Snowpocalypse edition

DC is experiencing a record amount of snow! The local airport has reported 54.0 inches over the past week. The Fed has been closed for the past 4 days. Without going into the office, its kind of amazing how much work I've gotten done! Hope all of you are warm, safe, and watching the Shining.

What I do for a living – Many of you have asked what I do for a living. In general I deliver information assurance and identity management solutions to federal clients, especially through biometric development strategies, privacy protection and associated policy development. I’ve set up a blog with articles and my commentary on Identity Management and Biometric topics of interest. If you are curious please check it out at http://minutiaepoints.blogspot.com/

Never say I didn't get you anything – How about a free (!) copy of MS-Office 2010 beta edition. Available for legal downloading at: http://us20.office2010beta.microsoft.com/default.aspx?culture=en-US#

The taxman cometh – Filing for taxes are only a few weeks away. If you need help filing I would like to recommend friend of mine who has been preparing my return for years: Julius Klausner. He's based in NY, but remember the Federal law applies everywhere and he can compute your state (or territory) easily enough; and what I like best about working with him is that it can all be done virtually (mostly email). You can reach him at 914-723-8560 or jklauscpa@aol.com.
 

 

Book Review: The Black Swan – is a book about randomness and uncertainty, by the epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In its most distilled form the book tries to classify and describe the origin of High Impact, Very Low Probability events. For those of you with some military or consulting training this is the area of the “Unknown Unknowns”; or more aptly to quote Rumsfeld “These are things we do not know we don’t know”. Taleb states that the majority of human history is dictated by these events such as the JFK assassination, market crash of 1987, and the tragic events of 9/11 (even though the book was written in 2007 he seems to predict the 2009 global recession, but if you had read the book you would know that Taleb shuns the word ‘prediction’). There are of course some positive ones as well such as the rise of Internet with its various effects was scarcely anticipated. He states that many of the modern black swans originate because most of us use history as too much of a crutch to predict the future. This is provided in a narrative about a turkey.  Imagine you are a turkey born on January 1- the world is great for you, and every day you feel that Farmer Brown is looking after your best interests by providing fresh corn for you. This is true on February first, March first, April first, etcetera and so you come believe that the feeding will always be so, just as the sun rises every morning. Imagine your surprise on Thanksgiving (when Americans traditionally eat turkeys) . It is a very interesting philosophical read and I hope it can reduce some of the perceived uncertainty and randomness in your life.