Dear Christians: This is a Test!

 

You have assumed that Trump is an instrument of God. After all, he has promised reversal of abortion rights and a return to law and order. In fact, he promises a lot of things that good Christians support and by all accounts he has done his best to deliver.

First, he flaunted his misogynistic behavior and you overlooked it because he was doing God's work. Then, he denigrated the military and you overlooked that too. Maybe you were troubled by the obvious lying, but he's a politician -- they all do that!

Now, he's taken a drug derived from unborn babies to save his own skin and you again tell yourself that he's doing God's work. He must have a plan. What if this is God's test? With each new revelation, Donald Trump shows us that he cares not about God's commandments. So, keep supporting him and maybe you will be able to join him in Hell someday.

Bye Bye Democracy!

There's so much fake news out there these days. Why would you trust me? Don't! Check anything that sounds like a fact for yourself. Fact #1: The Patriot Act was sold on the basis of finding foreign actors that would use terror on civilians to manipulate governments. Fact #2: Terror is a word that has had its meaning distorted since the act was put in place. What is the difference between asymmetric warfare and terrorism? Do you know? It's an important distinction.

When small actors, whether they be governments, religious sects, or independent warlords; go up against larger actors, they must use asymmetric warfare. They fight with snipers, roadside bombs, and suicide bombers. When they use these tactics against military or government targets, they are not terrorists. When they use them on civilians, they are.

This matters because when we brand a group as terrorists, the Patriot Act becomes available. That means our government can whisk away anyone who is suspected of being involved without due process. If that "anyone" happens to be a U.S. citizen -- bye bye freedom!

Meanwhile, we continue to ratchet up military spending. There are no major wars going on for the U.S. right now, so what are they doing with all the money? Well, a chunk of it seems to be going to new ground vehicles and personal armor. Guess what they're doing with the old stuff? Fact #3: They're shipping it to domestic law enforcement agencies! You may have seen some of it in the streets lately. Police are looking more and more like the military.

Between the Patriot Act, the expanded definition of a terrorist, and police militarization, we have the makings of the perfect storm for a complete take-over. Couple this with a White House that is siding with the police to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the citizens and it's not hard to imagine a tipping point that ends badly for democracy.

We think these things can't happen in America -- land of the free. Look more closely. Freedom can be defined any way you like. Even the most autocratic regimes will generally leave people alone if they play along. Freedom is about the right NOT to play along. A quick look at what's going on in the streets these days should be a warning.

Covid On My Mind

Longing to go out.

My sister-in-law, Carolyn, had an idea for the family: keep a daily log (or blog) of our lives during this hopefully rare pandemic. Personally, I don't expect that these things will be all that rare.

Global warming is changing our planetary climate system and highly adaptable organisms are likely to adapt more quickly during this time of rapid change. If the weather doesn't get us, the microorganisms will...eventually.

I've been thinking about the idea of keeping a journal or something, but to be honest, my life isn't dramatically different. I am a scrum master, which is a person that works with software development teams to help them be agile. That means adapting to change quickly. My company, ITHAKA, is well along on our agle journey, so we're already quite adaptable. We also have multiple offices and various people working remotely, so we have all the tools in place to work from home.

My Home Office Rig

Furthermore, having been a work-at-home entrepreneur in the past, I already have a sweet set-up at home. Let's just say I don't worry too much about bad ergonomics. I did purchase a little 10" LED display so that I can see the people I'm online with while looking at shared screens. Oh, and this picture doesn't show my Herman Miller Aeron chair, which I was happy to buy for only $350 out of the back of a van in a Burger King parking lot in Belleville. I have it on good authority that is was legitimately purchased in a bulk office furniture buyout from an office closure. I'm going with that story. I love Herman Miller chairs. They fit my back just right.

The Man Cave!

I also have a Herman Miller chair in the basement -- my man cave! This picture was taken before I removed the sofa from the room. There's a little more space over in that corner now.

Music is a great hobby to have when you're homebound. I have a band called Sweet Melissa. I left the band to pursue other musical interests, but when they lost both their bass player and guitar player, Melissa called and asked if I wanted to rejoin. I did. We found a great new guitar player and we are all good friends. I have been trying to keep up with my friends by doing regular video chats, but with the band, "getting together" is a bit more challenging. Elan, our drummer, is a pilot for Delta. He still has to go to work...at airports! He's a bit more stressed than the rest of us, who are in a better position to isolate ourselves.

We found a system called jamkazam.com that might let us jam together over the Internet, but everyone has to figure out how to get their instruments hooked up first. That hasn't happened yet. A couple summers ago, I hooked up with my friend JP and occasionally my friend Noah and we jammed in the street. I really liked busking. JP moved to NYC, so I've decided to try out the one-man band thing. I was thinking that I might take it to the street this summer.

Well, with this nasty little virus spreading wildly, that may not happen. It seems the music world has taken to streaming live. So, yesterday I started trying to figure out how to do my own live streams on Facebook. I tried something called OBS, which only sorta worked. Today, I switched to trying something called livestream and lo and behold, it worked! I was just testing it out, but apparently various friends, family and acquaintances saw it anyway.

We're about to take the dog for another walk. Going for walks is one of the only things anyone can do out of the house these days, so lots of people are doing it. Most people around here are getting the social distancing thing, but a few people don't. I worry most about the kids. They may just forget or maybe they don't understand that just because they're not vulnerable doesn't mean the people around them aren't. Anyway, it's easy to catch up with the neighbors during walks, which seems sort of backwards since we're all supposed to be staying away from each other. Now that we've purchased enough food and toilet paper to stay home for a few months, it's just neighbors for a while.

Is Their Truth Behind the Lies?

Money and power have always concentrated with the few. People with money and power tend to prefer to associate with people with money and power. Wired magazine recently did an interesting piece about this. So, it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that there is collusion amongst these folks.

When us regular folks get together and talk about the world and what can be done to make it a better place, our words are nothing more. However, when rich and powerful people have these talks, sometimes real actions can ensue. Sometimes, these actions may not be strictly legal, but with money and power can come a sense of invulnerability. We call this corruption and it is a lot easier to fall into when you're rich and powerful than one might think. There are so many laws to keep track of.

Thus, when Mr. Trump openly attacks the Bidens for corrupt behavior, he may not be wrong. There are probably a bunch of people out there that don't like any Democrats and are happy to see them get burned, but if you want to be serious about going after corruption, start in your own house, because that's where you gain legitimacy for the cause.

Donald Trump's selective persecution of corrupt behavior can't help but look like a political maneuver designed to help him in the next election. Maybe he feels that corruption is corruption and if its exposure helps him personally, so be it. I know he's not alone if he feels this way. There's a small percentage of the population who love to see him call it out despite the risks to his continued legitimacy as president.

The fact is, corruption is bipartisan. If we want to go after it, we should be just has happy about it when our own party's officials are called out. Corruption isn't a game of Republicans vs Democrats. It's more of a game of Whack-a-Mole. Whenever it pops up, we should uniformly knock it down...but we don't. There is no systematic pursuit of corruption, so we're forced to wait until a political enemy exposes someone. It's a lousy system, but maybe it's better than nothing at all. Or, maybe when exposing corruption becomes its own form of corruption, we should call for a better way. I wish I knew what that was.

AI is Coming to Take Our Democracy

Today, Wired magazine published an article entitled AI Algorithms need FDA-Style Drug Trials. They make a good case for how artificial intelligence (or deep learning) software is changing our society at a fundamental level.

The warning is clear, the answer maybe less so. Here's what I would recommend: pick your candidates based exclusively on what you see and hear them say. When words come out of their mouths, they may be influenced by software algorithms, but at least you are getting an unvarnished view into what that candidate chooses to project at the time.

We can no longer trust the spin and byproducts of political campaigns. This will require us to think and use our own judgement about what we believe to be the right path. Too much is at stake, so we should each reflect on what outcomes we would like to see for each issue we face as a society and listen to candidates to see if the outcomes they're proposing align with your own.

Is this more work? Yes, democracy is a responsibility as much as a right. We only get out as much as we're willing to put in. If we put in little to nothing, we'll get the candidate that the Russians and other powerful forces pick for us. I say let's do the work!

Let's Bring Back Civility

Here it is August 4, 2019 and I am once again saddened by a seemingly random mass shooting in an El Paso, TX Walmart. Every time one of these shootings takes place, we restart our national dialog about guns. "If there were no guns, people wouldn't get shot!" To this I say, "If there were no <your favorite bad thing here>, people wouldn't suffer from it.

The fact is, whether you are a gun lover, a gun hater, or a gun I-don't-give-a-shitter, guns are part of the fabric of this country. We were founded on the principle that people should have the means to rise up and suppress a tyrannical government, and at the moment, those means are guns.

So, let's talk about the real issue here. People. Most of us will go through life and never kill one person, let alone a bunch of people. We're talking about a very small minority of folks who will actually end up killing anyone, even by mistake.

Given the cost and contention around collecting up all the guns, why don't we focus on what makes someone shoot up a store? I read a lot of psychology books because I'm fascinated by the human mind. It is capable of such beauty and terrible ugliness.

Here's a quiz. You are more likely to shoot up a store if you are:

A) Joyous, full of love, contented, and fulfilled
B) Angry, hateful, depressed and scared

I think even the shooters would get this one right. We should all be asking ourselves how we can help people who are described by B.

Parents have two basic jobs: 1) love their children unconditionally, and 2) get them to adulthood with their self-esteem intact. It turns out that this is harder to do than one might think. There's no means test to determine if a parent can pull this off. Rich or poor, it doesn't matter because if your parents failed in their task, there's a better chance that you'll fail too.

Having made it to adulthood while enduring failed parents, even those who want to be an example of category A, have a rough climb ahead. They won't make the climb without help. And, for those who don't realize that they're in category B, I don't believe there's much hope to save them.

What We All Can Do

Call me a skeptic but as a former category B-er, I can speak to how much work it takes to climb out of that hole. We each see the world the way we've been trained to see it. Let's say that you're angry. You go to the store and the checkout person makes a mistake. She's human. We all do it. But, you're angry already, so you let her have it. Maybe her mistake was caused because she's already having a bad day and now you've blasted her. So, she gives you a piece of her mind. You think "what a bitch!" Your world view has just been reinforced.

Now, if you had the presence of mind to take a breath and say something like "I can see that you're pretty stressed out today. Don't worry about it," this would have most likely diffused the situation and garnered you an apology. Your world view has just been reinforced.

Same situation. Very different outcome. The difference is empathy and civility. The great thing is that you don't actually need empathy to be civil. Have you ever watched one of those old movies from the 1950's? They seem so fake to us today. People were so nice all the time. The world wasn't really like that was it? Yes. It was.

Once upon a time, children were taught to respect their elders (even if they didn't deserve it). They were told to ALWAYS say please and thank you. These little lessons caused children to grow up and treat others with a bit of kindness even when they didn't know why or maybe didn't even really want to. It was just expected. In the sixties, the hippies gave us free love, free speech, free expression, and ultimately a major erosion of civility. By the 70's, people had to earn their civility, so if they were having a bad day (as most days are to category B folks), they just may not get any.

All these little encounters pile up to cause a person who already thinks very little of themselves to think even less over those around them. When life becomes devalued, taking a bunch of it "don't mean much." This is where we are now. So, next time you encounter someone who is seemingly having a bad day, be nice. Try to help them have a better one. If all the category A folks do this, we can gradually shrink the number of category B-ers who want us all dead.

We The People, Getting Played Again!

My sister recently joined Better Angels and then talked me into it, too. This blog isn't about that, although it is about how both Republicans and Democrats are full of shit. They both provide us with a pack of well-crafted lies. I'd like to talk about things I hear from real people and how that connects to the bullshit being propagated out of D.C. and state capitals across this country.

First, some basic data. If it is true that 40%-45% of Americans are hard-core Republicans, it stands to reason that only a small percentage of that group believes in the course the party has set because all the historical data available points to their propensity to enrich the already rich at the expense of everyone who isn't. What I hear from real people is that lots of folks vote Republican because they are really opposed to killing babies. I hear that! Killing anyone sucks. I wish humans did a lot less of it.

To say that the Republicans have done nothing to curtail the killing of babies (in their nymph state, but we won't split hairs for the sake of this discussion), would be patently false. The party has made a considerable effort to reduce access to abortion. The irony here is that this reduced access impacts largely rural areas that are the most supportive of the party. I suppose it makes sense that you'd want your policies to be as visible as possible in the land of your party's base.

However, many folks living in the areas most affected by abortion wouldn't want one anyway. It is the heathen masses of the great cities who are most likely to pop down to the corner "family planning" (oh look! More irony) center for a post sex termination. They tend to work for companies who (remember, companies are people too - thanks Republicans for that one) are happy to pay for insured abortions, AND they actually can pop down to the corner for one.

Republican Lie #1: The party cares about killing babies.
No, they care about the votes of people who care about killing babies. If they really cared about killing babies, they would pass laws that made it harder in the cities, too. But guess what? There's a lot of votes in the cities and there's more rich people there. Some of those people are the very heathens I'm talking about. They won't take too kindly to Republicans taking away their abortions, so with a wink and a nod, everyone gets what they want...sorta.

Let's jump over to the DNC and see what the Democratic party is up to. Basically, the Democrats have given up on capitalism, but don't want to be called socialists. Nobody in the history of the world has ever figured out how to fund a socialist system and the Democrats are no exception. If you give everyone free college educations and healthcare, you're going to have to pay for it with debt, because by the time you collect enough taxes to pay for it, every wealthy person in the country will have moved their money, operations, and maybe even life, somewhere else -- because you can do that now. The rest of us are going to look pretty stupid trying to hold a capitalistic economy without any fucking businesses except fast food restaurants and liquor stores.

Democratic Lie #1: Redistributing wealth works.
We no longer live in a world in which one economy can make decisions for itself without consideration to other international trading partners. China, India, Brazil, Russia and many more countries would be happy to eat our lunch if we'll ship it to them. The choices we make to attract businesses here and keep the money here will affect our ability to pay for social programs. If we screw over rich people and they pack up and take their money with them, we're going to need quantitative easings #4, #5, #6 and possibly #7. By the way, in case you didn't know, quantitative easing is the computerized version of printing money. Maybe the debt associated with that will never affect us. And maybe, if you take a $1,000 to Las Vegas and keep gambling with it, you'll never lose. RIGHT! Even if you win for a long time, eventually you're going down.

The sad fact of history is that the vast majority of wealth redistribution has been at the end of a gun. So, unless we want to start a revolution, the only other option is to convince rich people to just hand over their money for the good of the masses. Yeah, get back to me and let me know how that works out.

As long as we have privately funded elections, nobody's going to be taking rich people's money away. They own the fucking government and if you don't believe that, put your big boy or girl pants on and  go do a little research of the facts. Massive amounts of private money are pumped into winners' campaigns. Do you really believe that there's no quid pro quo? How about the tooth fairy? Do you still believe in her too? Geez!

Was this any good? I've got plenty more lies where that came from. I really wish that people who are aligned with both parties will see that I'm not being partisan here, but rather trying to spark a conversation amongst "We The People" about how we flush the steaming pile of crap that is our government.

Building a Band: Not as Easy as You Might Think

I've been a musician most of my life and because I play bass guitar, being a solo act has always been out of the  question. That has left me with two choices: join a band, or start a band. Joining an established band is pretty easy because someone else has already done the heavy lifting for you. All I need to do is fit in, which has its own challenges, but at least I control most of them.

The thing about joining someone else's band is that its difficult to find something that's just what I want, so I need to come to it in the spirit of supporting the existing mission. By mission, I mean the type of music, the places the band wants to play, and the frequency of rehearsal. Even if all that works out, having longevity with a group of musicians is hard.

Let me be clear, the secret to a successful band is simple -- stay together! It really is that simple. I know what you're thinking. There needs to be talent. There needs to be good material. There needs to be organization. Well, yeah, but that will all come with time (okay, maybe not talent). The old saying that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while is true for a lot of things. Even a no-talent group of musicians will create some good tunes once in a while, so if they stay together long enough, they will eventually have some good material.

So, what's the secret to longevity? The family model comes to mind. Families are formed when two people fall in love and then they produce some offspring. The Offspring don't get a say in the matter, so building a family is a lot easier than a band, where every member of the family has to be recruited.

Beyond that, the characteristics that go into a tight knit family are similar (with some additions).

Reliability - I have limited tolerance for unreliable people. Others may be more flexible about this, but I expect bandmates to do what they say, so things break down quickly when people don't keep their word.

Passion - I am committed to being a musician and all that it means. Other things may vye for my time, but some of them will need to get in line behind music because I'm not giving it up. People who are just passing through a musician phase probably won't have the staying power needed.

Work - Having a strong work ethic is common across all successful people (assuming they were self-made). I can't tell you how many times we've tossed out a musician who chronically showed up to rehearsal unprepared. It becomes a giant waste of everyone's time and gets annoying really quickly.

Commitment - Commitment to what? Good question. For me, the most important things are goals. Setting them and staying on the path to reaching them. I suppose I could have also called this one persistence because it goes hand in glove with commitment. Commitment isn't something you can have every third Tuesday. It's an every day sort of thing.

Patience - Everything is not going to go right. Well, maybe it will, but I never count on it. When obstacles emerge, dealing with them harshly or hastily can often result in emotional damage that is hard to repair. Not all problems require the kid glove treatment, but sometimes you just need to give people time to get back on track when things happen (family issues, work issues, etc.)

Transportation - This one could be left out, but having dealt with people who did not have reliable means of getting around, I decided that I couldn't bury it under reliability. I've been in bands with a musician that didn't drive and they were always reliant on someone else to get them to rehearsals and gigs. It's never worked.

Now, all the things above could be applied to any endeavor, but there are some things that apply specifically to musicians.

Musical Preferences - Given that there are countless genres and subgenres of music, finding people that want to play what you want to play can be challenging. So challenging in fact, that we often compromise on this one. The problem with this is that compromise has a nasty way of gnawing at you over time. I've left a few good bands because I just couldn't enjoy the music anymore. Hard as it was to walk away from something that was working on all other fronts, I'm in it for the love of the music first.

Equipment - This isn't usually a problem, but I have had situations in which band members had faulty or inadequate equipment and the frustration eventually boils over. I was in one band many years ago in which the drummer was so broke that he couldn't afford sticks. This was compounded by the fact that he was a banger and regularly broke them. One time, he showed up to a major gig with one pair of sticks. In fact, one flew out of his hand during Jimi Hendrix's Manic Depression and he had to finish with his hand while I attempted to flag down a roadie (who was busy chatting up a girl) to fetch it for him.

Skill - I put this one last, not because it is least important, but because it may be the best one of these characteristics to sacrifice. If someone has all the other qualities listed here, lack of skill should be a transient issue, meaning it will be resolved over time. Now, if you're looking to start a jazz/rock fusion band, you may want to stay away from beginners, but most genres of music can be played in fairly basic form. If you have more skill that other members of the band and become frustrated, see patience above.

There you have it! What are the odds of finding a whole group of people that share all of these characteristics? If that isn't enough, it's always helpful when you actually enjoy each other's company. You can build friendships just around music, but it helps longevity if you actually want to be together anyway. I have many lifelong friends who performed with me somewhere along the way, but now don't. We still get together to jam sometimes, but we're not in a band anymore.

If you want to assemble your own band, make a checklist of the things above and make sure all of the members of your newly formed band have them. You're going to be tempted to look past a few of these when you find a really great musician or someone you really like. Good luck with that!

Rail Guns: Not Just for Quake Anymore

This week, the U.S. Navy puts their very first railgun into the field. That's right folks! Particle weapons are coming to a battlefield near you. No more gun powder for us. Back in the 1960's, when Star Trek first aired, the time frame represented was 300 years in the future. Here we are not even 100 years into the future and most, if not all of the technology in the show is available, under development, or being actively researched.

The XPrize contest to produce the world's first tricorder is over and there were not one, but two winners. Check that one off the list. Now, all we need is the other little thingy that didn't even have a name that Bones waved over someone to fix their broken bones and damaged flesh. At this rate, we may have to wait another 30-40 years for that.

Transporters are a bit  trickier. We have them, but the current models can only transmit a subatomic particle or two. You've got to start somewhere. There are claims of transporting larger chunks of matter shorter distances. The point here is that it is happening. Ultimately, the thing stopping us from transporting larger items is the scanning and computing power required. Of course, we continue to chip away at that too.

Replicators are now available to consumers. Granted, they can't make a hot cup of tea yet, but they can make just about any little plastic thingy you can think of. Specialized 3D printers can now print metal, electronic circuits, skin, and even organs. It is simply a matter of time before these devices are able to build more complex items. As we continue to miniaturize our devices, it is not unreasonable to expect that within the next 50 years, we will have printers that start with base material and rearrange its atomic structure to make anything. The trick to doing this is mostly in the necessary computing power and new graphene based chips will give us that (again - already developed technology).

The impulse (or ion) drive is well developed technology at this point. NASA is considering it for future deep space missions. They need to consider it because warp drive is a bit farther into the future. The more amazing thing is that warp drive is now theoretically possible. There are a number of theoretical models out there. My personal favorite is the Alcubierre drive, proposed by a Mexican physicist of that name (sorry Zephram Cochran - not in this reality).

Some of the stuff they had seems almost antiquated by modern standards. Take those crappy tablets they used. Why did they have to pass them around? Did they not even have WiFi? The original Enterprise didn't even have a holodeck, but we're closing in on that one pretty quickly. We certainly have holo-video systems and new research is ongoing. Of course  the most ridiculous piece of technology was the stupid flip phone. They are so last millennium!

Maybe the greatest invention of Star Trek was the economy-less society. What if people could live a comfortable life with all the basics and pursue their dreams unimpeded by the need for personal assets? Think of all the inventions that could be brought to fruition if anyone with an idea had the resources to fully produce it. Without an economy, there would be no need for greed. If that were the case, most of the people that would have been working to improve their own lives might start focusing on improving everyone else's along with the rest of the planet. Just a  thought.

Speed & Complexity is Killing Democracy

There can be no doubt that the demands on the average human mind have increased manifold in recent decades. Globalization and the Internet have combined to create a tsunami of information which is available to anyone with a smartphone and a data plan. Increasingly, that's everyone in the United States. Here in Ann Arbor, even the homeless are given smartphones with a basic data plan.

Technology has been steadily increasing productivity since the beginning of the industrial age. As productivity increases, what happens in a single day looks more like what would happen in the course of a year of an agrarian society. Consequently, it takes one with an extraordinary mind and the motivation required to keep up with the underlying facts surrounding the big decisions our country faces.

It's no wonder then that most of us are always looking for someone who we trust to distill down to bite-sized, understandable, consumable chunks, the issues we face. Our current president, Donald Trump, is a master at this. "It's gonna be a great healthcare plan" is just the sort of information anyone can process. "Our current trade deals are terrible. We're going to throw them out and have much better ones" is much easier to digest than the complex web of interrelated issues around global trade.

Here's the fundamental problem with the complexity of our issues and the speed with which they evolve: most people can't keep up. Democracy depends on a well informed public to work effectively. This is no longer a reasonable expectation.

This leaves our democracy at the mercy of spin doctors, pundits, and power brokers. Most of us have no choice but to get our viewpoint from people with an agenda that we can't fully comprehend. So, we decide who we trust and we trust them. But, what have the people we trust to tell us what to believe about how to solve our country's and the world's (considerable) issues done to earn that trust?

What can they do? Issues are often so complex and nuanced that verifying what is a fact and what is an opinion or completely made-up bullshit is almost impossible. Unfortunately, some of the people we trust to inform us take advantage of this fact in the worst way imaginable. Is this a fact? If you blindly accept that everything you are told by your trusted sources, you might argue that I'm the one who's full of shit. Unfortunately, unless you take the time to deeply research some of the "facts" you're being given by your new source, you'll never know.

Therein lies the problem. In our country, we have two parties. Each party has a point of view. We are given the option to choose between these two points of view. Do you really believe that there are only two points of view? As complex as the world has become, what is the likelihood that our options can be boiled down to only two that make any sense? THAT doesn't make any sense.

The great thing about democracy is that everyone has a choice. When the system becomes so corrupt that only two points of view are represented, that's not really democracy. It is a mere shadow of a democracy. If we are to get back to a real democracy, we need more voices. We need more points of view. We need people to who we can trust to fact check our leaders and call them out for lying. Realistically, it's unlikely we'll get any of it.

Conservative Perspective of a Revisionist

Most of us tend to take up the politics of our parents. It's hard to grow up in a house listening to people taking one position and then change that position later (Andrew Breitbart tried, but couldn't). It happens, but not often. I grew up in a house with two very liberal parents.

I like to think of myself as an independent thinker. Unlike most people, I actively seek out the viewpoint of all sides of any issue. The challenge with this is that the underlying philosophies that inform any particular issue are different. Without the right context, it's always easy to see the opposing viewpoint as tainted.

Realizing this, I've been doing some reading lately to gain a better understanding of the underpinnings of the conservative viewpoint. I've come to realize that there are some stark choices one must make before taking one side or the other. I've tried to sum these differences up in simple terms. Here's what I've got:

Conservatives: believe in freedom first. To have freedom, individuals must own the responsibility for their lives. If more successful people are able to shape the playing field because of their power to do so, those who do not have power must figure out how to play on their playing field.

Liberals (I prefer this to Progressives): believe in fairness first. Those with power stack the system in their favor and make it harder for those without power to gain it. Therefore, the system must have safeguards to even the playing field.

My suspicion is that few conservatives or liberals would argue with these definitions. If you are a liberal, you will see the conservative premise as flawed and vice versa. If I'm right, this is a great start to understanding.

Conservative Roots

So, here's where I think the conservatives have the high ground. When this country was founded, the men who conceived it had lived under the tyranny of a government that imposed themselves on their lives. Our founders sought to create a system in which the people would have ultimate control over anything the government did. They set up a system that would be prone to gridlock right from the start, knowing that these counterbalancing structures would ensure that the government couldn't run away with their power.

Since the states began life un-united, leaders of each wanted to make sure that the Federal government could not wrest too much control from their lives, so they kept as much power in the hands of states as they could. This would ensure that each state could shape the lives of their citizens according to their local desires.

All of this made perfect sense in a new land full of untapped resources and virtually unlimited opportunity. It is in this context that we must understand the mindset of the conservative viewpoint. Every conservative scholar that I've read refers to these roots as the driver of all philosophical positions.

Liberal Revisionism

The liberal view of the world did not even exist in the beginning. While there were differences between parties back in the early days of the union, I suspect that there was little argument about the principles discussed above. So, what happened?

I can only speculate about the origins of modern liberalism. There are undoubtedly too many variables to classify. I believe there are two biggies that ought to be near the  top of the list:

• Globalization
• The Federal Reserve

Both of these are game-changers that bring into question the logic of the conservative viewpoint. Let's just take these two apart to see if we can find some justification for the liberal viewpoint.

Globalization

Large ships, then large airplanes and now the Internet have connected people around the globe in ways that our forefathers could never have imagined. It would be unfair to have expected them to understand what the world would become when the economies of different nations developed the level of interdependence that we see today. If they had, what would they have done differently?

For starters, they may have given the Federal government even more power over commerce and regulating the economy. If they had allowed states to have most of the control over commerce, the "United" States would have not been very united in the eyes of foreign governments. At best, this would make our country a very difficult trading partner.

Most importantly, money flows almost seamlessly from one country to another. This means that government policy plays a very complex role in the health of our economy because capital seeks the best ground and that may not be ours. Key decision-makers in large corporations now control, with there choices about money flow, whether our economy does well or not.

The Federal Reserve

As the Industrial Revolution began gaining steam, the most successful entrepreneurs of the day (also known as robber barons) saw trouble on the horizon. By the way, that nickname is interesting because barons were European royalty and one could argue that they were U.S. royalty. Visit some of their ancestral homes and you will discover that they are castles. The parallels are considerable.

They realized that if the government was allowed to control money, they could disrupt the empires that they had built. With all their power, they created the Federal Reserve, which is a quasi-governmental organization run by bankers. The president is allowed to hire/fire the head banker, but he/she must select from leaders in the banking industry if they make a replacement. Essentially, the bankers are in control of the money in this country. Period. Full stop. No argument.

The Federal Reserve controls how much money we have and the interest rates at which it is distributed. These are the only two levers by which money is controlled. Thus, the government holds no levers to control the medium by which our economy functions.

Why is this a game-changer that motivates liberals? Because, without governmental controls on money, modern-day robber barons can endlessly stack the deck in their favor, thereby leaving everyone else further and further behind and more and more under their control.

The Decision

Each of us needs to decide between idealism and practicality. The ideal of this country lives in the hearts and minds of many of us. We long for the life that the framers promised and we believe that by rolling back the insidious changes made by the revisionists, we can get back to that ideal.

Others look at the reality of today's world and believe that it can't be undone. There are too many factors, which cannot be controlled which make it impossible to recreate what we once had. Further, half measures only seem to make matters worse. Thus, trying to roll back and failing puts us further and further away from the goal.

If you believe we can successfully roll back, you will continue to fight for the conservative attempts to make the government smaller, reduce regulatory control over our lives, and put more money back in the hands of the people who earned it. If you don't think that is possible, then you will want to take steps to level the playing field so that those who have benefited excessively from the changes of the industrial and information ages do not wrest complete control away from the rest of us.

My View

As much as I, too, long for the good old days, I don't think we can go back. Most of the really rich in the world are no longer contained by a single country. Multinational corporations can shift their economic interests to the highest bidder in a global competition for economic resources. If we were to roll back the Federal rules that contain them, they would strip our country of resources and send the money offshore to avoid whatever taxes we decided to charge. As our infrastructure crumbled, our overpopulated workforce may once again become attractive because they would have to work for third-world rates. 

What made us great the first time around was that we led the world in industrial and technological advancement. That is no longer the case and no matter what we do, it will never be the case again. It's too hard to keep secrets anymore and it's too easy to copy what someone else is doing.

Just look around. The countries that have the most growth are the ones with big labor pools willing to work cheap. Do we want that for ourselves? I think not. Our problems are extremely complex and we will need complex solutions or we will need to re-imagine our whole system. Nobody's even talking about the latter option. At least not in Washington.

AI & Capitalism: On a Collision Course

First we had self-scan checkout lanes, now we're facing down self-driving vehicles. IBM's Watson AI can predict cancer better than the best oncologist. Ultimately, few jobs are safe from automation. Should this scare us? Maybe.

We face a social conundrum. Capitalism, by its very nature, seeks the most efficient use of capital to produce an optimal economic outcome for shareholders. Technology doesn't require benefits. It doesn't get sick. It doesn't spend 30% of its work day socializing. Technology is efficient. Thus, it is always a natural choice for executives to invest in technology which will eliminate people -- that is, if their objective is to optimize the use of capital.

While there are certainly social-minded organizations that consider it part of their mission to employ people, most for-profit companies seek more profits. Technology is the best way to do that. Heretofore, white collar jobs that required people to "think" for a living were safe. We could retrain people who had used their hands to use their minds. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) threatens those jobs too.

Nobody really knows where the tipping point is, but we do know that there are certain types of phenomena that have tipping points. A tipping point is a specific condition that causes an abrupt and often dramatic change. A good example would be the housing bubble that manifested in 2006. In 2007, in a very short time, we reached a point that caused housing prices to drop sharply and quickly.

It is reasonable to suspect that at some point, AI and other related automation will eliminate enough jobs that the economy will become dysfunctional. Companies want to reduce cost and improve output, but they need customers to take advantage of those efficiencies. Customers are people with disposable income. Income is money earned from work. Do you see the conundrum?

Prospects for Change

There are alternatives. Unfortunately, they will all require strong political leadership. If we've learned nothing, we now know that any self-promoting gasbag with enough social and economic resources can claim the mantle of leadership, even having never demonstrated any evidence of real leadership.

What is a leader? There are many books on this topic and I have read some of them. My takeaway is that leaders are those who can create a clear vision of the future and empower people to execute plans to achieve that vision. We don't have many of those in Washington these days.

National politicians are convinced that they need huge amounts of money to win elections. As we all know, huge amounts of money come from places that have huge amounts of money. Common sense would tell you that these are not the people who are worried about losing their jobs to technology. They're the ones BUYING IT! In other words, the people who are taking away jobs are those who have the most influence on our "leaders."

There are three ways in which the major changes necessary can come about:

1. Total collapse of the system
2. Revolution
3. Courageous leadership that can sell tough love

I numbered these because I believe this is the order of likelihood that the necessary changes will come about. People are basically problem-solvers. It ought to be clear to anyone with a brain that the folks who have influence in Washington don't have any major problems with the current system right now. Thus, they will not be inclined to take steps to avert the onset of the tipping point discussed earlier.

Choices

So, let's assume that we eventually arrive at #1 - total collapse. The big problem here is we end up with the same crappy [lack of] leadership we have now. The first and most important thing will be to prop up the people who own Washington -- rich people (remember corporations are people too). In the past, this has meant printing money and giving it to them, so that their wealth wouldn't be diluted. This worked okay when they used the money to buy things that created demand for products and services that required more employees to deliver them. What happens when more people aren't needed to do this? We've already noticed a trend in the last few business cycles that the recovery is much slower. There has even been mention of a "jobless recovery." This sounds as strange as a "money-less economy." What is THAT!

Therefore, even if they try to prop up rich people first, that won't be the end of it because that won't do anything. Next, they will try traditional means of putting money back in the hands of consumers. This has typically been done with tax credits. Tax credits work great for people paying taxes. However, people with no income don't pay taxes...and there's going to be a lot of those.

Finally, we get to the only real solution: handing out free money. There's one big problem with free money. Since our capitalist system puts economic value on money by evaluating its productive power in the marketplace, free money is ultimately worth nothing. On a small scale, free money can be covered by other economic activity, but on a massive scale, the economic value would be gone.

This is right where our current government taps out. I can't imagine them overthrowing the very system that they control. It would take an incredibly strong and visionary leader who could reach the people, thereby bypassing the power elite to sell and idea on a massive scale. I can't imagine anyone like that coming to power now, but maybe in a crisis we could garner such a leader.

Assuming we could, what's the answer? I believe it is socialism. Socialism has gotten a bad name for two main reasons:

1. People don't like to work to support other people who are just sitting around
2. Socialism generally requires centralized control and this means central power, which becomes corrupt every time

In the past, #1 has been a problem, but in the future it is likely that people who don't want to work won't have to. Thus, nobody should be complaining about working to support the masses. If you don't like your work, turn it over to a computer or machine (or both); or the 100,000 people lined up to take it off you (some people actually like to work - even if they don't get paid).

The second problem is trickier, but not insurmountable. How can we decentralize socialism? The answer is to use open source algorithms that are democratically modified to alter decision parameters. If decisions are not "black box," the logic behind them can be examined and justified. I wrote a post about the distributed system problem that you can read here. The point being, the very technology that put us in this situation can be used to fix the traditional problems of socialism.

The Future

Nobody knows how the future will unfold. What we do know is that it will unfold. Sometimes it is relatively easy to extrapolate certain changes. They may not be inevitable, but it will take an intervening disruption for the course of major events to be altered. Assuming that doesn't happen, eventually we won't need near as many people to work as we have. We can't keep warehousing a growing population that is just not needed in the workforce. When the tipping point comes, it may likely come in the form of a seemingly normal business cycle. However, none of the old tools will fix it and as it deepens, it will drag more of us down with it. If we are ready with new options and strong leadership, maybe we can avoid much pain and suffering. I sure would like that. How about you?

Who is the Republican Base?

Compliments of the Huffington Post

If the 1% got half the votes in this country, they would overwhelmingly put the Republicans in office. They don't. That means that lots of people who don't earn over $250k/yr. are voting for them. Why? Is it because the Republicans have co-opted traditional family values? What have they done for traditional family values lately?

Republicans talk a lot on the campaign trail about rolling back abortion and discouraging unchristian behavior. In fact, as a group, they are just as philandering as the Democrats. So, let's talk about the things that really matter to them -- economics!

In a move of ultimate hypocrisy,  congressional Republicans and Trump squashed a plan hatched by mayors of three major cities to help their citizens plan for retirement by setting up a local funding mechanism. Why would they do this? It is local, which they supposedly support. It encourages personal responsibility, which they supposedly encourage. It reduces federal bureaucracy, which is also a good thing.

It also takes money away from Wall Street. If you're as old as I am, you might have had your savings wiped out by Wall Street once or twice along the way. We had enough money saved to pay for our children's college education before Black Tuesday. After, we had enough for one year. Our then retirement savings went to pay for their education.

The stock market is a giant casino in which those big investment bankers who work with each other every day are allowed to keep a few extra cards up their sleeves. If you are just a regular working stiff, you don't have those cards and they are thus siphoning off your savings. What those three cities were trying to do is take some of your money out of the hands of the New York robber barons. If you're a Republican, your party stopped it.

Your hatred of Democrats is bankrupting you and destroying the prospects for your children's economic prosperity. You can say that they're no better, but all three mayors that were trying to help their citizens save for their retirement were Democrats. One of them lives in the belly of the beast as New York City is one of the three cities.

The fact that our country is so equally divided is a testament to modern subliminal marketing techniques. Most of us don't have the time to do effective research to fully understand the impact of the decisions our leaders make on our behalf. This one is pretty simple and it exposes the Republican party for what they are -- supporters of the rich. The Democratic party is much more likely to go up against the rich -- no small task even for them, but unless "we, the people" give them a mandate, it will be more of the same -- rich getting richer and everyone else losing their money to them. You thought Donald Trump would be different, but he's turning out to be the biggest scammer of them all -- taking care of his rich friends.

I know Republicans don't like the idea of redistribution of wealth. You're convinced that when that happens, they will come for your money. If you make over $250k per year, you're probably right. If you make less, you are one of the suckers they've been playing. Keep it up and we'll all be broke.

Jam Band Lament

My fellow bandmates and I recently saw Spafford opening for Umphrey's McGee. We were giddy as a bunch of school girls with excitement to learn from the masters. Spafford has big time competency and Umphrey's...well...they make it look easy. In fact, too easy! The energy from both bands was very different.

From Spafford I got the sense that they had worked very hard to put together a seriously tight and solid show. Mission accomplished, but the fear of a mistake was almost palpable.

Umphrey's, on the other hand, played like a mistake was highly improbable. They now have the skills and experience to put on an improvisational pyrotechnical show of massive proportions without busting a sweat.

Unfortunately, to really bare your soul to an audience, you need to be willing to cut the tethers of what has worked before, and neither band did that. How do I know this, you ask? Answer: Mistakes. Mistakes are the only signal. A wise person knows that "you never know how far you can go until you've gone too far.'

I am encouraging my band to continue making "mistakes." As a continuous improvement professional by day, I know that people who embrace their mistakes as learning opportunities end up making ever-smaller mistakes.

Further, I would encourage all of our jam band brethren out there to keep making them too. Give jam band audiences some credit for knowing what it means when you really hang yourself out there without a net. They love it just as much as the band members who are pushing their individual envelopes. That's the juice, baby!

Humans: Out of Our Depth

Anyone who has hopes for humans to evolve past our primate proclivities could only be disappointed by recent events. It's not really all bad news because people are far less deadly than they were only a short 1000 years ago. Even looking back as little as 100 years ago, times have improved. Maybe it is because of our strides that there are so many more of us who have lived a life almost devoid of daily violence and death around them.

The relative lack of violence in our personal lives makes the daily violence in others' lives all the more distressing. At the same time, our distance and lack of connection to the suffering people we observe, makes us less sensitive to their plight. Chimps don't care what happens to other groups of chimps.

Someday, just maybe, the world will get small enough that we will value all beings on the planet equally. Until that time, maybe we could find a way to help spread some peace. In the last century, the Europeans pulled the middle east apart. They knew what they were doing when they drew national boundaries that split tribes, while pushing separate tribes together. It was the perfect way to ensure that the once great Persian and Arabic nations didn't become great again.

Isn't it time to undo this tragic manipulation of so many people? What is needed is an area summit to redraw national boundaries that reunite the tribes and provide them with the autonomy so many have died for. If we really cared, we would be trying to fix the mistakes of the past. The fact that we are indeed doing things that have caused further destabilization in the region suggests that we (the United States Government) still likes it that way. Maybe we, the people, still do, too.

Meanwhile, our own country is getting hollowed out. The generational poor in our country are cared for at a level that is superior to those in most of the rest of the planet. However, there is a growing population of people who have worked most of their lives and have a sense of identity that includes providing for their family.

One job at a time, capital has sought the most efficient way to profit (just like economists say it should). The most efficient way is capital expenditure for equipment that replaces humans. So far, most of the machines we've built have taken jobs from people who work with their hands. The net effect is the decimation of manufacturing and construction jobs. Politicians blame bad trade deals and cheap foreign labor. Wake up and look around! The number of people it takes to make a car or build a road is a tiny fraction of what it took only 30 years ago.

For every job that equipment replaces, a rich person gets richer. In the next few years, we will see the jobs that require a human mind get replaced, too. We already have very sophisticated automated phone systems that listen to and understand questions and actually provide verbal answers. These systems have replaced rooms full of people who once used their brains all day. IBM's Watson has started providing medical diagnosis and medical robots can already collect vital statistics from a patient. Lookout! They may be coming for your job next.

Basically, the technology available to us today has outstripped out social evolution. Our primate drives cause us to abuse the very capabilities that could make a better world for everyone. If we were evolved enough, each of us could focus on making everyone else's life better, but we still basically care only about our own and those close to us. Fix this and all our other problems simply melt away.

Some say that the profit motive is the only thing that drives progress. I call bullshit. If that's true, we have enough technology to put it in charge of making better decisions than that. Here's a formula for you: people are suffering, therefore do something to end it. Wow! That's complicated. How so, you ask? By a bunch of rules we made up to make it that way. See. Bullshit.

A Plea to Trump Supporters

I just read a troubling Facebook post about two open-minded teenagers who attended a Trump rally even though they were Bernie supporters. Granted, wearing Bernie garb was provocative, but they were otherwise quiet and respectful. They were also escorted out by the secret service and police. That's scary, but not why I'm compelled to write this post.

What is more scary to me is the reaction they got from the Trump supporters (not all of them to be sure). Look, I get it! Lot's of people are fed up with our crappy government and Trump does a great job of representing the "not our crappy government" camp.

I'm sure Hitler could tap into a similar sentiment right now. He came to power during a time when the economy was in shambles. Regular folks were getting squeezed harder and harder. Hitler blamed immigrants and outside forces for this. He argued that Germany was for Germans and that alone they could rebuild their country. For everyone who had lost a job to a Jew or a Pole or an Armenian, this really hit home. Throw them out! Build a wall!

At issue here isn't the problems we face. They are real. The issue is anger and those that would amplify it for their own ends. If you are angry, you are an easy pawn for power brokers with their own agendas. There is strong scientific evidence to  suggest that anger can impair cognitive functioning. It is in the best interest of leaders who want to control people to tap into and even inflate your anger. You are much more easily manipulated that way.

So, here's my plea. Stop being angry. Take some long slow breaths and just relax. There. Now, you can think clearly. If you hate our government, ask yourself what a good government would look like. Is there a way to get there from here? Will it be easier to get there with everyone's help or just whities against the world? Is the thing that make the U.S. stand out against all other countries that we are a melting pot of so many different cultures and treat them all equally? I think so.

I believe in the middle way. We use the word "extremist" to describe someone that usually ends up dead, in jail or at large. Extremists live at both ends of the political spectrum. It is a nasty place with little tolerance for divergent viewpoints. It is those very divergent viewpoints that make this country great.

One Trump supporter told those teenage girls at the rally to move to China. That's ironic, because they were doing something very American. They were exploring divergent viewpoints. Maybe the person who shouted that should move to China. I'm sure they'd fit right in.

Why Hillary Will Win the Presidency

I'd like to start this post by saying that I'm not a huge Hillary fan. She's a horrible orator, but maybe not such a bad politician. Her positions are calculated based on what her team thinks she needs to do to win. In other words, she's not particularly idealistic.

Let me also say that I like Bernie Sanders. He's affable and idealistic. He has a good grasp of the problems this country faces and I believe he truly desires to fix said problems. The reality is, he can't. The system is completely stacked against him. Washington has basically shut down Obama, who is far more pragmatic than Sanders. Congress won't let Sanders order paperclips.

It's starting to look likely that Trump will win the the Republican nomination. Anyone with half a brain who is willing to actually put it to work ought to be able to see that a Trump presidency would be a disaster. You just can't run a country -- especially the most powerful one on the planet -- like a game show. Maybe Trump would hire some proper diplomats to curtail his belligerence, but with an ego that far out of control, I wouldn't bet on it. With him as president, I could see us fighting a world war in which Europe and Latin America are part of the opposition. Simply put, the man is dangerous and there are many rich and powerful people who are smart enough to do anything to stop him -- up to and including voting for a Democrat!

This brings us back to Hillary. Her flexibility and pragmatic views make her far more palatable to more centrist Republicans. In a general election between Sanders and Trump, a third party candidate is more likely to win. In a two candidate race, lots of smart Republicans will begrudgingly vote for a sane, but ideologically divergent Sanders rather than a crazy man. Hillary is a no-brainer. That's why Hillary's war chest will grow rapidly if she doesn't win big tomorrow night. Republicans who want to hedge their bets will help her out as a backup. As is not uncommon, Republicans may even start voting for Hillary in the primaries, writing their own party's choice off as a lost cause.

What is this Trump phenomenon? I get it. People are sick and tired of Washington insiders casting them aside. Making choices that provide economic cover for the rich and powerful while stripping the middle class. Trump, unencumbered by reality, promises to reverse all that. Whoopee! Tell them what they've won, Bob? A crackpot president who won't be able to get anything done! Sweet!

I think Eddie Murphy said it best in Trading Places. "The best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people." It may be the only way. The Great Depression turned a lot of rich people into poor people. After the recovery, the years that followed (50's and 60's) were the most prosperous in our history. This time around, we printed up $3.5 TRILLION in order to prop up the rich people. Depressions suck, but they do serve a purpose. They unclog the pipes of capitalism. Neither Trump nor Sanders is going to turn rich people into poor people. Thus, the pipes will remain clogged.

At least Hilary will keep things moving along until the next crisis. Maybe it will be a real depression next time. If it happens on her watch, I think we will be better off than if Sanders or Trump were in charge. I'll take a pragmatist over an idealist or a game show host any day!

Voluntary Redistribution

I read an article yesterday in The Economist about how global fiscal policymakers are running out of tools to fix the next economic downturn. Interest rates are near zero and even negative rates have limited potential. All the levers of control have been pulled and yet, here we are -- facing sluggish growth that threatens to stall. Government spending means more debt and nobody seems to have the stomach for that either.

I’m a self-confessed Trekie. In Gene Roddenberry’s series, capitalism has been abandoned. Capitalism is a dear old friend that has been the best way for humans to exchange the things they need with one another. It is the best system we know for managing scarcity.

WHAT IF SCARCITY HAS BECOME A MAN-MADE CONDITION?

We assume that scarcity is an underlying fact of life on Earth. Is it? Are there any problems of extraction, reclamation, production and distribution that couldn’t be collectively solved with a combination of innovation, initiative and resources? Is it possible that unnatural divisions between us are the ultimate cause of scarcity?

If we all worked together for the common good, what could we accomplish? It seems to me that this initiative would need to start with the rich and powerful (who are usually one and the same). In 2013, the Forex currency exchange was trading $5.3 TRILLION per day. At that time, the daily global trading of goods and services was estimated to be 25 times less. That’s just currency folks! This does not take into account money sitting in banks or in other trading accounts. None of this money helps real people with real problems. I suspect it causes them.

It seems like it is the nature of the rich and powerful to hold onto what they have for as long as they can. When the system finally collapses (which it always has eventually), they are left with nothing. Frankly, in times past, they often ended up with their head in a basket, swinging from a rope or some other sudden and violent death. We like to think we’re more civilized now, but one only needs to follow the news of the day to know that’s just wrong.

What could rich and powerful people do if they took their money off the sidelines and put it to work? For starters, they could build infrastructure. Ideas already exist to build a global “enernet” that would provide cheap power wherever it is needed. We could build new transportation infrastructure on top of the old such as that proposed by SkyTran. Most importantly, we could fully fund (and thereby accelerate) research to address every unsolved problem facing humankind.

Just try to imagine what would happen if the global economy was 50 or 100 times more effective than it is now. What could we do? It seems we’d have virtually unlimited ability to create the golden age of humankind that we all know in our hearts is possible.

Behind it all are a few extremely powerful people who have convinced themselves that changing the system would be disruptive and destructive. They believe that from their vantage point, they see things more clearly than the rest of us. They understand about forces we know nothing about that would derail any attempt to create a better world. They are wrong. They are part of the same cycle that humankind has repeated over and over since the dawn of civilization. If they put all their power and resources behind a transformation. They could make it happen. They could own the creation of a future that unbinds us from the shackles of the past. It would take courage. It might even get messy at first. But, what better legacy to leave behind?

Lip Balm is For the Bees

When we got into the soap business, we thought we should have a few other products as well. Having started the business in late fall in Michigan, moisturizing was already on our minds. The air gets pretty dry in the winter months around here. So, we opted to make some body lotion and lip balm.

Our goal was to make better products that don't have a ton of chemicals in them. I will confess here and now that I am a longstanding Burt's Bees lip balm user. Back when lip balm was called Chapstick®, that's what I called it and that was the brand I used. When I discovered Burt's Bees, I came to realize that Chapstick® is made from petroleum. That's what some of us call a fossil fuel when its other derivatives find their way into the tank of our car.

Burt's is made with real bee's wax. It smells better, it feels better. And, it's ingredient list is a bit shorter. Frankly, when we set out to make lip balm, we didn't think we could beat it. There was one thing I did like about that petroleum product: it wasn't so hard. The hardness thing is particularly a drag in the winter when I most need it because it gets so hard that I practically risk chipping a tooth putting it on.

Enter Ti LeBlanc lip balm. The secret? Just the right amount of coconut oil. It makes the lip balm softer and creamier. I can pull an ice cold tube out of my jacket pocket and it goes on just like butter! Sometimes less is better. We only have three ingredients.

I know what you're thinking. "This dude is just going on about his damn lip balm because he's trying to sell it." Well...yeah, I'd like to sell some lip balm. Can you blame me? That doesn't mean it's not as good as I say it is.

Don't worry, I'm not going to keep going on about lip balm. Here's what I'm going to say. Go to the Ti LeBlanc Website and spend $24 on other products and we'll throw in the lip balm. It'll have to be peppermint because I can't figure out how to make our discount system allow you to pick your flavor, but if you really hate peppermint, put a note in the order and we'll hook you up with another flavor.

By the way, we've got a Grand Opening BOGO deal going on right now, so you can get two bars of soap and a lip balm for free! It's a good time to be dirty, dry and chapped.

Almost Biological

By Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff
at the European Bioinformatics Institute

We are a young species when it comes to intelligence. As we learn more about the brain, we find fewer differences between our own and those of other mammals. From a sociological standpoint, our differences may be mostly superficial. I often wonder what a race of intelligent beings far in advance of our own would think of us. Would they see the fine-grained difference between us and other mammals? They would obviously see that we are far more sophisticated at building tools. That’s a big deal -- but not the only deal.

When I look at other mammals, I see creatures that fight with each other to garner scarce resources. They are willing to do anything, up to and including killing their own kind, to improve what they perceive as a desperate situation. When I look at humans, I see the same thing. This self-destructive behavior is not in the long term interest of any truly intelligent species. I think most of us know this.

I read a lot of science fiction. I love speculation about possible futures. It makes me think about who we are now. As a result, I have come to believe that no advanced species is truly biological. We have already begun our march towards becoming a technological species. The lines are blurring.

Scientists are designing robots made from DNA. They are using a new approach called CRSPR to insert custom sequences of DNA to engineer certain traits. Is this biological or technological? Is biology defined by the materials used to produce something? Or, does “biological” refer a natural process of evolution through random mutation?

We can debate these questions, but over time they will matter less. If you could get a $500 transfusion that would replace your own blood with artificial blood that would prevent you from ever getting sick again, would you do it? If you could replace your lungs with a device that would let you run at full speed without ever getting winded and swim underwater for four hours without taking a breath, would you do it? Maybe you wouldn’t take advantage of these things, but there are plenty of people who would.

Technological breakthroughs like these are inevitable. People are already working on them. Incremental breakthroughs are occurring daily. Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves first, we will eventually start to colonize space. When we do, our current physical limitations will create a huge burden on our systems. Creating spaceborn environments that allow us to remain in our biological “Goldilocks zone” requires temperature, atmospheric and gravity controls that would not be required for technological beings. All of these things are easily overcome for a spacefaring species.

The debate about what makes us human will change with time. Any technological intelligence that is born of our creativity is ipso facto an evolution of us. We have not had to grapple with technological evolution for very long. The concept is new and it is only natural that we would resist relinquishing our biological roots. Currently, most artificial replacement parts are substandard compared with the our biologically evolved parts. That won’t be the case for too much longer. We’re already building exoskeletons that are stronger and harder than our own bones. Our cameras are far higher resolution than our eyes -- we just don’t know how to hook them to our optic nerve yet. Soon, we will start chipping away at our biology one system at a time. When we figure out how to make a better brain, we will load it with our humanity and see what happens.

When we finally accept that the things that give us the greatest pleasure are also the things that cause us to destroy ourselves, will we let go of them? If we do, what else will we be free to lose? I have no crystal ball, but I can’t help but feel that we will ultimately become purely technological beings. That is not to say that there won’t be any organic elements to our physiology, but they will be highly engineered technology -- not naturally evolved. I’d be happy to be almost biological if it allowed me to live forever and explore the universe. How about you?