Lucky

Sully Sullenberger, the hero of the day is getting well deserved kudos as a brilliant pilot. It's also true that he was lucky. If he had been only just a tiny bit unlucky, his plane would have broken apart on landing, and many or most of the passengers and crew would likely have died. If that had happened he would have been pilloried by some for not choosing to attempt to land at one of the two nearby airports, but his decision would still have been correct. He very quickly evaluated the risks and decided that the risk of a catastrophic crash that might have killed many more than just the passengers was too great.

President Obama will face several terrible challenges in his first term, and it is certain that success will require luck as well as good judgement. My guess is that at least some of his policies will fail. We can only hope that such failures, if they occur, will not cloud his judgement of how to proceed.

We have just about finished with one President who continually brags about his decision making even though nearly all his decisions were disastrous. Not only were the decisions bad, but the decision making process was textbook folly. A very ignorant and not very bright president insisted on making his decisions with a minimum of information input, ignored anything that didn't fit his stereotypes, and was effortlessly manipulated by his advisors.

Obama seems to be unusually free of those specific vices. Let's hope that his virtues serve him well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more