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Incompetence is bliss, say researchers BY ERICA GOODE New York Times There are many incompetent people in the world. But a Cornell University study has shown that most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent. People who do things badly, according to David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well. One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to...

DEAR Baltimore drug dealers: I promise this will be the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard. Here goes: How about taking the summer off to see what it might be like around here without all the shooting and killing? Serious. How about a cease-fire? A little break could save lives, maybe even your own. I know this is crazy, the idea of drug dealers just shutting down the factory for a few months - too much money to be made, and too many customers to serve. And if you back off, even for a little while, some other guy in...

Boca Raton trauma specialist has treated 15 patients   by Sean Salai More than a dozen traumatized John Kerry supporters have sought and received therapy from a licensed Florida psychologist since their candidate lost to President Bush, the Boca Raton News learned Monday.Boca Raton trauma specialist Douglas Schooler said he has treated 15 clients and friends with “intense hypnotherapy” since the Democratic nominee conceded last Wednesday.“I had one friend tell me he’s never been so depressed and angry in his life,” Schooler said. “I observed patients threatening to leave the country or staring listlessly into space. They were emotionally...

Arguing that the state's murder case "challenged the foundation of the right to defend yourself," two Harford County businessmen were acquitted yesterday of gunning down a drug addict who broke into their East Baltimore warehouse. Prosecutors said the men, frustrated by repeated burglaries at their business, were acting with murder in mind, not self-defense, when they killed Tygon Walker with a shotgun and a handgun in June 2001. But Baltimore Circuit Judge John M. Glynn pronounced Kenny Der and Darrell R. Kifer not guilty of first-degree murder seconds after attorneys finished their closing arguments.

ALTHOUGH SEASONED NETWORK administrators may have grown accustomed to the nuisance of unsolicited e-mail, or spam, these messages may soon pose severe security threats to company networks, thanks to emerging software geared to give e-marketers more access to personal data. Marketing companies have begun to embed invisible HTML "bugs" or "beacons" in their e-mail. Because these tiny one-pixel images must be retrieved from the sender's server when the message is opened, they can tell the sender when and how often a recipient looks at a message. HTML makes browsers launch and the senders can place cookies on every PC that ...