"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

Over the past few years I have heard a reasonably famous quote from a controversial character being bandied around by people as an example of political nonsense. Without wanting to get drawn into the relative merit (or otherwise) of one Donald Rumsfeld, I cannot help but feel that he gets a raw deal on this score.

You see, I have never really understood why people think it is nonsense. I am not sure whether my brain is hardwired to think in a convoluted and ambiguous way (it could be true, I have been accused of this, and I have also spent time locked in rooms with French post-modern feminist thinkers), but from the moment that I heard it, I couldn't see the fuss made about the quote. it seemed to make perfect sense to me right off the bat.

Let's go over the quote again before I move on:

...there are known "knowns". There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.

Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002

There it is. Simple really. Straightforward when you think about it. Perhaps not as succinct as we could crunch it down to, but probably concise enough given the universality of the idea. To break it down, I am going to try and use the example of alcohol and public policy.

Known 'knowns'. This is the easiest part. For example, we know that a lot of people drink alcohol, and that some demographics drink more than others. We have collated plenty of hard data on this.
Known unknowns. Now, we know about quite a few of the factors that influence why certain people drink, and why people drink the way that they do or why people drink the quantity that they do. But we also know that there are other factors that appear to influence behaviour in one way or another that we do not really understand (for example, why do some girls binge more than others if, demographically, they are the same?). However, in a public policy sense, we at least know that we do not know. Thus, we can try and find out.
Unknown unknowns. Who knows? If we knew them, we'd know them. For example, in the last few years some researchers have explored the notion that people are genetically predisposed to consuming alcohol at risky levels. That was not really foreseen years ago. As Mr Rumsfeld says, there are always things that we are not aware that we don't know. The best that can be done about this is be aware of that fact ("we don't know everything"), and be prepared to react when we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns (that is, when we become aware of the blind spots in our thinking).

See, clear as mud!

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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