A Neoconservative omelette

The NeoCon hawks who now have so much influence in Washington might sum up their foreign policy as: "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

However neither does one make an omelette by taking six eggs and smashing them with a hammer.

Another period of silence

During which I have got a job as a trainee actuary in Reading. I start next week so it's all crazy. I'll have to see how many random thoughts I have left over which I can post here.

Don't worry oh imaginary audience I haven't forgotten you...

Social Glue

Trust is essential to an advanced civilised society. Even if we had the time and ability to personally check up on the expert opinions and professional advice we recieved we would have time for nothing else. Trust makes society more productive. At a basic level it makes society itself possible.

We trust strangers all the time. We trust that they will not cave in our skulls our snatch our possessions away. We trust them to behave sociably. (Interesting aside - this trust does not come naturally to people with a disorder on the autistic spectrum perhaps that gives a partial insight into what a Hobbesian state of nature might enatil psychologically).

That is why fraud and professional misconduct are so serious and so damaging to society. That is why a winner takes it all high rolling economic system is so dangerous. Any of us is likely to cheat - if the stakes are high enough.

How to avoid good advice

Ever had some good advice you just didn't want to take. Here's a commonly used strategem for letting yourself off the hook.

Take the piece of advice and apply it to an extreme unrepresentative situation, the more ridiculous the better. Then shout at the person who gave you the advice
-See! It won't work!

That should do it. If it doesn't you can always put your fingers in your ears and chant
-La la la la la
la
la
la
la

Things I wish I had been told 1: Networking

I hate the word networking; it conjures up pictures of men in sharp suits and women with foot high shoulder pads talking on brick sized mobile phones and eating pretentious canapes. It is filed in my personal thesaurus between exploitation and sliminess.

So you wouldn't expect me to tell you that networking is great. But I am.

And you do it every day.

This is what I have realised. We are (almost all of us) social creatures. We naturally form friendships and make acquaintances. This unconscious process is netorking. It gives us people we can rely on, help and be helped by and enjoy spending time with.

The problem is that networking has been given a bad name by people who use it in a selfish nonreciprocal way to try and get an unfair advantage over the rest of us. People who are only interested in others for what they can get out of it.

Networking itself is a powerful and natural way of making our lives more fulfilling. It is the basis of society. Let's not allow the bad networkers to spoil our fun; meeting likeminded people to enjoy a shared interest is one of life's simple pleasures whatever you call it.