tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48148659260770912192024-03-05T08:35:02.393-05:00Mooch's BlogObserving life with a little editorialMoochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-24713507746272332712023-12-31T12:02:00.014-05:002024-01-03T07:19:50.157-05:00A Commentary on the Existence of Alien Life<div class="separator"></div><div class="separator"></div><div class="separator"><br /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><img height="276" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/imROgprs-wFZEYo2xFkihqt4aBkNI7IqVJCIGo5Xc8mJD1qo9PdGbUEtc_GZ367GCDLvgYV6z3kSmLPxDhH6E7UAereT5JACfe2WLUGMI4L13bHLjkZcFgdGebsbSwjKY6t41A32WF7dOzwjCC-0pyk=w460-h276" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" title="David Grush Testifying Before Congress on the Existence of Aliens" width="460" /></p><p>This guy? Wow, just when you think you’ve seen it all. Dang, now I’ve got to take time out of my busy day, the book reviews I want to write, and a million other things I need to do before 2023 runs out, to offer my opinion on aliens. Yes, I love the movie Aliens. It is my all time favorite movie…Sigorni Weaver, Bill Paxton, et al. “They mostly come at night, mostly”. And on and on. I’m a SciFi fan. A big one. I even use SciFi as the answer to my password question on the United Airlines flight-app. I’ll do that this morning as I fly to alien central, I mean Nevada. It’s ok that you know my password question. The United app is so worthless, I can barely log onto it myself, so good luck hackers! I digress, I really don’t want to waste my time with nonsense, but here we go.</p><p>Many places from Roswell New Mexico, Bishop California, to Tonopah and Rachel Nevada, I’ve been there, done that. But not in the sense of a tourist trip, a.k.a. from the movie “PAUL”, but in the sense that they are real world places, they exist, people live there, people work there. I work there. Things happen there…real world things. It's not Disney. It’s not an imaginary place. But extraterrestrial things do not happen there. That’s just plain crazy talk. We call those people (the crazy people) who believe in extraterrestrials, the tinfoil hats. They also frequent those places--or at least the perimeters of those places. For national security reasons, we restrict access to those places. As we do with most government facilities, we are trying to keep secrets from our adversaries. It’s a privilege to be trusted by the country to be granted access to these places. One thing the government does not burden us with, however, is to keep the existence of aliens secret. Because there are no aliens. </p><p>Conspiracy theories arise in two ways. </p><p>First, when something happens that is so big, it is out of balance with its actual cause, the human mind can’t rationalize the event and bring it back into balance. When out of balance, cause and effect, a conspiracy theory will arise. The assassination of JFK is a prime example. Huge impact on the country at the trigger finger of a lone gunman. That incident is still out of balance with human nature and continues to spawn conspiracy theories. </p><p>Second, when something is intentionally kept secret and the ego of an inquisitive person is too large to be contained outside the secret, a conspiracy is created. This is also known by its better name, paranoia. This happens at the local level and is the source of most family drama. Try to keep a secret in your family if another family member knows there's a secret. All hell breaks loose. But it also happens at a grand scale at the national level, when a journalist breaks a story, and doesn’t have all the facts. Good journalists, with their egos of normal size, fact check, and report only facts. Bad reporters simply speculate wildly about things they know nothing about and create fictions. To be clear these are not alternative facts, they are, in fact, fictions. That’s what’s going on now. Grusch has an outsized ego for the limited information for which he has access. We are witnessing the net result. Pure speculation giving rise to conspiracy theories. It’s worse in this case, because, sometimes, when in possession of the facts, the decision can be made to disclose the facts, and all but the most ardent conspiracy theorists will accept those facts. As in the first case, with the JFK assassination, The Warren Report, if you read it, dispels all rumors of any conspiracy in the President’s assassination (I’ve read it cover to cover). </p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-a31a53a8-7fff-de7c-c4cc-ca009769f44f"></span></p><p><span style="border: none; clear: right; display: inline-block; float: right; height: 186px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; overflow: hidden; width: 197px;"><img height="186" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/THUrB7JWSluF54kCK8zTtJdLlyVmu5iZHSmn-8k7o77Bh3ZftcSoOYp70Ogkiut62x9MXMn9KsIkRTgQMgI9StPppw5vUvaosyxBvzUD7CurhnLrcYb1H_5aNL0vGgclF5bZq9oBvaPw96EpBVs0IJM" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="197" /></span>I don’t think anyone else in our Country has. In the case of Grusch, it’s impossible to disclose all the facts because 1) the real facts are unrelated to aliens and are classified--we would damage national security to appease one man’s ego 2) there are no real facts regarding aliens. They don’t exist so there is nothing to disclose. This is the classic search for the black cat in the dark room. And there is no cat in the room. This is not Schrödinger's cat, since the cat is neither alive nor dead. There is no cat.</p><p>And now the news has been a flutter with the latest “credible” testimony of David Grusch in a tin-foil hat. He is a wing nut who just left NGA and announced to the world that, “We are not alone”. That leads me to wonder who “We” are. Apparently “We” includes us and the central governments of multiple countries who have been concealing the existence of aliens from the rest of the world--and in our country--from congress. And he’s testifying before congress. That’s him in the picture above in front of congress with a friendly visitor on the right. To be clear, this is stone cold fuck nuts crazy. Yes he is crazy, but so too are our fellow Countrymen in congress who allowed for this ridiculous entertaining theater. This is the start of how it ends folks. We thought we had a Banana Republic under Trump. Now we have “tin foil hats” being taken seriously in Congress. </p><p></p><p style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="233" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/-kj8G2OSONMjRSGT21OFJiAUDHCs6egYb8A_5e4aFMYQFGCOcwnUmwgy_ytZzL9smdKIsjKz1PzZz1hsqe4nQcuWpKMDiJLkDcs7aiU81paoHUyu6vKs44cT50pDdiq3t8RwzGfv419AV235tMgV96w" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="234" /></p>Look, I want it to be true, my friends want it to be true. We all want aliens, well PAUL, I don’t want a Xenomorph running around on our planet. But PAUL, hell yeah, I want to have a beer with PAUL. More than any conspiracy theorist out there, those of us in the aerospace business, would love for it to be true. We love science and we love science fiction even more--why? Because we can dream the dream. But I’m afraid it's not true, not in our lifetime, not in the lifetime of millions of generations of our ancestors yet to come. And it's beyond silly to think it's really true or it could even happen. Hoping it's true is slightly different, but hope is not a strategy either. Aliens on planet earth simply don’t exist. Unfortunately it will be harder to convince conspiracy theorists that there are no aliens than it is to convince people of the Truth contained in the Gospels. It's something that can’t be done. So I might as well not try. <p></p><p>Since I’ve spent the better part of 40 years running in the same circles as the whistleblower David Grusch…and I’ve actually worked with him…I keep getting the questions from my friends, family, and colleagues. We’ve once again been distracted. There is always a red herring to chase. Similar to far more credible Chinese balloons, and just as likely to do harm, which is none. It's just a distraction. Let's make 2024 the year we are not distracted (not likely giving the run up to the election). As for pure distraction, I like the NY Times article that paints this entire thing as a conspiracy of the government to distract the population. Well, that is also not true, but it’s actually in the space of something that could actually occur. Not probable, but inside the realm of the possible. </p><p>So let’s start with Grusch. First, there is no “credible” alien witness. Anyone claiming or showing as such is wearing a tin foil hat. Why? Because it’s not true. Can’t be true. And anyone with basic knowledge of science can immediately come to that conclusion. The fact that Grusch worked in a technology area, should suggest he knows a little science. Clearly he doesn’t know a thing about science. A conspiracy theory can't wish itself into being true. Science…science will reveal the truth. To be absolutely clear in what I am saying, a true scientist would never generate a conspiracy theory to chase the impossible. Which is what I want to walk you through today, the impossible. Five things stand in the way of aliens and all of it is science. Here are the things: 1) evolutionary biology. 2) regular physics 3) space-time physics 4) large number math, and 5) social science. There is a 6th thing as well but it’s not science. We could attack the witness directly with regard to his critical thinking skills. I’ve already called him a wing-nut. That’s sufficient. Psychology Today does a pretty good job at dismantling his critical thinking skills so I’ll just leave it to others to attack Grusch personally. You can read the article here. </p><p>https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/a-logical-take/202307/a-logical-take-on-the-new-news-about-aliens</p><p>This is so simple. You don’t have to be Einstein to see the facts of science and understand the many flaws in the alien argument. Any one of these conditions rule out alien visitors. But there are five of them. For Grusch not to understand a single one of them defies logic--he wouldn’t understand the 6th one inherently--or he’s looking for a book/movie deal with Hollywood. That might have some merit. In fact, in October the New York Times reported that Grusch’s most ardent supporters are, in fact, YouTube content gurus…if that doesn’t say it all. His attorney’s didn’t pick him up at the airport, to whisk him off to his congressional testimony, YouTube content creators picked him up and were his escorts. This is disgusting. You can read about all of that here.</p><p>https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2023/10/05/ufo-david-grusch-uap-congress-yes-theory/</p><p>The other options suggest he’s no longer reasoning logically. Which means he should seek a doctor for an immediate MRI of his brain. Something is seriously wrong…if this were new. But since I can tell you he was a wing nut when I knew him eight years ago, it’s seemingly his natural state. But let’s not worry about Grusch’s health. He’s a wingnut…maybe he will cash in and make appearances on TV. He might crash and burn. Fuck around and find out. He might find out.</p><p>In order to believe in science, however, you have to believe in science. Meaning you have to suspend all your preconceived notions about science and understand that it is possible for some things to be known. You have to believe, for instance, that science can create gold. Apart from the failed efforts of the alchemist, and the search to create gold, gold can indeed be synthesized in the nuclear lab (done in 1941). You start with Platinum (or Mercury), and add a proton (or remove a proton), and you have gold. Good luck doing that in your garage, however. The point is that you can do it. Science can do that…it’s not magic. Magic, on the other hand, is magic. Arthur Clake told us, “any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. This is a true statement. But the facts remain, it’s not magic. Aliens would be magic.</p><p></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img height="190" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/jYtSFqgBKU8dutZYFIHI4ch4LYrkQGnJwOR6Bm5h0OZShyrIfGZhXomd2juY8vdpSaZayZoErA_jsQwn1h0KnvUjy6LUKdXqwq3kptOpQ-c-eriLX5HDzx0evA80K8wnpZ3Wm4mJ0Nrsai7sBB6Yg7A=w380-h190" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="380" /></p>Another caveat, I do 100% believe that there is other life out there in our universe. Yes we can call that alien. But it’s just life in our universe. It’s just like a strange life on our planet, it’s in our universe, so it still belongs. And it’s just a matter of time until we find it. And when we do, it’s just a matter of time before the disciples of Reverend Moon will approach them and ask them if they have considered Jesus. That’s as certain as death and taxes, but I digress. It might also be true that life on our own planet, sprang from life elsewhere. An asteroid carrying microbes etc. That is totally plausible. But that doesn’t mean they are here, whipping around in flying saucers, crashing into the planet, doing us harm and staying concealed--with or without the consent of all the world’s governments. We all came from jellyfish, by the way. That's a pretty open and shut case. Now the question of the Octopus. Here we have something. I’m hoping that science will be able to reveal to us that our life here on earth was seeded from life on other planets, and later, another seed, created the Octopus. And then evolved from there. This is a far more plausible solution to the question of whether or not we are alone. We are 100% not alone.<p></p><p>So now we have a “credible” witness, with no evidence, raising some sort of alarm bell based upon what he heard, formulated in his head. And people actually believe him. People, please do your own thinking on this subject. And base your thinking on facts, not the feeling that you want it to be true. Before I dive in, let’s talk about where Grusch has worked. Isn't that what makes him credible? He worked for the NRO and for NGA. Those organizations have nothing to do with aliens. The search for, the discovery of, the communication with, the concealment of. Don't confuse these agencies with MIB. Just because they are US intelligence organizations doesn’t mean crap. Discover something at the CIA and then, perhaps, he would have some credibility. But this guy would never work for the CIA. They actually review the people they hire fairly well. Point I’m making is that the CIA briefs the president. If there were an alien liaison office, it would be at the CIA, not at NGA or NRO. That’s just how organizationally it would be aligned.</p><p>The world population, generally speaking, should trust science on the whole. And as much as I don’t like Elon Musk these days, he did have a few relevant things to say recently on this subject. He’s the guy trying to go to Mars. He knows the physics of space travel. It’s not just hard, it’s near impossible. But Musk has already addressed the subject, No aliens. It should stop right there for Musk and his followers. There are no aliens on planet earth. So let’s dive in and walk through the five things I mentioned.</p><p>1) Evolutionary Biology </p><p>Are we alone? The answer to that question is simple. We are not alone. Look around you. Are we alone on planet Earth? No! The Earth is brimming with life. Life has expanded to every crack and crevice from deep ocean trenches to high mountains to deep in the ice of Antarctica. Since every species on earth evolved from a jellyfish It's not hard to envision something like a jellyfish swimming. We only need water. Hydrogen and oxygen are abundant in the universe and on the surface of ice on a moon orbiting Jupiter for instance. Multiply that by the number of planets in the solar system and then by the number of solar systems in the galaxy by the number of galaxies in the universe and the chances that we are not alone is a very small number indeed. We are not alone. We will find life soon. But that doesn’t mean intelligent aliens visiting from another planet.</p><p></p><p style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="179" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/uU31QRsLkn01NDLBpjD9ldhA5KZgUGIrFHUeRua-Rc_QVjTSwo-F-9kjizFbCr8XuwFNBC7eJsErfI5TqQvnOhx-j8IKsYamSpccY4RZJa7rpbVaxSJLZlQgDoCgW-tXnAQsRCv7L384GtNuAWZQ3_g" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="383" /></p>First, what would an alien look like should they appear on our planet? Hollywood is full of ideas, but we keep coming back to the same gray lizard looking alien with big eyes. Why would that be? Alien bodies, even the ones in Peru begin to look the same. The end result of all this hubbub about aliens at Roswell and what we believe they look like, comes down to this…the one on the left, standard issue pilot gear. Fighter, bomber, even astronauts are going to wear gear with a helmet and supply of oxygen. The one on the right, standard alien. Coincidence?<p></p><p>But this is about evolutionary biology. Should aliens actually look like lizards, I think they are called Sleestak’s in Land of the Lost, and they wear Tunics. They would have evolved on a water world. In a water world, it’s doubtful you are leaving the planet. It is too hard to make gunpowder underwater. Which means, you would have crawled out of the soup, lived on dry earth for several million years, probably would have evolved hair and eyelids to shield the sun. Definitely fingers and thumbs. Or, as is the case of aliens that do live underwater (The Abyss), they evolved to control water with their or some type of energy.</p><p>It took millions and millions of years for us to evolve in a way we did to breathe air and not have the air kill us…or gravity kill us…or anything else like the sun, which could easily kill us. You can’t just wish an “M” class planet into existence. If an alien shows up and can fly in our atmosphere…and breathe our air…that would be an astounding bit of luck. </p><p>Biology takes time. A lot of time. And biology evolves to what is here, the environment. Take any biology out of its environment and it doesn’t last long. Eco systems are very fragile. Evolution is not. But the single ecosystem is fragile. Destroy one and another one will take its place, that’s what evolution does. So let’s hope, aliens don’t arrive anytime soon.</p><p>A good book to read here would be Jared Diamond’s classic “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. The best take away from this book would be the true alien invaders would be the Conquistadors who showed up in the new world with guns, and decimated the indigenous population with germs. There were perhaps 20 million indigenous people living in the new world, when the aliens arrived. One need only look at a map of Indian tribes in North America to realize, Diamond is far more right than wrong.</p><p><img height="250" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/ip-_ef6L3DK56LU7LPU5MymAR7eNm6kXhw3oNs0gu1pKig0zHqNLbCLphvucaG1DY_iuaL6WtTEJX-hYa5w-bxF9OzBj-xQmndroXGf1oUlS6rpDfFwUS8q_RZg6MtBIN8LDpoaJtrE56EZuRzx4QO8" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="184" /></p><p>2) Regular Physics </p><p>First let's start with flying saucers. Why am I so confident there are no aliens whipping around our planet in HG Wells flying saucers? And I just watched Cowboys and Aliens!! Great flick, Oliva Wilde is beautiful…just saying. But I digress yet again. Because of the laws of physics. Regardless of what the world thinks they are seeing in those Navy videos that can’t be explained, things that defy physics are not physically possible. It might be true that any significant advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic but that only applies to a pig looking at a wrist watch. It’s not true that it is indistinguishable from physics, so anyone with half a brain can see the facts of the real world. We are all not pigs, some of us are, in fact, scientists. The world population doesn’t have to become like Albert Einstein to study a few principles and know what can and cannot happen. Or the alien craft said to exist by Grusch that our government and other governments are in pursuit of in order to reverse engineer and weaponize in order to gain advantage on our adversaries</p><p>The ability to fly was invented just over 100 years ago the desire to fly has been around ever since humans observed organic things taking flight and documented it which is on a scale of thousands of years Whereas evolution has had a millions of years to produce the natural things in our environment that use the air. That includes insects, birds, and even plant life such as spores and those really annoying seeds from maple trees that fill the gutters. Whereas a large portion of science has moved in the direction of mimicking natural animals and their evolutionary successes most of our flight has happened by brute Force…originally we started with light things then went to fabrics then moved towards aluminum and titanium and now we are headed in the direction of composites me.. there's not too many other choices in the periodic table of elements from which to choose our materials. It's important to note that everyone in the universe including the aliens on the planets have the same periodic table of elements...they also do not have many choices…there are about 100 useful elements...just because you're an alien scientist doesn't mean you can invent a new element…transparent aluminum from Star Trek, or Adamantium (X-Men), or the stuff called Vibranium from Wakanda or what we call in the business Un-obtainium. Many good ideas die on the drawing board because of the availability of the element of obtaining. Alien engineers have the same problem. It's not that we haven't tried to create new elements we certainly have but the ones we've been able to create are at the tail end of the periodic table and tend to only live for seconds or less before they deteriorate back into something stable. It's hypothesized that there are up to 170 elements...most of those additional 70 will not be useful. Other elements simply are not possible. The wagon is full. Study up on the periodic table…gaps for these extraordinary new things simply don’t exist. Of all the things we do, the material science is pretty well understood. There is no “transparent aluminum”. If you don’t know this reference it’s to the material used in Star Trek 6 to transport whales to earth from another planet. They created huge light weight tanks to carry the beasts. I think it was more important for Hollywood to have clear tanks so we could see the creatures rather than realize that tanks of water (at 7 lbs a gallon) will quickly outweigh any material used to contain the water. But that’s what we love about science fiction and the imagination of Hollywood writers.</p><p>And as hard as we try we can't do much better than tungsten for density titanium for strength. But that’s not really the direction we are heading in. We are not heading in the direction of anything metallic. We are heading in the direction of composites and nano structures. Any of the alien machines are going not going to be made of some strange metallurgy…they will be made of the same things we make them out of…something composite in the air, something strong and with tiles, if it’s coming into air (heat of friction), and something very large with a lot of shielding if it’s coming extra terrestrially. The best shot at an extra terrestrial spaceship would have been something like that asteroid shaped like a cigar that passed by a few years ago. Repurposing an asteroid, and living on it…inside…propelled by a nuclear something, is probably our best shot, in the next few hundred thousand years, at least. Or seeing something from our galaxy. Forget about seeing something from another galaxy. Unless they are bending space time…and we know what’s required for this…a sun sized space ship with that much power, conceivably, has a shot.</p><p>Propulsion</p><p>Birds flap their wings - it took millions of years to evolve on this planet. A bird will not be able to fly on Mars. We know it’s not going to be an internal combustion engine…those breathe air. Those evolved to live in our atmosphere just like we did, and run on carbon. Coincidence?</p><p>So to leave the planet, we need a rocket. Not internal combustion, but something that requires carbon. Our rockets tend to be a mixture of ignited hydrogen and oxygen. With the most powerful engine we’ve built, it would take a long time to reach the speed of light. Accelerating at 1 g, which would not be comfortable for humans, we would have to accelerate for a full year to reach the speed of light. Rocket engines burn for minutes, not months and months. So propulsion will have to be something else. We slingshot around the solar system…that takes a lot of extra time…but we can move really fast doing that… The fastest thing we have and the thing fathers from the earth, Voyager 1, has only recently left the solar system. It's taken…42 years to travel that far…and is only traveling at about 10% the speed of light. So humans or aliens are not getting out of the solar system that way. What’s next?</p><p>A nuclear reactor that generates electricity that can activate an ion propulsion system. The nuclear reactor, particularly if its fission/fusion will last a long long time. But even ion propulsion requires some sort of propellant. </p><p>The Sun itself can propel things using solar sails…but we are never going to transit long dark portions of the galaxy where there is little energy from a star, let alone, between galaxies. But it doesn’t matter…the distances between stars is great enough to make this an impossibility in any useful time scale for us humans.</p><p>Traveling the galaxy on a planet or in a star is the way to do it. Even an asteroid would be too small. When a planet from outside our solar system enters our solar system, we are being visited.</p><p>3) Space/Time Physics</p><p>The radio astronomers in Bishop California, the facility that belongs to Caltech, I think Jody Foster and Carl Sagan's book Contact will be the first to tell you that they're not searching for alien life. They're working towards making better and better maps of the universe with a secondary mission to contribute to studying gravity waves and the bending of space time. Not only will they be able to see deep into the universe and create images they will be able to exclusively time the arrival of energy from these distant objects with such. Precision there will be able to correlate it back to other observatories that search for the feeling of gravitational waves as they make their way across the universe. Forty years ago it was SETI. Now, it’s to firmly establish the physics of space time. Corroborate Einstein, or debunk him. Feels like he will be corroborated.</p><p>Plus…we are a very advanced civilization…however, most advanced civilizations, like us, will have depleted the resources on their planet in a few thousand years. If they progress, according to the laws of physics, if they are lucky, they will have an earth sized planet circling next to them…another Earth like heaven that was slow to develop a civilization that would eat their planet… something just like earth, close by, with nothing more than a few dinosaurs, something easily dealt with, or not that easy, like an Avatar civilization that can fight back.. A planet we could pillage for another few thousand years while we get our act together… With a third planet, that the aliens could rape, for another period of a few thousands years, before beginning to leap frog through their local galaxy…until they could harness an asteroid, and then, perhaps a planet, and then a very small sun, and then a larger sun, and then maybe a tiny black hole…it will take space/time physics to be harnessed if there ever will be visitors…It took us 14 Billion years to get to the point where we even understand and can consider the possibilities. It will not happen any faster anywhere else. </p><p>4) Math. </p><p><img height="250" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/sWLiUT_zQBotEzg6xdFMcRoqU3MFgcsOinBwAR6118nl8pa-NHkP2UmRsijp69IqmpAOyZv3gAZrmoxNM_y3T_0JtbE4Y1zapYt2yrxczQsbCj70dYTIcg00HGnReiV-ZU5idKgT2FNKFCttVjvlIe4" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="274" /></p><p>The universe is so big it defies human understanding. 14 billion light years across, and we may be off by 2x based on some recent work. It’s helpful to write all those zeros out. Here goes, 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. That’s a 40 with 19 zeros after it. </p><p>I can’t imagine numbers that large. One look at the deep space field from the Hubble telescope should give you that impression as well. And then multiply by a thousand when you see the same deep field images from the new James Webb telescope. In a few years, hopefully, images will be processed by the DSA 2000. DSA 2000 will be the largest radio telescope ever constructed. So big, with so much data, that it will actually make images from radio waves. It’s not magic. They just use a lot of processing, a lot of data, a lot of math, and ten minutes of a supercomputer's time for each image. </p><p> <img height="168" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/VK_fAJgNJk6AW04goU9Jq5GEHPuu7K5rbAAb_Bh_6otNf_lI33jghC2uTi243rwUBKtJ5MW-o-UYd16W4w8H_RC1GS_jdR8qUWc4PsL0V1Zw5ouEks0wANP8hrBtpu6PaR8N9cSJL-9t15VKJhBNHXA" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="168" /></p><p>Not unlike how images of the first black hole were constructed -- a lot of images and a lot of processing time. It's important to note that the scientists from CalTech building the DSA 2000 in Bishop California, will not be searching for ET, unlike the scientists who built the radio telescope in Arecibo who were looking for extraterrestrial life, most scientists have given up on this pursuit. They haven’t given up on life, or the possibility of first contact in the local galaxy, they certainly have given up on the possibility of a visit. The universe is too big. China built a bigger one. They will not have any luck. The scientists at Bishop, however, will be imaging the universe as well as assisting the science into gravitational waves. Other sensors will be feeling around for events that cause warping in space time, and when they literally feel that happen, the DSA 2000 will be able to measure the timing sensing the stretching of space time by timing the reception of radio emissions. This are very physical things and physical things can be described by physical laws that we can measure and captivity using that math</p><p>Since there are billions of galaxies, there is a change. Webb had 13 billion years. </p><p>So the real inconsistency is that the only way to do it was considered by Carl Sagen already. Something like a machine that pushes us through space time…it’s not a spaceship at all. It’s some sort of portal where we can communicate…with another species. So no aliens… could we be talking with aliens…and thus could they have found a way to send us instructions to communicate with them… That is more probable than spaceships… It wouldn’t look like a flying saucer…</p><p>5) Social Science</p><p><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; white-space: pre;"><img height="196" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/aEuaMbeiY_UBz1ngKqvwUHlEoCQJPYYpLXqRU8hmtb_acbtYUQAoySV9suJ_rVj3iMEqC7haNVCsQatD_E7ejSN4EhP-wLgO5MYJuVf4M0LhgYezy4FusYHdSu3LgU1e-s0z3EH_WImBGNLV8c3128Y=w196-h196" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="196" /> </span></p><p>There are no secrets. It’s hard enough for anyone to keep a secret, let alone there be a collusion amongst governments to keep the secret of worldwide research into the existence of aliens by multiple governments, across decades, in the can. This is either the greatest secret ever kept, or the solution is somewhat simpler. There is no secret. I personally prefer the simpler solution. Since the movie “Men in Black” depict MIB as a secret organization with flashy things that make people who leave MIB forget, or lose their memory of all things alien, I guess we should believe those exist, because that’s literally what it would take. Through the decades, thousands of people, ultimately, must be in the know. But, we still don't have a shed of proof. The reason is so simple. There is no evidence because there are no aliens. And why is it a secret, to begin with? Because if the population actually knew of their existence, we would lose our collective shit? It’s interesting that MIB treats both of those symptoms. They have a magic flashy device that erases memories, thereby helping keep the secret. And…the world is always about to end, at the hands of these aliens, thus it must remain a secret, otherwise the population would lose its collective shit. So not only must MIB exist, they also must be highly effective because they have, in fact, kept the world safe. We have not been destroyed. </p><p>So, friends and family, no aliens. Sorry. The rest of you. Think what you want, but, and I’m glad to quote Elon Musk on this one, “no aliens”.</p><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-75096017595574575582023-10-02T04:11:00.009-05:002023-12-30T06:22:03.198-05:00I Was Canx'd by Amazon - The Shit-Heads<p>Well, after many years (since 1998) and 125 book reviews written (and over 360 books purchased from them), I was cancelled by Amazon. What a bunch of shit-heads. Or maybe it's their AI? No explaining other than I violated community standards. The only thing I've been able to figure out is that I called UBL (Usama Bin Laden) a douche bag who deserved to die. Yes, if that's hate speech, I violated community standards. I'll concede it is hate speech, but I can't think of another human who deserves hate speech as well as a bullet in the brain (which I'm glad he received). To say anything different wouldn't be American.</p><p>I'm assuming that's the reason, I said it twice, in two separate book reviews specifically about, the killing of OBL by special forces. One by the Seal involved in his killing (No Easy Day), and one by the Navy Admiral who set the killing in motion (Sea Stories).</p><p>I intend to pursue Amazon to speak to me about censoring me or I will use this platform to speak out about Amazon, the shit-heads. I also will slowly and painfully repost 25 years of work here on this blog.</p><p>24 Nov update -- I've posted 95 reviews on the link below, but you can find most of them to the right. I found 32 more and have appeared to have lost 5 but I will keep searching. So of the original 125 lost to Amazon...I will be reposting 127. The math is weird because I found 8 reviews I never posted! Bonus!!</p><p>Here is my checklist...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrdhSdrv9Jb_ZGKtVMQ4NyP8ibHKfapDtpYeCgatTHUvNxTlGW7a_IO3wm4bGuBDqabXf3mm9Kb7dtkWkYBmFh10O63NZ6Yx5Zm_5paJ7h52B9LEFNoUO9BPHuO-wVky0vVOYyPX4iN0HrKKg9PYx11JH224lY_oyKYMnQSGezBNf7XYZ2qQMw7Ro5S0ez/s1280/bookreivews.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrdhSdrv9Jb_ZGKtVMQ4NyP8ibHKfapDtpYeCgatTHUvNxTlGW7a_IO3wm4bGuBDqabXf3mm9Kb7dtkWkYBmFh10O63NZ6Yx5Zm_5paJ7h52B9LEFNoUO9BPHuO-wVky0vVOYyPX4iN0HrKKg9PYx11JH224lY_oyKYMnQSGezBNf7XYZ2qQMw7Ro5S0ez/w489-h275/bookreivews.jpg" width="489" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Dec 11 update - All done. 127 book reviews posted. Enjoy.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>Mooch's Book Reviews</p><p><a href="https://moochbookreviews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">https://moochbookreviews.blogspot.com/</a><br /></p><p><br /></p>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-9361686386346103002023-03-05T11:48:00.006-05:002023-03-05T20:39:07.226-05:00The Fear of No Oil Pressure<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5INGhQVY91vezHsuZ9XXl984YTFyAA8GW2mtRXTYQ6U3dpzgPLTQlG7LnzNFPpTOytk-gXxVVTbEUBaQv022BYNdsD57zwERgThlv8EHDFhVo0BNo3cA2VSbMkDTd7fs297S5-YNLd9iiH5JxBFYBwnIOqOxD43TxaFu4S265sMrQ-RXXMmy0Dc6Cgg/s624/chinook2.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="624" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5INGhQVY91vezHsuZ9XXl984YTFyAA8GW2mtRXTYQ6U3dpzgPLTQlG7LnzNFPpTOytk-gXxVVTbEUBaQv022BYNdsD57zwERgThlv8EHDFhVo0BNo3cA2VSbMkDTd7fs297S5-YNLd9iiH5JxBFYBwnIOqOxD43TxaFu4S265sMrQ-RXXMmy0Dc6Cgg/s320/chinook2.webp" width="320" /></a></div>Everyone knows I'm afraid to fly. That's no secret. I've detailed the six phobias that contribute to my fear elsewhere. I had the opportunity to fly in a helicopter the other day. Could I be brave and take that ride? I typically summon the courage to do things like that because my internal risk-analysis tells me my fear can be overcome when there is any opportunity to learn something important or do something cool. But the math works only if I take the risk one time. Risk accrues after multiple exposures to the chancy behavior; the law of large numbers applies. But I believe in Toby Keith and therefore, as he might say, ”I'm not as [brave] as I once was, but I’m as [brave] once, as I ever was”. Helicopters, however, enjoy a special place in my personal Parthenon of phobias because I took engineering dynamics in college. We did the math in class on the material strength necessary for the central hub of a helicopter's main rotor to stay intact during flight. Suffice to say the central hub of a helicopter's main rotor experiences hellish stress. It's one of those things that shouldn't be possible and it's clear to me that one of the gifts from our alien zoo-keepers must have been the design of that central hub. As I think back to that dynamics class, my professor (name and address withheld) looked like an alien with soda bottle glasses. A weak disguise if you've ever seen "Men in Black". I know the aliens were laughing when they gave us that design. They were probably thinking and chuckling amongst themselves, let's see what these idiots do with this! (Insert alien emoji for LMFAAO!)<p></p><p>If you study the history of helicopter design, and the multiple engineering problems that had to be solved, and continue to be solved, most people would never set foot in a helicopter. I don't want to be a hater...but helicopters just shouldn't be able to fly. But fly is a bad word. They don't really fly. They are called rotary-wing aircraft because before the rotary-wing aircraft, there were fixed wing aircraft. And those motherfuckers dominate the air domain. As Malcolm Gladwell would say, “Winner Takes All”. So the fixed-wing world dominated the lexicon. Thus we have rotary-wing aircraft. Perhaps rightfully so. These newcomers, the rotary-wing set, don't respect the air and they shouldn't be allowed to use the word fly. The community calls them choppers. They don't fly. They chop. I'll try to explain that later but first some background. </p><p>The history of choppers does indeed date back to the same time frame as the Wright brothers were using the Bernoulli principle to design their Wright Flyer in 1903. This would be an aircraft that actually flys. Over in France, another bicycle builder (just like the Wright Brothers) who was no doubt trying to find a way to win Le Tour de France by cheating, was a Romanian engineer named Paul Cornu. He is credited with the first helicopter that lifted off the ground. Solving all the design problems with this truly unconventional way to slip the surly bonds of earth took another twenty years. In 1923, Thomas Edison, who earlier had built a helicopter design of his own for the US government--but never flew it because he was a smart man--gave credit to George de Bothezat, another Romanian, for the first real helicopter that worked. It would take another twenty years with credit given to Igor Sikorsky and Arthur Young (at Bell), for solving many of the hard problems and integrating their solutions into usable designs that could be mass produced. The Henry Fords of the helicopter age were finally upon us. That was in the 1940's, with the necessity of war upon us, that their two designs, the Sikorsky R-4 for military purposes and the Bell R-47 for commercial, made helicopters a real thing.</p><p>Now something philosophical. You know when you are flying in an airplane. This goes without saying. There are so many indicators of flight. You're strapped in your seat. You hear the roar of the engines spinning up. You feel the forward motion of the jet as the pilot pushes up the throttle and you are pushed back in your seat. You sense the acceleration as physics pushes against the inertia of your fat-ass and you begin gaining speed; faster and faster and faster, until the wings of the aircraft begin feeling the effects of Bernoulli--the higher pressure of slower moving air beneath the wings, pushing up into the lower pressure of the faster moving air on the top of the wing. The nose of the aircraft comes up. The wheels leave the ground and retract. And then you are pointed to the sky, moving faster and faster until you begin leveling out and you hear the chime. The pilot turned on the Wifi at about 10,000 feet. At that point you forget that you are hurtling along at 500 mph in an aluminum death tube. Hearing that chime means you can log-on to your Android and check to see if anyone has sent you pictures of puppies on Instagram.</p><p>Recently--and the point of our story today--I had a chance to fly in a helicopter. I got to sit in the cockpit to see what it really was like to take off in this machine I swore, since my engineering class, I would neve set foot in. So, there I was, sitting between the two pilots and watching the events unfurl. Lift off in a helicopter is completely different from an airplane. First, engine run-up is very strange. The cockpit looks similar to an aircraft but don’t let it fool you. Yes, a lot of buttons and lighted switches…in modern craft expect to see glass screens, like iPad touch screens made to look like analog gauges with icons made to look like real touch switches. The pilots are coordinating with one another and running their checklist. That doesn’t change. They are checking all the mission systems and consulting their numerous screens, dials, and gauges. To me, it was telling, however, when the aviator in the left seat (the one in charge) had a singular focus on oil pressure. He called out the oil pressure multiple times. Almost as if, the single most crucial element of a safe flight, is the successful maintenance of the oil pressure of the system. That immediately struck me as new but also made complete sense. The system, I thought, is a giant spinning fan. The spinning of the rotor blades has to be maintained if flight is going to be successfully achieved. The rotors themselves are wings, with the Bernoulli principle in play. As the blade spins the higher pressure below the blade pushes up on the lower pressure of the faster moving air over the top…lift is what it’s called when that happens. The spinning of the rotary wing, however, is a very deliberate and a very mechanical thing. Mechanical things require lubrication. An aircraft with fixed wings, on the other hand, can achieve some level of flying success, by just gliding. If wings have motion in the air, they still have lift. No motor required. There is no lift produced in a rotary-wing aircraft if the rotors stop turning. Oil to keep the mechanical system spinning seems critical. For the love of God please maintain the oil pressure, I thought silently. Particularly if I’m on board. I imagine on future flights, my friend, the pilot, may post a sticker on his tail bumper that reads, “Coward on Board”. Nevertheless, maintain the Goddamn oil pressure please!</p><p>So the second thing I noticed, as the main rotor began to turn, was that the helicopter began to vibrate. Vibrate is another bad word. The helicopter began to shake violently. The entire craft was being buffeted by the main rotor as the weight of the blades began to turn. Up and down the massive blades shift their weight 360 degrees around the aircraft as they slowly spin up. As they spin faster, the helicopter body strains beneath as that weight of, not just one blade, but four ginormous blades. They slowly lurch around the alien provided central hub as they begin to gain speed shifting their weight around as they go. If you happen to be in a helicopter with two main rotors, as I was (a CH-47 Chinook), this weight shifting is occurring during the front rotor spin up as well as the back rotor spin up. That a total of eight ginormous blades shifting their weight all around the rosy of yet a second alien rotor hub. Every part on the helicopter was shaking and the noise from the engine and rotor blades became deafening despite the fact that I was wearing foam ear plugs along with aviator headphones tightly packed in place beneath the flight helmet I was wearing. I already had a headache, not to mention a neck ache. Since I was connected to the intercom, I was able to hear the pilot's voice above the din and violent shaking, the words he was saying were easy to make out as he was continuously providing the one piece of useful information I wanted to always hear: "The oil pressure looks good". Check. Was he talking to someone? Or was he reassuring himself? I, for one, was glad to hear it.</p><p>As the violent shaking continued and increased, I watched the extent of the vibration with what can only be described as a vibrational measuring stick. The Chinook I was in is equipped with an aerial refueling probe. This probe is thick, perhaps 15 inches in diameter and at least 60 feet long (That's what she said). This refueling probe doesn't extend beyond the tip of the main rotor that spins above it. I have questions regarding the ability of these helicopters to refuel, in flight, but those will have to wait. At the moment, as we shook violently, the tip of that probe was moving in the vertical up and down direction by as much as two feet...or maybe more. I was hypnotized by the sight. The violent vibrations were unnerving. Apart from the millions of thoughts flooding my brain as well as the physical sensation of neck pain, caused by the weight of my helmet, equipped with Night Vision Goggles or NVGs--seemingly designed to maximize my torture--came one weird thought. When I saw the long refueling probe slapping up and down like Lexington Steele’s dick on a PornHub video, I was thinking, what the everlasting fuck? Mechanical systems cannot vibrate like this...at least not for very long. It felt like we would shake completely apart and there were only seconds left. As I was preparing for the worst something truly amazing happened. I could feel the rotors above me taking control of the creature I was now sitting in. As they reached a rotational speed close to their operational level, they were now in charge. The two gigantic rotary systems above me transformed into two huge winged gyroscopes. The helicopter was not yet flying but the rotors were. They had taken flight and were now governing the mechanics of everything. The noise I was hearing subsided, the vibration stopped, and I checked the Lexington Steel gauge out in front of me. The probe had become rock steady, pointing the way forward. The mechanical system was now in its true designed state, the beast was alive, it was large and in charge. Two giant counter-rotating masses of kinetic energy stabilizing the entire system. Our frame of reference was now governed by the rotational mass of those two spinning weights and their winged chop into the air. The feeling was similar to when a wave catches the surfer beneath their board, you are surfing. Or when the wind fills the sail of a sailboat, you are sailing. Now, with the rotors in charge, we were not flying yet, but doing something else altogether. This is not a flight. Not even close. It's something else, I have yet to define. The closest thing I have experienced is when racing a motorcycle at high lean angles. With two giant gyroscopes for rims and tires, governing the coordinate frame of a racing bike, particularly on the up and down twisting roads in the mountains of western Virginia, gravity ceases to be a thing. The gyroscopes govern the physics of your motion. It’s why you can take the high vertical wall at Daytona and stay in the seat, even though, in motorcycle riding parlance we always say, “keep the rubber-side down”. Trust me, when you are on a banked surface at a high lean angle, the rubber is not in the down direction according to gravity, it’s at some other weird angle defying gravity. Now, with the rotor system in full life it was clear to me what rotary-wing flying was all about. We were about to go for a ride in a gyroscope. I had no fear. The beast had me in its grip. We were stable and solid as a rock. We were chopping. And then I heard the pilot say, "Oil pressure looks good". Check.</p><p>A few more calls on the radio, and we were ready to start moving. This is no airplane. When lift-off occurs, there is no sensation whatsoever of flying. If you are not paying attention, you wouldn't even know you have left the ground. If the ascent is slow enough, you wouldn't even know it even when you are looking out the window. You just start lifting. It's much more akin to being in an elevator. You are just being lifted up. But it would be more like "Charley's Great Glass Elevator'' from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. You don't just go up and down. You get to go sideways and forward and backward. It doesn't matter. A helicopter is free from the surly bonds of earth, but not covered by Bernoulli’s requirement to get lift over an aircraft's wings using constant forward motion--like a shark requires constant motion so water moves across its gills to breathe--a helicopter needs none of that. It’s making its own lift. And since it brings its own lift, it brings its own physics and reference frame. A helicopter gets to do what it wants to do in the air...beholden to nothing. Except oil pressure. Check.</p><p>Later while heading home, I deeply considered the many differences between rotary-wing flight, and fix-winged flight. Fixed-wing flight requires the momentary use of the air as the wing passes through it. It’s a very subtle and passing thing, unless the air is angry and you have turbulence. If you look out at the wing of an aircraft on a calm clear day, the wing is motionless as it passes through the invisible ether. It’s almost polite in some way. Perhaps wings are actually Canadians in their nature. The wing is probably apologizing to the air, or at least thanking the air for being there, as it passes by enabling it to slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings, as well as touch the face of God. To paraphrase John Gillespie's gorgeous poem about High Flight once more. Rotary-wing aircraft do nothing of the sort. There is no slipping the surly bonds of Earth as politely as their fixed-wing Canadian brethren. They are not in the same family whatsoever. The helicopter is the black sheep, the rude Cousin Eddie who shows up for Christmas. Helicopters, with their rotary wings are not polite Canadians, rather they are most clearly, and without apology, rude. Rotary-wing aircraft make the air their bitch. To me, it is clear, that is what chopping is all about and that is what choppers do.</p><p>But now, as we lifted off the ground, straight up, without the sensation of flying, I can no longer say it’s flying and that I am fearful of it. I may be fearful of chopping, but I haven’t decided yet. I had no fear of lifting straight up…as I watched the ground recede beneath us. There was no sense of flying, I couldn’t even tell we were going up. It was more like floating…also a bad word. And as we moved forward, there was very little sense of that forward motion either. Had I not been looking out, I might not have sensed we were moving at all. We belonged to the gyro’s spinning above us. We were in their reference frame. Now, I was in a very big helicopter, so perhaps it is a far more stable ride, but my sense is that it has to be similar to other choppers, it’s the same physics at work. It now became clear why helicopters can hover and fly so close to each other in formation, etc. They are not constrained by this requirement to move continuously forward to maintain flight. If you can control the winged gyros that make the air their bitch you get to do what you want to do.</p><p>We moved down the runway, and now I’m not sure why there is a runway, yet another artifact from the fixed wing community. Helicopters don’t need such things. We proceeded on our way. We were scheduled to fly about 30 minutes and so far the experience was awesome…not in the Mountain Dew fueled sense of the word when adrenaline is in play, but awesome nonetheless. As we left the runway and headed into the desert, I kept moving my eyes between looking out of the NVGs at the terrain before me and flipping them up to see the avionics in the cockpit. Later I adjusted them to look up and out with my eyes to see through the NVG’s and then simply look down with my eyes to see the screens looking below the NVGs. Without them, it was pitch black, I couldn’t see a thing. Darkness doesn’t bother fixed wing pilots because they are going to quickly climb away from the ground (a source of impact they want to avoid) and use their instruments to fly. They have to do this because they have to know how to fly in the clouds anyway. And when they land they know there is going to be lighting on the runway. Helicopter pilots are going to fly much lower…thus seeing the ground and obstacles in the way becomes very important. I’m happy to report that over the past several decades we have come a long way in the design of NVGs to the point where darkness ceases to be a problem. With the NVGs I could see the entire desert floor, runway, and valley beyond, all the way to the mountains, as clearly as I could during the day. Maybe better. When I looked up at the sky, without the NVGs, I couldn’t see a single star with my naked eye. There was minimal light pollution in the desert--but we had a hazy sky that night. I couldn’t see many stars, they were still almost invisible to my eyes. However, with the NCG’s on, the number of stars in the sky became biblical. Too many stars to count. Impossible. I was transfixed by the brightness of the night sky beneath the NVGS, and couldn’t stop staring at it. Picking out my favorite constellation, Orion’s belt, was impossible amongst the billions and billions of them now within my field of view. Our alien zoo-keepers are safe, we will never find them amongst that many stars. And as God said to Abraham, Genesis 15:5, “Look now toward heaven, and number the stars, if thou be able to number them”. I was not.</p><p>So we were chopping….we lifted off to about 500 feet above the desert floor and simply moved forward. Like a giant box in the sky we just moved along. I had more of the sensation of drifting, or floating along. It’s hard to define. It wasn’t drifting or floating, it was like Wonka’s fictional elevator, but it wasn’t fiction, I was inside. We were simply deliberately moving in the direction the pilot desired, albeit, 500 feet off the ground. Or higher, as we went to 1000 feet, or lower, we simply went down. As we tracked across the desert, it was also clear we were affected by the wind, much more than a fixed wing aircraft….in that sense, we were more like a balloon, drifting at the discretion of the wind, but not really, the pilots had full control. The ground trace of our track in a thirty-knot cross-wind had the nose pointing 35 degrees to the right of our direction of flight. The pilots seemed unconcerned about the ground passing beneath us at such an odd angle because their rotors had us in their reference frame and on the right course.</p><p>Apart from this odd angle a few more things occurred to me. Like helicopters don’t care about what’s happening in front of them…fixed-wing aircraft have to constantly predict the future…where they will be and what time they are getting there. They have to know their speed and time of flight and they have to know in advance that a runway that they can see will be waiting there to greet them when they land. Helicopters do not have such constraints. If something is in their way, they can simply stop. They can, in a very real sense, go backward in time. A luxury not afforded to the fixed-wing community. Fixed-wing pilots are made or broken simply based on their ability to work issues in advance of the timeframe they are permitted to take action. Fixed-wing jet aircraft pilots who land fast on aircraft carriers have perhaps the most rigorous checklist: they must work fast, in order to land safely and screw up their spinal column. That’s a special skill and physically demanding. Helicopter pilots have the luxury of time. This ability to reset the clock and move backward in time is of extreme value. The capability is so valuable, the fix-wing community has tried for decades to bring some of this magic to their side. Their failures are legion. The Harrier is perhaps the most successful of these efforts. A fixed wing aircraft that can hover and take off vertically. The Osprey V-22 has certainly gained traction over the past 20 years, but it took years to work out the engineering. It’s still not clear that the V-22 is superior to a Chinook. I think most of the community has sided with the Chinook. The maintenance requirements of that tilt-rotor aircraft, not to mention simply the sketchiness of its design has yet to win favor in most of the flight community--fixed-wing or rotary-wing. And of course, last but not least, the F-35B, the version being built for the USMC has the ability to take off and land vertically….somewhat. However, it’s a very precarious operation and not for the faint of heart. That is not to say that chopping doesn’t mean risk. If the rotor’s fail, there is no gliding down on silver wings. It’s a straight drop out of never-land right to the ground. And that’s a jolt that would exceed the tolerance of your spinal column. Hence, the rotors must spin. Check the oil pressure. Protect that oil pressure like the front wheel of your bicycle while riding in the peloton. Without your front wheel, you are no longer a bicycle. Without oil pressure, you are no longer a helicopter. </p><p>After a long career in the USAF, where the mantra has always been, flexibility is the key to airpower, I have now been introduced to another form of airpower that, seemingly, does not have to play by the same rules. Even at the very end of my flight, I was introduced to this flexibility. As we came in on our approach for landing, again on the runway…all the terminology was set up to conform to the requirement for fixed-wing aircraft. You must be cleared for landing, you must enter the pattern, and do so with perfect timing, so as not to interfere with others entering the pattern or those in the process of landing and taking off. Each one predicting in advance where they will be in the next few seconds, while their brethren do the same. So as the helicopter enters the pattern, it doesn’t have to set up a decent profile, to stay in their glide slope. White over white, you're high as a kite, etc. The helicopter simply descends. Then as we entered the pattern, this time to fly beside the runway to land from the direction the control tower indicated, I braced for what I knew would be the worst, getting to the break, breaking left, then descending rapidly, into the landing pattern for landing. In a fixed-wing aircraft this maneuver will typically impart negative g forces on my stomach, this is what makes your middle ear tweak and you end up getting nauseous. No such thing in a helicopter, unless you are prone to sickness in an elevator. No negative g’s and were already close to the ground. And do we continue in the pattern to approach the runway from the end directed by the tower? Hell no! Once cleared to land, the runway belongs to us…we stop the journey to the end runway and simply turn to the left, hop across the runway at its midsection, turn our nose in the direction of the required landing, and drop straight down to land. By making the air its bitch, bringing Bernoulli with you, helicopters cheat flight and most of its daunting requirements.</p><p>I still have other phobias that might inhibit me from future helicopter rides. I like being in control, I’m still afraid of heights, and I am claustrophobic. But the experience was so different from that of flying, I can’t call it fear of flying, if later I am inhibited. Regardless, it was an awesome ride, and I must rescind any negative thoughts, real or imagined, about the world of rotary-wing aviation. I still think aliens gave us the technology to build helicopters. But I am glad they did, and perhaps, they are no longer laughing at us. But now I have a new phobia...the fear of no oil pressure...</p><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-37058265906113012072023-01-28T17:07:00.000-05:002023-01-28T17:07:33.887-05:00An Art, Not a Science<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivPkI_lA59CunkyJPNLZm3jx7aUz__QRqE72EBNAbN1tJ9eHWemwerGpao2dGVRv9CbVPEIhZceVhlVx-kI4dMe7_ImZ9D0_ye_9lYSKI2Nbt2hpbGDRuaLH-Xa-ZzbZiyGXiJhVLbZVm5wxoiaTWGBVV3ftesW7h-sCCiL16K28BCDaAHcvjT5NUGEA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivPkI_lA59CunkyJPNLZm3jx7aUz__QRqE72EBNAbN1tJ9eHWemwerGpao2dGVRv9CbVPEIhZceVhlVx-kI4dMe7_ImZ9D0_ye_9lYSKI2Nbt2hpbGDRuaLH-Xa-ZzbZiyGXiJhVLbZVm5wxoiaTWGBVV3ftesW7h-sCCiL16K28BCDaAHcvjT5NUGEA" width="240" /></a></div>With a title as bold as “The Art of Intelligence” Henry Crumpton is trifling with the orthodoxy of warfare by riffing on Sun Tzu’s timeless classic, “The Art of War”. To say he is the best theorist to describe the art of intelligence to an intelligence expert, let alone a student of intelligence, or even a lay person, would be to cast shade on the heretofore already deeply understood notion in statecraft, that in war, beyond the Clausewitzian doctrine that demands logistics as the foundation for all we do, he has given us an understanding that both the fog of war (also Clausewitz), as well as what Sun Tzu has told us, “to know our enemy” brings intelligence to the fore of everything that happens in warfare. The best news about this book is that Crumpton isn’t just theorizing about intelligence. He was an operator with a full career doing the things that intelligence persons do. He is an authority on what he writes. As always, however, speaking about actual intelligence, and intelligence operations, collection, and reporting, remains a sticky subject because of the need to protect everything about it. The art itself, often described as tradecraft, is a closely guarded secret. The sources and methods required to obtain intelligence, as well as the intelligence itself, often called by various names based on how it was collected, IMINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, MASINT etc. is highly classified. Most of the time declassification cannot occur until 75 years into the future. That perhaps is an arbitrary number of years, nevertheless, that is the length of time our Country has deemed the sensitivity of classified information must remain in the dark. That means, for those able to quickly do math in their head, things classified in 1948 should soon be reaching the light of day. Things have changed significantly in the past 75 years, so those hoping to learn about modern day intelligence, should not be looking for secrets in this book. Rather, they should read this book with an eye towards what intelligence means in the general sense. Basically, stealing secrets from our adversaries. Wishing to reveal that which our adversaries do not wish to reveal about their preparations for war, and more importantly, revealing to us their intentions, specifically the intentions, as George Orwell has been attributed as saying, of those who wish to do us harm.<p></p><p>With that said up front, Crumpton has succeeded in giving us a pertinent view into the machine that produces intelligence. Some may disagree. Others will bemoan the very notion that spying is somehow a noble endeavor, believing that no one should keep secrets from anyone. We should live in an open society and all activities related to intelligence are so nefarious as to strike at the core of what should not be allowed to exist in a free world. That naivete will not be addressed today. A free country will not remain free if it doesn't prepare for, and seek out, the information about threats, both foreign and domestic, that strive to remove that freedom from us. Topically, we failed to heed the known threats coming from Vladimir Putin, and the hard fought freedoms of the people of Ukraine and now in a battle for their lives. It has been the nature of war since the inception of human society that aggressors exist. We must always prepare.</p><p>Intelligence is hard work. It doesn’t come for free. It can’t be passive. It must be active. Always looking and always listening. Attempting to figure out in the complex machine of human endeavor what is happening and why. It starts with the human eyeball and is as simple as the effective sound bite attempting to combat terrorism, “if you see something, say something”. That is, in the simplest of terms, what intelligence is all about. Discovering something and reporting on it. It’s not glamorous. It requires both vigilance and endurance. We’ve tried to automate the tedium of discovery with technology. Crumpton reminds us that the best intelligence comes from human’s in the know that reveal what is really going on. And that requires human to human relations. Our intelligence operatives are not the spies as we might believe. The spies are the human’s in other countries who must be recruited by our operatives and turned into willing sources of information about their people, their organizations, and their countries. The art of intelligence is, at its core, the way in which we must turn those in other countries against themselves, in essence to become traitors to their own flag. It is not an easy business. That is what Crumpton has made his career and for which every American should be grateful. That is what Crumpton has written down for us…as much as he could…and he succeeds in giving us a recipe for what it takes.</p><p>In the first half of his book he describes this art from the training of operatives, the recruiting of spies, how collecting is done and then reported. In the second half of his book he demonstrates in the real world, though the scenario we are well too familiar with, the intelligence failing to detect the threat from Al Qaeda and the subsequent attacks on 9/11. He follows through with the intelligence necessary to conduct the war in Afghanistan, the pursuit of Al Qaeda and in the epilogue, the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his subsequent death.</p><p>He also devotes a chapter to the art of diplomacy with other countries requiring the participation and close alliance with the State Department. In a particularly insightful chapter he takes on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and explains the difference between the two organizations. He explains how they are similar and should cooperate more openly, but more importantly he describes how they are dissimilar, and must be for a reason, but that which has led continuously to a misunderstanding of how the two organizations can work in concert can be at odds with one another. Nevertheless both organizations are maligned for the work they do in favor of freedom by Bozos who can’t fathom how critical both organizations are to the existence of the freedoms they enjoy. Those Bozo’s should read this book.</p><p>I am going to give Crumpton Four-Stars for this book. Yes he is bold with the title yet a book of this sort simply doesn’t exist. With a little back-ground on the subject it is easier for many to fill in the holes where we have knowledge. It helps to know a few things and therefore acknowledge that Crumpton is right on the money. For those who do not, whereas I don’t agree with their criticisms, I hope they find other ways to build their knowledge to understand that Crumpton has deep experience in the things for which he speaks. And it is an art, not a science. We are better for these practitioners of this crucial art and can hinge our way of life on the existence of these fine Americans. </p><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-88213096511499918292022-12-31T06:43:00.001-05:002022-12-31T06:43:52.368-05:00Savage in Tendency<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzZNHjSERHyfYgnnnB7RmmAtf-w4_zh49kC857TckUhsIx2Q6E18BhohZGPxy_wGIVSJPTfhM7ZM-0N4gPdkZl24GpG_1_dSAdBkWa3WkITqqw0WZqh7ofY5m1VDh1PBl9BFviJKc-48UVrEhmqeOE1J5i9ItqX3Mpae6xImOYVfpmh-rwpA9ITgflYg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjzZNHjSERHyfYgnnnB7RmmAtf-w4_zh49kC857TckUhsIx2Q6E18BhohZGPxy_wGIVSJPTfhM7ZM-0N4gPdkZl24GpG_1_dSAdBkWa3WkITqqw0WZqh7ofY5m1VDh1PBl9BFviJKc-48UVrEhmqeOE1J5i9ItqX3Mpae6xImOYVfpmh-rwpA9ITgflYg" width="294" /></a></div>Just finished US Special Forces and CIA covert operative Billy Waugh’s biography called “Hunting the Jackal”. The book was published in 2004 and much has transpired in the past 18 years. For instance in the book Waugh tells us he believes Usama Bin Laden (UBL) was turned into DNA in the caves of Tora Bora. We now know that the cockroach didn’t die that early but was later exterminated by special forces with a bullet to the head in Pakistan in May 2011. The other thing is that we have withdrawn from Afghanistan, that I’m sure, breaks Billy Waugh’s heart. Of course the Russians are on the offensive in Ukraine, getting their butts kicked. We’ve just come through COVID. Sadly, as I write this on New Year’s Eve, 2022, I just finished my first run-in with COVID. Yeah…a lot of travel the past month, and for me, thinking my protocol has been sound, I succumbed. I’ve been boosted 3 times. Will we ever know what really works? <p></p><p>Waugh quotes Orwell at the start of the book, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”. (Not actually Orwell but it’s not clear who said it…but it’s correct regardless) This cannot be any more true than in the life of this rogue warrior named Billy Waugh. Not to steal credit from the title of Dick Marcinko’s book about Navy Seals but by that name all our special forces are warrior’s and by definition rogue. I’m using the definition of rogue to mean savage or destructive in tendency. Which is exactly the mission we have in mind for these forces. Another definition of rogue is “unprincipled”. This however is the antithesis of Waugh’s work. When it comes to executing violence on those who would do us (The Country) harm, Waugh is the furthest it would seem from unprincipled. </p><p>The other thing that has recently occurred is that Argentina just won the World Cup. A December World Cup, one to be remembered. I only mention that because in one of the book reviews I just read about this Billy Waugh the reader refers to him as the Greatest of All Time or GOAT as it pertains to special forces fighting men. </p><p>To be the GOAT you have to be literally the Greatest of All Time. The greatest soccer player of all time, just led Argentina to victory. Lionel Messi. Not Diego Maradona, the other Argentine who once could lay claim to being the GOAT. Pele in Brazil (RIP Pele), or Ronaldo from Portugal. But the facts as they stand, Messi is not the current GOAT as he just lived out his destiny to become the GOAT. To which all others will be judged. Can we determine if Billy Waugh is the GOAT of special forces? It’s not an easy task. </p><p>Can there be a GOAT in this category of warfighting men (or women)? There are so many heroes out there. Is there even a category? Audey Murphy springs to mind as the most decorated American Soldier of all time. Surely he was the GOAT of something. Other warfighters who they write books about should be examined in this category. The Russian sniper Vasily Zaytsev played by Jude Law in the movie “Enemy at the Gate” has over 242 confirmed kills. The American sniper, Chris Kyle, played by Bradley Cooper in the movie “American Sniper” had 80 confirmed kills. Just getting Bradley Cooper to play you, might make you the GOAT, although Jude Law put in a strong performance.</p><p>Another testosterone laden category of warfighting men is that of fighter pilots. German Ace’s tend to dominate the skies with Manfred von Richthofen aka “The Red Baron” tallying 80 aerial kills in WWI. However another German Ace, Erich Hartmann, shot down 300 of his adversaries aircraft in WWII, making him the GOAT of the skies. Nobody even comes close to Hartmann. In the US we tend to hero worship ACEs such as Richard Bong with 40 kills in Korea and of Course Robin Olds, an American ace in three different wars, which is interesting to be sure. Olds is memorialized every year in the USAF during March where airmen try to outdo one another by growing the most outlandish Robin Olds Mustache.</p><p>Without proper criteria it’s hard to argue Billy Waugh is the GOAT. He would need that World Cup trophy. He would have needed UBLs head on a pike as his supervisor at the CIA, Coffer Black, described to him the mission at hand just before he went to Afghanistan. The fact that Billy Waugh was on the ground in Afghanistan, with the CIA, at age 71 certainly puts him in a unique, if not GOAT like category. Had he actually returned to Cofer Black with UBL’s head, on a pike, or in a box, I certainly would have said yes, to GOAT.. That would have fulfilled his destiny and come full-circle from those moments on the ground in Khartoum, Sudan in Africa where Waugh had multiple opportunities in the early 90’s to personally end UBL’s life. That was reported as real in Ric Prado’s book, Black Ops. That would have made a fine movie had we come full circle. We did not. But what else distinguishes his career from other mere mortals where we can find the ground to elevate Waugh into GOAT territory. We need heroes of this caliber. </p><p>Waugh’s first principle, rough men who stand ready so we can sleep at night.</p><p>This is both a true statement and a necessary condition of peace. Those who don’t have the stomach to consider the necessity of violence, or the threat of violence do not live in the real world and do not understand a thing beyond their own personal comfort. I don’t say that lightly. Homosapiens suck as a species. Left to our own devices we will never stop finding reasons to kill one another. Only sane and well considered members of our society will find ways to reason and make laws by which we can peacefully coexist. But then we must also have the manner in which humans are governed to include law enforcement internal to one's state and a military, to defend against aggression from abroad (and within as we’ve recently discovered). </p><p>So let’s consider what Billy Waugh tells us about his life in this biography. This is a brief synopsis, read his book to hear it in his words and his war stories which are fascinating and I wish I was in a bar with him, hearing of the exploits first hand. </p><p>Waugh started in the Army in 1948 and went to Airborne School before going to Korea. After Korea Shortly after the end of the Korean War, he trained with Special Forces and was assigned duties in Germany. He deployed to Southeast Asia and began doing counter insurgency against the North Vietnamese in places not on the map, like Laos. He was injured multiple times, the most significant being awarded this 6th Purple Heart for action under fire during the battle of Bong Son. Serving until 1972 in Vietnam he was a Command Sergeant Major before retiring from the Army. He began contract work for the CIA through Edwin Wilson (Ed Wilson’s War) in Libya, perhaps providing camera footage arguably later instrumental in Operation Eldorado Canyon. In the 80’s he worked as a security cop out at Kwajalein Missile Range in the Pacific to disrupt Russian agents/military attempting to collect intel on our long range missile testing.</p><p>In the 90’s he again worked for the CIA in Khartoum, Sudan where he found and kept under surveillance “the Jackal” for which his book is named. And he also kept a close watch on Osama bin Laden. Sadly not putting that dog down and saving the world from that scourge and several decades of GWOT. Then of course his historic Post 9/11 entry into Afghanistan as an advisor at the age of 71. (Gary Schroen - “First In” although Schoen does not mention Waugh by name his presence there is indisputable).</p><p>So, summing up. Huge American. Highly decorated. Savage in tendency. All the right principles. A legend. A motivator. A leader. I’m glad we have American’s like Billy Waugh giving their all for our Country. But Billy Waugh as the Special Forces and Covert Operative GOAT? Probably not. But exactly one of the roughmen (or women) we need on the frontline protecting us as we sleep. Four-stars for Billy Waugh putting all his war stories in one place for us to relish.</p><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-20484497330236740372022-09-09T05:26:00.013-05:002022-09-10T04:55:42.948-05:00My Life with Dyslexia<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgS9_t5o8TOJ8OQl_67KZP120qOwkKfinFhf7w61NX_O8ztc3cFP9VKEzf_5YUQBK_skXbHNku2ba-78KChKp5j3_ajkjxSfM7jmZtCcMqgs99rIm29Kb2Ggz9ENqd7vQHvTRA0VQTkI7mZK5-I5qNwCb8r4OX3m159mF6ETZgXezT3hXvT2qYEzfZRuw" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="247" data-original-width="247" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgS9_t5o8TOJ8OQl_67KZP120qOwkKfinFhf7w61NX_O8ztc3cFP9VKEzf_5YUQBK_skXbHNku2ba-78KChKp5j3_ajkjxSfM7jmZtCcMqgs99rIm29Kb2Ggz9ENqd7vQHvTRA0VQTkI7mZK5-I5qNwCb8r4OX3m159mF6ETZgXezT3hXvT2qYEzfZRuw=w248-h248" width="248" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><div style="text-align: justify;">I want to tell you a story… it won’t be about my fear of flying this time. For the most part, constant air travel has cured me of that phobia. It’s about something else that has plagued me my entire life, but went undiagnosed until I turned 50. A true disability, from which, I adapted, like a three-legged dog, and never knew I was disabled. I don’t know if this is a success story or some other commentary on the political landscape we created when we started holding ceremonies for our kids graduating from kindergarten…giving each one a trophy. I do remember, in New Jersey, on or about 1974, my soccer team came in second place in the League. Satisfied with the team’s performance, our coaches took us out for pizza and gave each one of us a second-place trophy. I cherished that trophy. It stills sit’s in my office today. It didn’t make me soft. It made me proud. And with pride, and confidence, much like any four-legged dog, I moved through life wagging my tail and compensating for the things I lacked without realizing I was even a dog, let alone with three legs.</div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">From a very early beginning I was detrayed by my words. My mom always told me I couldn’t spell because I learned phonetically in public school and the failure of phonics must have been the reason I sucked at spelling. She had one data point. How could a smart kid like me not be able to spell? It plagued her for her entire life. It must have been the phonetic spelling lessons she reasoned countless times when I asked her how a word was spelled. Imagine one day early in my life, while trying to spell the word detrayal, I realized it was actually spelled with a ‘b”. Well, I felt betrayed by the system. How could I have missed that one so badly? Sure, they knew about dyslexia back in the 70’s. I even remember my best friend David’s mother, Mrs. Simms, explaining to me that if you had dyslexia, you would flip your “S’s” backward. From then and there I was on the lookout for the telltale sign of the flipped S. As it turns out, to a dyslexic, a flipped “S” is the absolute least of your problems. A flipped “b” and a “d” on the other hand, robs you of your innocence. Let’s not even talk about a flipped “p” and a “q” because that’s just mean.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">So, with that very first betrayal of the school system going off fully undiagnosed, I launched into my mediocre school life never quite understanding I had a issue, or is it a problem? Fast forward another 40 years. Successful completion of high school, college, a BS in Engineering, a Master’s in Liberal Arts, and a Second Master’s in Operations Research. I was an officer in the USAF. A system’s engineer at a large corporation. I ran my own business and also became a federal civilian for a number of years. And now in my twilight years, I’m still a high functioning dyslexic with abysmal hand-writing skills. And I still can’t spell for shit. How did I discover, finally, about my disability?</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">Let’s talk about something that is a flaw in my character. I never wanted my daughter to fail. She struggles in math. I’ve written extensively on what I believed to be the root cause of her math failures…her 6th grade math teacher…who called all of her students, young mathematicians. I called her Bloody Mary for the way she forced my daughter out of STEM. If you want more of that story you can read about it here, <a href="https://jimmysblough.blogspot.com/2010/05/bloody-mary-and-paradox-of-6th-grade.html" target="_blank">“Blood Mary and the Paradox of 6th Grade Math Teachers”</a>. My daughter had to successfully complete some math to graduate high school. Maybe, and I’m not confirming or denying this part, her dad helped her with her math homework. Perhaps he actually completed some, or all, of her math homework. When this caring father, we will call him dad, completed his own work in school, he never checked his math. He’s kind of confident dude, bold, gusting to arrogant on most occasions. But he never checked his math. Why would he check his math? It’s right! The math is right! That’s probably a longer story…and as it turns out…the very subject of this essay. But because Dad was completing the math work for his daughter, he felt that if he was doing someone else’s work, and turning it in for a grade, he ought to check the math. Imagine, for the first time in his life, checking his math and finding some of it wrong. WTF? How did he make that mistake. He flipped a 25 and a 52. That’s a rookie error, not a disability. Imagine, however, after a semester of math, and checking his own homework over and over again, for the very first time, finding many similar errors. Not a lot of errors, but a sufficient number of errors to turn an “A” homework into a “C” homework. A passing grade. Had there been sufficient errors to turn his “A” homework assignments in school into failing grades, perhaps Dad wouldn’t have a story to tell. He would have known. As it turns out, his disability slipped through the cracks. A passing grade. Two-O and go. As they say. He stayed on the edge. It was seemingly more than enough to get by. But it was a mediocre, at best, getting by.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">But now, at age 50, it caught his attention big time. Also, he had just changed career paths. Moving from management, into program support, that required relearning a bunch of math. And, not just relearning math, working in computer programming with lower lever machine language, verse higher level languages. It would be hard enough, for a dyslectic to write code…but perhaps no harder than writing, and perhaps easier because a complier will find errors caused by misspelled variables, for instance. A built-in editor. But now I was working in hexadecimal and binary. One of the first things you learn when working with hexadecimal and binary in a computer architecture is the endianness of the processor. Since in a computer architecture, it’s arbitrary, which end of a circuit is on the left or right, the original designer can choose which side to start the significant bit of an 8-bit word when they stuff it into a memory circuit. Can anyone see why this might be a problem for someone who flips letters and numbers? Safe to say I’ll never quit my day job to design computer architectures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi80ZOwdGPps5XoKHevq4IrUyDlAfCLaZkPHHGcsEHmqmB4Z9KfC600ZhhrGiOI9RhI6kGGInL3yN1fscWoYREMNj1plZ0NigHpwkKGBGR9atthHvw9xlj1n-jt4xjmt1OY4ObStss1u2tS5fB_uxB2LJewloU_03_WsINTYgODN_TX1g57vN3GH76Lqw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="282" data-original-width="378" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi80ZOwdGPps5XoKHevq4IrUyDlAfCLaZkPHHGcsEHmqmB4Z9KfC600ZhhrGiOI9RhI6kGGInL3yN1fscWoYREMNj1plZ0NigHpwkKGBGR9atthHvw9xlj1n-jt4xjmt1OY4ObStss1u2tS5fB_uxB2LJewloU_03_WsINTYgODN_TX1g57vN3GH76Lqw" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">So, looking at a lot of hexadecimal code became incredibly laborious. It was hard to tell left from right. I just thought it was hard, or my vision was failing. It had not quite dawned on me yet that I had a problem. However, other clues began surfacing. Particularly when you start researching the symptoms of dyslexia.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Poor spelling</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Left and right confusion</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Messy handwriting</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Trouble reading unfamiliar words, often making wild guesses </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Pauses, hesitates, and/or uses lots of “um’s” when speaking</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar or complicated words</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Trouble remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random lists</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Avoids saying words that might be mispronounced</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">•<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Struggles to retrieve words; frequently has “It was on the tip of my tongue” moments</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">Oh wow! The story of my life begins to unfold. I don’t just have messy handwriting because I’m lazy. I don’t just have trouble mispronouncing words out loud because I’m illiterate. My brain simply flips the details at a lower level and decides to compensate in unusual ways. When I read, for instance, I’m just going to see the word, not the letters. That’s why it’s hard to pronounce words. I know what they mean but forget about me trying to read it out loud, particularly if I have to pronounce it. My mom thought it was the phonics simply because I couldn’t pronounce words, so the phonics didn’t teach me so the phonics must suck. No, I can’t pronounce words because I don’t know if its pronounced “de-trayed” or “be-trayed”. That’s a big difference and an embarrassment to a kid because one of those words doesn’t actually exist in the English language.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">Then it turns out I began giving a lot of white board lectures at work. More than a lot…I’m probably giving several three-hour lectures a week at work-- all with just a white board and markers. Turns out I have to spell words in public. Not just words… I have to use a lot of letters and symbols as well. Spelling words, by writing them, in real time, in public, is agonizing. And I can watch it develop in real time. I can watch, almost apart from my body, as I begin to write the same word I have written, hundreds of times, in front of me, with the wrong order of the letters. How do I compensate? I write quickly and as messy as I can. And I keep talking. Keep the lecture going, maybe no one noticed. It’s not clear anyone has detected my disability yet. They probably just think I sloppy AF. But that’s ok…if they understand what I am teaching them…and most of them do.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;">I still don’t know how I hopped through life as a three-legged dog. But I did. Perhaps my dyslexia is not as profound as others, but clearly, I’m on the spectrum, if that’s a thing. Now that I’m paying attention to it, I find even more things I do wrong…flipping letters and symbols, not just left/right but also up/down. When I look at a phone number, I stare at it for a few seconds. If I stare long enough at the numbers, I know they will be playing tricks on me. So, I wait, to see if they jump. And then I wait some more. They are tricky bastards. But I’ve stopped letting them fool me. I don’t know if I would have gotten better math grades in school, had I known, but I do now, I finally check my math. And, when I'm making a right turn at a cross street with a sign posted for a "No Left Turn", I sit and wait, like a pig, staring at a wristwatch, for the confusion in my brain to settle. And then I hop on three legs, blissfully into the intersection, with my tail wagging, to make my right-hand turn...</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-80469432702405917412022-05-08T08:44:00.019-05:002023-06-21T07:49:26.101-05:00Doggo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhr8WmDClZYEqE-Zw8OEj0Q2TT1SbpypsX0h1uudkL75KH4F-PAtKXKCLjs0WUjxgBTK_KjfAAKhKn2S0PF_xeq6jcnKlPStTRMbilsBg6yDlAdxabDo-VafAFbGAgoeuO70KWD2sT9_nGVXz0RKBpQfbolqCvYuqvcnjdtpJwaC710xwXP0vN5WzeEjA" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Dog" data-original-height="1137" data-original-width="1516" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhr8WmDClZYEqE-Zw8OEj0Q2TT1SbpypsX0h1uudkL75KH4F-PAtKXKCLjs0WUjxgBTK_KjfAAKhKn2S0PF_xeq6jcnKlPStTRMbilsBg6yDlAdxabDo-VafAFbGAgoeuO70KWD2sT9_nGVXz0RKBpQfbolqCvYuqvcnjdtpJwaC710xwXP0vN5WzeEjA=w320-h240" title="Dog" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anyone with basic observation skills who has ever had the pleasure of a dog's company, may have asked themselves the question, why is this animal so happy? It’s always wagging its tail! Dogs, in general, are the most resilient of creatures and have, in my humble opinion, unlocked the secret to a happy life. No matter the circumstance, a dog will undoubtedly find a way to wag it's tail. They just love life. They just seem to want to live their best life, despite the circumstances. Saving you the trouble of reading this entire blog, here then, right up front, is a dog's secret to a happy life. First, adapt to what you have, second, love unconditionally, live in the moment, and finally, sleep when you are tired, eat when you are hungry...that's it!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I’ve had the pleasure of a dog's company for a good portion of my life. Fearing the death of my first dog, the family dog, I would project 10 years into the future, knowing her life wouldn't last but a decade or slightly more. I prayed that I would be away from home when it came time for her to go to heaven. Later I would discover that this approach, foreseeing the future, and working through the future scenarios of this unpleasantness, is one of the key principles of stoicism. We are told by the experts that dogs can’t really do such mental gymnastics because they are not self aware. They can’t even see themselves in the mirror (recently disputed in several studies). It is also clear that none of my dogs have opened and read Marcus Aurelius “The Meditations". So I am going to have to rule out Stoicism as a secret to their happiness. Yet somehow they don’t react to the emotional roller coaster of life. They are resilient to these ups and downs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dogs are very keen observers of their environment. Through their eyes, ears, and nose they paint a full multidimensional view of the world around them. They have as close to perfect “total awareness” of this world without the help of the meditative skills given to us by Zen Buddhists for entering the mind known as Satori or total awareness. I have also not observed my dog sitting in the lotus position, so it’s probably safe to say my dog’s have not been Zen Masters. Yet they sleep when they are tired, they eat when they are hungry. That’s a perfect life. They are resilient to sensory deprivation through their awareness. If denied one sense, they compensate with another. Seamlessly, as if they are not even aware the other is missing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As we watch our dogs age they are incredibly adaptable. A dog named Lucky, a three legged dog, or the one eyed dog, are not just clichés for a reason. There are many dogs named Lucky. And it’s possible to have all three in the same package, a three legged, one eyed dog, named Lucky. I would love Lucky. Most of my dog lover friends would too. And you can bet Lucky would love to have his head scratched or his belly rubbed and be wagging her tail the whole time. Yet to endure this fate and the natural degradation of growing old I have never observed my dog dressing in her Sunday best, and heading out to Church on Easter. In fact I’ve never observed my dog praying at dinner time or reading the Bible for that matter. I can safely say my Dog is not a Christian in any sense of the word. I don’t know if all dogs go to heaven, but since I know my dog’ is not going to hell, I can only assume she's going to the better place...wherever that may be...and without the salvation of her soul. I believe animals are without sin...unlike other's who project their own sin's onto the actions of dogs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yet undeniably, a dog is a human’s best friend. A best friend without all the hang-ups of any human’s human best friend. Even the best of all our human friends come with baggage. Maybe rarely, but still, even the best of our human friends will have a bad day. A death in the family. A sick child. A major shift in their life. It is at those times when your friendship with them will be more important than their friendship with you. Yet still, the dog is there. Undeterred in their resolve by the sad news they wag their tail and it makes us smile.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So without the emotional maturity of Marcus Aurelius, the keen awareness of a Zen Master, or the selflessness of Christ Jesus, how did dogs become our best friend?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Our current dog is living out the remainder of her geriatric years, and is still a source of great love. Selfless, unbounded, universal Love. Not Eros, not Phila, nor Agape, dogs simply possess the ability to love without conditions. A dog holds no judgment. They don’t know what you were doing, what you were thinking, or what you were saying. They don’t condemn you for being a conservative or a liberal. I promise you it wasn’t me who trained our dog to bark at MAGA red or Marxist blue. She just knew. (that’s a joke)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Our dog is now a Centurion, in dog-years. Over the age of 15 she is now 105 in dog-years. She may be older but she still wags her tail when we enter the room. Although she can no longer see that well. And, she is stone cold deaf having lost all of her hearing sometime ago. We didn’t go to the audiologist so she doesn’t really understand that she would be losing her hearing…and to prepare for this disability. She actually doesn’t behave as if she has a disability. She just doesn’t bark at the mailman when she hears him on the porch. Rather, she sleeps at the door with her nose tucked up in the crack, and every once in a while, when she gets the timing right, she can feel his footsteps on the front porch and greets him with great exuberance…and a wagging tail.... Dog on a porch, wagging it's tail. That's the meaning of life. If you've every read the book, Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s classic book, I have reduced the tenets of Logo Therapy to being present. Paying attention in those moments of connection. Dog's pay attention in those moments of attention. They demand it. Even if they are just brining you a ball. They are present, they are in the moment. For more on Logo Therapy read my review of Frankl's book <a href="https://jimmysblough.blogspot.com/2020/01/logotherapy-and-curlys-one-thing.html" target="_blank">(Squirrel on a Branch Eating a Nut)</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because she is deaf, she isn’t that great judging when I am walking behind her, she turns her whole body to look, to make sure I am still there. This proves comical, because every once in awhile she will turn suddenly, and not being as agile as I use to be, it feels like she is about to sweep my legs, in a Karate Kid style take down. She also sleeps 28 hours a day. Reserving those last few minutes of her life for us as best she can. Even though she can't hear or see that well she can still smell. Her olfactory senses still seem as keen as ever. She doesn’t hear me putting her food in the bowl…so she’s not right there with me. But when, at the speed of smell, the meaty aroma makes it to the living room, she lifts her head, breaths in the air, and decides if she is hungry. If she’s hungry, she awakens fully, slowly stands, and makes her way into the kitchen, wagging her tail along the way…she is present.</div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-70486758016374447872022-04-03T08:26:00.006-05:002022-04-03T08:29:12.511-05:00To Our Wives and Our Girl Friends, May They Never Meet...<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikfArqHikPtCj42UQ7Mqb4m3Y0nyWjm3VyDla7ePutMSeIvfQJK1nzF2tDO68FtB2mPX8miX2_Jg03iEcoRfmdlxhOwBITP1Kyj8uBOYU8XpJruuzQy711UXURC0r8Q8eBwht9rFCj7WHu6rp5L0C5kWZ1DZb8Ipw2_Rkek-neZjECrXazBakyxL7t4g/s400/EnduranceImage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikfArqHikPtCj42UQ7Mqb4m3Y0nyWjm3VyDla7ePutMSeIvfQJK1nzF2tDO68FtB2mPX8miX2_Jg03iEcoRfmdlxhOwBITP1Kyj8uBOYU8XpJruuzQy711UXURC0r8Q8eBwht9rFCj7WHu6rp5L0C5kWZ1DZb8Ipw2_Rkek-neZjECrXazBakyxL7t4g/w264-h400/EnduranceImage.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Big news recently in the world of geographic exploration—the Endurance, famed sailing ship of Sir Earnest Shackleton, was found amazingly preserved laying 10,000 feet below the ice flows of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. At the time of her loss, 1915, she had been frozen in the ice for over 10 months and had drifted in that icy embrace for hundreds of miles before being crushed, broken, and lost beneath the surface of the solid sea. Forced to abandon ship and flee onto the ice flow, all 28 members of her crew survived the tell the tale. The 75 sled dogs they brought with them…not so much. This recent discovery, however, has motivated yet another wave of interest in what transpired on that ill-fated expedition. Perhaps the greatest story of endurance and resilience ever told.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Think of them and their resilience when you get trapped in a hail storm with your family on a springtime day in the park. Think of them as you wake up in the morning after a nice eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Think of them as you adjust your thermostat from 68° to a balmy 70° to take the chill out of the morning air. Think of them as you enjoy your warm breakfast with eggs-over-easy, crispy bacon, with melted butter on soft toast. Think of them when you take a warm shower and get dressed in clean clothes. Think of them--the explorers of the Endurance--trapped in the ice flows of an Antarctic winter having to endure the extreme deprivation found only in fictional stories—and remember—the story of the Endurance is anything but fiction.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">It's hard to count the number of stories that have emerged during the retelling of this true-life adventure over the last 106 years. One story, told in 1959 by the American journalist, Alfred Lansing, stands out as the very best. The book he wrote—Endurance—would become the definitive text on deprivation, survival, a stiff upper lip, leadership, team work, and of course resilience. As with many retellings of this story, Shackleton, the leader of the expedition seemingly takes center stage. As a seasoned and already famous Antarctic explorer looking to make an even bigger name for himself, so he could stand toe-to-toe with the other great South Pole explorers, Amundsen and Scott—he does seem to reach his goal. The theme of the Shackleton legend has been, “For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton”. Yet this book, by Lansing, is called Endurance, for another reason beyond the obvious. Yes, the ship is called Endurance, but for me, in Lansing’s mind, the word endurance is a tribute to the tale of the resilience in all of these men. All of them. Not just Shackleton. Just read it and you will understand why. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">What Lansing has done, through his writing, defies belief. If this were a book of fiction, one would certainly be convinced, he made it all up. No one can endure, let alone, survive these conditions—both bone-crushingly brutal and mind-numbingly boring at the same time. But yet it is all true. Painstakingly researched with the availability of the men’s journals, multiple interviews with them (as they were much older but still alive in the 50’s) as well as many photographs and drawings. Every hour on the ice-pack and so much more. Why are there photographs, you might ask? As mentioned, Shackleton was quite proud of himself. He definitely fancied himself a star. He certainly knew that taking pictures of his attempt at walking across Antarctica would come in handy for the publicity and lucrative nature of multiple speaking engagements upon his return. He brought with him both a photographer and an artist…he also brought a poet. In the darkest days of their survival, when they abandoned much of their equipment and were forced by necessity to destroy all of their sledge dogs, Shackleton allowed them to keep their personal journals. Somehow the photos, or at least the film made it back. Strangely, multiple sextants for navigation, were lost. The only remaining sextant, hung around Frank Worsley’s neck. Worsley was the actual captain of the ship Endurance. Shackleton was the leader of the expedition. Shackleton hired Worsley to be the captain. It was an excellent choice as some historians believe it was Worsley who is the true hero of this saga. But I digress, as compelling and nuanced as the adventure can be to tell to everyone, this is a review of the book not the adventure. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">With so much at his disposal, Lansing has done, what any really good writer would do. He’s has written. Not having to invent content, he was free to take the research material, think and rethink the conditions, timeline, the multiple stories of each man, with their perspectives, and in some cases, exactly what they were thinking—because he had their written journals with notes sometimes down to the hour of the day—and weave everything together in a fluid, seamless narrative, that has you believing you are along for the expedition. Along with very bump, every sound, ever pain, every taste, and every hidden fear in their minds.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">You feel the cold and dampness all around you. You smell the smoke from the burning seal blubber in their stoves. You hear Endurance moan under the crushing grip of the ice. You taste the fatty and bloody seal meat. At one point sledge dog--a delicacy given what they were used to with their rationed diet including penguin. You sense the relentless boredom and creeping fear as days become weeks and weeks become months. When the Antarctic winter fades completely into darkness and blizzards blow with gale force winds across a cracked and unstable ice pack—merely a 10 ft plate of flowing of living ice floating above the abyss of a 10,000 ft deep, dark, sea. Ten months they lived on the ice pack moving with the currents and winds for several hundred miles, with Worsley pin pointing their position with incredible accuracy. Lansing has you feel it all. Including the arguments of the men, their frustrations, their hopefulness and hopelessness, and the retched nature of Shackleton’s decision to destroy their beloved animal workers and companions, all the dogs, and one lovely ship cat. Over and over again, Lansing has you feel the repetitive nature of their routine. Most of us would go insane. Most of us would give up. Most of us would die. I died at least three times during this story. Somehow, the men were driven to keep trying, and Lansing has you keep reading. It’s a page turner. I could not escape from its grasp. The plight of the men remained with me through out each day, until I returned to read in the warmth of my bed. I used a flash light to read at night and imagined, in the depth of the Antarctic winter without sunlight, how these men continued to read the few books that they had salvaged. They kept going so Lansing kept writing. Had they all died early there would be nothing more to write about—but they did not. Thus, beyond their 10 months of floating on the ice, there are the truly fearful days they spent in small life boats on open and fearful sea trying to make it to Elephant Island. As well as the months of lost hope for the 22 men who remained on Elephant Island as 6 men set sail for the 800-mile journey across fierce sea to the Island of South Georgia. And then three of those men who hiked across the uncharted alpine glaciers on the interior of South Georgia to reach a whaling village finally signaling their ultimate rescue. Every man survived.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">As inspirational a story as there has ever been. Perseverance in the face of hunger, thirst, fatigue, bitter cold, and the chill of continuously being soaked to the bone, sleeping on the sea of ice, or rocks, or wet beach. Sleeping in wet bag of reindeer hide the natural animal skin disintegrating into hair and gunk literally in your face. Their discomfort knows no parallel from which humans could emerge, alive. And Lansing has you feel every hunger pain, every moan in the night, right down to the pain you feel as frostbite takes hold of your stiff wet hands pumping water out of the boat, for which, you cannot stop, because the boat is sinking. The descriptions of the daily rigors of life required discipline, endurance, and of course resilience. And it’s not without humor, these men could still laugh at their fate. I laughed in the face of imminent death as one of the survivors, trudged across the slushy ice pack, sinking down to his knees, as a one-thousand-pound leopard seal, able to move much faster than he could, closed in. Only after a fellow survivor with a rifle—liberated him from the pursuit—and earned the crew, half-a-ton of seal meat and blubber. This is key to the telling of the story and Lansing gets it right. Since you feel the cold, you feel the pain, you no longer get to complain if your own home feels a bit chilling in the morning…screw you. In fact, after reading this story you never get to complain again about the discomfort of hunger, thirst, fatigue, illness ever again. One of the survivors suffered a heart attack on Elephant Island. He made it. Another, survivor had his toes amputated on that same beach, he also made it. Shackleton, with Worsley providing the map, brought them all home. This is such a Five-Star book. With the topic of resilience training in vouge these days, I can’t help but wonder if “Endurance” should simply be required reading in high school English. As we debate political correctness and cancel culture in our schools, perhaps we can all agree, this book has no political agenda, makes no attempt to rewrite history, contains no statements of toxic masculinity, and there isn’t even a cuss word—although I can assure you these men cussed. Perhaps the most politically incorrect statement uttered by the men, was their evening toast, as they waited out the Antarctic winter from inside the room, midship the Endurance, which they called the Ritz. Pulling everyone together from out of their individual berths and into this hold, so they could all be together and preserve precious resources, like coal and heating oil. They thought of their families and their loved ones back home and they hoisted a cup of drink. “To our wives and our girlfriends, may they never meet”. That’s resilience in the face of death…that’s endurance…</p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-42812843850785304672021-12-26T06:34:00.007-05:002021-12-26T12:18:00.054-05:00A Theory of Air Power<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgY8juzNDLCoGSjb9RrbxgLwDfgci24sWtLkltYL-Q3FrpoWwMaNNIENo5YupP_gYUcCj6FwP3soncmkg6rfUdJCzYajmrGLokXF1_2htlBD-omEsu3_kVpX3zUGwDZ4m1z0-6rGFkKeOUV_bruTkzC9RxB1LI73CyykHwH5YQ-sbAQvGiLPMzZkzRupQ=s479" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="322" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgY8juzNDLCoGSjb9RrbxgLwDfgci24sWtLkltYL-Q3FrpoWwMaNNIENo5YupP_gYUcCj6FwP3soncmkg6rfUdJCzYajmrGLokXF1_2htlBD-omEsu3_kVpX3zUGwDZ4m1z0-6rGFkKeOUV_bruTkzC9RxB1LI73CyykHwH5YQ-sbAQvGiLPMzZkzRupQ=w243-h362" width="243" /></a></div>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.<p></p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-40795150891034455892021-12-12T06:57:00.003-05:002021-12-12T10:27:48.982-05:00Shooting Craps with the Cosmos<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaaE6iEiDCfzkNW9ATsfs65R3G-XwijaQchzNFeU8YJiurMAGYZWSTiCcmRFLg1Y-juAJhIF-GNTyMnLONsVRabEluxyN4y1GFZxup93JBCBe9hW_1YCjpzjDkaigOsv6YDsWrS8WyKdND/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="248" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaaE6iEiDCfzkNW9ATsfs65R3G-XwijaQchzNFeU8YJiurMAGYZWSTiCcmRFLg1Y-juAJhIF-GNTyMnLONsVRabEluxyN4y1GFZxup93JBCBe9hW_1YCjpzjDkaigOsv6YDsWrS8WyKdND/" width="149" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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… </div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">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</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">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. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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!</p><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-19184475398132211402021-11-26T08:50:00.010-05:002021-11-26T09:12:23.413-05:00Crime, Seth Rogen Tweets, & What Would Jesus Do?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsKr7-4tZhFEHNxL-iISjvq0k763BbmEkvSY61cSKtdsxdh9CsRwjTxiwfCG4sd4F0Warp7Zsprj4jjQjZWX0SrPXnz179RYX5fz8Ovrok-RBIKgrW5yZ_3mwM41AdCk2SkQGaGIVaJL4G/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1450" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsKr7-4tZhFEHNxL-iISjvq0k763BbmEkvSY61cSKtdsxdh9CsRwjTxiwfCG4sd4F0Warp7Zsprj4jjQjZWX0SrPXnz179RYX5fz8Ovrok-RBIKgrW5yZ_3mwM41AdCk2SkQGaGIVaJL4G/w267-h200/image.png" width="267" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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. </div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">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/</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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...</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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”.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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...</p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-28201076212860767142021-06-12T10:18:00.008-05:002021-06-17T17:20:45.535-05:00WHEN Not to Just Do It...<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6itDvt0JxWgR6uU90uFK-SU2n-HnPK3b0_tDm4xHQYgEhAEZwYycaW02ytVFusBGgDY1vTgVGTmYYwAc2SJ-QPwfL6umgJXG3tiCYlwhQUKqXp653ifL2DDLCDf-ozh7F-FIokxMfdBl/s427/when-cover.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP6itDvt0JxWgR6uU90uFK-SU2n-HnPK3b0_tDm4xHQYgEhAEZwYycaW02ytVFusBGgDY1vTgVGTmYYwAc2SJ-QPwfL6umgJXG3tiCYlwhQUKqXp653ifL2DDLCDf-ozh7F-FIokxMfdBl/w225-h320/when-cover.png" width="225" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">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.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">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. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-6159209598156588512021-06-07T05:35:00.006-05:002021-06-07T05:50:42.583-05:00What a Pain in the Ass -- How to Recover Your Apple Accounts and Other Secrets Apple is Hiding...<div style="text-align: justify;">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...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here is the article I reference.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">https://tidbits.com/2019/09/26/why-apple-asks-for-your-passcode-or-password-with-a-new-login-and-why-its-safe/</div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-56197185506786665072021-02-10T08:29:00.006-05:002021-02-11T06:32:25.613-05:00 A Rat, a Rat, a Motherfucking Rat<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh2VZzpAnvrblkQacv1gEaF-I_K5Ko6poLvza2khAokBTgouOhwpN7heH28SAg6yLONBsYw6mWWHxJi91PNkfOttHOaP19uwxpXf-AWXpIr2R9NY9gaswQheKStx1n6HaSwWpqfJhUz2NN/s1297/SoccerBallInSnow.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1297" data-original-width="973" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh2VZzpAnvrblkQacv1gEaF-I_K5Ko6poLvza2khAokBTgouOhwpN7heH28SAg6yLONBsYw6mWWHxJi91PNkfOttHOaP19uwxpXf-AWXpIr2R9NY9gaswQheKStx1n6HaSwWpqfJhUz2NN/s320/SoccerBallInSnow.jpg" /></a></div>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.... </div><div><br /></div><div>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.. </div><div><br /></div><div>https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html</div><div><br /></div><div>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? </div><div><br /></div><div>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?</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-23140275894862733192021-01-07T10:40:00.003-05:002021-01-07T10:45:23.879-05:00Chaos in the Republic?<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeV9c4LP2u-GSEALMeqoxuh37QblMCGNztx2u00ousZvXUyWZHYnUlL8gQdMtx8k9NsYZEzWcii1I-vgKCy4Gf1oC9C__AHp1ScRi_qS-kKOl4NQ0PW134T0YAoln4tiAPxdjLnXBKR53c/" style="clear: left; font-family: trebuchet; font-size: xx-large; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="720" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeV9c4LP2u-GSEALMeqoxuh37QblMCGNztx2u00ousZvXUyWZHYnUlL8gQdMtx8k9NsYZEzWcii1I-vgKCy4Gf1oC9C__AHp1ScRi_qS-kKOl4NQ0PW134T0YAoln4tiAPxdjLnXBKR53c/w544-h363/image.png" width="544" /></a></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Upsetting…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not unforeseen…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Mindless, semi-harmless, racist thugs seeking payback for BLM protests…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Spectacularly unsuccessful. A few disturbing videos, a sad loss, every idiot with a camera taking a selfie... </span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Not really a coup--even for a banana republic…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Capital Police - unprepared for the incursion, rightly stepping back rather than using deadly force on Americans…of lighter skin...?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">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…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Republican leaders finally stepping up...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Democrat leaders pushing too far...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">Our Republic, never in peril, restored…</span></p><p><span style="font-size: large;">We move on and erase/repair the last four years…</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-5526746744729278252021-01-06T05:42:00.003-05:002021-01-06T05:52:39.445-05:00Don't You Forget About Me...<p><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0f1111; font-size: 13px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq6LLa4xsrNP6OmHjgaA0LL-JMwglO0gUp9Fp3fI8CVjHPVtev2vuu4POsCo978cDJbMzx9-gDjEpJ5Gw5y60glhi0TGhyphenhyphenHnLMTa51OjorPE4m-kofkr2L32x2VQuoEP2SF73Hn4IRcJPa/s277/ReadyPlayerTwo.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq6LLa4xsrNP6OmHjgaA0LL-JMwglO0gUp9Fp3fI8CVjHPVtev2vuu4POsCo978cDJbMzx9-gDjEpJ5Gw5y60glhi0TGhyphenhyphenHnLMTa51OjorPE4m-kofkr2L32x2VQuoEP2SF73Hn4IRcJPa/s0/ReadyPlayerTwo.png" /></a></div><div>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...</div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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).</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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...</div><p></p>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-14121675588576529662020-09-20T10:46:00.003-05:002020-09-20T10:46:38.409-05:00Mooch's Black Cat<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHgSchaDcXGIUKbKvUJTxr4Lr7XyJFURV7v89EHBXotOPcJT-yc_Sk686zdN2RiNcY4VdOtBGlkiL-Z2VKpNL0A1Mrv975nZsnD3FkJitHEgrc8Anyvu4RqKOkPdFo2kLevSkk9p_HYUm/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHgSchaDcXGIUKbKvUJTxr4Lr7XyJFURV7v89EHBXotOPcJT-yc_Sk686zdN2RiNcY4VdOtBGlkiL-Z2VKpNL0A1Mrv975nZsnD3FkJitHEgrc8Anyvu4RqKOkPdFo2kLevSkk9p_HYUm/" width="160" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I begin by searching for my black cat in a dark room. I see a faint outline of her in the corner but it could be my imagination. She is close as I sense her brush by my leg. I call her name but she will not come to me. That is her nature, she is a cat. I get frustrated. That is my nature. I turn on the light only to discover that she is not in the room. That must be God's nature. As I turn to leave I see a box in the corner. I wonder if my cat is in the box. I also must wonder, as Schrödinger did, if my cat is alive or dead. That seems odd to me because this is no random cat, it is my cat. I am hopeful that she is alive. I curse the quantum foam and play along with the Fates. I open the box. My cat looks dead. She is motionless and her eyes are closed. I reach to touch her. She awakens, opens her eyes, and jumps out of the box...</div><p></p>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-47883450347767012292020-07-19T09:17:00.000-05:002020-07-19T09:17:12.361-05:00The Fallacy That is TRUMP<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9nh680SG8k9fG42jEgazNqPVtT-BtQHD6ud38rKxWLLAa6MCx7QW0HNl3d58LNqCMi5DCKnLmzBwzWYHqFERzeTHrbZwrbdKiIbiE_3NIdOTjTjEjr_KP0lEE3OoeNmvGmTWBbsMnvLYx/s4000/IMG_20200714_185113947.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9nh680SG8k9fG42jEgazNqPVtT-BtQHD6ud38rKxWLLAa6MCx7QW0HNl3d58LNqCMi5DCKnLmzBwzWYHqFERzeTHrbZwrbdKiIbiE_3NIdOTjTjEjr_KP0lEE3OoeNmvGmTWBbsMnvLYx/s320/IMG_20200714_185113947.jpg" width="320" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;">Fred, Freddy, Fritz. Names we don’t hear often but the names of the three people in our current President’s past life that explain in real terms, why Donald J. Trump will go down in the book as the worst President in American history. And, if we recover from the damage he has done to our many institutions, he will be recorded as either the most dangerous or the most destructive. Trump supporters will immediately dismiss the new book from which the narrative of these three names become known to us without ever considering the story...and I quote “Disgruntled family member, lifelong dem, writing just to cash-in on old news”. That quote was to describe the author of the just released, topping the book list in record sales in a single day, and arriving with all the fanfare of a federal lawsuit blocking it’s publication... just denied by a federal judge, Mary L. Trump, the President’s niece, offspring of his deceased brother, Freddy, and sister of his nephew Fritz, has arrived so we may hear her version of Donald’s formative years. And what created, in her words, “...the world’s most dangerous man”. </div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">She is definitely a disgruntled family member, and that’s fair. And why shouldn’t she be? As Machiavellian empires go, one might notice her worth to the Trump family based on her unique lineage. Donald Trump wasn't the first born. The first born honor belongs to Freddy, her father. Donald was the second born. In medieval times, Donald’s off-spring wouldn’t be in line for anything. As the line of royal blood succession would go to Fritz, Freddy’s 1st son. But as with all history, with regard to the Trump family, facts are of no value. Thus, when Freddy passed away at 42, a broken man, broken and bullied into the ground by his own family, that branch of the family tree, that included Mary, was cut from the trunk. Not because it didn’t continue to exist, but because, if you are a Trump, sharing something with someone else, means you get less. Thus Mary and Fritz get nothing...their dad is dead. You don’t share with a dead man. You don’t have to believe this line of succession, that is if you don’t believe in facts. What kind of a selfish family does that to their grandchildren? Yes, obviously there is no royal bloodline in our Country, and certainly not in the Trump family, but it’s a good example of just another in a long list of problematic decisions committed by the most selfish and arrogant man alive today. Of course we already knew this. It feels good, however, to hear this charge levied from on the inside of the very much not a royal family. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Regardless whether you initially believe Mary’s version of the Trump family history, or not, the fact’s will support her version. The family exists, the company exists, the house in Queens exists, and the many properties accumulated and subsidized by the Federal government exist. Fred Trump built the empire that Donald Trump effectively stole from his family. The records exist but have been long hidden. It’s no wonder it’s been so hard to put the pieces together. And, when the Trump financial records and tax records finally see the light of day, animus or no animus from Mary, the facts as they trickle out will shed light on the career of the most amazing fraud ever perpetrated on the American people. Mary Trump will be charged with telling the correct version of the story. Not the one we’ve read about in the tabloids for so many decades. The Donald, for his ego, can be happy in the knowledge that any publicity is good publicity, and with any luck, he will avoid the embarrassment of prosecution and jail time without the hope of a Presidential pardon. Which many will pursue, but to that extent, I would not support. This comical chapter of our Nation’s history will hopefully be quickly forgotten.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fred, Trump’s father,: by all accounts, was a hard worker. SIx days a week, 10-12 hours a day, a classic workaholic. He built the empire, but he didn’t start it. His mother fronted him the money, and kept the books in the early days to get him rolling. Fred was henceforth able to amass a large housing construction and management business by building apartments with subsidies from the Federal Housing Administration on the heels of WWII. It was the income from the rent charged on those thousands of units that funded the subsequent building of the empire, and later, Donald’s lifestyle. It also bailed him out as the building ceased, and the bankruptcies caused by his incompetence mounted. Perhaps the best story is the one about Atlantic City. Simply put, if one casino is good, wouldn’t two, or three be better? Maybe in Las Vegas, but in a brand new location, where there wasn’t a market. All Donald achieved was the creation of Papa Johns, a Domino’s, and Pizza Hut, all on the same street corner, in a City that was still eating at Taco Bell. Those are my words, not Mary’s, but that’s the analogy. If you ever wondered why Atlantic City never caught on. In a larger sense, Donald’s failure in Atlantic City not only took a major negative toll on his father’s empire, he arguably doomed the City itself to failure because of the failure of these casinos. This isn’t hate speech coming from me, This is his business record. And it’s abysmal. His father repeatedly had to bail him out of his bankruptcies and bad business deals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Freddy, Fred’s first son, and aire apparent to Fred’s business, tried to break away from the looming shadow of his Father. He longed to do something else with his life. Not only did he obtain his business degree from Lehigh University and was President of his Fraternity, through ROTC he obtained a commission in the Air National Guard, he learned to fly aircraft, and on his own accumulated sufficient hours to become a commercial pilot. Not something easily accomplished without military flight hours. And by all normal standards of performance, demonstrated both academic and leadership acumen. Thus it was no surprise he was hired by Northwest Airlines and flew 727s on several routes. The problem, as recounted by her daughter, was that Freddy was never good enough for Fred who hated that he would do something different with his life other than commit totally to the family business. He believed the military to be a waste of time and thought being an airline pilot was akin to being a glorified bus driver. As the story goes, Donald, observed his older brother doing everything his father disliked, Freddy would do everything wrong in his father’s eyes. So Donald gained his Father’s favor by doing everything exactly the opposite of Freddy. Thus Donald fraudulently gained his father’s favor by being a charlatan and thus successfully pushing Freddy under the bus and out of the line of succession. And if you think, perhaps that Donald was just savvy, not a ruthless bully, his torment of his younger brother Robert was not passive.. Donald would actively hide his younger brother’s toys just to torture him until he cried. This torment at the hand’s of Donald was not unknown to his family thus Donald was sent to military school so peace could return to the household. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the end of the day, and by all accounts, there is nothing extraordinary about the Trump family and the Trump management company that makes the Trump name anything special. Calling it an empire is to confuse a management company with a real empire. The only thing that makes the Trump brand, TRUMP, is it’s big letters, right alongside Donald telling you it’s great. Is telling you something is great enough to warrant praise? Just like the MAGA campaign the whole idea of being told to make America great again, never resonated with those who already thought America was great. Where did these notions come from? Well, when a snake oil salesman is selling snake oil, he first has to create the non-existent market for snake oil. The track record of Donald creating demand for something that doesn’t exist, is perhaps his only talent. But many, including me, would conclude it’s less the strength of Donald, and more the weakness of his targeted victims. And Donald also knows that as well. His primary marks, as Mary has said, are people Donald would have only contempt outside of his political rallies. There is something to be said for positive thinking, and Fred Trump was a believer in the power of positive thinking, but his son learned from this rule book, and took it to the extreme. Every first and second utterance from Donald J Trump fits this profile. There is no reason to believe this well written profile of our President’s upbringing is anything but highly plausible. I suspect that after his Presidency has ended, given Mary’s lead, much much more about the history of the Trump family will surface and the sham of both this man and his life will unravel. Four stars for the courage it took Mary to write this book...and we should all thank her for publishing and exposing how we created the fallacy that is our current President. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-20361790846243640692020-05-17T06:30:00.006-05:002020-05-17T06:46:27.835-05:00Stalling for Time Saves Lives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3GwLDYijZQtAXKu87qBWA6eogYpTmvqVSH4UeHkQUOK2PyFaHjINgO6BoA11tixmTKjJ7ioN9SA9EzTwitfoD_M67i8ILj9Qynb1GzKFmazy4p9OkT2_pZSeaAHfaxxEYNfDj-DQalF2I/s1600/StallingForTime.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3GwLDYijZQtAXKu87qBWA6eogYpTmvqVSH4UeHkQUOK2PyFaHjINgO6BoA11tixmTKjJ7ioN9SA9EzTwitfoD_M67i8ILj9Qynb1GzKFmazy4p9OkT2_pZSeaAHfaxxEYNfDj-DQalF2I/s320/StallingForTime.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
When Timothy McVeigh went mad and bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and became the most notorious domestic terrorist in our Nation’s history, he had a motive. His act was in retaliation for what he believed to be the oppression of freemen at the two botched incursions by the Federal government during the standoff at Ruby Ridge and siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco Texas. McVeigh targeted the federal agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and two other federal agencies housed within that building when he committed his crime. Ironically, as vile a crime against America as this was, few American’s would argue that those Government standoffs were indeed botched and good examples of Federal law enforcement gone bad. Giving no justification for such horrific crimes against fellow American’s, for which McVeigh forfeited his life appropriately through his criminal prosecution and subsequent execution, there can be no better understanding of what actually happened at Ruby Ridge, and Waco, then through the eyes of an FBI agent who was involved in both standoffs. In his book, “Stalling for Time, My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator”, written after his retirement from the FBI, Gary Noesner, gives us a crystal clear portrait of the FBI position on the use of both tactical response and negotiations during a crisis standoff. The indictment of the FBI’s position on the use of force, outweighing the use of alternative peaceful negotiations is abundantly clear. Yet when properly applied, the negotiation tactics have proven over and over again, that life can be spared, and violence reduced. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the top of the heap, perhaps an Oxymoron’s in its use (my words, not Neosner’s), is the very phrase, “FBI Negotiator”. Chief among the stated policies of the US Government, is simply, that “We do not negotiate with terrorists”. Why then have a negotiator in the first place? The answer? Because we actually do negotiate and must negotiate if we are to save lives, not just the lives of hostages and innocents caught up in the chaos but also those of law enforcement who must engage in the tactical actions if force is used. The US Stated policy isn’t actually a policy. It’s merely a sound bite taken from a brazen speech, post 9/11. And a terrible impediment to much ground that was gained in the aftermath of the incompetence displayed in 90’s. Of course we negotiate with bad guys. Everything is a negotiation. Even in the grimmest of situations, even when all hope is lost, final words, attitudes, and information derived from speaking with, and barging for, concessions, can lead to a tactical edge if and when the shooting starts. But the biggest gain, of all negotiations, is time. Whether that time leads to a peaceful settlement or not, stalling for time is everybody's friend and it should be job #1. The patience to stall for time, in the midst of a crisis, however, is perhaps the hardest thing to do. The negotiator, thus, finds themselves, not only negotiating with the perpetrators, but also with the tactical force, with the itchy trigger finger, chomping at the bit to break down the door.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Knowing this, why then, did things go so poorly at Ruby Ridge and Waco? Noesner grapples with this question throughout his book. Himself, suggesting and agreeing to the use of deadly force against an estranged husband who had taken both wife and child hostage, for which he knew, as an experienced negotiator, that hope was gone...and in fact would set the husband up for a sniper’s bullet through his final negotiated words… Noesner carries that burden with him though he knows he saved the life of an ever grateful wife and her child that day.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As it turns out, and the reason I read this book, is because it was one of the references for the NetFlix series, WACO, about David Koresh and the tragedy that befell his compound after the long and frustrating siege. All of us who can remember, lived through the reporting on the siege. I wanted to understand how truthful the series was in reenacting to the standoff. I rate the show as highly accurate, given other material I have read, and of course now this book. It should be noted that this standoff was indeed a tragedy given the loss of innocent life. All blame can be placed on David Koresh, and of course, it is not in dispute that the branch Davidians set the final conflagration that took most of the lives of all inside the compound, but what is also clear, there was no compelling reason to breach the compound. And the reasons given for final approval, that came from the top, were heavenly biased and misleading. Truth was not spoken to power on that day.in Washington. Bad decisions were made.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But this book is not just about Waco. Noesner provides incite into a number of high profile standoffs, not just in the United States, but around the world, in which he was involved. From domestic incidents, to prison riots, to the hijacking of aircraft by Muslin extremists, including the bombing of the 747 that broke up over Lockerbie Scotland. Also included are random kidnappings for ransom and finally, his involvement in capture of the Washington Sniper. In which case, believe it or not, negotiations were being attempted through the use of notes left behind by the snipers (John Mohamed and Lee Boy Malvo) and controlled through use of the media to provide indications back to them. True to form, the powers that be, choose not to take some of Noesner’s hard learned advice.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is a short but powerful read.. Noesner is firm, credible, and clear. Perhaps based on his decades of experience in negotiations, where clarity with very little ambiguity is paramount. This book is a must read if anyone questions the tactical response using what may be observed as an excessive use of force. With so many shows on TV depicting these crucial scenes where ego, competence, fear, and adrenaline come together...it’s nice to see ground truth. Law enforcement activity is most successfully executed when boredom takes precedence over action. Negotiations, much like stakeouts, are long periods of time being away from home, uncomfortable, while drinking a lot of coffee and eating cheeseburgers. Stalling for time saves lives.</div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-81369892787077758682020-04-22T08:52:00.002-05:002020-04-22T11:17:32.320-05:00The Red Eagles of CONSTANT PEG<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj675_MoJE5TOGHnaCzgypWPVSsenN7_8VCQ1CrF02pfOrL1JPT7l9RZArA3FidOJS6CJKx5OVh28jc26yIeBsdQDJjILCY6nrFE0ibRg_BqCN8dfwlPcdy10kYwwCxDFuGX8FwanhKiJ79/s1600/RedEagles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1044" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj675_MoJE5TOGHnaCzgypWPVSsenN7_8VCQ1CrF02pfOrL1JPT7l9RZArA3FidOJS6CJKx5OVh28jc26yIeBsdQDJjILCY6nrFE0ibRg_BqCN8dfwlPcdy10kYwwCxDFuGX8FwanhKiJ79/s320/RedEagles.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ever wonder what’s been happening in the skies over central Nevada? Much is still speculation and many extra-terrestrial hunters spend a large percentage of their waking hours trying to peer into the valleys and canyons of those regions certain that if they stay vigilant they will remove the fog of government lies and discover the existence of aliens. The truth is out there, but whereas it might not be as spectacular as it could be to discover the US government has been conducting horrific biological experiments on ET, which no doubt includes anal probing, the real truth is less science fiction and more history and heroics courtesy of some fine Americans and the United States Air Force (USAF). The aliens, of course, would not be life forms from another planet, but rather technology from a foreign country...in this case from Russia--in the form of their jet fighter aircraft.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Ever heard of the Tonopah Test Range or TTR? Long before it became a secret base concealing the first operational home of the F-117 stealth fighter jet, it was a remote Department of Energy laboratory. Later, it was to host the first cover story to explain the increase in operations and construction that would surround the arrival of the super-secret F-117. What’s really weird, and awesome at the same time, is that this cover story was also so sensitive and treated with such respect by those in the know, that even as the F-117 jets were arriving at Tonopah and going operational, the word of the cover story, never got leaked. The MiGs remained more classified then the Nighthawk. The story was thus never told. A failed cover story. Finally, in 2006 the mission was declassified. And one of those original fine American’s decided to write some of their previously undisclosed history.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Before they were the Red Eagles they were the TAC Red Hats. TAC stands for Tactical AIr Command. Back then, TAC was on a leadership rampage. What resulted was the rise of the “fighter generals” as described in the great history book by Mike Worden of the same name. This was, and has been, their heyday. Yet their rise to prominence culminated in the dissolution of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the previous reign of the “bomber generals” over the USAF. This was thirty years ago. This event ushered in the 3rd epoch of USAF maturity since it’s birth as a new service in 1947. The epochs were defined and characterized by Jeff Smith in his illuminating work entitled. “Tomorrow’s Air Force”. The rise of the fighter generals happened on the eve of the first Desert Storm war in Iraq. It was the late 80’s and I was a newly commissioned officer in the USAF. A SAC trained warrior as we were called...forged in the fire of a nuclear weapons maintenance squadron, inside a profession and an maintenance Air Force Specialty or AFSC well known for eating their young. Everyone remembers the 80’s with the movies, Top Gun, the music, Billy Idol, and our clothing choices, parachute pants. It was a fine time to be young and unafraid. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
With all that going on it’s no wonder that a few fearless pioneers went unobserved in that high desert of Nevada. They were guided by a vision to train fighter pilots, the cream of the crop fighter pilots, to join an echelon above the best of the best, to cap-off their training with an aerial engagement of actual adversary alien (foreign) aircraft. In this case, actual Russian MiG fighters straight from behind the Iron Curtain. The training would be conducted in complete secrecy. The Cold War was still in full swing. We were still a decade away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. America’s strategy was still nuclear deterrence with actual limited nuclear strike options materializing to confront the nightmare of the Fulda Gap scenario which was deemed not only real, but likely. What burned in the heart of Air Force planners at the Pentagon was the ability to gain Air Supremacy over the communists in the event a conventional war kicked off in Europe and 50,000 Soviet tanks streamed across the border, through the Fulda Gap, and into Germany.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Who were these planners at the Pentagon? Enter Gaillard Peck, known as Evil Peck in his band of fighter pilot brothers. These brothers, seasoned in the aerial combat of Vietnam, knew the Air Force could do better. Their august plan? To build a squadron of real Russian MiGs and train pilots to fly them and to fly against our best of the best in aerial combat. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
“America’s Secret MiG Squadron, The Red Eagles of Project Constant Peg”, is an effort by Evil Peck, to describe how he got it done, in complete secrecy. How did he pull it off? How did he get it approved, funded, and operational? What it took, despite the huge bureaucracy, and what was the resulting success of this elite squadron of US owned and operated Russian MiGs? It is also an essay about winning and losing, It is an essay on leadership and egos. What is wrong with the United States Air Force but also, what can be done right? Evil Peck, through his own eyes reports on being inside the bureaucracy that made it all happen. There was also some losing going on and Evil is too much of a gentleman to place blame where it belongs. Those of you who know me know I will not pull the same punches. Having been in and around the Air Force myself, since 1982, as an officer in the field, a civilian on the Air Staff, and as a contractor supporting the Pentagon, I have seen it all. Evil Peck nails it. He also tells the story of Bud “Chops” Horan, who cloaked the program in secrecy, almost to a fault...given the need for a cover story that never really emerged...and for good reason. OBTW that story still hasn’t emerged. More on that later...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First some background before I get deeper into this book review. Flying high performance jet aircraft is a lethal enterprise...not just because of the necessity to dogfight in combat. These technical marvels of the sky can kill you very quickly. Thus the training required to learn just how to strap on engines with more thrust than weight is not something those who are in the profession have ever taken lightly. It demands no compromise and the best of the best training required is an absolute. A block approach was adopted by the Air Force to build the best of the best. Baby steps. Learn and master in stages. Finally, when you’ve mastered the jet you still have a long way to go. You are only learning for one reason, to fly in combat. At the top of the flyer’s pyramid stand the aerial aces. Those who have downed other enemy fighters in combat. During wartime, experience was gained in the heat of the dogfight. What did you do? What worked and how did you survive? Pass that on to the flyers in your squadron. From previous combat it is well known in the fighter community that 10 missions is the number required to gain comfort and some proficiency...that is if you don’t die first. After all the book learning, after all the block training, after all the tactics and techniques have been described, you still must fly in a hostile exchange to really know how you will perform. Enter, Red Flag. At the top of the heap, pilots are invited to Red Flag exercises to gain their 10 sorties of combat proficiency against a simulated aggressor aircraft….but is that even enough to eliminate “Buck Fever”. The first time you look through your rifle scope while hunting a deer and hesitate before you pull the trigger. That’s buck fever. It’s a well known phenomenon. How then, do you get the deer in the room? Let the pilot see the deer, run with the deer, and down the deer in combat, or be bested by the deer...and learn that lesson too. How do you put a highly trained USAF fighter pilot in place with their cross-hairs on said deer...a Russia pilot in a MiG trying to kill you. How do you get the deer to 20,000 ft, AGL, moving at near the speed of sound? Evil Peck figured it out.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Back then the Air Force fostered what was known as the one mistake mentality. A single mistake would mean the end of your career, unless you were very lucky. Some of this grew out of the nuclear posture of the Air Force where we constantly hung under the Sword of Damocles and a single mistake could not be tolerated. But yet, how do you learn? Particularly when you are coloring outside the lines. When I was a maintenance officer on the flight-line in 1988, I remember an issue came up and at one point I had 10 senior NCO’s in my office, totaling 220 years of USAF maintenance experience. I did the math but I didn’t try to solve the problem. I told them to solve the problem. My two years of maintenance experience wasn’t going to get it done. And guess what? In the morning 220 years of experience had that problem solved. As Evil describes leadership within the Red Eagles, the difference in leadership styles jumps off the page, from the maintenance officer, David Stringer, who went on to be a 1-Star general, a very very high rank for a logistics officer in those days, to George Gennin, a commander who destroyed the Red Eagles because of his commander’s ego and classic blind spots. Later Col John Manclark would have to repair the mess made by Gennin and get the sortie rate back up.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In his new best seller, “Talking to Strangers”, Malcolm Gladwell describes what happens when two people don’t understand one another at a very basic level. In the case of Bobby “Daddy” Ellis, the SMSgt who was the Chief of Maintenance for the Red Eagles nothing could be closer to the truth. When the 6th Red Eagles Commander showed up, Col George Gennin, they immediately had a communication barrier. They didn’t speak anything close to the same language. Gennin seemed unwilling to even try to learn. Ellis, on the other hand, owned those jets in every sense of the word. He built them from scratch. He repaired them. He maintained them. When pilot's showed up to take their jet they trusted the maintainers were handing them something safe to fly, relatively speaking. How would the pilot really know anyhow? There were no manuals for these Russian MiGs. There were no Techical Orders (T.O.s). Knobs and switches were labeled in Cyrillic. Ellis knew these jets down to the last rivet. The pilot's knew and trusted the maintainers. Gennin, on the other hand, knew none of this. What he knew was Air Force good order and discipline and was told that officers do not fraternize with enlisted men. And this is what he imposed on the Red Eagles when he showed up. Gennin was out for himself. And hypocritically, as he would condemn Ellis for doing things outside the chain of command, he himself evaded the chain of command, not reported in Evil's book. (you can find this story in the other book about the Red Eagles by the journalist Steve Davies). Gennin himself frequently jumped the Chain of Command and would have routine conversations with the Commander of TAC, Gen Creech, behind his own bosses back. He, better than anyone, understood the value of these back channel communications. But fundamentally failed to understand the magic that was taking place right in front of him. Instead of finding a way to join the team he decided to crush the spirit of the unit. He claims credit for increasing the sortie rate, where the numbers reported by Evil show he did nothing of the sort. Sortie rates decreased under his watch, the lowest to date in the history of the Red Eagles and morale was in the tank. He handed a broken squadron to the next commander’s both Manclark and White who really had to turn morale and sortie rates around.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is a great book which captures a brief moment of Air Force culture. Apart from Evil’s story and personal involvement he was humble and truthful enough to include stories of the Red Eagles written by other Red Eagles in his book. These are all fascinating stories told in their own words. I’ve mentioned several times that the Red Eagles should have been the cover story for the F-117s. They were not. Perhaps, again, we return to Gennin. Perhaps, we may never know, trying to break the Red Eagles into conformance with the USAF was one way to thrust them into the light of day...to assume their envisioned role as a cover story for those F-117’s, the primary reason for Tonopah’s resurgence, visibility, and obvious influx of major funding. Ultimately the Red Eagle squadron at Tonopah was shut down as the F-117’s went public due to their involvement and success in the first Gulf War.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I alluded to it earlier, but a word about Intelligence collection in the United States...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What Evil doesn’t describe is this book is the inherent relationship the Red Eagles must have had with the United States intelligence community. I am speculating here. For obvious reasons this may have been been left out. And perhaps the reason is you don’t use an intelligence program as a cover story for another classified program. Evidence in the book would suggest you don’t run off to Egypt and other countries around the world, as Daddy Ellis did, to collect Russian aircraft parts, without US Intel in the room. So they must have been there and Daddy Ellis must have been eyeballs deep in this community. This is another piece of the puzzle that Geoge Gennin would have never have understood. It’s a blind spot for most inside the Department of Defense, primarily because most employees of the DoD never possess the coveted clearances to go behind the Intel curtain. And whereas they may brush up against it, they never understand it’s depth. The relationship between DoD and US Intel meet at organizations such as the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) under Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). You are on your own to research such things but I would start with the history on the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). And keep in mind the rules are different on the Intel side. Those guys grow beards and don’t wear uniforms.. They also don’t serve as cover stories for DoD missions. Typically it’s the other way around...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRnlP7oQ1IqRc7hdJFB03eQ58LCU7uiajBGR_wnlA50RouC-G6ug81WlYo7qTeZIanD-fG9TOoOaX5ZbGcQUctBF9m2tLQK8t-uLhoYEBeWbztEeYFcBkkEozdu4sEvasFpPGc0K1QNLdZ/s1600/fighterpilotAlien.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRnlP7oQ1IqRc7hdJFB03eQ58LCU7uiajBGR_wnlA50RouC-G6ug81WlYo7qTeZIanD-fG9TOoOaX5ZbGcQUctBF9m2tLQK8t-uLhoYEBeWbztEeYFcBkkEozdu4sEvasFpPGc0K1QNLdZ/s320/fighterpilotAlien.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I close with a question for those alien hunters out there who may be reading this review and searching for ET in the high deserts of Nevada. Ever seen a fighter pilot complete with face-mask and oxygen line connected to their helmet? Check it out sometime... I'll give you a hint...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-20981818211864515152020-03-26T11:31:00.002-05:002020-03-26T11:46:41.194-05:00Keep Bringing the Juice Boxes<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAxCT__ztGcLiN0z3sj7Dz6eprFrF_BcRZ2x092HQRTgz5Kf83WLwjYRz3fPrtOoZdsZYiR5TjDKQpyKtdkvc2Fed2wxD4VOzmWd5OjDhCCjUpmrBGfMpA7Uv0NlUy_GGLpWCksDoiYwx/s1600/JuiceBoxGuy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="450" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUAxCT__ztGcLiN0z3sj7Dz6eprFrF_BcRZ2x092HQRTgz5Kf83WLwjYRz3fPrtOoZdsZYiR5TjDKQpyKtdkvc2Fed2wxD4VOzmWd5OjDhCCjUpmrBGfMpA7Uv0NlUy_GGLpWCksDoiYwx/s320/JuiceBoxGuy.jpg" width="320" /></a>Sadly the book, “A Seat at the Table”, by Mark Swartz, is the worst book I’ve read in a long time. Heralded by the Chief Software Officer of the United States Air Force, Nicolas M. Chaillan, as a must read, I believe we are being led down the primrose path by the likes of personalities such as Swartz and Chalillan. The buzz word in software is DevOps and whether or not we believe software is key to every business, and the business of most businesses, the tenants of DevOps are not new to the real business of innovation. Recast as some sort of new knowledge, when it comes to rapid development of anything, look through history at the companies who have found rapid ways to develop new things and get them to the marketplace, and the exact same rules will apply. Nothing new here. Even when applied to software. What is new is the idea that the Chief Information Officer at a company should be in charge of it. The danger, as I see it, is not with how the next Uber or Airbnb will get their app to market. The danger is that some companies are not strictly software development houses, They also do other things, like build cars, planes, and rockets. Coming from a military background I’ll rephrase that as tanks, planes, rockets, and satellites. Yes, the software development involved with these systems is extensive, 35 million lines of code and counting on programs such as the F-35 (including ground support systems), but so too must these companies also build the hardware that works, physically, and the hardware that supports and runs the software at the interface between the physical world and the digital logic inside.. The world does not consist strictly inside your desktop, laptop, and iPhone. At least not yet. The world is still a physical place. And thus we must still interact with it in physical ways. Engineers build these physical systems. Deeper still, is the need for these software driven physical systems to be secure. This does not happen on the software side alone. Thus even if the CIO understands not only IT but software as well, they will not understand the other product development in other engineering disciplines. They still are in a heavily supporting role. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the old days a company consisted of the CEO, COO, and CFO. Typically, before the days where everybody wanted an MBA, engineering companies would advance, not necessarily the best engineers, but the good engineers who could communicate with the outside world. Those smart folk would rise to the top and it was hard to compete with them because of their deep knowledge of what the company was actually in the business of producing. As the information age blossomed, companies began creating positions like the Chief Information Officer or CIO to run their Information Technology enterprise. So let me just ask a question, who do the software developers work for? Do they work for the CIO or do they work for the CEO? In an information company, where software applications, games, webpages, shrink wrapped software are the products, do the software developers work for the CIO? In a hardware company where the product is the next business jet, do the software developers work for the CIO? The answer is no. The fallacy here is that the CIO needs a seat at the table. The misunderstanding here is that the CIO drives the DevOps cycle. What’s happening here is because of the surge in software development in every company, the CEOs and COOs understand less about the technology. That is why if you put a software engineer in charge, like Elon Musk at Tesla, he is smart enough to speak all of the languages he needs to speak in order to run the company. The CIO can play his supporting role to keep the networks up so that everyone can do their job. The software engineers do not work for the CIO at Tesla, or SpaceX for that matter.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Hopefully you understand where I am going with this. I like CIOs, don’t get me wrong, but giving them a seat at the table to drive DevOps when the software developers don’t work for the CIO is a dumb idea. And it would be an even dumber idea to put them in charge of software development thus splinting the development of an integrated engineering solution. Software might be the cool magic in any given hardware, who doesn’t love the artificial intelligence of a self driving car? But the car can only drive because it has cameras that can see, radars that can feel, tires that can turn, and brakes that can stop the car. This is a fully integrated engineering hodgepodge of technology that must remain on the engineering side of the house under the CEO. The CIO has other things to worry about, like making sure the engineers can communicate with one another and save data. Driving DevOps is for engineering management and whereas it may have arrived for commercial companies it is still not ready for prime-time in the military...nor should it ever be.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The United States Air Force, as the foremost technology service, has been enamored with this book and with other fantasies about Silicon Valley. Thus the Air Force appointed a Chief Software Officer to drive software development into a DevOps future. Yes Chalian has started a few software companies. He has not, however, built a F-16, a B-2, or a MilStar Satellite. Yes all companies can do better with their software development cycles, but they still must build hardware. They must build an integrated solution. They still must test hardware and they still must secure everything from attack. DevOps is antithetical to building defense systems that must work in a life and death situation while also under attack from both within (cyber) and from without (physical). In this still highly relevant paradigm the CIO is still in a supporting role and should still just keep bringing the juice boxes.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-59295867839143912642020-03-16T09:40:00.002-05:002020-03-16T19:19:28.292-05:00Trust is Life or Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1pJ6bOIj4LeLTRtMys3aSdvCGN3B8xVAsjWkMqcAojipVIsoEw1bCBLvbxEIbFUNNWbev33ehJ6nIU1Vp9-4pLMJj1MKh18DXvHkUybavdN8VDXAfMoxcP3nCRrDwwse2Rd57q8hb7ov3/s1600/talkingtostrangers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1075" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1pJ6bOIj4LeLTRtMys3aSdvCGN3B8xVAsjWkMqcAojipVIsoEw1bCBLvbxEIbFUNNWbev33ehJ6nIU1Vp9-4pLMJj1MKh18DXvHkUybavdN8VDXAfMoxcP3nCRrDwwse2Rd57q8hb7ov3/s320/talkingtostrangers.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
How do you link terrorism, Adolf Hitler, sexual predation, murder, ponzi schemes, and the Black Lives Matter movement under one cover? Ask Malcolm Gladwell to write a book…. And he has. His latest is called “Talking to Strangers” and he has created yet another phrase for our culture and times, Much like he has with “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. The phrase, “Talking to Strangers'” will forever mean, don’t forget, when you are out there in the world interacting with people, you don’t really know what is in the mind of the person you’ve never met standing in line in at the checkout counter, even though you’ve seen them many times. This is not to infer something nefarious is going on. It is to explain that although it is our human nature to give fellow humans the benefit of the doubt, and to trust them, we never know how a person’s personality and what they are thinking, presents itself outwardly in a manner for us to infer anything about them. The phrase, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, was never meant to be about books. Thus, Gladwell has usurped the idea, and given it a new name.<br />
<br />
Talking to Strangers is how Gladwell has recast the old line but given us a much deeper understanding of how? And why? It’s a thing. This is not the simple classic admonishment that has become an internet meme or YouTube video where we are reminded not to get angry in the checkout line because the person in front of us might have experienced a death in the family, or diagnosis with the “C” word. Rather, Gladwell presents the evidence from all these unrelated examples, that even with our very best intentions to read people correctly, we always get it wrong…<br />
<br />
Ironically, I write this review as the novel Corona virus, Covid-19, has begun amping up it’s chilling effect on the population here in the United States. Strangely, three things occur to me. One, the “C” word, now apparently stands for “COVID-19”. Two, just like not being able to judge a book by it’s cover, we really don’t know who is the carrier of the virus. And three, social distancing tells us to keep six feet away from everyone, including in the supermarket checkout line. Perhaps we will have to wait a few months before we get back to talking to strangers in line at the grocery store. But I digress...<br />
<br />
As always, Gladwell did a lot of research to come up with this book. Most of the stories he relates to us are familiar topics in the news and the ones he connects with his ideas about not judging a book by its cover are well known to us. How Chamberlain totally misread Hitler during his meeting with him prior to WWII, How Bernie Madoff with his ponzi scheme, pulled the wool over the eyes of Wall Street. How Gerry Sandusky could have had a charity to help young boys and abuse them at the same time, under the watchful eyes of the most famous football coach in the world? How was a doctor able to sexually abuse so many women on the US Gymnastics Team, sometimes with their parents in the same room? And on and on...<br />
<br />
The answer, in a nutshell, is that we are a trusting race of humans. We evolved to trust because we have to live by trust and trust our other fellow humans to live by us and trust us as well. Maybe it’s to live in society together, but we’ve been evolving long before societies, so it must be something deeper. But with regard to society, here is my own analogy from something I like to do, drive cars. In order for the rules of the road (society) to work, and not have mass chaos on our highways, we trust other drivers to follow the rules. It’s funny that we can be so trusting but yet we yell and scream at the a-hole who will not yield, or the maniac who passes us on the right. After all, anyone going slower than us is an a-hole and anyone going faster than us is a maniac. The dichotomy of thought is a classic human inconsistency. We trust those a-holes and maniacs with our lives, and to stay in their lane, as we wind down a two lane back road with a painted line in between us and a closing velocity of 140 miles per hour. Since we are so trusting, perhaps we should be willing to believe the guy with the concealed carry permit is as reliable as his cousin on the highway. This is a very pro-gun argument, and many of my friends would agree. They are to be trusted. But Gladwell’s argument, that we can’t judge a book by it’s cover, suggests we shouldn’t, or can’t always trust the smile on their face. Yet the list of reasons to trust people in society goes on and on... otherwise we would all live in a cabin in the woods and write manifestos (I’m referring to unabomber Ted Kaczynski not HDT).<br />
<br />
Here are the use cases Gladwell writes about:<br />
<br />
Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain traveled to Germany multiple times to meet with Hitler so he could report back to the world that he trusted Hitler because he told him his objectives were not world domination as they shook hands and he looked into his eyes. History was not kind to Chamberlain given how badly he misread der Fuehrer's face, despite the fact that he had written an entire book on the subject. Did anyone actually read, “Mein Kampf”?<br />
<br />
Amanda Knox and the Italian policia: The Italian authorities and most of the world did not believe a girl buying red underwear the day after her roommate’s brutal murder could have been anything but the perpetrator of a violent sexual escapade gone bad. When in fact, Knox is so ridiculously innocent, as to resemble any one of our shy, awkward daughters. The missing detail, was of course, the fact that she was locked out of her apartment and literally had no underwear. She was seen by the Italian press, buying underwear the next day. Who would do that after murdering their roommate? How about someone who didn’t murder their roommate. And the scandalous innuendo went viral from there....<br />
<br />
Bernie Madoff fleeces all of Wall Street given he had absolutely nothing to show for any investment he ever made? How is that possible? One man saw through the impossibility of it all...but no one would listen to him. Madoff was too important of a figure.<br />
<br />
In the Gerry Sandusky case, for decades, many looked away from the smoke, when there was not only smoke, but a fire. Not just a campfire, but a three alarm conflagration and a towering inferno of abuse.<br />
<br />
Gladwell’s point, in all these cases, has been those closest to the issues, those who could have seen the signs and understood what was really going on, have been unable to effectively communicate because they have been talking to strangers, literally. Like a pig looking at a wristwatch. No matter how much talking you do, if you haven’t a clue as to the premise, the context, and the language being spoken, you will miss the mark.<br />
<br />
I’m reminded of my own “Talking to Strangers” experience from when I was in the Air Force many moons ago. At that time the Wing Commander put me in charge of an explosive safety mishap investigation. The mishap involved the inadvertent firing of an explosive squib. The squib is the first in a series of explosive events that will lead to the firing of the rockets in the ejection of a seat on the B-52H bomber. It seems a maintenance technician pulled the ejection handle while on a Red Ball, an emergency maintenance response to an aircraft just before take off. The maintainers blamed the mishap on the aircrew and the aircrew blamed it on the maintainers. Clearly, the maintainer pulled the handle, he was at fault. But if we let it go there, we would not understand what Gladwell is talking about. After careful investigation I uncovered the following facts. The aircrew refused to take the aircraft because the ejection seat handle appeared loose and it would wobble from side to side. Per the technical order (T.O.) the handle should not wobble. The maintainer insisted that the aircraft was safe for a one-time-flight and that the ejection handle, despite the slight wobble, would function if it became necessary to eject. Back and forth the maintainer and the aircrew went debating whether or not the seat would work. The aircrew wanted to reject the sortie and the maintainers wanted them to fly the jet. During the investigation, as I looked at the handle, and the disassembled unit, on the maintenance bench, there was no doubt the handle would work. There was also no doubt there was a wobble. But during the incident the debate went on and on until the point that the maintainer was so frustrated with the aircrew, and their inability to trust his judgement, that he said, “Look, it works!”, and he pulled the ejection handle. The fact that the handle would work is so intuitively obvious to the most casually observing flatworm, it's so easy to see how the frustration would build. This wasn’t a question of some arcane and mysterious black box, and there are many of those, for which the aircrew has to put their faith (and life) in the hands of the maintainers...this happens everyday. This is a very basic mechanical operation...the handle moves up and down...it’s an on or off proposition. This came down to attitude, respect, and the ability to communicate, whilst engines running, and trying to move fast, in the heat of an aircraft launch. Fortunately, the squib only sets off the first event in the chain of explosive event’s leading to the seat being rocketed out of the top of the aircraft. The seat has final safety pins that are only removed at the very end of the runway just prior to takeoff roll. Had those pins also been removed, undoubtedly, both the maintainer and aircrew member would have been killed. They would not have just been just injured. They would have both been ejected violently through the roof of the B-52, traveling up on a rocket sled several hundred feet into the air, to be smashed by the seat leaving the aircraft, and then smashed by their subsequent fall to the ground…It would have been ghastly.<br />
<br />
But it was the frustration of the back and forth, the lack of trust on both sides, the inability to see what the other one was saying, their inability to communicate, that neither party could be completely absolved, or completely blamed. Gladwell would say, they were not talking to one another, despite all the training, they were effectively talking to strangers. Mishaps happen this way…in this case, the Chief of Flying Safety, a B-52 pilot himself, believed my investigation and called in every aircrew member from the wing to describe what caused this lack of trust and what we should do to enhance respect and grow closer as a flying wing. We could not have tolerated the more ghastly mishap had it occurred. On the flight-line, it’s one family...yet there is always a tension between ops and maintenance, I could go on and on but I will not. Communication and understanding is key, trust is life or death.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-81025709409211049112020-02-17T19:08:00.003-05:002020-02-18T05:24:29.805-05:00What Took So Long?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFtQdyuUFYbEDk56QLtz3fQZ2xe91s8PFuM-k5SwU9-bJbIZ09SBKr9nrkRTZOrwJBGToGfKVytfC175AYJ7s3njD29R8mQbyjSvxTvYVTh7Fl4vqyRU8EAx3LP_jyseUm6s6LiVzAhoj/s1600/LQGCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1418" data-original-width="922" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFtQdyuUFYbEDk56QLtz3fQZ2xe91s8PFuM-k5SwU9-bJbIZ09SBKr9nrkRTZOrwJBGToGfKVytfC175AYJ7s3njD29R8mQbyjSvxTvYVTh7Fl4vqyRU8EAx3LP_jyseUm6s6LiVzAhoj/s320/LQGCover.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I have a pretty straight forward way in which I review books I have read. First, I read the book...I never read the introduction until the end. Then I do a little research, think about the topic, and I always read some of the book reviews, including the 1-star reviews. I want to know who's pissed. Then I think about the book and everything I have learned. When I am satisfied I have something cogent to say, I write something down. Typically I can't move on to my next read without putting the current read to bed in this tried and true fashion. I've currently just finished a book and have begun the next step. I had to laugh out loud as I was reading one of the reviews of Jim Baggott's "Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe". The book I just finished. I came across this gem of a comment in one of the reviews on Amazon. The reader GEBUHER said, "If I do not understand after three readings, the only possibility is to read for the fourth time". Whereas I am not inclined to give Baggott 5-Stars for this book as GEBUHRER has done, I'll confess, I also did not follow his rule of thumb. One reading was quite enough for me.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
But he nailed it...seriously, four readings? Or maybe he is just talking about a paragraph or a particular concept. Here's the rub, Baggott is suppose to be writing popular science....something accessible to the populous. He has failed. He is thrashing through what he has read regarding Loop Quantum Gravity and Cosmology LQG and LQC respectively. He still does not understand it sufficiently to bring his talents to the fore. The ability to make it accessible to idiots like me. The best chapter of the book is the epilogue where the subjects of his book, Lee Smolin and Carlos Rovelli are being interviewed and talk about the subject in their own words. But still...this is a review of Baggott's book, so here are some thoughts.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He does bring the relationship of Smolin and Rovelli to life. It is certainly clear, that without those two, we would not have LQG or LQC any time soon. But would we not? The other competing theory is so wrong shouldn't it just be a matter of time. During the time period he is discussing, this particular subject was monopolized by Edward Witten and his merry band of string theory theorists... Any one who was keeping up with physics during this period of time couldn't believe in string theory, let alone understand it. Only those who could do the math, could begin believe in it...and let's be clear. Even if you could do the math, and you believed in string theory, you had to be a moron of the highest order, or high on drugs. This is the major difference between mathematicians and engineers. It is the difference between theory and practical applications. Any theory, in which, one must believe in the possibility of 11 dimensions, has to be one of two things, on drugs, or high, I've just recently eliminated the possibility that you are a moron. I guess the forth possibility is that they are stone cold f-nuts wrong. And yes, spoiler alert, this book basically says string theory is wrong. But so to, did Peter Woit in his book, in 2006. I'll repeat that, 2006. Why has it taken so long to really get the word out? Anyone thinking about string theory right now? Don't do it. It's a bad investment. Let's stop saying it.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Truth is, LQG, mathematically speaking, is far easier to understand then any string theory with it's 11 dimensional space ever could be. Calabi–Yau manifold anyone? I don't think so. Baggott has written the history now, to give credit to Smolin and Rovelli. Now we need someone to make it accessible to the people. No need to give a synopsis here...but I will because I'm trying to review his book. But how ironic. I want to give him 5-Stars for the future and for getting the word out...but I can't because it's a mediocre book at best. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Baggott reviews some basic physics, gravity, and then quantum mechanics before diving into the subject. In fairness, he says up front, you can skip the first three chapters, but he hopes you don't. I wish I did. Nothing in there really lays the ground work for the meat and potatoes of the narrative. Nothing that any one of the books written on theoretical physics hasn't plowed ahead of time. Everyone want's to write physics in their own words...but all of them are the same. Einstein, Einstein, Einstein, Bohr, oh shit, Stephen Hawking,..ugh. We've heard all the fucking stories...get to the point...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Here's the point. One, at the smallest possible scale there is this thing call the Plank Length....1.616255 ×10−35 m... Don't even try to imagine how small that is...I mean seriously, don't even try. Two, gravity, is not a force, it is an emergent phenomena resultant from this thing called quantum foam, which is essentially volume based on a gravitational field (not particles) united by a spin network (Look up Roger Penrose). Boom. That's it. We have a fabric, of space, comprised of Plank length volumes, forever and all around us, that become the foundation for everything...that's where gravity comes from and that's kinda what Einstein said. Mathematically it is a sound theory. It conforms to both general and special relativity...should we need anything else. And since we can not empirically detect the quanta of the gravitational field at Plank scale without a sensor the size of Jupiter, it will be awhile before we can prove it in the lab. Oh, there is one bugaboo...whereas it explains time, it doesn't give time equal footing in the relativity space. Time does pass by. In case someone was wondering if time really exists. It does, and both LQG and LQC says it does and it passes by. Unlike other crack pots who talk about time going backwards and the possibility of infinite universes...yes Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. The physical world around us, actually makes a bit of intuitive sense, even at the quantum level. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Lest I throw Baggott completely under the bus, he is a good writer. He keeps it going and has been around the scene long enough to throw in all the right physicists, Susskind, Dyson, and Heisenberg. But then he throws in Descartes a philosopher, Picasso an artist, McLuhan a journalist, and Claude Shannon, an information theorist, in the same cover. So clearly, he is a smart writer.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So here we are, a mediocre book by Baggott that should have been written ten years ago. I'll start with 5 Stars for the future of Loop Quantum Gravity. Deduct 1 star because if you are gonna review theoretical physics, review theoretical physics. It was half-assed attempt at best. Deduct 1 star because it's still not accessible to the masses. Three stars for a book with a cool cover but I wouldn't read it a second time. And what the hell took so long?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-13991613542564490592020-02-01T09:42:00.004-05:002020-02-01T12:24:17.800-05:00Letter to the Editor at AFM<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/space_force_logo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for space force logo"" border="0" height="200" src="https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/space_force_logo1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;">
I woke up and started to read the Jan/Feb edition of AF Magazine. Didn't get beyond the "Editoral" page where the Editor in Chief wrote about the new Space Force. I immediately wrote the magazine...</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
First, here is the essay in AFM by the Editor-in-Chief, Tobias Naegele, that I freaked out about...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.airforcemag.com/article/editorial-launching-the-space-force/">https://www.airforcemag.com/article/editorial-launching-the-space-force/</a><br />
<br />
Here is my letter...as I doubt they will publish it...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Editors,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I guess it's hard for the editorial staff at Air Force Magazine to push back on the Editor in Chief when he want's to write an editorial...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What a disservice to the Air Force and now the new Space Force on what should be a profoundly important event...and a nice cover "Space Force Rising". Tobias Naegele had to write something, I guess, or as the adage goes, "open your mouth and remove all doubt". Naegele has removed all doubt. His editorial in the Jan/Feb edition, "Launching the Space Force", fails to do so.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He is worried about tribaism...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He is worried about intoxicating power...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He is worried about what we will call them...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He is worried about the uniform...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
He want's the NRO budget...</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What a full and deep misunderstanding of the mission and purpose of a space force, it's relationship to the USAF, and the real meaning behind this historic occasion. He also doesn't understand the cultures of which he is trying to speak. As editor in chief of the premier service periodical, Mr. Naegele should be talking about the mission...or at least demonstrate he knows something about the mission... before he tries to talk culture.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Air Force get's continuously beat up for stealing dollars from space programs to build fighters and bombers, yet we are still the dominant space force in the world. Without the Air Force the United States wouldn't be the preeminent superpower in space....And oh by the way we still happen to have the greatest air force in the world. The USAF should be proud of space and take credit for space. Now more than ever. The USAF's only failing is to not take sufficient credit for what airmen have done. Incidentally the same if true for BMC2, ISR, Strategic Nuclear Forces, and our burgeoning unmanned fleet of aircraft...all unrivaled. Cyber, not so much. Although at one point they tried. The USAF doesn't get the credit they deserve for any of these world altering capabilities and in particular space.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The NRO is a boutique compared with the USAF's space forces. And if you don't think the USAF is eyeball deep in the NRO, you don't know that's going on in the NRO.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I would have rather Naegele called out this historic occasion. Give airmen the credit for all of their successes in and thru space thus giving our great country complete mastery of the ultimate high ground as we step off into this final frontier with new found independence. Instead we are treated to issues so superfluous and demeaning to the professionals in the Air Force as to make me question my membership in the AFA.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Mr. Naegele, going forward, please focus on the mission and the real challenges we face. Not the superfluous. The threat is external. That is where you've failed the publication and our Country. To win we must build the space force doctrine, push the technology, know our adversaries, continue to organize, train,and equip and present space forces to the combatant commanders. The rest will sort itself out...as it has for decades, one soldier, sailor, airman, marine, and now spaceman, at a time...</div>
</div>
Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4814865926077091219.post-15437585391644560092020-01-12T12:02:00.003-05:002021-04-10T06:03:01.718-05:00Logotherapy and Curly's One Thing<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iy-VSqmpd2hwTYS1B94aBC_x_y-I0MtASzxgJoooVVCAJC8gjPy69VmSP_n4tZPhvHKuKPVz6w46OmKCkYwYLbpga0byW-V_qVIPbs75cyH0m1M49AetdrM4C1VwnvPGFAAQRES889zC/s1600/squirrel.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="900" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8iy-VSqmpd2hwTYS1B94aBC_x_y-I0MtASzxgJoooVVCAJC8gjPy69VmSP_n4tZPhvHKuKPVz6w46OmKCkYwYLbpga0byW-V_qVIPbs75cyH0m1M49AetdrM4C1VwnvPGFAAQRES889zC/s200/squirrel.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The book I just read has been translated into
twenty-four languages. Twelve million copies are in print.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as of this morning there are over 7500
reviews on Amazon. Is there anything more I can add to the world wide commentary on
Viktor Frankl’s classic, “Man’s Search for Meaning”? Probably not, but
regardless, my intent today is to write a review in the midst of these
numerous threads of thought that might perhaps edge in on something different. That said,
let’s begin...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frankl’s great book is a revelation to me in
that I definitely believe, some 70 years later, his theories still have the
power to transform the treatment of mental health patients. Frankl’s hard won
Logotherapy, the approach he developed in the 30's and 40's, still has legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, his
belief that those with anxiety and depression can find relief by simply
discovering some meaning in their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Interestingly, and anecdotally, this can happen with just some basic
observation and a few strategically placed words that can shift a patient's
perspective directly into recovery mode. Easier, perhaps, said than done. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the movie "City Slickers", with
Billy Crystal and Jack Palance, the role of Curly being played by Palance (who
incidentally won an Oscar for his role) tried to get Mitch (Billy Crystal's
character) to find the meaning in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If we are not careful, we might fall into the easy trap. Curly's famous
line in the movie about finding the "One Thing", seems to ring true
in a book entitled "Man's Search for Meaning".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is about the farthest from Frankl's
philosophy as it can get…No offense Curly. Yet the search may be easier than we think,
just not in Curly's way, if we can lower some of our natural defenses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Can it work?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Will it work?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let's find out… But
first, let’s understand it…and give it a try later on as I wrap up this
discussion.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagine first, what everyone must know about the
Holocaust. Whether you’ve read about it in “The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank)”,
or you’ve been exposed to Concentration Camps through documentaries or movies,
or perhaps you’ve visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, or physically
been to one of the dark places, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like Auschwitz, preserved
in Europe to remember these dark times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first part of
Frankl’s book, entitled, “Experiences in a Concentration Camp” is exactly what
Frankl says. This part contains his first hand experience in German death camps.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Altogether he was in four different
camps and somehow survived to write about it. It’s worth noting, as he
certainly does, that blind luck had more to do with his survival more than his
metal attitude. If you can imagine, one in 29, souls survived those camps. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's Frankl's number, I didn't check actual
statistics. One does not give positive attitude any credit under those
deathly odds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he does not credit his
attitude though some have claimed with a certain insensitivity, that he
has.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is not casting undue blame on
the millions who perished for being responsible for their own demise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an unfair and insensitive
characterization of what Frankl is telling us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That he survived to tell his story has less to do about his actual
survival and more to do about his unique observational platform.
Prior to his internment in the concentration camps he was already a
psychiatrist of note.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During his
informative years in Austria, over a four-year period, he interviewed more than
12,000 patients--most following their attempt at suicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the 1930’s and the fact that Frankl
talked with so many patients with depression and suicidal tendencies is quite
incredible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many therapists today
have had that sort of clinical experience?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We send our family’, or perhaps go ourselves, to therapists and doctors who prescribe medications
based on a textbook diagnosis. This is a sad state of affairs but that discussion
is for another day.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fast forward into Auschwitz. If you can
imagine a doctor of note with such a storehouse of human knowledge pertaining
to mental health conditions as he is personally walking within the gray huts,
snow, mud, and fence line of a death camp. Where everybody, including him, have
been stripped of anything remotely human, as they are freezing, starving, and
waiting to die, but taking mental notes of the human behavior occurring under
such extreme and dire circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fact that he was the observer is like having the prescience to send a great
poet such as Whitman or Wadsworth to view the great plateau of Olympus Mons. This is like sending a great engineer such as
Tesla or Edison to examine technology on an alien world, or like sending Stephen
Hawking to an event horizon to study Black Holes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we are not careful, we might ascribe even
greater meaning to Frankl’s survival than permitted by the math alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why he, among millions of others, with his
observational abilities, as opposed to someone less learned in the human
condition, survived? Arguably one of the greatest emerging minds in
psychology sent to a Concentration Camp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think about it for a second, Frankl was
living and working in Vienna, Austria, as was Sigmund Freud, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vienna in the 1920s was to psychology what
Paris was to the art world in the same decades. As an eminent medical scholar,
he had the ability to leave Austria when it was clear the war was coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He chose to stay and serve his patients. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And here he was present to observe and miraculously actually
did survive on the slimmest of margins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And not only did he survive he has given us his story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world is a richer place for his
observations and his new insight into psychology.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let’s start with the word Logos. Frankl
says “logos” in Latin means, "meaning". Hence, he named his
therapy, Logotherapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t find a
Latin or Greek translation that actually defines logos this way which is rather
odd. Most definitions I can find seem to relate the word "logo"
to mean logic or rhetoric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assuming he
was better in Latin and Greek than Google or Wikipedia as they currently exist,
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt principally because the word “Logo”
obviously must come from the same root word and it doesn’t take a huge leap to
ascribe meaning to a logo...any logo...even in modern times, right? Who
doesn’t derive some meaning from their favorite sports team logo, or their
family coat-of-arms, or that of the great seal of the United States?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think, just as Frankl says, Logos means,
literally, meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Christians
speak of Logos, they are of course, referring to Jesus by one of His many
names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus again, Logos is meaning, if
Jesus is your reason, or meaning, for living. That makes profound sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, that is not what Frankl is after.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_s1026"
type="#_x0000_t75" alt="The Far Side, You Know, We're Just Not Reaching That Guy."
style='position:absolute;margin-left:-6.75pt;margin-top:0;width:179.45pt;
height:255.75pt;z-index:251658240;visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square;
mso-width-percent:0;mso-height-percent:0;mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;
mso-wrap-distance-top:0;mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt;
mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0;mso-position-horizontal:absolute;
mso-position-horizontal-relative:text;mso-position-vertical:absolute;
mso-position-vertical-relative:text;mso-width-percent:0;mso-height-percent:0;
mso-width-relative:page;mso-height-relative:page'>
<v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/Mooch/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image003.jpg"
o:title="The Far Side, You Know, We're Just Not Reaching That Guy"/>
<w:wrap type="square"/>
</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Frankl was not observing whether or not prisoners who were at the
brink of being sent to their death on a minute by minute basis believed in
God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frankl was looking into what inner
force created something more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm
reminded of a Far Side Cartoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
depicts the fires of Hell with one character pushing a wheel barrow with a
heavy load through this environment. He is whistling, he is obviously happy and oblivious to the dire circumstances surrounding him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two
devils, obviously the guards, are standing to the side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is commenting to the other that, "You
know, we are just not reaching that guy."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Where does this inner force originate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, I must reiterate, there is nothing in a
person's character or attitude that would make him more likely to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His odds are the same because life and death
was arbitrary in the death camps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Frankl's interest lay more in from where this attitude might
emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not whether or not it would save
someone from the gas chamber.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">True enough one can search for the meaning in
life as many have. Cosmologist and philosophers a plenty have dedicated
their lives to the study of life’s meaning…that's what they do. Each one
of us has our own world view and set of beliefs be they spiritual or
other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this we might entertain our
own meaning of life or what life means to us. Many try to impose their own meaning upon us. But this is not the meaning Frankl is after nor what he describes in his book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lest we fall into that
trap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we don’t believe in God, for
instance, perhaps our life has no meaning. Thus, we must define meaning based
on something different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
"Christmas means a little bit more" as Dr. Seuss has pointed out when
the Grinch's heart expands 10 times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
even then, we will fall well short of what Frankl was driving towards with his
Logotherapy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I think if we stick to western definitions, we
will continuously be spinning our wheels with regard to a search for meaning. Sure,
we can find it…and will find it in many places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I find it odd that there is never any mention of eastern philosophies
in this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps Frankl was more
studied on eastern philosophy and wrote about it elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attribute of meaning that cannot manifest
itself in a more western definition is that attribute that has no external
origin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That attribute that cannot be
attributed to anything tangible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don't
want to get rolled up in the cyclical philosophical arguments here…many have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the least of which is the existence of
God as a foundation for meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
hear in lies the rub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where was God in
those concentration camps?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frankl avoids
that search.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's a fruitless endeavor
and ends in either proving the absence of God or, as in the case of Harold Kushner
in his best-selling, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People", we end up with some form of a lessor, or less than all powerful God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can avoid those traps by examining where
Frankl takes us and to a larger extent where reliance on eastern philosophy can
take us. Logotherapy easily coexists with or without a Christian Monotheistic Omega. Yet there still exists a profound source, or origin, of meaning...this meaning...Frankl's meaning, as well as others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif">In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance", Robert Pirsig examines the source of this meaning as quality in our
lives.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">It too can be derived from externally,
or from a source of higher meaning and its decomposition done with hierarchical building blocks
from which meaning can be traced, a very western activity given to us by Aristotle.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">But that is not it's only source.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">When you strip away all this decomposition of reality, and you are
left with only the constructs of language and rhetoric, you are left with
nothing but instinct.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">You can't reason
your way to quality or more importunately, do the right thing for the right
reason, if you've left reason.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">Without this form of thought we
are lost. Faith must fill the gap, as Francis Schaeffer tells us in his monumental work, "Escape from Reason" which laid the foundations for new age, evangelical, Christianity.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">Without something to hold onto
we a lost.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">Yet animals don't seem
lost.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">And animals know the difference
between right and wrong.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">They also get
anxious and they also get depressed.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;">
</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">They certainly suffer PTSD and any number of other mental
illnesses.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif">Yet they have no foundation
of higher meaning or a rhetoric behind it to hitch their lives and their animal mental sanity.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black;"> </span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A dog, however, wags their tail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my dog wags her tail, she is not wagging
based on her knowledge of her eternal salvation through the love of her Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. But yet her life still has meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The happiness in her heart is arguably tied directly
to the prospect of the next morsel of food to fill her doggo tummy but yet she
also seems very happy just to be with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just to be close to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Man's
best friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the quality that
Frankl is driving towards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the quality
that Pirsig is driving towards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
the attribute of the moment of living that creates quality in our lives?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the moment of life that gives us
meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that moment, that crystal clear
vision of meaning, is the essence of hope that can carry us through bad times…the
worst of times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question remains,
can we find it when we need it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that
is what Logotherapy, more than anything else, is about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is not about the past, in the words of the Indigo
Girls, "Galileo's head was on the block, the crime was looking up the
truth, as the bombshells of our daily fears explode, we try to trace them too
our roots".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the essence of Freudian
psycho-analysis…which Frankl attempts to move away from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But yet the meaning of life the Girls grasped for
was nevertheless at their fingertips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We
look to the children, we go to the Bible, we go through the work out, we read
up on revival" has us in the moment, which they also clearly reject as
their source of happiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And instead,
just want to be happy, being happy…"The less I seek my source for some definitive,
the closer I am to fine", So they are rejecting one source of meaning and ignoring
the source of meaning right in front of them...not the best philosophy but a great song none-the-less.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I promised at the beginning of this for a practical example so let's
give it a try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So how can you find
meaning at this very moment? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just
any meaning, but meaning on such a deep level as to carry you through whatever disaster
you might be facing in your own life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is Frankl's fundamental philosophy and contribution to therapy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it was, and still is, a game changer. It's
is Curly's "One Thing" but as it turns out that one thing can change from moment
to moment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Happiness can be derived
from the one thing that gives your life meaning at this very instant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Logotheraphy is not about finding the meaning
for your life in general but rather finding meaning as you live today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many searches for the general meaning of
life can ask a question that has forever been too profound to answer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The less profound answer is never-the-less no
less profound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe more so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it is the moment to moment solution
that is the essence of what makes every life valuable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every life, not just human life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is why there is such thing as quality of
life for a quadriplegic, or a patient in Hospice, or the life of a three-legged
dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What possible meaning does any of
this life make for itself if not but in the very moments of living? Meaning is not the salvation of ones soul in the afterlife. That may be important for other reasons. Meaning, more so, is drawn from what you are doing at this very moment. The sanctity of life is drawn moment to moment...not in the past and not in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So let's try.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Stop what you are doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look out
the window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ask yourself one question?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not why am I here but rather why am I looking
out this window?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look for something as
simple as a cat crossing the street or a squirrel eating a nut on a tree branch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don't see anything, look a little closer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try to focus. Try to quiet the noise from all
sides. Too much sound, too much light, too many distractions from TikTok or Tumbler. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you must, look down at your
window sill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need not capture any ants
to hold under a tumbler on your window sill as Henry David Thoreau had done, just
find the life as if exists around you at this very moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your life's meaning then, at this very
moment, is as an observer…your meaning is simply to observe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you think that's too simple, I dare you to
try it…let me know what you discover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
do it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then do it again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you are on your way to understanding
Logotherapy...and Man's Search for Meaning...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Moochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13415084327598958608noreply@blogger.com0