When we see the various talking heads on television pontificating on, say, the future of Iran, or the future of the economy, or whatever other unknowable future course of events  they get paid to blather about, what is not widely understood is the use of sheep to assist in this scientific and communication process.

I thought I would let this expert cat out of the bag, to mix my animal metaphors.

Now what the experts know, and most of us suspect, is that most human beings most of the time are really bipedal and vocative sheep.

The experts that we see on television, and in front of the blackboard, are actually bipedal and vocative sheep who just dress up like shepherds, or experts, but in reality, they generally know no more than anyone else about the future.

The experts, or shepherds, are just significantly bolder than your average bipedal and vocative sheep in pretendng to know what they cannot possibly know.

What the experts know, and most of us secretly suspect, is that we human beings as a species are basically bipedal and vocative sheep, who all share a need to recite the same plausible words in our mouths together as a flock.

This is so that we as individual sheep do not appear dumber than the other sheep, and especially so that any individual sheep do not appear stranger than the other sheep by having weird and therefore baaaaaaad ideas.

The great French Shepherd DeTocqueville called this scientific phenemenon the Tyranny of the Sheep.

Furthermore, bipedal and vocative sheep are much calmer pretending to themselves and especially to others that they know what they cannot possibly know.

This is because so much of reality is intrinsically unknowable that is is terrifying and truly horrific to a vocative species.

If the bipedal and vocative sheep really acknowledged the vast unknowns in the life of the flock and as individuals on a conscious and daily basis, they would quickly have to be locked up in a padded paddock.

We need forecasts of the unknowable just to be able to get up in the morning and graze; hence the role of the expert in the life of the flock.

This educational and communication process between expert shepherd and sheep makes for a happier flock, and shepherds, although because neither the flock nor the experts really exercise any real independent thought, ever, because we can't really know what we are talking about most of the time, occasionally we all go over the cliff together, baaaing in unison all the way down: "buuuut IIII thoouugggt......"

As to the role of non-metaphorical sheep for the experts on television and in front of the blackboard, which is the main point of this  essay, it is a poorly understood fact that when forecasting the unforecastable, like what will happen in Iran or North Korea any time in the next minute, or century, or what will happen with the economy, or especially with the Stock Market, ever, the real experts use sheep.

They just don't announce that fact, because it would disturb the sheep that walk upright and talk if they knew what was happening to their quieter and more supine cousins.

For example, the Persianologists gather once a year on the high Iranian plateau at the Persian New Year of No Ruz to create their annual Iran forescast.

After intense intellectual discussions, which they all secretly know are total nonsense, because there is no way for an outsider to understand the mentality of a Shia cleric, for starters, they gather for the main event: the sheep sacrifice.

Every year on the high Iranian plateua at the annual Persianologist Conference, and I have been there, and it is so beautiful in Persepolis in spring, a pure white sheep, descended from the one that gave us the Golden Fleece, is brought forward.

After numerous interrogatories of the sheep in Farsi as to the course of events in Iran for the next year, to which the sheep is very rarely responsive, the President of the Persianologists draws forth a knife.

As the conferees chant "Iran Qeshvar e Bozoorg-i Quadmi Ast," the Chief Persianologist slits the sheep's throat with the knife used to kill Xerxes the Great in his harem.

As the conferees drink the sheep's blood collected in a bowl used by Alexander the Great to kill 38 men in a drinking contest with his Macedonian Beer, the Persianologist President then removes the entrails from the sheep for examination on the platter used to hold Roman General Crassus' head for the scientific forecast of the course of events in Iran for the next year.

If a sole white horse appears on the horizon during this process, like with Darius the Great, it augers regime change.

Unfortunately, I saw no white horse this year, although it was rumored at the conference that Ahmadinejad, like Darius, stole his rivals horses before the conference.

As to other experts use of sheep in scientific forecasting, I have also personally witnessed the American Economic Association's sheep sacrifice and entrail examination at the annual Black Tuesday meeting on Wall Street every October.

The AEA conference is similar in form to the Persianologist's conference, as all scientific processes have a replicable portion, although we economists drink the sheep's blood out of Adam Smith's beer mug while rolling around in hundred dollar bills printed by the Fed for the festivities, as we look for a red sunrises over Wall Street for augurs of inflation.

The sky was streaked the bloodiest red ever recorded this year.

On behalf of the the Association by the way, I would again like to thank the Federal Reserve System for printing so much money for the festivities, even if we all know that having the Fed print money for someone or evetn doesn't really make one very special in itself.

As to the general valdity of expert use of sheep sacrifice for forecasting purposes, I should also note that I have participated in numerous econometric research projects at various colleges and universities across the country that conclusively demonstrates that sheep blood drinking and entrail examination has significantly superior scientific forecasting accurracy properties  over one thousand equation structural macroeconometric models at the ninetey nine per cent level of confidence, with P values typically of .9998 and up.

I wish I could say that the sheep do not suffer in this use by the experts, but then science always has a price for its advance.