host Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – spiritual guru Fess Parker – actor Paul Winchell – voice of Tigger Updates James Arness – died 6/3/2011, age 88 Doris Day – died 5/13/2019, age 97 Yvonne DeCarlo – died 1/10/2007, age 84 Lady Bird Johnson – died 7/11/2007, age 94 Art Linkletter – died 5/26/2010, age 97 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – died 2/5/2008, age 91 Fess Parker – died 3/18/2010, age 85 Paul Winchell – died 6/25/2005, age 82 Read more →
Working Late
Sometimes when I’m working a little late, my boy calls me at the office . . . Read more →
Sex Tips for Girls
Things to Say Afterwards “I really needed that!” Read more →
HW Solves Two of the Thorniest Problems in American Education
Racial Gaps On average, black students who graduate from high school are equipped with the skills the average white student mastered by the eighth grade, according to federal tests. — “Equal access to schools fails to equalize education,” USA Today Blah blah blah . . . Read more →
Life’s Work
The company intranet has profiles of the Six Sigma team members, including their responses to the following fill-in-the-blank question: If I weren’t in banking, I’d be . . . Here are the answers: Read more →
Less Than Zero
More whittling away at logic and critical thinking . . . WASHINGTON (AP) — Patients on some popular antidepressants should be closely monitored for warning signs of suicide, the government warned Monday in asking the makers of 10 drugs to add the caution to their labels. — CNN.com, “FDA issues suicide caution for antidepressants” Read more →
Warren Buffett Gets the Last Laugh
Warren Buffett published his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders this week: Our gain in net worth during 2003 was $13.6 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 21%. Over the last 39 years (that is, since present management took over) per-share book value has grown from $19 to $50,498, a rate of 22.2% compounded annually. Read more →
Doggie Love
My wife was talking to a fellow dog-walker at the park this morning. The woman asked her, among other things, does she work, and my wife said no. That was good, the woman replied, because it really raises her hackles when people buy a dog and then leave it alone all day while they’re at work. What an astounding statement! Read more →
Market Recap for Dummies
Explanations of daily changes in aggregate stock market indices are among the most ridiculous, speculative, and uncertain causal inferences made by journalists. — Edward Tufte My son was looking over my shoulder as I checked my online portfolio tracker . . . The Dow was down, the Nasdaq was down, the S&P was down, all the stocks I own or track were down, nothing but red numbers from top to bottom. Read more →
Celebrity Interviews Send Me Into a Homicidal Rage
Every once in a while, my wife is flipping channels and on comes one of these celebrity interviews . . . Read more →
A Moron’s Guide to Success
You could easily conclude from reading profiles in OC Metro that there’s not a single businessperson in Orange County with an ounce of wit or self-awareness. Case in point: A profile in the current issue of “surfing banker” John Lynch, executive VP of Secured Funding Corp. in Costa Mesa. The hook is — he’s a banker but he surfs every morning before work, and he says things like “Hey bro,” “We rock,” and “I never took a day of college.” Read more →
Fun With Obituaries
Several ordinary life stories, if told in rapid succession, tend to make life look far more pointless than it really is, probably. — Kurt Vonnegut Is that a fact? Let’s try it and see! Here are some excerpts from this week’s obituaries in the Irvine World News: Read more →
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Hugh Hefner As if the Carl’s Jr. commercials weren’t bad enough, I saw one of those “Celebrities on the Town” shows where “Hef” is getting out of a limousine with his entourage of girls, shambling into a club like a doddering old man in what appears to be a bathrobe, his hair sticking way out in back like he slept on it the wrong way and nobody bothered to tell him . . . Pathetic — hurry up and die. Read more →
Prescription Drugs by Email!
I get about 200 emails a day — 90 percent junk — and 90 percent of the junk is targeted at human weakness, weariness, disappointment, regret and self-loathing. Read more →
Unskilled and Unaware of It
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. — Justin Kruger and David Dunning,… Read more →
I Don’t Care About Your Car
I don’t care what kind of car you drive, what kind of a deal you got on it, the gas mileage, how fast it goes . . . Here’s why: Read more →
I Hate to Look at Wedding Photos
For several years after I got married, I kept a wedding picture on my desk at work — not one of the “professional” photos, but a candid picture of my wife and me, taken by one of the guests. Read more →
A Perfect Murder
DURHAM, N.C. — A jury convicted novelist Michael Peterson Friday of bludgeoning his wife of five years in the stairwell of their Durham mansion. — CourtTV.com, “Novelist convicted of first-degree murder in wife’s staircase death” Peterson says his wife fell down the stairs. Coincidentally, another female friend of Peterson’s was found dead at the bottom of a staicase in 1985 . . . Read more →
The Death of a Child
My nephew died yesterday in a car smash in Amarillo, TX, where he lived. He was 10 years old, the same age as my son. He was my son’s favorite cousin. Read more →