Last week was National Procrastination Week. I would have mentioned it before, but somehow it seemed more appropriate to wait. Procrastination is one of my favorite things. It is usually seen as a weakness, but in fact it is a strength. If Napoleon had put off invading Russia in 1812, or Hitler had hesitated before charging into Poland in 1939, a vast amount of trouble would have been avoided. You may be able to think of other examples. The opposite of procrastination is precipitation, which my dictionary defines as: “Impulsive action, rush, or haste.” Socrates was famous for inducing a kind of intellectual paralysis in his fellow Athenians by constantly asking questions, then questioning the answers, and so ad infinitum. What this technique reveals is simply that most of the knowledge we act on is garbage, and most of our “informed decisions” are informed only by ignorance and wishful thinking. This can be irritating. It was so irritating for the citizens of Athens that they killed