Heading through Tokyo Narita airport...

It's been such a wonderful, relaxed day of omiyage shopping and travel. It'll be a shame to ruin it with an 11-hour flight.

On the other hand, seeing my family again will be absolutely wonderful. So it's totally worth it.

Also, the book "Superforecasters"...

Also, the book "Superforecasters" is pretty decent. It's a Malcolm-Gladwell-style one with a simple premise and then a lot of elaborating stories told around it. It's a good premise and they support it well through the book, though.

For those who haven't heard of it, the idea is that there are a small number of people who can get really freaking good at predicting the answers to questions like "will the government of Egypt be replaced in the next 6 months?" or "will the UN draft a resolution specifically condemning American racist organizations before January 1st, 2019?" or "will Swiss or French researchers find traces of polonium 210 in Arafat's body before the end of 2014?"

One of the authors organized the study that proved that conclusively and several others like it. It's well written and highly informed. The authors' recommendations are excellent, but mostly won't be surprising to the statistically literate with a focus on work-and-put-numbers-on-things-to-improve.

Which is actually a tiny number of people, now that I think about it. So, um, everybody go read it :-P