All the talk of benchmarks for American performance in Iraq makes me wonder if we shouldn't reverse them.

Tell the Iraqis as a nation, for every week that goes by without a (well-defined) terrorist incident, we will pull out 1,000 troops. (We need at least one fine-grained condition that is likely to happen, so we can actually do it, and show that we are serious.) Serious terrorist events may pull troops back or delay our leaving.

Via dangerousmeta: How Not to Talk To Your Kids (The Inverse Power of Praise). Self-esteem uber alles as mortal menace.

This strikes me as one of the most important lines of research into education I've ever seen.

Prediction: Iran will be in a civil war at least as intense as the Palestinian and Iraqi civil wars by the end of this year.

Physical Evidence: A significant car bombing and the inevitable failure of centralized economies, with all that implies (and that implies a lot).

I freely grant that's not a lot to go on, although it is telling that we've heard about these things. The real reason I make this prediction is cultural: The entire culture has been built on the premise that if you have a grievance, it's acceptable to bomb people. No, it's beyond acceptable.... it's your moral imperative to bomb them.

Would police officers be happy having that fact tatooed across their foreheads? "Police Officer" in big letters. Leave space so "retired", "dismissed", "ex-" or "disciplined" can be added later.

Would that be acceptable?

Of course not. It might make certain social situations... uncomfortable. It might mean they find it harder to get jobs. It might mean they're open to being attacked on the streets...

So why is it acceptable to publish personal information about everyone else? - katie on ID cards

Apparently, mentioning the word "Superbowl" on my website means I get spam asking me to add my website to a list of sports sites. On the strength of that one word.

("What's the deal with people still 'asking' you if they can link to your site?" he asked rhetorically.)

You should read The Psychology of Security. It has nothing to do with programming or computers.

As I post this, I'm still reading it. I recommend it before finishing because it's just that good.

It might be interesting to have a discussion about practical techniques for mitigating fallacious risk assessments in real life. One I've noticed w.r.t. Prospect Theory is that if I have two choices, one phrased in terms of loss, and another in terms of gain, I try to convert them both into the same domain (both loss or both gain); I never would have explained it as the essay did, but my reasoning is definitely covered by the prospect theory discussion. For example, putting something on sale is not a "savings". Buying something on sale is a lesser cost than buying it not on sale, but at no point do you "gain" or "save" anything.

And the winner of this year's Superbowl is... the rain.

Comments and other text you can post on iRi use standard HTML, with some helpful additions. I'll start with a quick primer on HTML, then tell you what you can use on iRi.

iRi uses HTML despite the fact it's not the easiest language, because it's the only standard language you may be able to carry your knowledge of elsewhere; see Please Stop with the HTML Replacements for more on that.

I've wanted to write something similar to this: The trajectory of a society matters. (I've retitled it for my link as I don't think the original really captures the point.)

I'm fairly confident that one of the reasons why my political views differ from others is the firm belief that what we have here in the US and civilized world, where we don't worry about where our next meal is coming from or whether we'll have good water to drink and that sort of thing, is more fragile than most people think. Things that we take for granted like a certain degree of trust in the government, the ability to trust our business associates (and we all have hundreds of business associates), and the reasonable expectation that nobody is going to point a gun at me today, are all vitally important components of our society. No matter how strong those characteristics might become, we can never afford to be blasé about them, because the "tipping point" where it all comes apart can come upon you faster than you think.

Of all the problems facing the United States, and the civilized world in general, I would pick this as the most important:

...the anger that lately pervades our politics is more than just an aftereffect of six years of Democratic setbacks... Our political anger is only the most impressive expression of a much wider cultural transformation. In politics, in music, in sports, on the web, in our families, and in the relations between the sexes, American anger has come into its own. Wood says we’re living in an era of “New Anger,” and regardless of who becomes our next president, New Anger isn’t going away anytime soon.... Anger has turned into a coping mechanism, something to get in touch with, a prize to exhibit in public, and a proof of righteous sincerity. - Stanley Kurtz's review of "A Bee in the Mouth"

Emphasis mine.