2x2 - A Strategic Guide to Life

IST Results - Searching for the soul in the machine

2006-05-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

IST Results - Searching for the soul in the machine

Temperature vs. Pirates

2006-01-09T15:27:00.000-06:00

Ed Note: I came across this FSM while out trolling today. A true 2x2 with a purpose...

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD:

CC:

DOVER SCHOOL BOARD (PENNSYLVANIA)
OHIO STATE SCHOOL BOARD
RIO RANCHO SCHOOL BOARD (NEW MEXICO)
GRANTSBURG SCHOOL BOARD (WISCONSIN)
COBB COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD(GEORGIA)
SHELBY COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD(TENNESSEE)
CHARLES COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD(MARYLAND)
NAPERVILLE SCHOOL BOARD(ILLINOIS)
DARBY SCHOOL BOARD (MONTANA)
BLUFFTON-HARRISON SCHOOL BOARD (INDIANA)

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

P.S. I have included an artistic drawing of Him creating a mountain, trees, and a midget. Remember, we are all His creatures.

Support the Cause? Sign the petition -added 11/29/05

Price vs. Value

2005-12-29T21:58:00.000-06:00

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

Saint Jerome, On the Epistle to the Ephesianschurch father & saint (374 AD - 419 AD)

Ah, tis the season of giving and receiving. With Christmas past, and the and the orgy of food and drink in its trough of disillusionment, I thought I'd take stock of gifts given, received, or just wished for...

Why do people give greeting cards? Do you really need someone else to come up with a pithy statement of sentiment or humor to convey your feelings for someone? And is it really worth $2.99 plus tax? I think the greeting card industry is a self perpetuating fraud on the American psyche. Have you noticed the growth of "Card Giving" events over the last few decades? Grandparent's Day (9/10) , National Bosses Day (10/16), Friendship Day (8/7), Administrative Professionals Day(4/26), National Mentoring Month!?

And while we are looking at gift horses, I don't really get the whole stocking-stuffer stuff. There are a thousand presents under the tree, and yet the opening can't commence until we dispose of the stockings. At my house, it seems that the stocking stuffers are getting more in quantity and expense each year. The presents under the tree are not enough; Santa has to spend 50 bones filling each of the stockings hung with care.

"The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated."

Baltasar Gracian

My top three picks for gifts that packed a punch were a remote control boat that Santa gave my daughter, A copy of Food Plan Soup (which I gave myself) , and 4 bottles of Lambic Beer (props to willy78746). Food Plane Soup was recently published by a ex-coworker and tells of his wanderings following being laid-off from our last dot-bomb.

No - I did not get 5 shares of GOOG. But if I had $2100 to invest in GOOG, Id sell it short. Mark my words boys and girls, GOOG will be cheaper for Christmas 2006 than it is now.

No one gave me a trust fund either :-( I think I'll make getting one my New Year's resolution.

Size vs. Fight

2005-12-24T13:17:00.000-06:00

"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969), speech to the Republican National Committee, January 31, 1958

[Click Image for Larger Picture]

Or, perhaps Dwight should have discussed the size of the fight in the cat. The Cat-in-the-Hat in particular. In 1997, the Cat-in-the-Hat Balloon reeked havoc on the Macy's Thanksgiving
Day Parade when he crashed into a lamp post, seriously injuring a spectator. The C-I-T-H has been, apparently, been put out to pasture at Universal Studios, but may still be a menace (as seen here with an unsuspecting tourist).

Compare the fight in that darn cat with the fight in the dog - in this case, Snoopy, and we can begin to understand where Gen E. was coming from. Yea, Snoopy took out the red baron... but what has he done lately?

And what happen to the USSR? That spot on Gorbachev's head - emperor of the largest, most powerful empire in the world, turned out to be red from embarrassment. The empire wilted away in the face of the US of A: our lethal armada and our tenacious intimidation!

And speaking of pussies: Did Kodak wave the white flag or what? The leader in film and photography - now a shell of it's former self resorting to buying cool startups (www.ofoto) to have any chance of surviving in the digital world.

Now, let's look at the "Pit Bull" quadrant: Small dog - Big fight. Here we see that big things do come in small packages. Fire Ants, HIV, and Ross Perot.

-> ->

(Increasing Lethality as "Fight" moves left to right)

Lastly, look at the little-fish-in-small-pond quadrant: Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf is know for breathless quotes like "We have them surrounded in their tanks". Priceless!

Author's Comment: Props to Squiechnoorb, proporietor of One Funny Thing, for his suggestion of this topic.

Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find

2005-12-15T22:54:00.000-06:00

They're blind to own failings, others' skills
- Erica Goode, New York Times

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it," Dunning said.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.

The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.

This deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.

In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to "grossly overestimate" how well they had performed.

In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.

Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored only in the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile, and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.

Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to "identify grammatically correct standard English," and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.

On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an "expert" panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.

Unlike unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the "false consensus effect."

When high-scoring subjects were asked to "grade" the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.

"Incompetent individuals were less able to recognize competence in others," the researchers concluded.

Credibility vs. Hair

2005-12-12T21:54:00.000-06:00

Studies have shown that there is a correlation between success and height. It turns out that we humans are predisposed to under-appreciate the vertically challenged among us. Read all about it in "Don't Want No Short Man: The Study of Height, Power, and Male Selection".

But does this correlation extend to another factor that contributes to height - Hair height? You be the judge...

The results of our study are confounding. While there does seem to be a correlation, it is not at all the one we expected. It turns out that make-believe people tend to have higher credibility than real people, regardless of hair height. This finding requires more study....

Lucky vs. Good Revisited

2005-12-05T13:03:00.000-06:00

The NY Times today published the sad story of Lottery Winner Mack Metcalf and his estranged wife Virginia Merida. Back in 2000, they won a $34M lottery. More recently, Mack died of alcohol and Virginia died of drugs. Clearly, winning the lottery is a "Lucky" event. But being the daughter of drug dealers is even more unlucky. And having an alcohol addiction is most definitely not "Good".

"Any problems people have, money magnifies it so much", said one of Virginia's brothers. This makes me wonder if perhaps Lucky vs. Good is really just a cover for the Nature vs. Nurture debate?

Good = Nature. You are either born with the ability to be good or you are not.
Luck = Nurture. You either had the good fortune of parents who saved for your college education (definitely Lucky for you), or your folks didn't bother reading to you at night (so sorry).

The old adage is "the better you are, the luckier you get". It seems that we might need a disclaimer on Lottery ticket purchases: Warning, unless you are good, you should not play the lottery - It will bring you nothing but bad luck.

SPECIAL 2x2Guide READER BONUS: Download the Metcalf Estate Sale Brochure here!

Chaos vs. Complexity

2005-12-02T23:48:00.000-06:00

I spent some time with my brother recently and the discussion turned to 2x2’s. Specifically, we talked about Chaos vs. Complexity. Without a doubt, complexity drives chaos. The more complex your home life or work or project is, the more likely that it will spin into chaos.

My brother lives on the frontier of chaos and complexity. He is an architect in NYC and spends several days a week on the road. My sister-in-law manages the home and 3 kids, plus she performs and teaches violin around the tri-state region. His life is complex – managing multiple large architecture projects, and his life is chaotic. And his place on the 2x2 is very different than mine – far less complex and chaotic.

It turns out that chaos has some serious heritage. Not only does it make an extreme case of confusion or unpredictability, but it also has a deep base in mythology. In Greek mythology, Chaos or Khaos is the primeval state of existence from which the first gods appeared.

Chaos Theory is a mathematical concept best represented by the butterfly effect: The idea is that small variations in the initial conditions of a dynamical system produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system. Aka: Can a butterfly flapping it’s wings in the Amazon cause Hurricane Katrina? (See Ray Bradbury's 1952 story "A Sound of Thunder")

Butterfly effect. (2005, November 29). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:33, December 3, 2005 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Butterfly_effect&amp;amp;amp;oldid=29610359.

But sometimes there are incredible anomalies to this 2x2. Great tasks like the Apollo program or building a skyscraper or running a trauma center or my friend Brian who has 8 kids – they seem to have the ability to manage major complexity without the accompanying chaos. What strategies have they employed that the rest of us don’t know about?

One of the guru’s of personal success, Stephen Covey, has spent his life studying this question. He translates Chaos vs. Complexity into his famous 2x2: Urgent vs. Import. By categorizing tasks and tackling them based on their importance first and urgency second, chaos can be reduced – especially in complex environments. There is much to learn from Covey's 7 habits - especially as they apply to managing Chaos.

Lucky vs. Good

2005-11-30T22:51:00.000-06:00

Is it better to be lucky or good?

The answer is: Lucky!

What is a 2 by 2?

2005-11-27T23:26:00.000-06:00

A 2 by 2, also called a 2x2, is a graphical picture that shows how similar items are related. The reason it is called a 2 by 2 is because there are 2 primary factors being compared against each other. For example, you might have seen a 2 x 2 at the doctor’s office that charts height versus weight.

In this chart, the vertical axis is labeled “Height”, and the horizontal axis is labeled “Weight”. For any combination of height and weight, you can put an exact point on the chart:

Where do you fit in this picture?

Another example of a 2 by 2 could compare different professions by how much money each makes versus how much free time they have. Here things can start to get interesting. Unless you are one of those who “lives to work”, one of your goals might be to work less and get paid more. Or at least make more money for an equivalent amount of work.

The funny thing about making a 2 by 2 is that the results are usually pretty obvious, but usually you need to actually see the picture before you can really appreciate how things relate to each other.

Each 2 by 2 can be divided into 4 quadrants. This allows you to organize the different points on the picture into like groups. For example, you could name the group of careers that are high in salary and high in free time as the “Stars”, while you could name the group that is low in salary and high in free time as the “Slackers”. I might name the other quadrants as the “Movers & Shakers” and the “Worker Bees”.

At the center of each 2 by 2 is a unique spot called the “control point”. This is where the 4 quadrants all intersect. The control point is special because of its complete averageness. In the work vs. free time chart, the control point is represented by the Teacher.

Taken together, you can understand the simplicity and power of looking at life from a 2 by 2 perspective. In most cases, the goal is “up and to the right”!

Tastes Good vs. Good for You: A Thanksgiving 2 by 2

2005-11-22T19:50:00.000-06:00

What are you doing for Turkey Day? The usual Turkey fare? Something more exotic? Screw it, lets eat out? Like everything else, your Thanksgiving Meal can been seen as a 2X2: Remember, you are what you eat. Enjoy!

Salary vs. Enjoyment

2005-11-19T21:27:00.000-06:00

Are you a true winner in life, or just a company man? Does you work promote enjoyment in life, or are you a slave to wages? Looking about your job in a 2x2 might make you stop and think...

In one corner, we have the "Winners". Those who make a great salary AND are fulfilled by their jobs. They generally have broad respect, control their destiny, could move from company to company, and get to pick and choose their activities.

The "Creatives" have similar traits to the winners -- they get enjoyment from their job, and generally get to pick their projects -- but the similarities certainly don't extend to their salaries.

The "Company Men" make up the vast majority of the middle class. They make a decent living, but frequently find that they are not fulfilled by their jobs. Company men can become Winners, but usually they just want to get drunk.

Sorry to be harsh, but if you have a low paying job that has no redeeming qualities, you may be a loser. Think about how you can get more creative, or at least a bigger salary. Wherever you are, the goal is - as always - Up and To the Right!

Do You 2 by 2?

2005-11-17T10:03:00.000-06:00

Do you have an idea for a 2x2 chart that you would like to see featured on 2x2guide.com? "Deeds vs. Words"? "Lives Fast vs. Dies Young"? "Good Looking vs. Good For You"? Send your 2x2 ideas to jonas@lamis.org. We will build and publish the best.

Smartness vs. Right Choice

2005-11-16T09:35:00.000-06:00

Why is it that the smartest kid in the class rarely becomes the millionaire? Perhaps because intelligence alone is not a determinant of success. Rather, it is a factor that has to be matched with others -- like making the right choice:

Sure, the people who created Enron and the Segway were smart, but they made some poor choices along the way. These people fall into the quadrant we call "unlucky". They had the raw materials for success (brains), but couldn't close the deal.

On the other hand, everyone knows that buying a lottery ticket is like throwing your money out the window (Losers), but for the lucky chump who actually wins, he made the right choice (we'd call him blessed).

Lastly, and most importantly are those in the upper right quadrant. Those are the titans of fame and fortune who were able to apply their brains at the right time with the right idea to be in the winner's circle.

Up and to the right!

2 by 2 - A Strategic Guide to Life

2005-11-16T08:48:00.000-06:00

Up and To the Right!
The 2 by 2 Manifesto

Life is not black and white: Your place in the world should be observed relative to others. You might consider yourself as "smart" or "rich" or "ugly" or "pious", but you are not -- at least not compared to someone else.

Actions and words speak equally loud: You can no longer get ahead on merit alone. Where you stand in life is now determined as much by what you say as what you accomplish.

Life is a 2x2: Each facet of life can be viewed as a 2x2 (2 by 2) chart. To improve your lot in life, you must understand what the terms of competition are, and where you stand.

With a goal of constant improvement, you must embark today on a strategy to move “up and to the right”!

2005-11-14T22:13:00.000-06:00