Errol Morris is back with a new piece on his NY Times blog about how the holes in people's knowledge affect their actions.

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody's field of ignorance.

This is part one of a five-part series in which we hear from David Dunning about the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

When people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

I wonder what the most important thing I don't know is?

Hilarious! Don't worry - that's nowhere near the end of the story.

Walking's when I do my meta-life: Working on my life, not in my life.

From Sky Play Flickr set

This is great - Orison's fantastic!

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse.

This is craziness, but why are the courts upholding it?

X-treme fail

And of all the things a church can imitate, this is the worst.  Probably the biggest blight on advertising from the last decade is the word “extreme.”  A bunch of suit wearing focus groups decided that everything kids buy should be totally awesome and / or radical, and thus dubbed “extreme” (or x-treme to illustrate the fact that their product is so radical, it doesn’t even conform to proper spelling.)

The x-treme problem with this is first of all it’s a huge disappointment.  Just like when you had your first x-treme granola bar you realized it was just a regular granola bar in jazzed up wrapping.  The people who go to x-treme lengths to package Jesus hardly ever live up to their image.  Probably the most x-treme things about most of these button down Christians are their potluck casseroles.

If you thought X-treme Jesus would be gone by now, think again.  If there’s one thing the church is good at, it’s being behind the times.

It's Fail Month at The Church of No People, so go and check it out.

Wow. This puts the remote control helicopters I've seen to shame. I want one of these... No, I want to build one of these. Yes.

As kitchen knives go, these are pretty awesome! They're a bit expensive, so now I've got a decision: Do I want the knives, or a kitchen to use them in?