Good old Errol Morris. His ongoing series for the NY Times exemplifies the benefits to simply following one’s tangential interests to their strange, winding, sometimes banal conclusions. In this (5-part!) series he investigates the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which describes the depressingly common phenomenon in which incompetent individuals believe themselves to be much more competent than they are – because they lack the ability to comprehend their incompetence.

I’m not going to name names here, but if you’ve ever wondered why certain apparently dim public figures keep on charging ahead, convinced of their own brilliance… well, that’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. As Morris puts it, “knowing what you don’t know… is the hallmark of an intelligent person.”

1. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. – C.D.

2. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. – C.D.

3. We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. - C.D.