The Presidents Johnson

It is now conceivable, within our lifetime, we will actually see a picture of the President's Johnson. Not the Presidents Johnson, Andrew or Lyndon.  But the President's own Johnson.  His willy.  His wiener.  His penis.  The Mueller investigation has nude selfies.  The investigation team has used extraordinary restraint and control of this information not to leak or release these to the press.  I'm not sure how that is possible. The control measures must be extraordinary for nothing to have been leaked other than the fact that these nude selfies exist.  These selfies are of such National Security importance that even information pertaining to their exact content has not been leaked.  What else could they be?  I guess it's possible that someone of great importance to the Administration met with some nefarious character and took a nude selfie.  Our President has already met with the most nefarious character's representing world leadership... Putin, Kim Jong-Un...plenty of pictures exist of those encounters. Alas none of them nude.  But did He or someone else in his Administration meet with the  leader of an international crime syndicate and stop for a selfie?  KAOS, SPECTRE, or even Dr. Evil holding Mr. Bigglesworth?  Mr. Bigglesworth is nude in all of his selfies, but such is the life of a hairless cat.  

Another theory that may restrict release of the selfies is that it's not the content of the pictures that is of National Security importance, it's the manner in which the pictures were obtained.  This means they were either collected within intelligence channels and those collection methods would be compromised or they were obtained illegally.  I think Snowden has forever changed the way we view sources and methods within our Country's intelligence circles.  Nothing seems to be off limits and nothing would come as a shock that someone, somewhere, had access to the President's collection of dick pics.  Selfie's typically mean cell phone.  Does anyone believe the sources and methods to extract a picture from your cellphone, or the cloud behind your gallery of selfies, would actually now compromise National Security?  Particularly during an investigation where a warrant could easily be obtained?  Of course if the Russian's have the dick pics and we obtained the dick pics off of one of their internal servers that could compromise a lot. In this case, once again, the content wouldn't matter.  If I were Russia and had compromising evidence on the President, and someone claimed to also have compromising evidence, I would start looking for a leak on my servers.  It's not hard to connect the dots.  That is, of course, unless a third party also had compromising pictures. That might throw some ambiguity into where and how the information was obtained.  So just how many pictures of the President's Johnson are out there?  I thought I had the only ones?  Doubtful, right?

So perhaps sources and methods are also a ruse to obscure the content of the nude selfies.  Who, what, when, where, and why?  That's what inquiring minds will want to know.  Where is the National Enquirer when you need them?  Where is WikiLeaks in all of this?  The Justice Department has now become paparazzi central.  What with the text messages between FBI lovers Strzok and Page and now nude selfies?  Since we are not talking about a motorboat, those Johnson pictures could fetch more on the open market than the $2M paid for a picture of baby Pax Thien of the Jolie-Pitt consortium.  

What, however, does this say for our Country?  Ever since the blue dress incident we've been preparing ourselves for a White House full of embarrassment and finally a Presidential Penis to make the front page of the Washington Post.  We never saw Willy's willy.  That's probably only because Bill Clinton didn't have a cell phone.  Dick pics were not a thing in 1997.  We did get explicit testimony that's on the record regarding what actually happened in the alcove behind the Oval Office. That testimony would make Stormy Daniels blush.  And of course we know a lot about other President's who couldn't keep in in their pants.  Thomas Jefferson springs immediately to mind, no pun intended.  So does JFK.  In our technological age how is it that we can forever keep the 1st Penis out of the history books.  It's just a matter of time.  And although we will gasp when revealed, no doubt smallish and with an orange hue, the image will quickly fade from our consciousnesses. If the Russian's are actually holding it as leverage over the President, again no pun intended, the quicker it is exposed (again), the sooner it will be impotent (ugh).  So if 45 is listening...let's end any additional National Security intrigue.  For the good of the Country, you have a camera, you have a Twitter account, let's get this over with...that said, you might want to sell it to your friends at the National Enquirer...could be worth more then $2M...

Honor Among Thieves - Radical Honesty, Whitey Bulger, and the Anarchy of Truth in America

Politicians lie.  We know this.  Cyclist and other athletes cheat.  We also know this.  And of course, criminals steal.  When I was in college we had a code of honor, most schools do.  "An Aggie  doesn't lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do". But most people who lie, cheat, or steal feel guilty about it.  If you play poker, unless you are very good, trying to bluff your way out of a shitty hand doesn't come naturally.  You have to have trained yourself extremely well.  The lie has to become second nature for your body and other natural mannerisms not to give your bluff away.  It's dangerous when someone can tell a lie and not give it away.

Father's, as it turns out, also lie.  In my house, when I'm lying to my daughter, about Santa Claus, or whether monsters really exist, she knows I'm lying.  She can sense it immediately.  "That's your lie face".  She knows it and so does my wife.  Thus I try not to lie. But eventually, the inevitable question will be asked , "Does this dress make me look fat?" Only one man alive, Dr. Brad Blanton, will actually tell the truth.  It's worth considering Dr. Blanton's philosophy, called Radical Honesty.  You can read about it here.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Honesty

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

Radical Honesty is something to consider, but alas, reality is something a whole lot different.  Everybody lies, Dr. Blanton does too.  Despite his radical life style he has specific rules for when he is going to lie--and he is truthful about it.  He lies when playing poker, playing golf, or when asked by government officials if Anne Frank is hiding in his attic.  He also lies to the IRS.  That is a very high bar but immediately shows that at some point any rigid moral compass, for the sake of humanity, must be less rigid.  Who among us would be willing to lie when the jackboots are at the door?  Who would give up Anne Frank?  It is a very slippery slope.

I've written extensively about lying surrounding the Tour de France.  I'm accepting of it because of how wide spread cheating has permeated the Tour since the very beginning when bike racers would use cocaine to gain an advantage.  How truly unsophisticated they were back in the day.  Today they say the Tour is mostly clean.  I roll my eyes.  But I still watch, it's an amazing three weeks of endurance.  What riders put their bodies through to compete, clean or not, is no more grotesque than that of any other world class athlete.  Training is extreme.  The search for any advantage is just as extreme.  However the most extreme, and most grotesque, has to come in the form or the sport that brought us the anabolic steroid.  Body building. Check out the new documentary on the Life of Ronnie Coleman on Netflix.  Extreme doesn't begin to describe life as Mr. Olympia.  Coleman won 8 times.  Absent from the documentary...any mention of the use of illegal substances.  Sure, every illegal substance is banned from body building, but the fact remains that when you enter the competition you will never be tested.  And nobody is talking.  The entire community is silent.  The athletes, the trainers, the press.  No one is willing to talk about it.  Why?  It's almost as if the code of conduct requires a code of silence if you want to be a part of the community.  That sounds a bit like organized crime.

So we know athletes lie.  We accept that politicians lie.  We tend to ignore that fact the the car salesman in front of us would never lie to our face.  We never call them out even though we know they are lying through their teeth.  But what about doctors.  Members of our society that should be dealing only in facts when it comes to our health. But our health is so lacking in facts.  Too many unknowns.  We certainly want them to tell the truth.  But alas doctors lie too.  But not in they way one might expect.  When they remove that tumor, it was the biggest one they have ever seen.  Or the surgery was the most complex they have ever performed.  They are managing expectations when there is an uncertain outcome.   Is it lying? Would we want them to tell us something different?  I don't think we would like a doctor if they said to us, "I've got no idea what's going to happen next".   But with the right human to human interaction trust can be established.  And once trust is established, it's OK for your lie to become my lie. The whole family is in on it. And it's very comforting when the whole family is in on it.  It's part of our social make up and one of the reasons humans can live in society.  We play by the rules of the family, group, tribe, or team we ascribe to. It's honor among thieves and why Whitey Bulger, who had no honor, just found himself, at age 89, on the wrong end of a prison shank.

So when the head of the household is lying to the Nazi's at your front door, you have a decision to make.  Are you on the team?  There is no right or wrong answer at that moment.  Lives are at stake.  To tell the truth condemns those hiding in the attic.  Yet you might also condemn your family if you reveal anything at all.  This is why we can over look the lies our father tells us about Santa Claus, or the existence of murders in the caravan of souls making their way north.  We can visualize that these murders will soon be squatting in our front yards because that is what our daddy just told us. And we are definitely on daddy's team.  We must not let them in.  We know daddy is lying...but daddy is lying for us.  His lie is to protect our family.  Fair enough.

That's not to pass judgement on those who are in on the lie.  We honestly believe the safety of the family is at stake, thus there is no right or wrong. His lie becomes our lie. That is why, when the lie eventually swings to the left, and it will, we will not necessarily be that much better off.  The trouble, as I see it, isn't in the decay of honesty in our politics, although we have reached some mighty new heights (or lows as the case might be). The trouble is those in the family who don't see that it is all a lie.  Everything single word.  There are far too many lies.  The majority of the family in power cannot detect the lie face of their father.  Too many actually believe the lies.  No Democrat actually believed Bill Clinton  when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman".  Democrats gave him a pass for their "greater good". Most of what he said was true. The current torrent of lies are all believed to be true thus the Anne Frank scenario ceases to be a measure of merit for our moral compass.  There is no reality.  Anything goes.  We are left with chaos and the anarchy of truth.  That is not the society that our Founding Fathers created.  Truth, has to be, on balance, truthful.  My daughter believes me because the vast majority of what I say to her is true, thus she can discern my lie face.  We have to be able to discern our father's lie face. That is impossible to do if everything the father of a family says is a lie.  Please vote against the anarchy of truth. Vote in favor of some code of honor not the anarchy of truth.  It's not against your family if you are a member of a much larger family, a family that believes in truth, liberty, and justice for all... 

Tyranny Has Arrived...

"What a sad day for our great country". It would be simple to say, “I rest my case”, but that’s a cop out.  Here are a few additional thoughts for Columbus Day...a day fittingly  fraught with it’s own brand of controversy.

I posted that statement on Saturday and was intentionally vague...as in I didn't specify exactly what had happened that made me sad.  Since Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, that was the biggest news, all of my friends on both the left and the right assumed I didn't like the fact that we have a new ass-hat on the bench.   Given my use of that term, ass-hat, my meaning is no longer vague.  But my social media experiment proves that it is indeed a sad day for our great country.  And so much more so than the selection of Kavanaugh.  Why?  You only need to read the comments that were posted to my page to understand why.  I'll get back to the comments in a second.

First, why do I think Kavanaugh is an ass-hat and bad for the United States?  It's not because he may have come close to date rape in college 35 long years ago. It's not because he may be a drunk.  It's not because he may support challenges to Roe v Wade.  He's undoubtedly an ass-hat simply because he believes that a sitting President is above the law.  What are we--North Korea?   Fuck me...there is no human being, orange haired tyrannical wannabe, or even a deity made flesh, that is above the law.  It's troubling for me to believe that there is some sort of legal justification, constitutional or otherwise, that makes this matter so.  It is so foreign to my sensibilities as to render the opinion of this man, on any subject, highly suspect. If he for a second thinks that the constitution holds this to be true he cannot be qualified as a keeper of our constitution.  That, alone, is his disqualifying belief.

Kavanaugh believes, and using his legal writings as reference, that a sitting president is above the law. To indict as sitting president would be a distraction from his duties and thus cause a problem with National Security.  Should he, the President, cross some imaginary line of abuse, Congress would reign in  the executive power before it became a problem.  That's his case.  Therein lies the fallacy of his optimism.  He believes that the checks and balances on the President will always right any wrong.  I'm also optimistic in that regard believing we need only wait out the incompetence of any one administration.  And I have some additional faith in the op/ed piece published in the Washington Post recently, that some adults are remaining on the bridge in case of trouble.  Despite the cowardice of the essay and the subsequent witch hunt it’s semi-reassuring...perhaps that’s why it was written.  

However, the trouble isn't just this one thing, an ass-hat on the Supreme Court.  It's the tiny little victories that lean more and more in the direction of tyranny.  The right sounds the klaxon that it is the left that will lead us into tyranny, when we know full well that all jackbooted thugs hail from the right. I stepped away from the Republican party during the Bush administration and became an independent when it was clear  the new order of conservative thought believed in torturing, occupying foreign lands, and spewing forth all manner of imperial behavior on foreign populations in the name of democracy.  I can name those four ass-hats should anyone forget...Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz.  And beyond that neo-conservative bastion of stupidity, following the rise of the Tea-Party jackalopes, we now have a new conservatism, based on a populist ideology, that will, and has already brought forth, the very worst of our human tendencies. One might call these tendencies deplorable. Let me be clear, while the far right, and in particular the racist alt-right, have more than earned their moniker "deplorable", the left is not without their own spin on deplorable behavior. Two wrongs don't make a right.  Yet common decency should be where we draw all lines.  Sure, Kavanaugh is a decent human being and digging up dirt from the past and smearing him is arguably a deplorable tactic, but he was nominated to the court by someone who's deplorable nature has never been in question.

 Anyone, and I mean anyone, who believes mocking a victim isn't deplorable behavior, behavior with no place in our society, I welcome you to the deplorables.  That doesn't mean lying-Hillary isn't a liar.  Of course she is a liar.  All politicians stretch and bend the truth.  Stretching and bending the truth, spinning the optics, is a political profession and typically involved lawyers deciding upon what can be legally defended.  That just doesn't make her deplorable, that makes her a lawyer and a politician.  Making things up whole cloth is not spinning the truth. Making things up is called fabrication and embodies or combines just about every other category of lying into one.  All of us spin, stretch, embellish, or omit facets of the truth in our daily lives.  Very few of us fabricate.    Hillary and her husband could be conspiratorial murders. I highly doubt it given all the real evidence in those cases, but yet there is still some ugly conspiracy in all of that mess.  I've never said she's the most qualified...in fact she fits the very definition of the elitist in Washington.  The left has brought us another Clinton. Just like my argument against Kavanaugh...we've already got one graduate from Georgetown Prep on the Supreme Court, how is it statistically possible for us to have another?  Elitist shenanigans are no doubt at play.  And that’s the swamp.  It's not just any swap.  It's our swap.  And it's the swamp that's been around at least since the founding our Country.  It's a political swamp but it's a swamp traditionally run by the "Best and the Brightest" a term I’m intentionally stealing from the Watergate era.  It’s an elitist swamp that helps our country survive.  It’s why were are a Republic and not a true democracy for those who want to swoop in and point out why we have an electoral college.    

By survive, I don’t mean survival as a country ala the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I mean as a country of liberty, freedom, the American values we were born into.  We believe in our country and our very foundation that for my lifetime has been the envy of the world.  The rest of the world does not envy a racist country.  You can’t swing a dead cat and not hit a racist country.  They envy us exactly because we are not a racist country and we hold dear certain truths.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".  Yes, that's not the Constitution, something a little less political but quite possibly more important.  Those ideas are not deplorable.  Those ideas are the antithesis of tyranny.  In fact they were declared to cast off the bonds of tyranny. Yet those ideas are being usurped by selfish individuals with a deplorable ax to grind in favor of something less.  Those under attack are those with progressive ideas.  Perhaps the most damning of all the deplorable notions--more so than racism, since everyone has a tribe, more so than sexism, since everyone has some gender, and more so than social inequality, since everyone can be happy within their  economic strata in America--is the notion that any American would rather be a Russia then a Democrat.  What the fuck?  This is a sad day for our Country indeed.

So let’s get back to my social media experiment.  I could walk through all the comments.  I invite you to read them.  They are not vile, as I have read elsewhere on FaceBook.  I thank you all for maintaining a certain degree of decorum. That said, I always feel we are one insult away from a shouting match and someone dropping the F-bomb. The comments are clearly divided into  two lanes politically.  Some are good, some are wrong, some are funny.  But there is no compromise.  One side is right, the other side is wrong...dead wrong.  How can that be possible? How can both sides be dead wrong.  It's not possible.  Both sides, in reality, are right.  We just fail to give an inch. We now refuse to give an inch. We can blame ourselves...and certainly that would be the right thing to do.  But we seem to be beyond that.  Prior to his election, everyone I knew, also knew, that Trump had “some issues”.  They were going to vote for him anyway, for any number of reasons...but they all conceded it was a risky but an necessary step to drain the swamp, keep Hillary out of office, and return us to something else...greatness.  One oft quoted phrase by those who couldn't conscience voting for Hillary, was that they were voting for Pence, expecting Trump to not last long.  Of course most who cast votes for Trump also had the firm belief that he wasn't going to  win.  But now, in hindsight, continuing to support him despite his deplorability, either speaks volumes to one’s own deplorability, or has you, placing  him, above our American values.  With Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, we are acknowledging, that it’s OK for an American President to be above all that.   We are on slippery slope when the checks and balances that Kavanaugh constitutionally will depend on for checks and balances are being destroyed before our eyes.  Congress does not intend to hold our President in check.  They had one job. We now have a Supreme Court that will not hold our President in check. Well done!

Saturday was indeed the saddest day for our great country...tyranny has arrived...and we defend it.

Sorry Star Trek Fans There is No Horta

You can't read an science article in any publication these days without reading something about the search for extraterrestrial life, be that on Mars, the moons of Jupiter, or the planets orbiting distance suns discovered by the Kepler observatory.  In his new book, "The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution", by Charles S. Cockell, the author argues that should life be discovered this life will be very similar to our own.  The extraterrestrial biology will have evolved under the same pressures, and more importantly, the same physics, from which life on our planet has evolved.  Thus things will be very familiar to us.  Or not...  One need only look at an octopus to realize just how different things could be.  Life, however, will always involve carbon, oxygen, and water.  Those seem to be the building blocks on our planet, and Cockell is spot on labeling those as the necessary building blocks for life on other planets as well.  This, however, is nothing new.  Specifically, the Periodic Table of Elements, describes everything there is to work with and suggesting life could emerge from an different combination of elements, is not to understand life, or the elements.  Interestingly, he hearkens back to an episode of Star Trek, when an alien life form, known as the Horta, is discovered.  

The writers of Star Trek actually got it right, according to Cockell.  If life did emerge from another set of elements, they would have to be very close to carbon.  The Horta was a silicon based life form.  But also, to evolve it would be necessary to  have the same basic environmental properties which would require a fluid, in our case water, and a gas, in our case oxygen, for the very basic properties of cellular life to gain energy and replicate.

Whereas Cockell has a very deep knowledge of biology he has only cursory understanding of math and physics.   I think, however, the physics he applies, is mostly self evident, at least to an engineer. Maybe not for him based on his softer back ground in biology.  This insight was so extraordinary for him he thought it worthy of an entire book. So maybe his audience is biologists. It can't be physicists, They will just yawn. 

His academic upbringing forced him to be way too repetitive. I felt like he was retelling his entire argument in every chapter.... I think 4 or 5 chapters would have been sufficient. 12 chapters just dragged on and on, beating the same dead horse... Of course he's also trifling with the creator...as any good biologist tends to do.  But that's a different subject. Still I can't help but wonder that should we find extra-terrestrial life, who is going to be the first to ask said, alien, have you considered Jesus?   Certainly not the biologist, but maybe the physicist?  

Best part for me was  his discussion of single cell evolution... Mapping out evolution at the cellular level was something completely new, not being a biologist, and I learned a few things.

This is not a book for physicists, this is a book for biologists who would otherwise wonder about evolutionary magic should they not been tuned into the preexisting physical laws of nature that constrain everything we understand above the quantum level.  Strangely, this is also not a book for biologists, at least not a written with so many of the equations he has chosen.  He's not really using fundamental laws, per se, he is just using math to calculate constraining limits.  To understand what he is doing you kinda have to have had some physics or engineering in your back ground. You can't simply assume the math works, you have to do the math, and when you do the math it's not black and white.  For the most part, he should have left the equations out of this book he has written for biologists.  Of course then he destroys is thesis, maybe.  Oh well. It was particularly annoying to me when when he presented an occasional hard number as fact, he should have been more accurate, or at least done the calculations himself.  We don't contain a tennis court of absorption area in our gastrointestinal track, he's over by an order of magnitude.   10's of square meters, not 100's of square meters as he claims.

Start with three stars because overall, although well researched, there is nothing earth shattering in this book. Deduct a star for being so repetitive. Deduct another star for using equations that will be obtuse to biologists and simply wrong in other areas.   Add a star back for his treatment of single cell evolution and of course add another star for the great use of a Star Trek reference.  Three stars overall.

MAGA, Negan's Wife, and How We Save the NFL

Park View High School in Sterling Virginia will not field a varsity football team this year. We are witnessing the end, in real time, of one of the most significant cultural institutions within the United States.  If head injuries were not bad enough the dinosaurs who profit from those head injuries don't seem to understand just how significant this shift in culture will be for our country.  I'm a soccer player not a football player, but every significant moment of my life revolved around American Football one way or another.

My first friends were formed in  backyard games wearing a Cleveland Browns uniform with helmet and shoulder pads from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.  My friend David was wearing Green Bay.  One night the game winning touchdown was a pass his brother Donny threw to me, well past the time when we were called to dinner shouted by moms across fence-less yards, sun having set.  The ball, arching across a dark sky, with only the white lines encircling the pig skin, flickering in the moonlight (they painted white lines on the footballs back then).  I made the catch.  It was 1970.  We were all American Football fans back then.  Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Roman Gabriel, they were the greats...and who could ever forget Brian's Song, Brian Piccolo who died from cancer in 1970 with the great Gale Sayers at his bedside. I love Brian Piccolo. I lived in the deep south, Alabama to be exact...to say we worshiped Gale Sayers is an understatement.  If Gale Sayers took a knee at the football game, I would take a knee.  Not only were we color blind in my neighborhood, seriously, Green Bay and the Cleveland Browns? That was back when dogs were boys and cats were girls...I didn't like cats.  I didn't have an identity, but I liked Gale Sayers.

I moved to New Jersey...if I thought we were color blind in Alabama, New Jersey didn't seem to mind a bit either.  On my street it was hard to choose a team, but you had to choose a team.  If you didn't have a team you were just weird.  But was it going to be the  the Jets, the Giants, or the Eagles.  One friend of mine had the audacity to be a Redskins fan.  I had to choose a team, and choose quickly.  I needed an identity to fit in. Quickly choosing Dallas I was in.  Why didn't I choose the Browns, I had their uniform, or the Bears, goodness knows I liked the Bears.  In that split second, I had to form an identity with my friends, and it was Roger Staubach, the role model, that flashed through my head.  Superbowl champion, Navy Officer.  I was in.  It was 1974.  My identity was Dallas Cowboys.

We moved again and I carried that identity with me unwittingly into the mixing bowl of Northern Virginia, except this mixing bowl was more of a crucible.  Who's your favorite team?  The Cowboys.   Who's your favorite team?  The Cowboys?  This was Redskin's territory and those fan's let you know it.  For me, this National Football culture would now give way to the local scene.  Those playing in the local leagues preparing to move into high school.  That scene playing out thousands upon thousands of times in every hometown from New England, the Patriots, to San Diego, the Chargers. My home town was Sterling, Park Virginia, and I was a Patriot.  A Park View Patriot. That was my High School.  We produced footballer Allen Pickett, I had Chemistry class with Allen.  And in 2000 we graduated the actress Hillary Burton.   I still remember the chills from my very first pep rally.  The marching band, lungs in shape having reported for band camp a few weeks early, now locked in the confines of a high school gymnasium bringing the roof down.  Then there were the games, Friday night lights, at Bill Allen Field.  Pick up our Friday night and it too was being recounted over and over throughout the land.  What were we learning?  We were learning how to be American's and it felt great...in particular if you scored in the closing minutes and went on to Regions or State competitions.  This year, for the 2018/2019, school year, PVHS, will not field a team.  But before returning to this discussion, let's continue with my life.  My identity was Park View Patriot.

To say, I didn't play football in high school, would be inaccurate.  We all played football. Whether it be in the street or behind a school  Someone always had a ball and we were always choosing sides.  That was touch football but it was just as fun...and no head injuries.  But it was time to choose a college.  The last thing on my mind was football, the last thing on my mind was choosing a school in the South West Conference, the last thing on my mind was the Aggie Fight Song.  But I learned it on day one.  Reporting to Texas A&M early, you memorized it before you knew what classes  you were taking.  Why, because now I was a member of the 12th Man.  It didn't matter anymore if I liked Dallas.  The enemy was no longer the Redskins.  The enemy was much closer and took the form of a Great Longhorn Steer, BEVO, who represented the worst of the worst.  The University of Texas football team, our mortal enemy. Since Texas A&M was THE University of Texas, we referred to that little school in Austin as "texas University", little t for emphasis.  If thought I knew something about football before, I was in for an awakening.  Every, and I mean every aspect of my life was geared toward the rivalry. From, midnight yell practices, to Aggie Bonfire, to marching into Kyle Field on home games, and the events where we followed the team on away games to Houston and Dallas.  Every aspect of life surround the moments when we could stand, in the stands, for every minute our team was on the field.  One might say, if you've never stood for every minute of a football game, in the Texas sun, wearing a full military uniform, your not living.  Oh, and then when it's half-time, and it's time to sit down, as soon as your butt hit's the bleacher, you're back up.  The Fighting Texas Aggie Marching Band is on the field.  And the 12th Man always stands when the band is on the field.  My junior year I was on the color guard.  As the Aggie Band played the National Anthem from the field, and every fan stood, we raised the largest American flag in Texas high above Kyle Field, I would wear the white gloves with pride in the Texas heat.  I thought we were the greatest fans in the history of football.  That, of course is not true...just go to any other University in the country on any football weekend and you will find the greatest fans in football history.  Only the colors and the words of the fight songs will change...but my identity was Fighting Texas Aggie.

Entering the United States Air Force, after college, that identity served me well.  If you went to a school with a big football team, you were somehow in the club. If you kept up with quarterbacks and coaches you could speak a universal language, a unifying language, despite the fierce rivalries.  It didn't matter what team you supported, you just needed a team. You were also, as is military tradition, assigned a team.  In the Air Force, regardless of what school you attended, by default you adopted the the Air Force team, you were a Fighting Falcon, or you had better be when inevitably the game against Army or Navy would be on the schedule.

The football culture has been with us for decades now. It has made our Country strong for reasons too numerous to count.  It is slowly being eaten away from numerous directions.  Let's count the ways...

1) Culture that promotes head trauma injuries (Real)

2) Culture that promotes winners over losers placing vulnerable students who don't fit in at risk of being isolated, jocks over geeks (Real)

3) Culture that promotes football over all other sports in a university program (Real)

4) Culture that erodes the line between professional and amateur athletes (Real)

5) Culture that erodes the line between sports and academics (Real)

6) Culture that permits sexism in the locker room (Real)

7) Culture that permits sexual abuse of young boys (Real)

8) Culture that promotes/glorifies violence (Real)

9) Culture that promotes a decline in US Patriotism if you are allowed to take a knee during the National Anthem (Imagined)

I am not denigrating American Football.  I love it.  Too many positives to count.  Too many memories.  But here's another, When I was the care taker for a pair of seasons tickets to the Redskins, despite my love of Dallas, I would dutifully take my dad to see the Skins play his beloved Giants, just to watch them lose.  American Football is part of the American dream, it is more American than baseball, hot dogs, apple pie or Chevrolet, it just didn't fit the jingle as well.  Before we decide to fix an imagined problem, we should get to work fixing the real problems contained in one through eight.  That's what will make American football great again.  I hope the NFL is listening.

So getting back to Negan, a character I love, who ironically uses a baseball bat to give his enemies a concussion.  He also happens to raise chickens on his farm in New York, or rather actor Jeffery Dean Morgan, his alter ego does. I didn't just throw Negan in this blog to draw in my other Walking Dead fans.  Recently his wife showed up at a Pep Rally at Park View High School in Sterling Virginia, promising to fund students who want to go to football camp to boost our players numbers, so that next year we might field a team.  That could help. I hope it works.  It's worth a try.  In case you are not tracking, Negan is married to actress Hillary Burton, our 2000 PVHS Homecoming Queen.  Thanks Ms Burton for doing something.  I hope, all across our Country, other's are getting involved.  The NFL dinosaurs are currently distracted by the wrong thing. 

Forged in Faith, Fear, and Love...

If you are a military history buff, your are no stranger to the exploits of either side of the air wars over Britain or Germany during WWII. Plenty has been written from many different perspectives. When it comes to the B-17 Flying Fortress, it's exploits are legion. The toll it took to fly and fight over the skies of Germany are the stuff of novels and movies. Even if you not a fan of history books everyone else has read Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and laughed at the insanity of it all. Perhaps more have read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" and know that war is no laughing matter.

Yet, what happened to our planet, the generation of humanity it affected, from the Holocaust, to the start of the Cold War, to the formation of the world we know today comes on the heels of the generation that fought that war. We know about the missions, deep into the heart of Germany to stamp out their industrial capability and change the will of the Germany people. We know the of cost thousands upon thousands of lives lost, both in the air and the victims of bombing on the ground. We know about the machines of war, the bombers, the fighters, the missiles, fadio to radar and of course we know about the secret Norden Bomb-sight that made it all possible. What we know comes from the hardware and the documents thousands of historians have picked through over the decades. What we don't have is enough documentation of the first hand accounts of the brave men who peered through the Norden. Those who were there, witnessed and participated, and then returned home to raise families and grow businesses in the aftermath.

But here we have "The Bomber Boys: Heroes Who Flew the B-17s in World War II" by Travis Ayres, to give us but a glimpse of these stories, first hand. I read most of this book flying back and forth across our Country staring at the clouds below wondering what it would be like to have the clouds of black flak from anti aircraft guns rounds busting all around me. I wondered what it would be like landing the aircraft with engines failing either ditching into the ground or into the water. I wandered what it would be like, exposed to the freezing atmosphere while fighter aircraft strafed by, trying to kill me while I fired 50 mm guns, trying to kill them, while locked in the cramped and crystal clear ball turret hanging from the belly of the plane. And I wondered what it would be like, having the Fortress around me, disintegrate in an exploding ball of flame, then plummet to earth only to have my parachute retard the fall and deliver me into the hands the enemy. In one case, to not have my parachute open at all, and survive a fall from 15,000 feet onto the snowy peak of a mountain. These are but a few of the first hand accounts you will fine in the pages of the Bomber Boys. And so much more. The stories include their fear, their faith that saw them through, and their letters home to the ones they love, always hoping to return and be returned.

These real men, heroes one and all, were boys when they left for war. When they returned they built the American dream, and lived it, having survived yet another epoch of war we humans have not yet figured out how to avoid. These stories must not be forgotten. Having lived most of my life in and around the Air Force and the generations of airmen who came after, I know first hand that not enough of these stories have been preserved. Ayers has saved five of their stories ...that's not enough...in their 90's now there are are but few eye witnesses who remain.

On Ethical Leadership and Keeping Us Great, Again…

Who is James Comey?  When a future history book  is written, will he be the pivotal character in American History that caused the fall of our great country? Or is his new book, “Higher Loyalty” destined for the ash heap?  I guess that will depend on if we survive, as a country.  As empires go, we still have a few more years in us before someone has to write the book about our fall. Some days it feels we are closer than others.  Maybe it will all turn out to be a bad dream.  Comey’s book, however, reminds us that it’s not a dream.  What’s happening is very real and it's very bad.  This, from the once top cop in our country.  The former Director of the FBI.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it...but I dove in, trying to make sense of our current administration and the events surrounding the election of President Trump.  It’s all there.  Step by step, page by page.  Why there was no criminal indictment of Hillary Clinton.  Why Director Comey reopened the investigation on the eve of the Presidential election and then quickly closed it.  But perhaps more important, his personal conversations with Trump, for which he took notes, and then of course his spectacular firing--perhaps the most outward, brazen, and morally bankrupt acts of a US President since Watergate.  Yet here we remain.  Trump in charge and a country divided.  It should be noted that Comey is not whining, he’s providing the facts, just the facts.  He’s letting his readers decide.

Just like the book, I do not want this review to be divisive. Most who support Trump will have stopped reading at “Who is James Comey?”  But that’s Ok.  This book isn’t going to change a single mind.  His book isn’t about impeaching Trump. Rather his book is a call out to all who serve in the public eye to be ethical leaders with a higher sense of loyalty. Not to a party, not to a cause, but to our Union and a belief in our Justice system.  A system that demands truth.   

Oddly, Comey is the last person one might think to be on Hillary Clinton's side. Many in law enforcement lean to the right.   Everybody thought he leaned to the right when he opened the  the investigation into her email, and then they reversed their opinion when he failed to indict her, and then reversed their opinion again, when he reopened the investigation, only to reverse it again, when he closed it, only to sing his praises (or damn him) on the morning of Trump's election, and then, of course, only to reverse it again, when it looked like, in Trump's eyes, he was leading an investigation into Trump on Russia.  The left was neutral on that one, their necks had already been snapped off.   He wasn't opening that investigation as many thought.  Nevertheless he was fired just in case and because he wouldn't show a lick of loyalty to the Don (or Donald) in Washington (my word’s not Comey’s).  Does that sound a bit schizophrenic?  That’s what happened.  And, oh by the way, it’s not Comey with the mental illness.  Yes our Country’s  head was spinning like Linda Blair's.  And I think, that it why, the book was necessary. At least we have Comey's side of the story.  Which is helpful.  Each of us have our own story, what we thought, what we decided to do about ti.  But it’s helpful because now we know what the guy in charge was thinking, and at a minimum, why he did it.  And I can tell you from reading his book, that his side is far more rational than your side...whatever you were thinking, because he had the facts.  None of the rest of us did.  Even though the evidence was staring us in the fact.

So what does Comey think?  First, he thinks Donald Trump has leadership skills that parallel the crime bosses of NY.  The Mafia, The Cosa Nostra.  And he speaks from experience having prosecuted many cases of organized crime.  Trump demands loyalty, manages by transaction, and truth is irrelevant.  A modern CEO of a publicly traded company could never survive in such an organization.  Such a leader would never be elected to the job by a public Board of Directors to begin with.   Or if he was, he would be replaced fairly quickly. 

Something happened in Russia and he lied about it.  That should come as no surprise. He doesn’t know what exactly, he also doesn’t care if there were prostitutes in his hotel room, or what that prostitutes were doing. He cares that Trump was obsessed with telling him it’s not true and that nothing happened.  That obsession is a tell tale sign of having something to hide.  And if you have something to hide,  that means someone can blackmail you, in this case Russia.  If he would come clean, he would no longer be under the risk of blackmail.  Something happened.  If nothing happened, there is nothing to obsess over.  How do you obsess over something that didn’t happen?  If someone accuses you of robbing a 7/11 and you didn’t and they never produced camera footage, because you were never there, you have nothing to anchor your obsession.  Your brain has nothing to recount, nothing to remember, nothing to say over and over again (if you’ve ever obsessed over something)  if only I hadn’t done this or that.  A man who has spent his life time investigating crime, as Comey has, knows human nature. He knows how people react in these stressful situations.  Something is not right. Something happened.

The next part of the book details the Linda Blair period of our history running up to the election.  No indictment for Hillary.  Why?  Because no one gets prosecuted for mishandling classified the way she did.  You get fired.  You get walked out.  But you don’t get prosecuted.  If it makes Trump supporters happy, they got their day.  Hillary was fired.  Hillary was walked out.  The case should be closed with regard to prosecution.  Why can’t they lock her up?  There still is no case.  But he reopened the investigation, days before the election.  Why?  New evidence emerged.  Emails they never had access to previously.  If you don’t open the investigation it’s a cover up.  He had to reopen the investigation.  And of course, no smoking gun.  You still can’t prosecute.  In our Country, you can sue, you can scream and cry, you can protest, but you can’t prosecute without a sufficient evidence of a crime.  We all should be thankful for that fact.  That’s the heart of our Justice system.  So Hillary never lied, but she mishandled our secrets, and the American people fired her.  Even those who didn’t like her, but supported her, over Trump, believe justice was served in this case.  Now we have to deal with the aftermath of not having alternative.  It’s bad for us, but this is the annoying situation that arises from having to tell the truth.  And a boy scout, like Comey, is going to tell the truth.  It’s not unlike when your wife asks you the question, “Does this dress make me look fat?”.  A boy scout tells the truth, Comey tells the truth, and deals with the awkward aftermath.  The rest of us choose the little white lie in order to maintain peace and tranquility.

The end of the book describes the four conversations Comey had with Trump leading up to his firing.  Following the first conversation Comey knew immediately he had to write things down.  Believe what you want to believe, but I believe the red flags that were going up all around him, the bizarre nature of the circumstances and the conversations that ensued, would compel any normal person to take a few notes.  Comey has convinced me he was the normal person in these conversations.  He was the adult.  He was the guy without a bias, without an ax to grind, and with everything at stake...his job, for starters.  Trump was obsessed and irrational.  As we all know, the firing of Comey and the things that Trump said in the aftermath, lead to the logical conclusion that Comey didn’t mislead, or misrepresent those conversations.  Again, however, you will have to read the book and judge for yourself.  I can tell you I’m convinced.

Maybe one day Comey will return to public service.  His book has convinced me, not only is his version of the story reliable and accurate that he is indeed a true public servant.  We need more like him in the service of our country.  That is what will continue to keep us great.

An Evolution Too Far

Sociopath. Harsh words. But in the closing pages of “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup”, Pulitzer Prize winning author John Carreyrou, suggests Elizabeth Holmes might actually be a sociopath. After reading his book, and watching a few videos of Elizabeth Holmes in action, speaking about Theranos, I don't think she is a sociopath. She is definitely lying, even though the power to believe her is as compelling as her blue eyes, blonde hair, and black Job’sian turtleneck. She was living the Silicon Valley dream of “Fake it till you make it” and giving her the benefit of the doubt, she brought this brand of business ethics mainstream like no other. Is she a lying, sociopathic scam artist? Or is she faking it, till she makes it, Silicon Valley Extreme Makeover Edition style?

Theranos was the quintessential Silicon Valley startup that at one point reached a $9B dollar valuation and her the cover of Forbes magazine. Given all that, it’s hard to believe Carreyrou is telling the truth. Let me say that again. It’s hard to believe a Pulitzer Prize winning author at the Wall Street Journal is telling the truth. Investors, wealthy men, and women, who we all respect, would also find it difficult to believe Carreyrou. Does that sound familiar? The false narrative we all want to believe is true, a disruptive, game changing technology, making health care affordable, taking on the titans of the medical industry is a story we all want to believe. But it all turns out to be a lie. Carreyrou, in fact, has the facts. Yet we still wish it it to be the other way around. We wish that it can be made to be true. If only Holmes had more time. Some investors wanted it to be true so badly they invested $100M of their personal fortunes. Rupert Murdoch the owner of the WSJ for example. How’s that for putting Carreyrou in a pickle? That fact alone might win Carreyrou another Pulitzer. It’s important to note that Carreyrou has reported that Murdoch was approached by Holmes, not once, but twice to put the kibosh on his story. Both times Murdoch trusted his editors to get the story straight and allowed it to go to press. That might be the single most important fact in the mountain duplicity that surrounds this case.

Even though now in hindsight, her behavior seems to defy logic. Her motives, while the facts of this case have been well sourced and recorded, remain as secretive as she the elusive nature of the technology behind the patents with her name on them. As it turns out, literally, one day after I finishing the book, Holmes and her boyfriend were indicted as criminals in a Federal court. It’s possible that over the course of the criminal trial, all of the facts in the case will finally reach the light of day and we will get our answer...maybe. But I still don’t think she is a sociopath.

So, how does, a 19 year old, Stanford dropout, with no biomedical engineering, software, or healthcare experience, raise $700M in venture capital? That is the phenomena that Carreyrou reports in this book. It is a compelling as any business book I have read. And it’s easy to see how it may also top the charts of best business books of the year...or “How Not to Run A Business” book of the year if there were such a category. Thug tactics are not the best way to run a business. But it’s easy to see how she did not run her business like a true Silicon Valley unicorn. She was no Peter Thiel or Elon Musk where the inspiration and perspiration goes into the technology. Her inspiration and perspiration went directly into raising capital and covering up for the non-existent technology until they could invent it. Which again raises the “what if?” question. What if she would have focused on the technology? Could she have invented something, while well short of the Theranos dreamstate, could still be defined as medically useful? I think the answer is no. Gates wrote MS-DOS. Job’s invented the Apple in his garage. Zuckerberg banged out the code for FaceBook in his dorm room. Similarly, Elon Musk banged out the software that would become Paypal. Holmes didn’t like needles. That’s insufficient knowledge to change the world. It’s easy to see that wanting to be like somebody else is also insufficient motivation to change the world. I don’t think she is a sociopath. I do think she believed in her vision, she just didn’t spend enough time in the lab to realize that her vision was an evolution too far. She was chasing a unicorn that didn’t exist and was unwilling to listen to her people simply because she didn’t, and still doesn’t, understand the technology. Unlike other Silicon Valley startups, a few cans of Red Bull and an all night coding session doesn’t change biomedical science.

On Amazon book reviews I have said I’m giving this book 5-stars because it’s a page turner, it’s well written, well researched, and a necessary story about the ethics of a Unicorn start-up. I will deduct 1-star because the term sociopath, as applied to Holmes, seems like a personal attack and an easy out when trying to find the motivation behind her actions. There is a far less complex answer starring Carreyrou in the face which in my mind is an even more damning indictment of Holmes given that she started Theranos. She is not an engineer and simply the worst biomedical scientist ever to run a biomedical company. No one has figured that out yet. But they will. Case closed.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Utopia means many things to many people.  Certainly none of those meanings have anything to do with the Utopia that Sir/Saint Thomas More wrote about when he penned “On the Best State of a Republic on the New Island of Utopia” late in the 15th Century.   My Utopia includes endless lush soccer fields with plenty of cold beer in the aftermath.  Others may view their Utopia quite differently.   Very quickly, however, should you randomly approach people on the street, you might find answers to Utopian question that run the gamut from such things as the end of hunger or the end of unemployment to the more controversial things such as universal health care--heaven forbid.  

Those answers would be closer to More’s Utopia than mine, but I can’t help think soccer would be one of More’s favorite pastimes, had it been around back then.  Soccer, you see, is far more akin to a balanced state of social justice then the economic dominance of the winner take all mindset always at the root of capitalism.  American football, for instance, is capitalism at its finest and more closely related to the philosophy of Conan the Barbarian, “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!”  Which, ironically, is also more akin to another book, published at about the same time as Utopia.  “The Prince”, by Niccolò Machiavelli, which was  published in 1513, about three years ahead of Utopia, would never be referenced in any bill on universal health care.  But to continue the analogy of soccer, low scoring games, well played, are superior to the breaking of bones.

More was well ahead of his time.  And that, perhaps, cost him his head.  Yet he was on to something big.  Something bigger than the governments of the day, something bigger than the Church of England, or the Catholic Church.  He was talking about justice.  Was talking about equality.  He was talking about happiness.  Institutions, such as slavery, were impossible to reconcile with his view of justice and thus, had to play a role in his Utopia.  Slaves, were not thus, slaves, but rather the incarceration of those who committed crimes against society.  That was an easy fix for the injustice of the day.  But so too were the inequities of commerce when the rich were in a powerful position to exploit the poor.  Fast forward 500 years. It’s now 2018.  Would anyone dispute that living in a democracy, be it in the United States or any other modern democracy, is Utopian?  I think despite our political differences we all can agree modern democracies figured most of it out.  Yes we have flaws but the precepts of More’s Utopia foreshadow most of our American values for justice and the value of human life.  We also work hard, wish to create as few laws a possible, and try to only engage in just wars. We do not commit criminal acts and we are free to worship as you please.  Above all, More believes that  an overarching principle of Utopia is to be happy. Bob Marley would echo that sentiment. 

Yet Utopia, despite the fact that we live in a very Utopian USA, is riddled with criticisms stemming from what can only be described as Marxism.  It’s communist at worst and  socialist at best.  Well yes, the Utopia that Thomas More envisioned had many flaws, but if life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equals socialism, then yes, socialism is what he wrote about...that, and an unfailing love of God and the Catholic Church.  Which isn't so bad either, and no would would argue the impact of the Christian theology on Western philosophy.  The Golden Rule is a prominent feature of Utopia, to name but one of the many ties.

We should all drop to our knees and thank Thomas More for writing this book, 500 years overdue. There can be no doubt his influence on our forefathers showed up in our constitutional framework.  We credit Hobbes and Locke...but perhaps we fell 100 years short of the real inspiration found in many of our textbooks.  Most likely because the common good of the common man flies in the face of profit the past 200 years.

John Depp, Early Adopters, and the Best a Man Can Get

Have you ever used a disposal Bic razor? Single blade, hard plastic? I have. In the aftermath I look like Edward Scissors Hands [1] just completed a topiary. To avoid this look, my dad opted to use of an electric razor, presumably in the 60's. I've never seen him use anything else. He's used it all of his life having been, in my mind, an early adopter. Although Schick invented the electric razor in 1930 it required several modifications, with the introduction of the foil razor, and later the Norelco three-head, to really become mainstream.

Many men still prefer the electric razor. I suspect for the following reasons. One, men do not like to look like Johnny Depp. Two, they are still on the market being gifted and received under many Christmas Trees annually. And three, I saw a dude shaving with one in the car the other day. Gross. The women in the passenger seat had the vanity mirror down and was applying make-up. Maybe they fight over the bathroom mirror in the morning and this is their compromise? Still gross, but I digress.

Maybe this ability to shave in the car is the attraction. Not for me. I tried the electric razor. It never worked for me...my beard just isn't my dad's beard. He has a five o'clock shadow by noon. I guess that's why I've never been able to grow a full beard either. It takes a special kind of beard to work with the modern technology..which isn't so modern anymore. My technology, the old technology, remains the same. Cold steel. And if you can avoid the lacerations, I much prefer the wet shave. When twin blades became ubiquitous, I never tried the electric razor again. I've been wet shaving every morning since. No improvement, over the twin blade, seemed necessary. Yet, when the twin blade was introduced, it was ridiculed by Saturday Night Live. When will it end...they mocked the multiple blades. Yet here, in 2018, six blades are available. 

I've been a twin blade purist for most of my shaving life. I resisted the urges to move to the triple. But in recent times it's been another force in the market place that has pushed for change. Mail order razors. New start-ups like Harry's and Dollar Shave Club sensed that men no longer had the available time to spend picking out razors at the CVS. Rather, for a monthly subscription, their razors would arrive in the mail. And the cost would be so low, rather than scraping your face with a dull blade, because you forgot to run to the pharmacy, you would have a fresh blade whenever you needed one. 

As mentioned in previous blogs, I am an early adopter, not an innovator. So I spent some time observing the mail order razor phenomenon before I took the plunge. I studied the business model. But studying the business model doesn't allow you to actually know what you are missing. You actually have to use the product. So here is the trade. Can the new companies keep the cost and convenience of using a new blade on a weekly basis undercut the well established companies dominance in the wet shave market. The business model makes sense, but are they sending you a quality product. Does the promise of a new blade every week provide better performance than the performance of a quality blade? This is not a quality guarantee you can trust the butcher on. You really do have to stick your head up the bulls ass and have a look around [2]. Dollar Shave Club and Harry's are competing with several titans of industry...well really only two because Bic razors suck...they should stick to cigarette lighters. So Schick and Gillette are really at the top. Harry's and Dollar Shave want to topple these dynasties with their business model. I've been a Gillette man for as long as I can remember. Why? Because it's the best a man can get. I believe that in my soul, but I also believe 4 out of 5 dentists survey recommend Trident for their patients who chew gum. 

Regardless how I got here...I logged into a monthly shave club and joined the buzz. I've spent about a year evaluating their product. Bottom-line. Despite the business model, mail order shave clubs are a scam. Quality blades from Gillette are far superior to whatever bullshit manufacturing process (and their German steel) these clubs are using. And if you are following their advice though to the inevitable end, you will ultimately be paying a ton more money for your morning shave, wasting more product and resources and getting a less quality shave. 

Over the course of my test period I tried all the razors they had to offer. The twin blade, the quad, and the boss (6 blades). The twin blade is what you get for $1 a month. The quad cost's you $6 a month. And the boss will cost you $10 a month. If you stick with the $1 a month plan, and change the blade 6 times a month (they give you 6 blades) you will save money. But you will not be shaving with a quality twin blade...nicks and cuts come easy if you don't go easy with these blades. I shave quick...not like Edward, but I like to throw the blades around in the morning. By comparison, you can buy the top of the line Gillette Fusion razor, with five blades, and all the technology Gillette has been working on. That will cost you $42 for 12 blades. Gillette wants you to use each blade for 4 weeks. So that's the essence of the trade. Pay $12 a year, get 72 twin blade cartridges, or pay $42 for only 12. Seems intuitive that the shave club wins. Except you cannot compare the shave with the twin blade to the shave of the Fusion razor. To compare the experience you need to elevate to the Boss. And thus, without much thinking about it...you are now paying $10 month for 4 blades, or 48 cartridges a year, versus the paltry 12 blades of the Fusion from Gillette. Per cartridge, that's $10 x 12 / 4 = $3 for the club and $42 / 12 = $3.50 for the Fusion. You think that price point is a coincidence? The club is contending their blades are cheaper...they are, slightly. But you need to buy more...a lot more. Last time I checked, $120 / year was more than $42 / year. And you don't have to take any trips to the pharmacy. So is $10 / month worth it? What about performance? 

So...the shave club estimated their performance correctly. Their blade quality lasts about a week. After 4 or 5 shaves their blades are dull. So much for German steel. If you proceed to week two, and try to stretch the life of their blades, you run the risk of nicks and cuts. On the other hand, Gillette wants you to use their quality Fusion blades for a full month. Can you shave 4 full weeks with one cartridge? The answer, probably not. I can't stretch them that long. But you can get a quality shave for three full weeks. Which means you need more than 12 cartridges. But not too many more...just four. So doing the math...$3.50 x 4 = $14 for the extra cartridges. So for $56 a year you can use Gillette, the Best a Man Can Get, all year long. And if you buy them all at once, that's a single trip to the pharmacy. 

Now for you tree huggers out there...who tend to be early adopters of technology, thinking they are saving the environment by not going to the Pharmacy every week. Well, one, you are going to the pharmacy anyway. So buy your razors. And two, with the shave club you are disposing of 48 razors into land fills a year vs 16 from Gillette. And that's not to mention the packaging from the shave club...monthly boxes and postage. 

So I'll admit. I tried to work this all out in my head, a head of time, and it seemed like the shave club was the way to go. It's is not. Unless you like the twin there is no reason to switch methods.

As an aside, the club I joined also offered other products. I choose a tooth brush. Here again, for these items, one must stick to the companies who actually put some engineering into their products. Colgate makes the best tooth brushes. Unless you like brushing your teeth with a stick, stick to Colgate. 

1) Image: http://thefilmspectrum.com/?p=20283
2) Tommy Boy

Yes Men and Echo Chambers

So here we are, 11 March, 2018 8:42 am (feels like 7:42 am). Flat Earthers are on the rise and drinking coffee will extend your life. With regard to the Flat Earther’s, Neil Degrasse Tyson blames free speech and a failed educational system [1] . With regard to coffee, apparently, even if you smoke, you get the beneficial effects of a lower mortality rate by drinking coffee daily [2]. Don’t mind if I do...

OK, in these two ideas we have a perfect example of the twisted life we lead inside current social media spheres. The flat earth belief is widely ridiculed but nevertheless promulgated, specifically, perhaps, because of its worthiness to be ridiculed. Yet some still really do believe and the number grows. And the other tidbit concerning coffee is music to our ears. Specifically, since so many of us drink coffee and eschew the criticism of caffeine addiction brazenly because it’s one of the very few indulgences that is politically acceptable to both the left and right. And now it may be good for us. It’s less clear that we have the same views politically on a failed educational system, but certainly, criticizing education is less a third rail in polite society then is gun control for example. Of course it’s not the parents fault...it’s not the parents who have failed (read with deep sarcasm). So it must be the dumbing down of society and our long fall from Biblical principles that has eroded our moral base and directly precipitated the necessity to arm teachers inside our failed public schools. After all, guns don’t kill people...let’s say it together everyone...people do. Thus the 2nd Amendment remains good and inviolate. 

So is Neil Degrasse Tyson actually suggesting that the 1st Amendment is bad? I like Tyson and I don’t like Flat Earthers (FYI I don’t know any Flat Earthers). I definitely believe something is wrong with our educational system (and our parents). But I disagree with Tyson as I don’t think it’s our educational system that is producing Flat Earthers. And I have a lot of trouble believing it’s our 1st Amendment that is producing them either. I don’t see many 1st Amendment speeches about the right to believe in a flat earth. I do see a lot of speeches about other weird things...thus I have concluded that weirdo’s really do exist. But haven’t they always, even without Twitter? Just ask someone from 13th Century about the Cathars and who the weirdos were at that time. And they didn’t have a 1st Amendment to hind behind or the excuse of a failed public education system to complain about. Yet they existed--past tense “existed” because the Catholic Church was both ruthless and successful in their extermination. About all that remains as household knowledge of the Cathars is the famous line from the siege of Béziers, “Kill them all, God knows his own” [3]. And of course they did...kill them all. Every single weirdo. But the question remains, where did these weirdos come from? Those that would be different. Those that dared to think outside the normalcy of society. They must be the product of something...perhaps a flipped gene, or better yet, a left over gene from the Neanderthal. Part of the DNA we all share if you happen to believe that it was ever possible for a homosapien Capulet and a Neanderthal Montague to successfully copulated.

So where do weirdos come from? I write this blog freely acknowledging that there will be a cult of weird that I am insulting. I fully anticipate a backlash of hurt feelings from both the clans “Weir” and “Doe” asking me to cease my assault on their 1st Amendment protections and right to exist in society. Should they appear to protest I apologize in advance and expressly state that I do not mean “you” specifically, and will say snowflake under my breath. This is nothing new and weird has been around for a long time. Long before the Flat Earthers, long before the Cathars, and long before the Neanderthal. Unfortunately the Neanderthal boyfriend was just a little too weird for the homosapien father who couldn’t stand idly by and watch it happen. Thus, in an act of fatherly rage (and ownership of both a .45 and a shovel) dad put the hairy boyfriend with elongated forehead to the stone. Alas his protection of the family tree was a little too late to avert the preservation of the Neanderthal gene and so here we are with a little Neanderthal in all of us. Weird isn’t new. We, as homosapiens, are a pretty weird lot since the beginning. We’ve managed to survive and move to the top of the food chain, a place we don’t actually belong if you’ve ever spent some time with a lion, a tiger, or bear in the wild. Oh my, it’s weird that we are even here. Isn’t it an abomination to the natural order of things? Thankfully, the natural order has a way of adjusting for things out of balance. Just look around. Call it God. Call it the Anthropic Principle (either weak or strong), or call it evolution. Balance is maintained. Yet imbalance is still necessary. In chemistry the equivalence point is when the ratio of acid to base is 1:1. Rarely do you find this ratio. Most of the time things are reacting with one another. So too are humans reacting to other humans. Some violently. Some less so. We react more violently to the weird...or is it the different. Maybe we are just a bunch of acidic chemicals with an approximated street value of $4.50 [4] reacting the the base chemicals around us?

So what really brings me to my rant today? It’s two movies straight out of Hollywood and popular culture. The first, “Wonder Women”. The second, “The Shape of Water”. Wonder Women brought in close to $400M at the box office last year. The Shape of Water won the Academy Award for Best Picture although with significantly less revenue. Wonder Women didn’t get a single nomination but was widely acclaimed. The movie was packed with the same story we’ve been told for decades, Diana is the daughter of the Queen of the Amazons, etc. Her first telling in 1941 by DC Comics [6] long before Gal Gadot was cast in the role. The fish story, however, was a bit different, and seemingly new to many people. But not really. Guillermo del Toro was just retelling the story of a lonely creature that has also been around for a long time, since 1954 [5]. This lonely creature, of course, is “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”, and was one of my favorites as a kid back in the 1970’s. All of the monster films back then had a similar theme. The monster always falls in love with the beautiful woman. King Kong, Dracula, etc. Yet whereas Wonder Woman struck a cord of mass appeal, del Toro’s new creature drew aversion is some circles, even though, like Wonder Woman, the creature was portrayed as a deity. And this brings up the familiar theme of hypocrisy. Why are we such hypocrites? It’s ok for Chris Pine to bed a goddess, Princess of the Amazon, but it’s not OK for Sally Hawkins to make her own choice. Even though, at the end (spoiler alert) Hawkins is revealed to have a bit more fish DNA in her then was previously known. That aversion, more than anything else, is what divides us as a nation. Things that are different, things that are weird to us, even though hypocritical to our principles, is what divides us. It is what has always divided us.

We are all hypocrites. Admitting that we are hypocrites is the step one. That’s actually a pretty easy step to take because no further action is necessary. But should we want to take action, what is the next step? Those of us familiar with any “12 Step” program know that Step 2 is to believe a higher power could straighten things out. Well, in this case, our aversion to things different is deeply seated in our DNA. Aversion is an instinct. It keeps us safe from harm. Things more like ourselves are less likely to kill us...even though...history tells us the exact opposite is true. Most murder is committed by someone we know. Not the stranger. Even the school shooter, most of the time, is someone known by or connected to the victim. Is arming more people we know with guns the solution? The right says yes. The left says no. The right is comfortable with guns. The left is not comfortable with guns. Having a gun is normal. Not having a gun is normal. We are at a standoff.

What needs to happen if for both sides to walk a mile in each other’s shoes. Easier said than done. Here on social media some attempt to post things hoping the other side will see their perspective and change their mind. Some conversation ensues. A few thoughtful people try to keep the peace. Ultimately we retreat to a safe corner where a friend with our beliefs will give us a comforting pat on the back. Keep up the good fight and all that...

You should surround yourself with perspective. Not yes men and echo chambers. You should surround yourself with things that make you uncomfortable. Not so that you can eventually feel comfortable but so that you can understand what’s really going on when someone says they believe in a certain way. If someone is doing something repeatedly they are doing it because 1) they like it 2) they have always done it that way 3) they don’t know another way to do it. I am reminded of the story of the young person who left their small town for the first time and went to the big city. They saw a very familiar looking sign in front of a restaurant and explained, “Oh wow! They have a McDonald’s here, just like us!”. Now many of us would laugh, I would laugh, and the young person would probably not know why. To them that sign reminded them of their hometown, their parents, their friends, their first cheese burger, or their first McBreakfast (Pancakes and sausage, Bricktown New Jersey, circa 1975). They would have no way of knowing, or ever seeing the 69 million daily customers or 37,000 other McDonalds signs in front of all the other restaurants in over 100 other countries [7].

That said, an expanded worldview is not enough. You have to walk a mile in the other person's shoes. Which means to start you have to get out our your own small mind and at a minimum leave the echo chamber. It’s an echo chamber of lies. This goes equally for both sides, it’s a echo chamber of lies. And yes men make it worse. Just because Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity don’t look like you fools you into thinking you’re not looking in the mirror. You are. Just because Rachel Maddow or Bill Maher doesn’t look like you fools you into thinking you’re not looking in the mirror. You are. It’s the same lie, just reflected back to you off the walls of ignorance. 

And now the danger, and of course here is where I leave the winding road of independent thought and show a little of my bias and reflection of an echo chamber. You can tell me it’s not true. You can tell me I’m listening to my own reflections on this issue. But I ask you to consider it at least a little bit two things from another persons perspective.

1) In my echo chamber of a mind the National Rifle Association is out of balance. It has become isolated and it’s own source of truth...which of course is self perpetuating. And once truth becomes rooted in it’s own echo chamber, with no input from the surrounding environment, it may deviate from the truth. It’s easy to tell from the external observer, who’s standing in the surrounding environment, why what they say is no longer true. For those standing in the echo chamber, it’s impossible for them to see anything but truth. What’s important here is to simply recognize that the echo chamber exists...to at least question if what you are hearing is an echo and maybe just look for another perspective.

2) In my echo chamber of a mind President Trump is becoming more and more isolated and is now almost completely surrounded with Yes Men? He is now deep within his own echo chamber. Some supporters, very few, have broken ranks. Again, I’m not asking that you believe me, I’m just asking that you consider the possibility that an echo chamber exists and the recognize the dangers of perpetuating echos above truth.

Shared perspective is what we need. Because weird is necessary.  Different is necessary.  Different perspectives could unify us because they help us survive when the world is changing around us.  When the water is rising it's the weirdo who knows how to live in the mountains that will lead the way. But reading a paper doesn’t actually allow you to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. You need to go live in the mountains. Neither does watching the news or going to the movies. You have to actually do the walking.  You have to go meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  And that’s extremely difficult to do inside social media...I suggest, at a minimum, take a mile walk outside of the echo chamber...and when you do, please do not carry an electric cattle prod...

http://time.com/5194310/neil-degrasse-tyson-flat-earth/

https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/health/coffee-leads-to-longer-life-studies-reaffirm/index.html

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1201-1500/horrible-massacre-at-beziers-in-christs-name-11629815.html

https://liblog.mayo.edu/2010/01/14/whats-the-body-worth/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-guillermo-del-toros-black-lagoon-fantasy-inspired-shape-water-1053206

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s

Expected Value of Gun Used in School Shooting

Here is something completely unexpected.  I set out to determine if my proposed buy back of an AR-15 from a friend was too much money.  Was I paying too much for the weapon?  It appears that at least a few of my friends were laughing at the notion, and further, if someone took me up on the offer, they would be laughing at me all the way to the bank.  My original thought was that they are probably right.  I didn't do much research to come up with the $750 as I was more or less taking what appeared to be a fair market value for a rifle that was legal, operational, and in fairly good condition.

By estimating the value based on probabilities I learned something more important than the concept of fire power...or more specifically that we should restrict the amount of lethal fire power that any single person could tote into the public square.    What I've learned is that beyond fire power there is a draw to these weapons that transcends most descriptions of simple inanimate objects.  The draw to these weapons is the potential for each weapon to cause damage.  It's the opposite of the value of tools.  Go into the Home Depot and you can rate tools on their ability to build something.  To create something useful out of nothing.  Yes, a circular saw is an inanimate object, but in the hands of a home owner becomes a tool that enables some pretty sophisticated carpentry.  So reversing again back to fire arms, the damage potential that any single gun will possess is directly  related to it's ability to inflict damage. Can I kill a wild boar with a single shot at range?  Can I stop an intruder at close range before they can harm my family?  Each of these things carry value that is hard to quantify.  The wild boar could be calculate based on damage to agriculture and the amount of time and money spending to eradicate the pest.  The value of home defense is almost impossible to place a number value on.

But I was doing different math.  I was trying to determine the probability that any single gun, of the 300 Million plus currently in circulation in the United States, would be used in a school shooting.  And from that, assess the Expected Value of that weapon.  Until I did the math I couldn't put a number on it.  Of course these numbers really don't mean a lot in a practical sense, but they do show something more tangible, dollars, numbers we can all relate to in a way to get some insight on value.

The number that emerged was $2,161 in Expected Value.  I define this value as the expected dollar value that is associated with any single weapon used in a school killing to take a single life.  This should then be the dollar value we, as a society, should be willing to pay to take that weapon off the street.  What is immediately clear is that I underestimated the dollar value of a weapon  potential use in a school shooting.  What is the exact number?  That's unimportant.  What's fascinating is that it's clear that the destructive value of these weapons will always far exceed their "street" value.  This is an intangible that's almost impossible to grapple with.  But if you've ever held a fire arm in your hands and have been unable to grasp it's draw....not unlike holding a precision tool (but not being a carpenter and knowing with to do with it) or a musical instrument (but not being a musician and knowing what to do with it) we all know we are holding something that should be taken care of, something of danger that should be respected, and something of value.  I now have another number, beyond energy in Joules, to talk about this subject.