A Theory of Air Power

I finished Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “The Bomber Mafia”, in less than a day. Then I bought 10 more copies to hand out as Christmas presents.  It’s not a difficult book to read if you’ve spent four decades tied to the United States Air Force (USAF) with many of your formative years spent inside the Strategic Air Command (SAC).  During that time, I had the chance to personally weigh the morality of high-altitude bombing as an offensive first use weapon or better as part of the strategic triad of nuclear deterrence.   Sadly, due to Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait our country went kicking and screaming into the first Gulf War.  In those early days (circa 1991) we ushered in the first war-time use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and it’s timing to aide precision bombing (more on timing in a bit).  The mighty B-52 bomber, getting old at the time, still in noble service to our Country now another 30 years later.  In 1991 it became new again with the technology that enabled those new GPS guided munitions.  GPS brought about a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) for those who study such things.  The pinnacle of air power envisioned by the Bomber Mafia.

Beyond his great storytelling, if you are a military history buff (no pun intended) you should read other recorded military history--not Gladwell’s.  Gladwell doesn’t write for historians. He writes for a more general audience to learn a few things about the human condition.   The stories Gladwell tells in “The Bomber Mafia” have been told before in much more depth, in numerous books, and in many Hollywood movies.  The simple insight that Gladwell delivers on the human condition is that some military leaders are profoundly moral who strive to reduce the atrocities of war based on their decisions. Other leaders are great tacticians.  These tacticians can execute a plan of action and solve a set of complex military problems through operational art regardless of the technology focused primarily on effect. Finally, Gladwell also tells us, that some military leaders are just plan sadistic. In this manner Gladwell captures the richness of human behavior, our idiosyncrasies, and our strengths and weaknesses.  He doesn’t pass judgment.  He just puts it out there for you to consider the right and wrong of it all.

Anyone in the military should have studied WW II in great depth.    Anyone who considers themselves well-read should also know about the great works of fiction coming out of WW II.   Novels such as Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller to name the best—in my opinion. Some recent histories include stories of courage and the many thousands of personalities of that infamous era.  For instance, the story of Louis Zamperini the Olympic athlete who’s his trials and tribulations with the B-24’s in the Pacific were told by Laura Hillenbrand in “Unbroken”.  WW II will continue to be studied by historians for the length of human existence. In time most will end up being a mere chapter in a high school history book.  That is, unless, great stories and anecdotes told by great authors and storytellers like Gladwell (and Hillenbrand) persist.  

As to the sheer horrors of war, Gladwell does more than just hint about them.  He discusses the development of napalm and it’s effective use against the dense, tinderbox homes in Japan where 100,000 died in a single firebombing raid on Tokyo.   He glosses over the firebombing of Dresden, Germany the topic of Vonnegut’s nightmare, attributing only 25,000 to that conflagration. Although the number who died in Dresden is disputed and arguably higher.  Japan is significant in that Curtis Le May did not stop with the firebombing of Tokyo.  He went on to firebomb as many as 67 additional Japanese cities each with a similar outcome.  Most of the population of each city was decimated.  A fact that gets whisked away in the days after the nuclear missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In firebombing Gladwell tells the story of human babies igniting on the backs of their fleeing mothers as the hellish furnace of the conflagration consumed every life in its path.  In addition to the horrors of firebombing, in the nuclear conflagration the horrors of radiation sickness would soon materialize.  Like Vonnegut, you cannot not read these passages and find any nobility in war.  The book “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, written by Chris Hedges in 2002, is tells us perhaps, why humanity wages wars. Gladwell reminds us why we must continue to find ways to solve our differences peacefully even in the midst of wanting to strike out against those who oppose us, conquer us, or would lead us into tyranny.

To be sure Gladwell makes a few technical errors and errors of historical fact.  But that does not detract from the story of what happened.  This is not a revisionist history of WW II aerial bombing as some of military critics of his work have stated.  These men existed.  These bombing missions happened.  The results are historical fact, Germany was defeated.  Japan surrendered. Those who push revisionist, anything, really don’t understand what history books are trying to deliver to the future.  

Now a little more about the book.  The Bomber Mafia grew up in Maxwell AFB, Alabama, by military aviators believing several things.  First, they believed that air power could help bring wars to a close faster.  The method theorized was the precise aerial bombardment of strategic targets and choke points that could cripple an adversary's ability to wage war.  The doctrine of strategic bombardment to crush those critical nodes of production and transportation is sound provided effect can be delivered precisely.  That doesn’t preclude the use of boots on the ground or naval blockades or the coming requirement to own the high ground in space.  In the 1940’s space was the domain of HG Wells. And as for air power, it was a pipe dream back then.   Second, these air power theorists believed the use of area bombardment was morally obtuse. Decimating a country’s population to include the non-military, the civilians, the elderly as well children is a pretty evil enterprise no matter whose side you are on. As the 3rd Reich hit out at England during the Battle of Britain, many English, of course quickly overcame their squeamishness about bombing populations as they themselves were the target of the German evil.  You can almost hear the English pragmatism in doing unto the Germans which was being done unto them.  This is of course why leadership should always be sane and moral. You can’t let emotionalism govern a country.  

Gladwell is light on air power doctrine as it would take volumes to really dive into it.  Instead, he focused on those two competing methods of aerial bombardment through the eyes of Curtis LeMay and Haywood Hansell.  Where, may I ask, is Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, or the modern-day John Boyd and John Warden?    Hansell was basing aerial bombardment on strategy and morality.  LeMay was getting the job done.  These are not mutually exclusive.  But it’s worth noting that in general, air power is an RMA, it just took 80+ years for air power to hit it’s stride after it’s invention at the start of the century.  Gladwell spends time on the technology of the Norden Bombsight.  A closely guarded secret.  The bombsight was a marvel of technology akin to the first maritime chronometer.  Essentially a highly accurate clock with a telescope.  Daytime was a must.  Straight an level flight at a precise altitude was a must.  Straight into the target was a must.  With all those in order, the bomber would look through the bomb sight and with many adjustments made for every variable Norden could think of, precisely drop the bombs at the right time.  The math worked, with this proper clock, the bomber could time the release of altitude to hit a pickle barrel on the ground.  Reality was something completely different.  In fact, bombers could still not hit the broad side of a barn, or many barns, or the farm or many farms.  For numerous reasons, the bomb sight simply didn't work as promised.  Theory would have to wait.

This is a lesson for the current technology mafia who believes with unwavering optimism that the RMA before us, has to do with software and networks.  That somehow the Internet is an RMA by itself.  The theory behind that RMA started 25 years ago with chorus of networks being the solution with network centric warfare (NCW) being the crowning achievement.  Since that RMA was never achieved it’s now been augmented with the refrain that faster agile software development will deliver the heretofore unachievable.  It’s now referred to as the kill-webs as opposed to NCW but at the end of the day, it’s still not an RMA.  You don’t achieve combat power with a network even with the faster software a network can enable.  There is no warfighting energy contained in a network no matter how many nodes exist.  Further, if you connect everything, apart from being supremely difficult, you introduce an information problem that still, no matter how many temporal increments of Moore’s law we advance through, the information problem will remain intractable or in the parlance of computational complexity, NP-Complete. Wait, Artificial Intelligence.  Wait, quantum computing. Keep waiting, and good luck.  Instead of waiting on magic, what’s fascinating in Gladwell’s pages is the way Curtis LeMay overcame the greatest technology of the day, that wasn’t working, to force a winning outcome.  All the technology in the world (at the time) and the B-29 couldn't overcome the lack of an accurate bombsight.  The bombsight that would enable precision, high altitude bombing, was in reality unobtanium. In essence, a unicorn.  In the presence of the unobtanium, LeMay moved away from precision, high altitude, daytime bombing of strategic choke points and completely changed the tactics.  Instead, he went with low altitude, area bombing, and introduced napalm because he knew that flammable tinderbox houses in densely populated areas of Japan would be the target.

What allowed this change was the flexibility in the operational art of war with LeMay not tied to one doctrine of aerial warfare, but rather a doctrine of solving problems faster than your adversary can react.  Flexibility is the key to Air Power (Douhet). React faster than your adversary (Boyd).  This is the insight that Gladwell is writing about.  Though it may be hard for the average reader to ferret out without deeper history.  There is more here, but I've written enough.  Read the book.  It's less than 200 pages.   I’m going to start with 5-Stars because I love this book.  I’m going to deduct 1-Star for several technical errors and 1-Star for missing the attribution of other great air power theorists.  I’m going to add back 1-Star for the part of history often glossed over, specifically, that LeMay bombed 67 Japanese cities in total.  Capitulation without the atomic bomb was at hand.   The argument for use of the atomic bomb was that boots-on-the-ground would be necessary for the win but cost an ungodly number of American lives in the assault.  It's not at all clear that would have had to happen. Air power might have succeeded without the nuclear boost…at this point we will never know. 4-Stars for Gladwell’s jaunt into air power for those who believe in a strong Air Force and air power theory. 

Shooting Craps with the Cosmos

 

When you think of classic science fiction you always start with HG Wells.  And then you can say Isaac Asimov,  or Arthur C. Clarke.  But you can’t go too much further without saying Ringworld.  You may not say Larry Niven directly--although you should---but you can’t, not, include the title Ringworld in the same breath when mentioning the greats.  When you pull science fiction apart, there is the improbable and the probable.  HG Well was always inside the probable.  Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, to some extent, try to be.   Larry Niven is so far outside the probable, as to be light years into the future and somewhat beyond that… Not only is a Ringworld itself so improbable, most of the concepts contained within Niven’s novel are also improbable and to be entirely accurate, physically impossible.  Even his notion of probably, the math he tries to imbue, not just the science, is wrong.  Let’s just completely forget about  physics, let’s forget science, let's forget math…and go for it. It is fiction after all… 

Thus Ringworld, and who wouldn’t want to live there, can’t be real.     A mere factional wedge (or belt)  of a Dyson sphere inside the Goldilocks zone circumscribed around its central star. Perfect is all it’s design detail.  Safe from anything that might threaten it.  Engineered to hold not the people of an overpopulated planet, but perhaps a universe full of people, millions of worlds.   From the tiny thread that holds the sun shades in orbit above the ring surface to the speeds necessary for the travelers in the story to get to Ringworld, Niven is completely wrong.   All of it.  To wit, Larry Niven pushes back against his critics and says to them with his own axioms, when Arthur C. Clarke tells us, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, Larry Niven says, bite me, rather more correctly, “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."  Niven breaks the paradigm and as the greatest novelist of all has told us, just for the fleeting instance we stretch our arms out further, and beat back against the current of the genre, Ringwold is magic.  Magic that is brought alive through Niven’s narrative. It is pure science fiction.  No wonder it won awards.  No wonder it still inspires me today.  No reason, necessarily, to read further into Niven series…and I never have.  What must follow in his series (pure speculation) can only be at best an improbable defense for the impossible or at worse an apologetic

Yet here we are with such a fantastic story, without much of the defining detail as to how? To me, to provide that defining detail would be crushing. It would  lose it’s fantastic nature.  Even millions of years into the future.  There is no physics that could possibly support any of it. So don’t try.  This scale rivals the scale of human comprehension.  It is massive and beyond understanding. And the result is breathtaking.   Three  million times the surface of the earth--with walls around the edges stretching 1000 miles high. A lifetime just to walk across it’s 100,000 mile width laterally, let alone head out toward the base of the arch…an the mirage of the ring, disappearing behind the horizon and reappearing as the ring itself.  I don’t know what Niven was thinking…but we are so much richer for him having created it.  A book shelf needs bookends…Ring World is my book end for science fiction. 

When I read Ringworld in my teens it was real.  Not the reason I became an engineer…but certainly an  influencer.  Reading it again in my 50’s it’s so physically wrong as to be laughable but so fantastically right with regard to what science fiction ought to be.  Too many writers are trying to stay within the realm of physics as they know it…not courageous enough to take their potential detractors head on.  Again, bite me, it’s fiction.  It’s a magnificent flight of fancy.  If you want exactly the engineering required and accept no possibility of magic go read Weir, only The Martian, however. Artemus sucks, although, admittingly technologically accurate.    Despite the many criticisms, Niven’s awards are absolutely  justified and the book itself will always stand the test of time.  It will always be millions of years in the future…at the time when spooky magic at a distance is understood and magic becomes ubiquitous.  But there is so much more beyond technology inside it's cover.

Niven also dealt with several sticky social aspects of multiple alien species living together, super advanced life forms (Nessus the puppeteer), a warlike species that look like giant cats (Speaker to Animals a Kzin, and of course the humans (Wu and Teela -- who are on a life extension program).  Niven has been criticized, probably by the woke generation, for being somewhat bleak in his portrayal of women.  Given that he wrote this in the 60’s can’t we give that a pass?  His characters are all somewhat of a stereotype.  Turns out stereotypes exist for a reason.  Wake-up woke people and chill the hell out. Yes cats eat meat.  Carnivores eat meat. Get over it.

Yet despite his somewhat old fashioned view of women and despite the  colossal  story and engineering behind the existence of the Ringworld itself,  the actual story being told, and the hero of the story is the female human, Teela Brown.  The story actually isn’t about technology, Niven just needed a backdrop for what he calls the luck of Teela Brown. The real story is about what Einstein calls, shooting craps with the cosmos.  Does God roll the dice?  Can it happen? Does it happen? What happens when it happens?   Beyond the gift of Ringworld, Niven has given us the gift of Teela Brown.  Whereas Teela never became the messiah, it’s not too far of a stretch to understand that’s where Niven might have headed had he not gotten caught up in the debate over the technology.  Particularly if the Teela Brown character would have been slightly more appealing.  Had he written her character today, and dressed her in prose to resemble a smarter character, a Lizbeth Salander for example, he might have given us a Christ like figure. What we do have instead is from the Marvel series is the Domino super hero.  Cute…and powerful…but not the messiah.  Marvel gave us Domino in 1991.  Twenty years after Niven gave us Teela Brown as the savior of Ringworld. Niven’s aspirations for her must have been incredible.  And certainly the math he chooses to use/or ignore, is just as fantastic.  He does state early on that random flips of a coin have no memory. He must have hated that…or couldn’t understand it.  To review basic probability,  one flip of a coin is 50/50 heads or tails.  Another flip is 50/50 just the same.  Just because the more recent flip was 50/50 there is no bearing on the subsequent one. The next flip is again, 50/50.  And so it goes, as Kurt Vonagut might say.   If you are looking for a heads-up coin flip  every time, Teela Brown is that coin flip.   The problem here is that Niven, while examining the material, never quite understood what was going on…and couldn’t explain it sufficiently.  Had he argued the math, only slightly better, he might have been considered a theoretical genius in the area of statistics.  He might have handed the  mathematicians of the world a conjecture with consideration.

So here’s exactly what’s happening with Teela Brown…that Nevin couldn't prove, but surely wanted to prove.  I’ll call it the Niven conjecture.  He might not have understood what he was saying either.  Teela Brown is not  flipping the coin repeatedly and landing on heads.  She’s switching her choice back and forth as the coin is being flipped, seemingly without memory, and choosing heads or tails each time.  But in her case, she’s always right. She always makes the right choice.   The first time you flip, it’s heads or tails. Then you flip it again and you have heads, or tails, but also the branch of what might have been.  Then you flip it again, and you have heads or tails and what might have been and what might have also been.  Then you flip it again and have heads or tails and what might have been and what might have been and what also might have been.  This goes on forever.  Everybody’s life plays out according to one of those paths. Teela’s life plays out precisely because she is always on the path that is correct as to the flip of the coin. The longer the flips go on…the longer the sequence.  Those with an infinite mindset know that there are an infinite number of paths and thus if an infinite number of monkeys were seated at a typewriter and were allowed to hit the keys continuously, one of those monkeys would type out the novel “War and Peace”.  Well I can’t find the number of letters in that novel by Tolstoy but he put 587, 287 words into “War and Peace”…so loosely multiple the number of words by  five to account for spaces and punctuation so maybe three million individual characters.  This is the number of unique characters a monkey would have to tap out all in exactly the right sequence all in order to create the book.  So if that were the case it would not take an infinite number of monkeys…that number also is finite and knowable…it’s just very big.  It would take 3 million factorial x 26 plus a few special characters.  (3,000,000! X ~26)  That’s 3,000,000 x 2,999,999 x 2,999,998 x 2,999,997… all the way to 1.  It’s a big big  number, a really really big number…but it’s not infinite.  

But that’s also not what’s happening with Teela Brown either.  Day to day, minute to minute, we don’t have to make a life and death decision.  Evolution has seen most of already through over the past six billion years. We already have much of the luck of Teela Brown behind us.   Thus the remainder of our life isn’t random monkeys typing “War and Peace”.   We live perhaps for 35,000 days.  We don’t even make a life or death decision every day…if we would do that, a lot more of us would be dead.  The question correctly posed, is how many near death experiences befall us throughout  our lifetime.  That is for sure, a much smaller set.  Thus, the number of monkeys required to sit at the keyboard and type our life is a lot closer to the book “Goodnight Moon”.  There are 131 words in Goodnight Moon.  So let’s go with 131 characters that a smaller set of random monkeys would have to strike the keys on a typewriter to randomly write the story of Teela Brown's life so 131! X 26 or 2.2 x 10 raised to the 223rd power.  The question is can you find such a person living…and if they found that person in Teela Brown?    To be sure the number would need to be much smaller…the number would need to be on the order of no more than 15 life or death decisions…and you actually could find such a person…given that about a trillion people were your sample size.  1 x 10 raised to the 12th power. 

Anyway, that’s not the conjecture.  The Niven conjecture isn’t about doing the actual math.  Because as we’ve learned, math from statistics will not work here.  It’s wrong. Statistically Teela Brown will not win. She will lose, and lose quickly.  As she begins flipping the coin will lose, if not at 15 flips, shortly thereafter.   Beyond that the numbers move toward infinity, or as close to infinite as the human mind can comprehend.  That must not be what’s happening statistically.  If we are to believe there is math behind it, something else must be going on.  I can’t figure it out.  But someone, somewhere might.   The conjecture therefore  is more about whether or not  something mathematically magical is happening on the way to this  infinity.  And the answer is, yes.  It must.  Why? Because we are all here to observe the outcome of this math.  Every single life form on planet earth, animal, insect, plant, has survived though time to be living and breathing the atmosphere of our Earth.  Everything, to exist today, has been done with the Luck of Teela Brown. Is this magic?  Is this deterministic?  Is this proof of God?  That’s what Niven was really talking about when he wrote Ringwold.  And beyond the technology we have the math behind his magical thinking.  I like that Niven is a magical thinker.

I give Niven 5 full stars for Ring World.  It’s just what science fiction should be…extra-ordinary science (and probability) wrapped up in brazen, unapologetic  fiction!

Crime, Seth Rogen Tweets, & What Would Jesus Do?

On the surface, one might consider the latest out of Hollywood tweet by the comical Seth Rogen, to be at the pinnacle of woke liberal progressive tripe and a danger to the country.  “Get used to it”.  We can dismiss petty crime.  You can read about his tweets here.  

https://www.mediaite.com/news/seth-rogen-defends-car-break-ins-in-los-angeles-i-dont-personally-view-my-car-as-an-extension-of-myself/

Essentially he is saying stuff like, if you live in the "big-city" you can expect to have your car broken into, get over it, seemingly giving crime a pass.  This should, on the surface, rub every law abiding citizen wrong.  It should also make Republican’s go ape shit. I think we are seeing that ape shit response.  Even from a few moderate democrats.

The complete thoughts here are far deeper and more nuanced for a tweet.  The thoughts here go  so far beyond the pages of People Magazine or the  latest  Woke experience from the progression wingnuts on the left who strive to make the criminals the victims.  Let’s dig deeper.

Let’s start with remembering that very first crime you’ve experienced that was committed against yourself and I’m talking about a relatively petty crime.  A misdemeanor, a theft.  Not a felony, not a violent act. Let's not confuse the two.    Regardless of the petty nature of the crime, who  didn’t feel violated?  It’s still shocking. It’s emotional.  It’s ethereal.  And yes, being violated is a valid expression.   Those who have numerous petty crimes committed against them, without serious mental preparation,  stoic meditation perhaps, rarely can reduce the pangs of violation--even if minuscule by comparison to physical assault or armed robbery, for instance. 

Rogen claims his car has been broken into 15 times.  I hope that’s an exaggeration, but nevertheless, repeated exposure to that same stress, no doubt, will make your mental reaction somewhat less fraught with anxiety.  Certainly, that first night of sleeplessness after experiencing a crime, will abate, if a car break-in has been something you’ve decidedly decided to live with. Doubtful Rogen would feel the same way if his house was broken into, perhaps while resting peacefully inside.  There are other petty crimes.  Having your wallet or purse stolen at the airport.  Having your bike stolen.  Tires slashed.  Hotel room burglarized. Even a home break in, preferably while you were on vacation.  For the record it’s  not petty at all if you are home.  Rogen also claims he's unaffected, because he doesn’t view a car, and the material value of things in the car, as an extension of himself.

To some extent, all of these crimes have befallen me, or someone I know.  They all suck.  Yet here we are, giving crime a pass.  What would Jesus do?  If you steal a loaf of bread to feed your hungry child, should you have your hand chopped off?  These are ethical and moral scenarios that have been explored greatly throughout the literature.  Even better, if you have an expensive car, park it in a sketchy place, leave your wallet on the dashboard, and leave the doors unlocked, haven’t you just explicitly invited the crime?  This would be akin to saying a woman invites an assault by wearing skimpy clothes.  Let’s stop that line of bullshit right there.  No one invites crime against themselves.  Period.  For whatever reason, you parked the car, felt it was safe to run into the 7-Eleven, and did so.  Only to get trapped momentarily in the back of the store and delayed by some high school kid  trying to make a mature selection on which IPA they should try to buy with their phony ID.  It happens.  Next thing you know,  your cell phone has walked out of the parking lot...hopefully after it locked itself. The cell phone can be replaced easily...if it’s an Android.  You’re fucked if you iPhone was stolen and you don’t know your Apple ID or password.  But I digress...

Now another crime story, from the early 1990’s.   My aunt and uncle visited me in Texas.  They were accompanied by their three young daughters.  This story is a bit poignant as my uncle just passed from cancer a few weeks ago and I attended his memorial in Florida.  I actually recounted this tale when I spoke at his celebration.  They traveled in a van, the five of them, around the country having returned to the states for a year furlough, after doing five years of missionary work in a foreign land.  In every sense of the word, these five disciples of Jesus, spinning around the country in a van, doing, living, and breathing God’s word are a living manifestation of His Gospel. Unfortunately their van was broken into in San Antonio.  I don’t remember everything that was stolen.  But I do remember it included personal artifacts, such as pictures from their mission, over the last five years.  Principally the evidence of their mission and the reason for their travels.  Missionaries need sponsors.  Without support they cannot be on the front lines, in far off places, preaching the salvation of the Lord. Missionary work is not a thing without support.  My aunt and uncle were un-phased by the crime. Living true to their beliefs, it was to them, in fact, “God’s will”.  These two beautiful humans are not hypocrites.  In 50 years I have not seen them waiver in their belief in this regard.  Perhaps, given the expression on one of my cousin’s faces at the memorial, when I recounted the tale, the crime was still raw.  I heard her mutter the words, “Ugh, San Antonio”.

Would they excuse the crime, certainly not. Are they bothered by a crime that was most certainly God's will?  Also, certainly not.  The criminal, should he have been encountered, would most certainly have been forgiven by my aunt and uncle .  So has the cancer that ravaged my uncle’s body, so recently rendering him to the Lord,  been forgiven by his wife, now widowed aunt. My uncle, some of his last words, when asked how he was doing? Could only respond, “Better than I deserve”.  Should any of us believe, what befalls us is somehow not  better than we deserve, we have not paid attention to life in general.  Those are strong words and I use them only to set context for this post. Individually, today perhaps, many of you have mighty struggles.  I am not insensitive to that pain and real suffering. Yet we can, in fact, understand and perhaps give it less power over us, as Saint Seth  has perhaps told us in his tweet.

Here’s another crime story.  One that plagued me a few years ago. Forget living in the big city, and locking your car doors.  I fled the city and lived not only in the suburbs, but in a gated community, on a barrier island in Florida. This is the pinnacle of escapism.  I’m embarrassed to say that.  I’m also embarrassed to say our gated community was not free from crime.  Lock your cars the neighborhood youth seemingly checked for locked doors routinely.  This was an insider threat.  What was worse for me, however, was not losing my radar detector, pinched from the glove box one evening, it was losing my bikes directly out of my garage.  This happened twice.  Shame on me for leaving the garage door open, I guess.   Cue my first several encounters with Florida law enforcement.  Turns out, if you want to check to see if your bicycle has been reported, or recovered to law enforcement,  you have to contact all municipalities.  There are at least five  separate municipalities on that barrier island, all within easy bike riding distance.  You can’t just call your local one...chances are the bike left your municipality about 6 minutes after the thief started pedaling. Do the cops in Florida care about bicycles?  No.  This isn’t even a crime in Florida.  Even if they took the bike from your garage. As it turns out, the hoodlum wasn’t actually stealing my bike, they just needed it to travel someplace.  Grabbing the nearest, unlocked, set of wheels, is a mode of transportation.  Florida’s finest advised me to drive up and down the beach-front and look for a place where someone might have needed the ride, and dropped the bike.  I did this.  My bikes never turned up. I started to check to see that my garage door was closed every night.  I never grew insensitive to this particular petty crime.  But perhaps, I didn’t live in Florida long enough.

What am I saying here?  I’d love for someone to put words in my mouth because this isn’t easy.  Don’t condemn Seth Rogen for his liberal views with regard to crime, petty crime.  They might not just be liberal.  He is not the left-wing boogieman you may think he might be.  I’ve just provided two ultra-conservative accounts of the dismissal of petty crime as a part of life, and not just in the big city, code word, urban-environment..  Don’t be a hypocrite.  Live your life, if not in accordance with His Word, in accordance with Seth’s word.  Get used to it.  But you should also lock your doors...

WHEN Not to Just Do It...

As birds go, I’m a morning lark as opposed to my daughter, who is a night owl.  I rise at 5 am every morning and try my best to stay awake after 9 pm so my wife doesn’t take my drowsiness personally.  She is also a night owl.  There are reasons for this type of behavior.  Daniel Pink has written an accessible--pop science--account of why there are night owls and morning larks and thus why we should pay more attention to the “WHEN” of when we do things.  As the other Byrd’s have told us, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose, under Heaven…”.  But really that wasn’t the Byrd’s since they clipped the phrase from Ecclesiastes 3. And Daniel Pink clipped the concept from the Bible to give us his NYT’s best seller, “WHEN”, his fourth book.  This is an enjoyable romp through what we have always suspected about the value of time...and why we shouldn’t force our night owls to wake up and get their day started.  Society in general is not actually made up of night owls or the morning larks.  As a species we are more like daytime chickens. Evolutionarily speaking, we’ve only had  a few thousand years to evolve into a world of artificial light.  Like chickens, we can only see in the daylight, so what’s up with early mornings and late nights?  For hundreds of thousands of years homosapiens have risen with the sun in the east and gone to bed when it disappears in the west...just like chickens. Thus we could all learn a lot from a chicken's schedule by mimicking their behavior and time patterns. They stay safe from predators and work hard. They even adjust for daylight savings time.  But that’s a different story.

In his book, Pink has aptly captured the science surrounding when our human bodies perform the best given what we’ve known for years to be the rhythm of our physiology. Typically we choose to ignore these cycles by forcing ourselves to do things that make us wake up on the wrong side of the bed...like setting an alarm clock. Only night owl’s need alarm clocks--like my daughter which they mostly ignore when it goes off. Morning larks wake up au naturel (don’t worry I’m talking about time, not attire). That’s me saying that, not Pink.  Pink is searching for a formula to better “hack” your own body into optimal performance by staying attune to your highs and lows of energy and mental acuity during the course of the day.  For instance, if you force high school students into class early, when their brains are not awake, they will underperform.  Also, if you force these same kids to do analytic work during their off peak hours, say math in the afternoon, they will underperform.  He’s talking about our kids, for the most part, but everybody does better if they are attuned to this cycle of optimal performance.  Between chapters  he presents his formula for how to hack your own body  to sync up with it’s internal performance clock. This is a useful self-help tool if you haven’t already discovered how to do it through self observation.

Not only should you do this yourself, you should help your kids through the selection of optimal “WHEN”.  Also, we should be aware of the people around us and when they are at their optimum performance if we need them for something. For instance, the right time for elective brain surgery is not during the late afternoon.  If you are going to select for that type of procedure pick a surgical lark and go in the morning.  Pink uses the example of colonoscopy and how mistakes are made during the procedure when it is performed later in the day. Typically, that exploration is done in the numerous colonoscopy sweatshops that freckle our country.  If you’ve ever been to one of these medical locations it looks and feels like an assembly line...customer after customer.  As it turns out, and this is not contained in Pink’s research, there are not enough doctors performing colonoscopies in this country to accommodate the American Medical Association’s advice for everyone over the age of 50 to have an annual colonoscopy.  Further, if everyone chose to have their procedure done in the morning, where the doctor was at his best, the number of available colonoscopy lifeboats would be reduced by half, or the same ratio of lifeboats available on the Titanic.  So schedule your colonoscopy early in the day  so you don’t have to take that afternoon lifeboat. As an aside, here's a helpful tip for those in need of a colonoscopy.  It turns out some doctors prescribe drinking a gallon of water with a full bottle of Miralax in preparation for your procedure.  If your doctor prescribes the standard gag inducing cocktail of magnesium citrate and water tell them to bugger-off and go find a doctor who will prescribe the Miralax solution.  You will be much happier.

As a self help book “WHEN” is a must read...at least the first four chapters.  He establishes his case for the rhythm and performance of our bodies which is pretty much an open and shut case.  It’s undeniable and you should adjust your schedule to do important things, like making critical decisions, at the right time for you.  It’s easy, once you identify your peaks and lows.  Then he walks through how to complete a project, any project, that has a natural ebb and flow starting with the natural excitement at the beginning, moving through the waning of interest and the slog of slow motion in the middle, and finishing at the end of the activity with a flourish.  All of this makes perfect sense and is as practical as any management/self-help book I have found.  Mapping your highs and lows into this type of schedule really works.   I’ve already adopted some of his techniques for getting through the slog of the middle zone.  So many things go unfinished when we encounter the mountain before us as we climb through this ugly place. Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration” meaning it takes a lot of work to get through this middle zone.  Thus in my mind, most of us might actually be geniuses if we could get the 99% of the activity completed.   Edison was a night owl, by the way.  Pink tells us that...it’s odd that he left out Edison’s most famous quote since it fits perfectly.

In the final section of the book, Pink takes a hard left turn and drives into a story about the delivery of Dabbawala lunches in Mumbai, India. As most of his stories go, he spins a good yarn and tells these anecdotes with very accessible prose.  However he’s no Gladwell when it comes to defining the “So What?” of his story. Gladwell is the master of answering that question.  Alas, “WHEN” will not, and cannot, become a household word as a result.  Also, try doing a Google search on the word, “when”.  It’s a bad choice...but perhaps that’s his editor's fault.  I digress.  The story of the Dabbawalas has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the book.  Totally weird.  In  this chapter he calls “Syncing Fast and Slow” perhaps he is attempting to call out to the guardian angels of Daniel Kahneman?  Pink is clearly an acolyte of the Nobel Laureate, having mentioned Kahneman several times.  But in the end, the chapter heading and the story of the Dabbawalas just doesn’t sync (no pun intended) with the topic of “WHEN” to do something important..  

I can just imagine the writing slump Pink was going through during and decided to use his new found tools to move through this depression.  Then he finished with a flourish as he had the excitement to write the story of the Dabbawalas--which he used to add meaning to his story.  He even included pictures...which was weird. Well look, it’s a good self-help book on time management and motivation.  It doesn’t have to have eternal meaning.  It’s interesting that Pink claims he has adopted some of his new found perspectives having researched this book and put those insights to use.  He came to believe he had been doing things wrong most of his life...which is a bit confusing as he has been a productive and prolific writer this being his fourth book. He already had skills that worked and many of the reviews I have read claim some of his earlier work is superior.  I’ll have to give another one of his titles a go just to see for myself.

This is a solid book, certainly the first four chapters. His writing style is conversational which makes it easy to read.  His wife, apparently from his acknowledgement, read the book aloud cover to cover...which has always been the best way to write something and make it easy to read.  Four stars for a solid book.  I have to subtract one star for a finish that I simply didn’t understand. I thought I was reading a different book.  But when it comes to the bulk of the material on “WHEN” to do, or not to do, something...don’t just do it.  For the important stuff, pay attention to the time of day when you are at your optimum and save other times to slog through the mountain in the middle of life. 

What a Pain in the Ass -- How to Recover Your Apple Accounts and Other Secrets Apple is Hiding...

FU Apple! Guess what? Apple Stores you PassCode. How do I know? Because if you forget your Apple PassCODE for your iPhone and iPad, and you forget your AppleID PassWORD, it is possible to recover your account and all your iCloud information, if you have patience. It requires an iPhone, in this case with your old phone number enabled, SIM card not important. I went with the iPhone 12 Pro Max. And you will need, at least temporarily, a new AppleID. At least if you want to use your new device in the meantime. Once you tell Apple you want to recover your AppleID password and you are in their automated system you can expect a call back in about 2 weeks. That's where patience comes in. And it worked. Two weeks later, down to the hour and minute, Apple called. The automated system told me I could now log in and reset my password to my old AppleID account. This is how I did it...but that's not how I know they store your Passcode. That comes a bit later...

On June 4th, at 7:36 am, the new phone rang. It was an automated voice from Apple telling me I could now recover my AppleID. The first thing I did was log into my iCloud on my computer with the old AppleID and reset the password. It worked. It required a call back from Apple with a confirmation code. The second thing I did was log out of the new AppleID that I had set up on a new iPad. And then, when relogging into the iPad with my old AppleID (which required a call back from Apple with a new confirmation code) I discovered something that shouldn’t have happened. It was prompted for a Passcode. What PassCODE? I hadn’t set up a Passcode for that iPad with the old AppleID. Only for the old iPhone that was forgotten. What Passcode was it asking me for? Luckily there was a bypass but it told me I would lose any data that had been end to end encrypted. When I logged into the iPad with the old AppleID I then was able to check to ensure all the pictures, contacts, and iTunes were intact. It looked like there was a lot of data there...I didn’t really look to see when the last backup had occurred. There were very old pictures and it looked like some new ones. I also recognized the music and full contact list.

Then it was time to log out of the new AppleID on the new iPhone 12 Max and log back in with the recovered old one. The moment of truth had arrived. Same thing happened after logging out, logging on, and then receiving a phone call from Apple with a confirmation code to complete the 2-factor authentication. It prompted me for a Passcode. OK...here is what’s weird. I have no idea if this is true or not. If it was prompting me for a Passcode, and that Passcode could only be the Passcode that existed on the old IPhone, the one that was forgotten. That Passcode clearly didn’t only reside on the old iPhone. That phone is a brick and turned off. It was on an Apple server someplace. All this talk about an encrypted iPhone that Apple has given the press, the world, the public, and law enforcement has to be a bunch of happy horseshit. For the new iPad and the new iPhone to be prompting me for that old Passcode means it was extracted from the old iPhone and existed on their servers associated with the old AppleID profile someplace in the cloud. Apple knew that Passcode. They would have to...otherwise what I just witnessed, twice, would not be possible.

It bothered me so much I had to research WTF was going on. So I found an article that explains it. “Why Does Apple Ask for Your Password or Passcode with a New Login (and Why it is Safe)?” Well, if you read this article the writer came to the same conclusion, although it’s not definitive because Apple doesn’t publish what’s actually going on. The conclusion is that Apple does indeed store the Passcode from your devices. However, the Passcode is only ever stored on Apple servers encrypted. Thus, they don’t really know it. OK, so this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever encountered. Not so much because there is anything they can really do with an encrypted Passcode with out work...but because they could. If they give it to you, you still can’t use it in it’s encrypted state. You can’t enter it, for example, you still don’t know it, and neither do they. But in it’s encrypted state, it is definitely discoverable. Thus, if working with law enforcement, for example, when trying to catch a terrorist, Apple were to surrender the Passcode in it's encrypted form, it would be far easier for researchers to figure it out if they have the original, stored, hashed value...because they know exactly how it's encrypted...Apple surely does. As opposed to working with the iPhone itself, trying to extract the encrypted Passcode, and then breaking it. Apple wouldn't have to break it...only run their algorithm until they discovered it...

Oh, one more thing. If you have "Find my phone" enabled and it is associated with your AppleID...if you don't have your Passcode, you are never getting back onto your old phone. Since you will be prompted for the Passcode, even after a hard factory reset. Which, also means, the Passcode is coming in externally. And for which, Apple does not allow you to by-pass. In theory, you would then have all the encrypted data...if you had access to that iPhone. FU Apple. I like my Android just fine. So, don't lose you Passcode, don't forget your AppleID, don't enable "Find my Phone". Or just go with Android.

Here is the article I reference.

https://tidbits.com/2019/09/26/why-apple-asks-for-your-passcode-or-password-with-a-new-login-and-why-its-safe/

A Rat, a Rat, a Motherfucking Rat

I love little Johnny jokes.  Or at least I use to.  The one where the teacher goes through the alphabet and never picks little Johnny because she (or he) knows he (or she ) will say something really dirty.   Finally she gets to the letter “R” and she can’t think of a dirty word that begins with “R” so, since little Johnny has put his hand up on every single letter, she picks him. And little Johnny says, “A Rat, a Rat, a Motherfucking Rat!”  That’s classic humor...and never gets old.... 

Recently  I've been very public about my desire to stand on the left get rid of Trump and then swing back to the right and push back on the wave of Marxist ideology rising up on our radical left.  I think that is the real danger to our society although some believe it’s the overdrive for political correctness and wokeness of that same radical left.  This cancel-culture is  based on the deep movements in American Universities...safe spaces, trigger words, etc..  You can read about the issue and how it’s seemingly having not just an impact on us but an impact on other countries...in particular France.  French intellectuals believe our American Universities could destroy their culture.  Here is the article from the New York Times..  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html

Since France is far more socialist than we are, maybe I've missed the issue and am wrong.  Is this the real issue and danger?  Maybe?  But in general isn't Europe more "woke" across the board.  On the environment, on social issues, on taxes, on healthcare, on everything.  I thought we lagged behind them?  So how is it our American Universities are causing this problem for them?  Is it simply because we've lost the ability to make off color jokes?  

I agree, we are more sensitive to a lot of things.  I had to say this on the soccer field on Sunday...we were playing soccer in the snow and the soccer ball would roll through deeper snow and start picking up snow covering like a snowman. Who doesn’t think that’s cute?  One of my friends would stop playing (repeatedly) and pull out his camera to take pictures of the forming ball of snow.   I said,  "You can take the kid out of the playground but you can’t take the playground out of the kid".  That phrase is  based on a less socially acceptable cliché.  Can I even say it?  Even though it's as PC as I can think.  But just the fact that I know  it came from the old cliché, and I knew that old cliché, will the “Brain Police” that live inside of my head, now say I’ve said something wrong?  Is that sufficient...or will cancel-culture crush those brain cells as well?  And perhaps me for writing it down?

If that's what's really causing the unrest, the true issue, and why Trump lovers love Trump, is because under Trump  you can say "Merry Christmas", you can laugh when someone slips and falls, you can tell off-color, sexist, and even racist jokes.  This is clearly a 1st Amendment issue. And we’ve seen the right rising in defense of those pushed off social media for simply airing their thoughts and political beliefs.  Although for the record, insurrection isn’t protected by the 1st Amendment.  Nevertheless, we must make room for the remote idea that there were election irregularities...but at some point, after 60+ legal judgements, we must move on.  We also have to be more precise in our wording...and less prone to reacting when we call a duck, a duck.  If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...and weighs as much as a duck…it’s a duck.  Terrorists are terrorists, patriots are patriots.  Patriots are those who cast off the bounds of tyranny for the greater good of all...both the left and the right...when in the course of human events it becomes necessary…  Terrorists, on the other hand, are those who attempt to cast off their bounds for their own self  interest.  Let’s call the insurrectionists by their proper name.  Words matter.  Facts matter.   Trump is a corrupt moron...whereas individuals with no foundation, guided by their own woke feelings, are just as moronic.  I spell that word AOC.

I was recently reading G.K. Chesterton on a friends recommendation.  Chesterton said,  "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."   The mistake progressives are making is seemingly the growing cancel-culture.  How do we reverse it?   I'm such a hypocrite and enjoy a good off-color joke as much as the next guy (or gal). And, seemingly, so to do many of my friends.  So maybe...with nowhere else to go...since we can't tell dirty jokes,  we can't tell sexist jokes, we can't tell racist jokes, we can't make jokes about disabilities, we can't trigger anyone,  we have a hole in our collective brains. Human nature being what it is, we must fill that hole in our psyche. We are now filling it with deep trash from the internet.  Whereas ten years ago, I might literally have posted a slightly off color joke on FB.  (I hope not...they might still be there.)  We are filling that void with conspiracy theories...  I have compared Trump to Hitler and Hillary to the Anti-Christ.  One of those is considered a conspiracy theory...  The other is not.  I'd like to get back to dirty jokes instead. Yet I will be corrected...I’m sure...by one side or the other.

If we want to pull back together as a country we have to forgive the occasional faux pas. Jokes are jokes, conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories, and radical ideology is radical ideology. Laughing at the stereotype contained in a joke is what makes it funny.  It says you have a sense of humor, not that you are racist, sexist, or a radical. I return to GK Chesterton once again.  In critique of the progressives, the idea that we can change the 70 million who voted for Trump, we cannot.  Although 70 million voted for him, let’s just call it a bigger number, half of our country does not want to change what is not broken. And they are correct.  What progressives are asking for is to throw them out...as we have thrown out Trump.  Throwing out half the country is not possible.  Having the other half of the country move to Canada is also not possible.  Chesterton said, “It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.”  It’s time we ask for a new food.  The good news, the new food we seek, has been with us all the time.  It’s called the Constitution.  We have a Bill of Rights.  It protects all of us equally.  Not just our own selfish interests.  Let's get back to applying it to We the People.  Not just those of us who are woke.

  

Chaos in the Republic?

Upsetting…

Not unforeseen…

Mindless, semi-harmless, racist thugs seeking payback for BLM protests…

Spectacularly unsuccessful.  A few disturbing videos,  a sad loss, every idiot with a camera taking a selfie... 

Not really a coup--even for a banana republic…

Capital Police - unprepared for the incursion, rightly stepping back rather than using deadly force on Americans…of lighter skin...?

Glad it's over...puts the final nail in Trump's coffin as someone grossly mistaken for having the character/integrity/honor and anything else resembling the conduct of a US President…

Republican leaders finally stepping up...

Democrat leaders pushing too far...

Our Republic, never in peril, restored…

We move on and erase/repair the last four years…

Don't You Forget About Me...

I gave "Ready Player One" 5-Star's for Ernest Clive's first book to bring virtual reality alive in the OASIS of his creation.  He wrote a sequel.  As with Andy Weir's sequel to "The Martian", an absolute must read follow-on after such an incredible first book.  Unlike  Weirs' second effort, "Artemis", which was a complete literary train wreck, Clive wrote a strong sequel called, "Ready Player Two" that is every bit as good as his first effort.  In fairness to Weir "The Martian" is one of my all time favorite books.  But to avoid being a troll, Weir and Clive communicate, or at least Clive gave Weir a nice mention in the credits.  The difference is that Clive doesn't deviate from what he is good at doing...which is bringing video games to life on a written page.  Since "Ready Player One" was published, the movie was also produced.  As spectacular as the movie showed on the silver screen, there is still no screen as spectacular as what can be knit together in the human mind...great writers know this and Clive can still bring it.  This is highly suggestive that  may be a great writer.  Although I will go to the movie for this sequel when it is produced,  given Clive's writing, the book will still be better. Interestingly Clive also gives Spielberg acknowledgement for help advice in the credits suggesting, perhaps, that "Ready Player Two", the movie, will not be far behind. And they obviously don't have to screw with the name...

But now, on to the review, which I will not pack with spoilers. Let's just say, "Ready Player Two" is another epic quest across the OASIS delving far deeper into Shermer Illinois than one should go...even if you are a John Hughes fan.  Far deeper into Prince's "The Afterworld'', even if you are a rabid Prince Fan, and so much deeper into Middle Earth, that even if you are not already in love with Tolkien, you might be forced to start reading that Parthenon of fantasy from the very beginning.  I suspect most of Clive's topics will enjoy a resurgence of interest. Did Prince, for instance, really become a Jehovah's Witness?  Damn, I missed that on the news...  I've already checked the reference...it definitely seems true. Sorry to you Prince fans if I'm behind the times.  Which means, Clive, generally speaking, must be staying on the factual side of his cultural references. I'll probably fact check a few more, simply because fact checking is in vogue these days here in early January, 2021.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not trolling Clive at all for his deep references to pop culture.  Every single fan of the 80's will love this book as much as the first one.  What a trip down memory lane.  And, even if you are not a fan of the multitude of references, beyond there being something for everyone, even the best fans can't possibly get every reference.  My daughter, who is worried about reading either of these great books, since 80's culture does not belong to her, shouldn't be.  The book is still extremely enjoyable even if you don't get the reference...Clive's style is such that you know it's a reference.  And maybe, you will go watch a John Hughes movie, you happened to have missed.  Look, I'm just saying that you can't go wrong with Molly Ringwald...no matter what...but I did not know that John Hughes actually played Brian's (Anthony Michael Hall's) dad in the Breakfast Club.  Yes I fact checked it. Yes it's true. 

So, perhaps, as a gamer, you grow tired of just another quest.  Just another search, and collection of gems, or keys, or stones, or in this case, shards.  Yes, collect the seven shards of the siren's soul and win a prize.  Seems old hat.  And certainly, without the cultural references, it might be.  However, that's not only what Clive does.  He mixes it deeply with his first.  In fact, it might be worth going back to reread the first, in advance. He also, beyond gaming, he began exploring, for the first time, the true futuristic realm of true artificial intelligence.  He even mentions the Singularity.  Now, let's not get carried away.  Clive is not the software engineer that  Weir was back when he worked for a living.  He is also, not the science fiction writer and advanced thinker, that is Philip K. Dick or Neal Stephenson or even Ted Chiang.  But he begins to address some of the same advanced subjects that humanity must face, should one happen to believe, AI could become self-aware.  Since I personally don't believe in that fiction, I am happy if he stays in his gamer, and pop cultural lane. And for the most part, he does. While bringing those subject's up...he doesn't really try to treat them with a deep philosophy.  That's probably a good thing.  He knows his blind spots unlike at least one of the aforementioned authors (Andy Weir).

He also cleverly avoids the deep technological understanding that would necessitate both the operation and the security of the massive server complexes necessary to create the OASIS.  He sticks to his craft.  He tells a story.  This fundamentally is why I believe Clive's work is so good.   Also, despite criticisms registered in these reviews, he deserves some defense.  He mentions destroying the planet from environmental catastrophe based on the endless consumption of resources.  So too, did he, in "Ready Player One".  If you didn't like that in RP1 you shouldn't have read RP2. That is no surprise from a book about science fiction particularly when the plotline demands that everyone plug into the OASIS to escape reality.  Second, he mentions, the gender fluid nature of computer generated Avatars inside the OASIS.  This is a perfectly natural outcome of dealing with computer generated artificial life forms.  You can also be a dragon, a wolf, or even a lamp...but he doesn't really mention those potentials.  Also, despite the criticism, he doesn't beat the reader up about it.  It's slightly more than a casual mention that will certainly have occurred to anyone with a brain who has ever logged into an online game and been asked to select an avatar.

I rarely give 5-Stars to books, as in my mind a 5-Star book is a must read and an immediate classic.  RP1 is such a book.  RP2 is just as good so I'm in a quandary.  We must not forget that RP1 came first and thus I think you get Clive's craft by simply reading it.  Thus RP2 isn't necessary reading if you've read the first.  So I'll give RP2 a rating of 4.75 stars overall...which will look like a full 5 stars...but in reality, it's slightly less...  So don't forget about RP1, and don't walk on by RP2...  If you are a fan, read them both...