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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Black Swans.... Get It This Time?

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2010/07/black-swans.html

An article on Black Swans, low probability events because they are outliers on the statistical distribution.

Problem is, everything is getting very Black Swan-y lately:
2008 - the possible destruction of the entire financial system (?!)
2010 - Deep Horizon biggest oil spill of all time
2011 - Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, worst nuclear disaster of all time
2011 - April tornado average until 2011 = 138 per April;  April 2011 had over 700 tornadoes.

There is a message here. It is not End of Times, either. The End of Times Lady was the one who I had lunch with the afternoon before Glenn Beck's Washington Rally: she not only believed in End of Times Right This Second!, but also that it was a lovely irony that Beck, a Mormon, was going to lead all Christian groups back together in harmony! Maybe she thought his anti-Semitism was going to do it: unite Christians and get kicked off FOX!
She also believes that End of Times is signaled by Israel's being restored in ONE day, to wit, the day of formal statehood back in 1948. Since the declaration of formal statehood is sort of the quick culmination of a lengthy process, this is not one of her sharper moments. I also used to quote Peter at her, "Before the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day."
She never quite got my point.

Anyway, not End of Times, dullards everywhere. People in Washington, prepare for an expensive launch into the future, which is arriving quicker every day now.

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