Idiot. I have asked you repeatedly to COMMENT ON the article. Either it's way over your head and simply too difficult for you to understand, or you have written so many posts on so many different threads that you can't even keep track of them. The question I referred to earlier, and which is stated plainly in the post, is the question I asked you in another thread - "NSA Condi Rice" -regarding the scanning of cargo containers. Because you obviously need a lot of hand-holding and guidance, here it is: You wrote: Quote from waggie945: Hapa, I'm afraid to tell you this but you are wrong about our inability to screen hundreds of thousands of containers every day. Actually, the technology already exists with a company that I am extremely familiar with called L-3 Communications, (NYSE: LLL). They have a Homeland Security division that specializes in Port Security and cargo container screening. I replied: You did not answer the question. Instead you went on a delusional rant accusing me of making light of 9/11. Again, think before you write your moronic statements, or at least keep track of your plethora of posts which merely repeat each other over and over in a monotonous litany. Arguing with you is like lecturing to a 2-year-old.
L-3 Communications has had a Cargo Screening system in place and operating since January 2003 with the Dutch Customs in the Port of Rotterdam. The CX-2500M is the lastest state of the art mobile X-ray screening systm, having the highest image quality of any system in the market today. The system uses linear accelerator technology to provide excellent penetration in the majority of cargo types found at either seaports or border crossings. The CX-2500M is designed for fast deployment and ease of operation; fromn arriving at a location, the system is ready to begin inspecting cargo in only 20 minutes. When delivered, these systems will be deployed at both seaports and border crossing in Europe. www.l-3com.com http://www.porttechnology.org/industry.news/2002/mainnews/04.07.02.shtml
waggie945, you're wasting your time with "Happyboy." He's just a moron who makes stupid statements that in HIS mind are valid counter-arguments to sound reasoning. He's not a trader, he just posts so he can read and reread his own posts thinking they make him famous. He doesn't know what time of day it is. He loves the thrill of all the death and gore in the Iraq war so he wants it to keep going on and on like one of his cheesy B-rated movies he watches over and over for excitement. Just ignore the idiot like I do. Best regards, to
Ok, so just because you posted this article and you believe that it is full of relevance, I guess that I am suppose to automatically respond to it and make comments? First off, I do not see that Mr. Meyer has presented any evidence of a "connection" between Iraq and 911. Therefore, I do not see much relevance of his article other than his very obvious description of our countries Cold War policy and now having to deal with "assymetrical" attacks. In this regard, I would once again question whether or not Condi Rice is qualified to be a National Security Advisor. She is an academic by training and in my opinion does not have the vision or leadership ability to respond to assymetrical security issues. As for the rest of Herbert Meyer's article . . . It is not groundshaking at all, especially in light of conversations that I have had with a family friend. Again, I suggested that you do a search on Douglas MacEachin. But as is typical with you, you are only here to argue in partisan fashion with the blinders on, and with no desire whatsoever to learn anything. http://www.security-policy.org/papers/1994/94-D74.html http://fas.org/irp/cia/product/afghanistan/ http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/summer00/art02.html
In an illuminating foreword to the book, written in 1999, Douglas MacEachin, former deputy director (intelligence) at the CIA, asks: "How many times have we encountered situations in which completely plausible premises, based on solid expertise, have been used to construct a logically valid forecast - with virtually unanimous agreement - that turned out to be dead wrong?" He doesn't answer his own question, but he's plainly aware of a litany of errors. Where he differs from Brooks is in his diagnosis of the problem. Here's what he wrote: "Too often, newly acquired information is evaluated and processed through the existing analytic model, rather than being used to reassess the premises of the model itself." The kind of intuition Brooks calls for might introduce people who think outside the "existing analytic model", but they would have implicit analytic models of their own. If they deliver accurate forecasts, that's just lucky, because there is no clear basis for assuming that, as circumstances change, the invisible and unexamined premises of those models will continue to yield accurate forecasts. So, we'd quickly be back where we started. It is the explicitation and critical examination of the premises themselves, the assumptions underlying mental models, that is the key to really sound analysis. Brooks implies that the CIA does too much of this and that this is what causes its errors. He could not be more mistaken. MacEachin's testimony on this point is trenchant. He notes, first, that, far from being excessively wedded to critical analysis, "many CIA officers tend to react sceptically to treatises on analytic epistemology" - because it tends to offer models as generic answers to problems, when what is needed is fluidity of thinking in a policy-oriented world. "But," he goes on, "that is not the main problem Heuer is addressing. What Heuer examines so clearly and effectively is how the human thought process builds its own models through which we process information. This is not a phenomenon unique to intelligence ... it is part of the natural functioning of the human cognitive process, and it has been demonstrated across a broad range of fields from medicine to stockmarket analysis." (emphasis added). In other words, it will be as true for politicians, Mafia bosses and studio heads as for country experts at the CIA or, say, Merrill Lynch. "The commonly prescribed remedy for shortcomings in intelligence analysis and estimates - most vociferously after intelligence 'failures' - is a major increase in expertise," McEachin went on to remark. But "the data show that expertise itself is no protection from the common analytic pitfalls that are endemic to the human thought process. A review of notorious intelligence failures demonstrates that the analytic traps caught the experts as much as anybody. Indeed, the data show that when experts fall victim to these traps, the effects can be aggravated by the confidence that attaches to expertise - both in their own view and the perception of others." (emphasis added). These observations by McEachin are spot on. Is the answer, then, to bring in people distinguished by their lack of expertise? Surely not. Rather, it is to bring people in whose expertise consists in re-examining mindsets, mental models, premises and assumptions; winkling them out from where they often hide and coaching the content experts themselves in seeing their reasoning and their world views in a new light. Bringing in the Mafia, I suggest, would be a very hit-and-miss affair - and the hits might not be the ones you'd really want. Being able to see and critically examine one's own reasoning processes is more difficult than is intuitively evident. Strong experimental evidence suggests that, in fact, experts in various domains have a poor grasp of how they actually use evidence in making judgements. They typically tend, in Heuer's words, to "overestimate the importance of factors that have only a minor impact on their judgement and underestimate the extent to which their decisions are based on a few major variables". Those variables are often assumptions so deeply embedded in the expert's mental model as to be invisible to the critical eye. They come in below the radar, as it were. What happens, therefore, is that evidence is sought to confirm, or test, variables which turn out not to be crucial.
That does not answer my question. You stated that "we are able to screen hundreds of thousands of containers per day." I asked if we are able to screen containers in a timely manner (not have a traffic jam of cargo ships at our ports and harbors).
Billy, Billy, Billy. You are such a simpleton. As a matter of fact, I am a trader. I probably trade more than you do. That is why I frequent ET - I assume that's the reason you do as well. Did you even ask if I traded? No. Spoken like the true misguided individual you so apparently portray yourself as being. Were this discussion taking place in 1941, you'd probably be lambasting Roosevelt for the Pearl Harbor attack and railing against our involvement in WWII. Now go play with your alphabet bricks.
No, not at all. If you don't want to respond to it or make comments, that's fine of course. But if you do respond to a thread, the normal course of events is to make comments on the thread subject. That is why the titles of threads are posted on the chit chat homepage, so interested people can see those titles, understand what the subject is, and then respond to that subject by posting on that thread or disregarding it because it doesn't interest them. Again, let me try and explain it to you in a way you may understand: It's like when you see TradeOff open his lunchbox at school and you notice he has a Twinkie in it. If you like Twinkies, you may ask him for a bite of his. If you don't like Twinkies, you will notice that he has the Twinkie and not say anything about it to him. Does that make it easier for you to understand? Gee, I wonder why that is? How about because THE SUBJECT OF HIS ARTICLE IS NOT ABOUT A CONNECTION BETWEEN IRAQ AND 9/11?? Hmmmm, could that have anything to do with it? You are so obsessed with your personal crusade to lambast Bush for a 911/Iraq connection that you post on threads that have nothing to do with that subject! You're like a little kid told by his mommy to take a note to the school nurse, and instead you make copies of it and drop it off to the librarian, the science teacher, and the hot coed PE teacher. Cliff's Notes needs to start making special editions for you explaining thread subjects. p.s. Didn't you have me on Ignore?
I just wish you'd stop harrassing us real traders. Happyboy is probably an analyst or desk trader of some losing interbank. The forum is free to all, Happyslapitboy, just don't irritate us real traders is all we ask by cluttering the forums up with your posts just so you can read them. Not asking too much. Surely you have something else to do in between whackin your pud. Try to go pick a runner up for Miss USA then post her pic on waggies' Miss USA thread. to
You tell Waggie to ignore me like you do, then a couple of posts later you're off slinging the mud again in my direction! ROFL! You're not only an idiot, but an idiot challenged by short-term memory loss (and probably long term as well. That makes you, well, a cabbage). Dont imagine you'll read this, since I'm on Ignore and all, you REAL trader, you!