Steve

Friday Ark #242

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Vertebrate Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Visit all the boarders, Link to the Ark and check back for updates through Sunday afternoon!

You can board the Friday Ark by submitting your post here, leaving a comment or a trackback to this post or emailing fridayark AT themodulator.org.

You can find previous editions at the not quite up to date Arkives page.

Alert 12:22 EDT: The Friday Ark Staff will be offline for the next 5-7 hours. We will get everyone boarded when we return,

Cats

Birds

Other Vertebrates

Dogs

  • Gandalf & Grayson: Puggles: His First Year
  • 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera: Friday Creature ~ Dog rescue
  • Three Happy Heelers: She was bad!!
  • Duck Pond: Friday Night Dog Blog ~ Trees, Dogs and Tracks: Sasha and Dexter

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to:

Birders: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to:

  • The Canine Carnival hosted by Pamibe last year is on hiatus an looking for a new sponsor
  • The Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings

    • has been out of operation since July 2007

For other current carnivals check out The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Friday Ark #241

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Vertebrate Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Visit all the boarders, Link to the Ark and check back for updates through Sunday afternoon!

You can board the Friday Ark by submitting your post here, leaving a comment or a trackback to this post or emailing fridayark AT themodulator.org.

You can find previous editions at the not quite up to date Arkives page.

Cats

Birds

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

  • x

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to:

Birders: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to:

  • The Canine Carnival hosted by Pamibe last year is on hiatus an looking for a new sponsor
  • The Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings

    • has been out of operation since July 2007

For other current carnivals check out The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Your Legislators Would Never Lie to You

This entry was posted in Federal Government Government on by

Or would they?

But a professor at Oxford University in England has done a compelling series of studies trying to get at why big public-works projects such as bridges, tunnels and light-rail systems almost always turn out to be far more costly than estimated.
“It cannot be explained by error,” sums up one of his* papers, matter-of-factly. “It is best explained by strategic misrepresentation — that is, lying.”

Don’t think for a minute that this problem is limited to large public-works projects.
It permeates every branch of government and every political party.
It’s not just that they don’t know what they are doing:

It’s not technical challenges or complexity or bad luck, he asserts. If that were so, you’d get more variation in how it all turns out. He concludes the backers of these projects suffer from two main maladies.
One is “delusional optimism” — they want it so badly, they can’t see its flaws. I know about this firsthand from when I supported the monorail.
The second is worse: They knowingly are lying to the public.

Large public-works projects are small compared to wars and massive social programs and the same maladies apply.

*The person referred to is Bent Flyvbjerg. See here and here for more detailed information