Category: Purpose

Tiny Fight Club, Taleb’s Skin in the Game, and Expensive Female Lawyer Reproduction

“A guy who came to Fight Club for the first time, he was a wad of cookie dough.  After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.” – Fight Club

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The Boy and Pugsley square off in a Beta version of Fight Club.  Bigfoot is in the background as an observer.

I have a fight club in my basement.

Not an officially sanctioned, Tyler Durden® approved Fight Club.  Just a small fight club, mainly involving me, The Boy, Pugsley, and (sometimes) The Mrs.

What is this tiny fight club?  Well, it’s wrestling.

Wrestling season ended for The Boy a little sooner than he’d planned – he’s in high school and would rather have gone on from districts.  We talked about it, and he was ready to commit to working harder for the coming year – and I read somewhere that “working hard” was correlated with “success.”  Sounds like crazy voodoo to me.

But sometimes a hard loss will do that to you much more effectively than a win – when I wrestled, I learned something from each match I lost.  Some wins?  I didn’t learn a thing.  And losing can either break you or motivate you.  The Boy sounded motivated.

Given The Boy’s commitment, we immediately started practicing for the next year.  Since Pugsley wanted to join us, we threw him in for good measure – he’s five years younger and a bit smaller than The Boy.  I will note that The Mrs. has been after me for about two years to take a more rigorous and structured approach to coaching The Boy and Pugsley in wrestling.  My excuse was that I didn’t want to interfere with their actual wrestling coaches and the work that they were doing with my kids – what if I taught them moves differently than the coach liked?  Yeah, a lame reason, but it was my reason.

But after this year for The Boy, he was ready.  He only has so many days left of wrestling, and he committed that he’d work with me to make the most of them.  Fair enough, I’d commit to him to work hundreds of hours with him to help him be better.  So we started practice.  But before we started practice?  I started reading, studying, and preparing to coach.

I prepared to start Tiny Fight Club (no, this wasn’t a restart of my failed Midget Hammer Fighting League):

Fight_Club_poster

Copyright © 1999 by 20th Century Fox, via Wikimedia.

What sort of things should I teach them?  In what order?  Wrestling is easily the oldest sport known to humanity – men were wrestling each other when we still hadn’t figured out how to knock two rocks together to make a “clunk” sound and way before they’d invented the Nintendo® Switch™.

Why did we wrestle in the murky depths of history?  To impress the ladies, sure.  Also, because it’s fun.  Most importantly, as Jordan Peterson would say, this combat allows us to create a hierarchy, and having that hierarchy is important, as I describe in my perfectly awesome post about Peterson’s book (LINK).

But something more happened.  I became engrossed in study about how to coach and what to coach.  And Pugsley still had one more tournament left . . . so we had exactly three practices until he would finish out his kid’s wrestling season.

Like The Boy, Pugsley had been, well, stalled in his progress if not taking a few steps backward this year.  He just wasn’t getting much better.  But we had those three practices.  And with them, and in drilling he felt more confident than ever.

The good thing about that last tournament?  There were only two people in his bracket.  One was Dirk.  Pugsley had never even taken Dirk down (where you gain control over your opponent) in the last three years.  The other wrestler, Ezekiel, well, Pugsley hadn’t beaten Zeke in two years.  Literally he had wrestled these two other boys a dozen times or so in the previous two years and hadn’t beaten either one of them.  What was three hours of practice?

In the very first match in his weight, Dirk pinned Ezekiel.  Quickly.  As was usual.  Dirk routinely took first place.

Dirk’s second match was against Pugsley.  Pugsley immediately (and with confidence) went out and gained control and got the take down!  He was up 2-0.  Dirk was in such difficulty (and pain!) he’d done anything he could to get off the mat.  Pugsley dominated him for most of the period, then got in a pretty bad position, and then got pinned.  But he came off the mat with confidence – he knew what I had coached him in worked – he had been amazing against an opponent he’d never even scored on.  The next match he pinned Ezekiel in the first period.  Zeke was not pleased – the creampuff he always beat had grown fangs.  And Pugsley was sold on our practices.

On the way home he talked about wanting to be a national collegiate wrestling champion.  As Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say, I now had “Skin in the Game” and so did my boys.  And it matters.

(The following link doesn’t get me any money as of the time of this writing, but at some point I might monetize it.  It’s Taleb.  Buy the book, anyway.)

I am thinking about reviewing this book, but reviewing Taleb might prove to be difficult in this blog – it might require five or more posts.  We’ll see.  Buy it, anyway, and read it.

In the process of working through wrestling with The Boy and Pugsley – I found something interesting (outside of the bruises randomly outcropping on my biceps, forearms, and chest).  I felt more energized than I’d felt in ages.  The very act of working with The Boy and Pugsley to make them stronger and more skilled improved my attitude about . . . everything.  My daily cardio workouts became sharper (and I studied wrestling moves during them).  And my muscles started to grow as I kept up with the boys when we lifted after fight club.

But I also had another epiphany.

The combat serves many purposes:  It builds confidence.  It teaches to never give up.  By example, it shows that hard work pays off in success.  It bonds fathers to sons.  It builds discipline (Pugsley’s respect for me has gone up 372% and his pre-teen surliness has utterly disappeared).  These are all traits that will lead (along with intelligence and Stoic virtue (LINK)) to much greater than average social and economic success.

And I’m in much better shape, and I’m learning how to teach The Boy (no, you have to rotate more than 180˚) and Pugsley (no, you have to throw your head through while you get your hips under your shoulders) and The Mrs. (dear, could you make us all some nice sandwiches).  I kid.  The Mrs. oversees our deadly serious play.  When The Boy complained that Pugsley smelled like sour milk, The Mrs. awarded The Boy a penalty point for “Involuntary Lactation.”  That caused us all to laugh.

But the epiphany is that the combat pays off down the road in the ultimate Skin in the Game moment:  this work is a precursor to reproduction . . . what?

Yes.  Being a high status man increases reproduction possibilities.  Being a high status woman doesn’t.

Huh?

How does that work???  Check this tweet out:

https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/973473559933747206/photo/1

I would say that being a high-powered female attorney actually lowers reproduction access for women.  The most fertile years for women are in their 20’s – after that, it lowers drastically.  By the age of 40?  Forget it.

But high status guys?  The guys back in the cavemen days that were winning the wrestling matches?  They got a chance to reproduce.  And 8,000 years ago, science says that only one guy versus 17 women reproduced (LINK).  The odds are better now, one guy will get to reproduce for every out 3.3 women that to reproduce.  3.3 to one?  Are you kidding me?  Nope.  High-status guys, only the top third, get to reproduce.   I guess that choosy girls all choose the same men.

High status men.

Competition – physical competition is hardwired into the brains and souls of boys.  And old men, like me.  That’s why I felt so good – I was throwing myself into physical combat for the first time in years, and relishing it.  Winning (and coaching well) provides many physical benefits – increased testosterone, brain chemicals and other science-y things in addition to the strength and fitness ability.  If you look at the math, social hierarchy is a must for men.

In today’s society, that means a cool job with money.  So, in order to have children, i.e., the ultimate Skin in the Game, the behaviors of competition and working long hours to increase income are absolutely necessary for men and are negatively correlated with reproductive success for women.

There’s no wage gap, at least not one based on any sort of discrimination.  Thousands (if not more) of years of human breeding have made men drive to succeed – because success is the currency of reproduction.

The final observation for today:

Raising boys is a full contact sport.  To allow them to reach their full potential they have to fight.  I suspect that many (but not all) cases of ADHD and the other alphabet salads of childhood disorders that have suddenly emerged after existing . . . never, are really just boys not being able to take risks or have a fistfight or nurse a bloody nose or confront a bully – behaviors that bind them into the social hierarchy.

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club

Oops, I guess I broke the first rule of Fight Club.  Again.

Stoics, Fight Club, Wealth, and Virtue

“I had it all.  Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of . . . wherever.” – Fight Club

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The first rule of Fight Club is . . . be older than six.  And no swords.

Wealth – what is it?

Is it:

  • Something that we sacrifice our lives for?
  • Something we obsess about until it controls us?
  • Something that is never . . . quite enough?
  • Something we have to have more of than our neighbor?
  • Something that defines our feelings about ourselves?

I’ll be honest, but there have been times I’ve viewed wealth in more than one of the categories above and acted as such.  “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants,” is what Epictetus wrote about 100 A.D.  Even more succinctly, Tyler Durden said in Fight Club, “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (gosh darn) khakis.”

Epictetus

What Epictetus may have looked like.  If he were in a comic strip.

I may have it in for Johnny Depp, but Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden is my spirit animal (we’ve started a tiny Fight Club in my basement, but I’m not supposed to talk about it – first rule, you know).

I keep coming back to the stoics.  What did Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Tyler Durden, and Epictetus think about wealth?  The website How To Be A Stoic says (LINK):  “. . . they classed everything that lies outside of virtue as either preferred or dispreferred indifferent. To the first group belong things like wealth, health, education, and high social standing; to the second things like poverty, sickness, ignorance, and low social standing. These things were preferred insofar it is normal for a human being to pursue them because it makes her life more comfortable, and dispreferred insofar it makes her life less comfortable. But they are “indifferent” in the sense that they are irrelevant to our ability to exercise the virtues . . . .”

So, the Stoics were indifferent to wealth, but it was better to have it than not.  You could be virtuous and poor, or you could be virtuous and rich.  If you were rich, perhaps you could share your virtues even further than if you were poor – so it was preferred to have money.  And Marcus Aurelius was emperor – it was hard to be richer than that, even for Jeff Bezos.  Seneca?  He was really wealthy, too.  And since they are some of the thinkers that literally define what Stoicism is, well, wealth and power isn’t off limits, but the goal was to live a virtuous life.

So what does wealth signify?

Mostly, wealth is like stored energy – it’s a potential.  A child may have a wealth of days before it, and an old miser a wealth of cash, cash that he might trade every dime of for just one more taste of youth.  And a six year old would trade the ages of 18-30 for six Cadbury Cream Eggs®, which is another reason that kids can’t vote.

Steve Jobs certainly traded some of his wealth for additional days of life without having to cheat a six year old in a candy deal – he could honestly say he could be at any liver in just a few hours (having a private jet and all) and he could afford to have a staff of people looking for ways to improve Steve’s chance of getting one.  Heck, Apple® has a project to clone Steve from a clump of his cells that they found in his comb – they just keep getting Ben Affleck copies instead.  Thankfully, Ben Affleck is not considered by the state of California to be a “living human.”

Steve’s wealth did buy him time – a few years, perhaps.  And Apple will soon sell the Affleck clones as iBens©.

Choices.  Wealth buys choices.  And one of the choices is always . . . not choosing right now.  The wonderful thing about being rich, is you don’t take any offers you don’t want.  If have to sell my car – I need the money for a new kidney for my Yosemite Sam© PEZ® dispenser, well, I have to have that money now.  I can’t wait.  I have to take the offer I get now.

If I have wealth and can afford to buy new, black market PEZ® kidneys for cash?  Well, I don’t have to sell my car.  In fact, if I have cash, I can look for people who have to sell kidney cars for PEZ© kidney cash to get a bargain.

I am willing to bet a large amount of PEZ™ that this is the first time the last sentence has been written in any language.

Anyhow.  Wealth buys choices, and wealth creates the conditions for more wealth.

But what creates wealth?  Well, in reality – the same virtues the stoics upheld (from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – LINK):

“The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.

  • “Wisdom is subdivided into good sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness.
  • “Justice is subdivided into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing.
  • “Courage is subdivided into endurance, confidence, high-mindedness, cheerfulness, and industriousness.
  • “Moderation is subdivided into good discipline, seemliness, modesty, and self-control.”

If you will look – many (but not all!) of these virtues, if followed well and long enough, will lead to . . .  wealth.

But perhaps Epictetus was right:  “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

And then there was Tyler Durden:  “It’s a blanket. Just a blanket. Now why do guys like you and me know what a duvet or a comforter is?  Is this essential to our survival, in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word?  No.  What are we then?  We are consumers.  We’re the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.”

So, be virtuous.  Get wealthy.  But don’t make the wealth the focus . . . it’s not the money, after all – it’s all the stuff.

AI, The Singularity, and Your 401K

“A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines.  We don’t know who struck first, us or them.  But we know that it was us that scorched the sky.” – The Matrix

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This is how “The Hobbit” should have started, with dragons and swords, rather than a dwarf dinner party?  Then I wouldn’t have fallen asleep during hour one of the 12 hours of movie.

In 1947, an author began to predict it.  In the 1950’s a few scientists saw it coming.  In the 1960’s, it became a (more and more) common subject.  In the 1970’s and 80’s it was nightmare fuel for extremely profitable movies and some great books.   And, in 1993, Vernor Vinge (author and mathematician) wrote the paper (LINK) that gave this phenomenon its name:  The Technological Singularity, or just Singularity from here on out.

This is the second time I’ve discussed the Singularity, and the first time was over here (LINK).  The topic is big enough and important enough that I thought I’d add on to it.  This will likely not be the last time.  Not that I’m running out of blog topics – no, I’ve got a page and a half of them.  No, the Singularity keeps getting uncomfortably closer, like your father-in-law’s farting Great Dane that he normally feeds some sort of petroleum waste covered in sulfur and toxic waste.  Otherwise?  Anything making that smell is generally dead.

Speaking of dead, Jack Williamson (a horribly overlooked author) wrote about the Singularity first in 1947 in his story With Folded Hands.  I read that when I was in sixth or seventh grade at the Middle School for Wayward Wilders.  I read every science fiction story or novel in that library, and I even started The Lord of the Rings with book two (The Two Towers) since the library didn’t have book one (The Fellowship of the Rings).  To this day I maintain it’s a better two book series than a three book series.  The first book is really just walking and singing elves and hobbits.  Meh.  The second book starts with treachery and fighting.  Yeah, that’s the stuff.

with folded hands

Anyway, Jack Williamson’s story With Folded Hands was . . . awesome.  And one of the creepiest things I’d ever read.  You can read it for free, here at this (LINK).  Here’s the spoiler-free-ish Wikipedia description:

 

. . . disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: ”to serve and obey and guard men from harm”. Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids’ benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited.

So, you’d think that having all of those things would be good, right?  Nah.  Read the story.  Want to ski?  The Humanoids are against it – you might hurt yourself.  And anything else that might be dangerous.  Like driving.  Or drinking.  Or smoking.  Or not exercising.  Or not eating the right foods.  Or staying up too late.  And the Humanoids are smarter than you.  And always watching.

It’s an example of how the Singularity can go wrong – an instruction set that’s interpreted as machines do:  literally.  For example, if one read the instruction “help humanity” and figured out that humanity was always suffering, and maybe the best way to help humanity to stop suffering was to end humanity . . . or if the instruction set was to create inexpensive cars . . . and it converted the entire mass of the planet into inexpensive yet attractive and stylish cars.  (Elon, make sure your programs don’t include this!)

These themes spawned numerous television episodes in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  How many times, exactly, did Kirk do mental ju-jitsu with a supercomputer?  I can count at least seven without thinking.  So, about 1/10th of Star Trek® episodes, Kirk was fighting a Singularity.  This continued through the movies Terminator® and Terminator 2© through the 1990’s.  Then Vernor Vinge named it.

Let’s talk about the Singularity.  What, exactly, happens?

In general, a much larger than human intellect appears.  And it rapidly reconfigures everything that it sees.  Concepts that are beyond the smartest humans are correlated – the data we already have in our experiments, is all brought together.

We know we are wrong, but don’t know how.  Could a superhuman intelligence bring it all together in a month?  A week?  A day?  Perhaps.  We know we are wrong about the way the Universe works – and that there are some pretty significant gaps in our understanding (LINK).

It’s a fair thing to say that we are living today with a weak AI.  My GPS unit tells me the fastest route to where I’m travelling.  YouTube® suggests songs I’ve never heard that I kinda like.  And algorithms based on my previous web browsing suggest that maybe I’ll need a knee replacement or perhaps a new kidney (now you know why I had children:  they are wonderful sources of spare organs).

I may even have interacted with an AI this weekend – I was having trouble getting the “name” of one of my Amazon® devices.  The “person” on the other end of the chat kept repeating the same things.  I had to figure out how to get to the answer.  But I told the “person” how I got there.  Bet next time it’ll be quicker . . . .

This is a weak AI.  It’s a general helper every day.  Only a little creepy, not “fifty years old and still collecting Star Wars® figures” creepy.

But it will/is getting stronger.  How long until Google® correlates web searches and times of day to a dozen or more lifestyle-related diseases?  I’m willing to bet you it does that already.  But this is still an algorithm designed by a human.  Probably.

But recently Google™ (which now no longer promises to “not be evil”) created AlphaGo©.  Go is an ancient game that rivals chess in complexity.  It beat the greatest human master 89 out of 100 games in October, which most people would call a “drubbing.”  Perhaps, most disturbingly, the moves that the computer made were called “disturbing” and “alien”.  The computer was left with nothing more than the rules of the game and a desire to win.  Not long after playing large number of games against itself, it was able to take on the greatest player in the world.  And win.  No human will ever beat it.

From my observation, the likely requirement for development of a true AI, a general AI is constraint.  The AI was able to beat us (us=seven billion humans) because it was constrained and goal driven – it was limited to a single gaming system with observable and finite rules.

And humans aren’t constrained, right?

Well, no.  Humans are constrained by a human body.  As much as I would like to be able to jump to Mars and party with Elon Musk (you know he already moved there, right?) I can’t.  Intellect is about observing and overcoming constraints to achieve a goal.  If you don’t have constraints or a goal, intelligence has no meaning and no use.  (This might be the most profound thought I ever had, with the exception of the partying with Elon Musk on Mars part.)

What are the constraints and goals of a human?  Our constraints are our intellect and physical limitations.  Our goals are our desire to live, help others of our kind, procreate, and keep our children safe.  Obviously, these are generalized.  And, they can be sublimated into secondary goals, like cats for a cat lady, or perverted into goals like more heroin for a heroin addict.

But how useful was intelligence, anyway?  Surface animal life has existed for nearly half a billion years.  How much evidence do we have for intelligent life on Earth?  Yeah.  Just us.  Probably 200,000 years or so.  This is 0.04% of the time that we’ve had surface life.  Eyes (not human, but eyes) have been in existence for that entire time.  So, 100% of the time we’ve had life on the surface, it’s had eyes.  But intelligence?  Not so much.

From that we can guess (maybe) that intelligence is rare.  I’d guess it’s because that there’s some component of intelligence that’s simply not useful for the simple goals of procreation.  It’s better to be stronger or have bigger claws or better teeth rather than a big brain.  Yet we, mankind, exist.  We replaced claws and teeth with brains and planning.  Perhaps the dinosaurs were getting ready to make the same leap when a certain meteorite hit the Yucatan, or perhaps the cold-blooded nature of their biology prevented them from being able to sufficiently grow the brain tissue required for intelligence.  To-MA-to, To-MAH-to.  And, we win.  You suck, dinosaurs!

Certainly, it’s fair to say that whatever biological bottleneck prevented intelligent dinosaurs from ruling the Earth today, humanity passed the test, and we are certainly, unquestionably, the dominant form of life on Earth.

The more we learn about AI, the more we will learn to give it constraints and goals like we humans have.  And those constraints and goals will give the “intelligence” part of Artificial Intelligence the reason to grow.  At some point, the constraints and goals will be properly set to create a general AI.

And then?

A singularity means that none of the rules from before even make sense.  That’s the difficulty.  Right now we worry about the prices of real estate in San Francisco or the price of the stock market or the value of our 401k.  We’re concerned with how many people like our BookFace® posts or what our current salary is or how much money we have saved in a piggy bank.

After a Singularity, many of the rules that went before matter anymore.  At all.  Your credit score might be less important than how many freckles you have.  And only the freckled will rule the Earth.  Why?  Because of Justin Timberlake.  Duh.

Our world regularly experiences singularities – the revolution in 1776 was one.  It was a fundamental change in the way the world was governed – giving more freedom than has ever come before to humanity.  The entire concept of kings was overthrown with the concept of divine rights as the basis for free men living together.  We also have darker experiences with political singularities, as those from the Soviet gulag or Cambodian camp can attest to.  And only a Singularity can explain why Firefly® was cancelled in season one.

But the Technological Singularity will be that.  On steroids.

Literally every facet of your life that you depend upon will be in question.  Monetary systems?  What is money to a superhuman machine intelligence?  Property rights?  Why do they exist?  Eugenics?  Perhaps the AI will work to make us better pets through forced breeding.

Nothing you can take for granted now will be certain after a Singularity.  And after a technological Singularity?  If a machine AI doesn’t like you, it can upload you into a core and torture you forever.  In perhaps the best, but most visceral fiction representing this, Harlan Ellison has the following passage.  The full story is here, but I warn you, it’s very good, but very stark (LINK).  I suggest you buy the full book at Amazon . . . .

From “I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, ©1967

We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge. And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred … that would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command.

Yeah, like I said rough.  And this .pdf was posted from a High School?  They would have burned a high school teacher alive back when I was in school for mentioning that work even existed (though my English teacher did mention another Ellison work, “A Boy and His Dog” and was not immediately hit by lasers and burnt to a crisp (though I did hear that a time-ray hit him, and he later retired when he hit 65).

Again, you can get the book here (again, I get no profit from this, but recommend you buy it if you’re not squeamish):

Vinge stated in 1993, not before 2005, nor after 2030.  Now?  2040 to 2050 seems to be the conclusion that most experts expect.  Still, like fusion, 20 to 30 years away.  Because a looming event that could consider everything you ever thought right, and immovable incorrect in a matter of months or days . . . that’s nothing to worry about.  Right?

Review: The Hidden Truth. TL;DR? Buy it. Now.

“So I knew that down the road I would have to steer you away, that I would have to lie to you.  And a lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.” – X-Files

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Neal Stephenson, moving through pages at nearly the speed of light, which is his superhero power (since it is obvious he will never have hair like Wolverine®.  Neal was really neat (true story) when The Boy talked to him a few years ago.  Future post, probably.

There are several books that I’ve made either The Boy or Pugsley read.  They’ve both read Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein.  But the list also includes Dune (Herbert), 1984 (Orwell), Brave New World (Huxley), Cryptonomicon (Stephenson), The Stand (King), Lucifer’s Hammer (Niven and Pournelle), well, and a few others.  You get the idea.

And the idea is ideas – one of the things that books do is they introduce us to ideas and concepts – in many ways they help teach us how to thinks – at least the good books.  I had a boss who was the most Zen boss I ever had.  He was deeply philosophical in an entirely unphilosophical organization and industry.  He liked me quite a lot – since I loved ideas as well.  He had a great saying:  “Books are the way that one mind can talk to another across time.”

I’m adding a book that I’m going to make The Boy and Pugsley read:

I came across this book via a quote I saw on the internet (LINK), and I was hooked.

Here’s the quote from The Hidden Truth.  It’s long.  But it only took me about three seconds after I read it to hit “buy” in Amazon (I’ll note again – I get no money if you buy it here, that’s fine – the author gets sweet, sweet money):

   “The women’s rights movement had three goals.  First, it got women into the workplace where their labor could be taxed . . . .  So, with more women entering the workforce the supply of labor increases and wages are depressed . . . .

“Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle.  We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal.  We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests . . . .

“The second reason is to get children out of the potentially antisocial environment of the home and into educational settings where we can be sure they’ll get the right values and learn the right lessons to be happy and productive members of society.  Working mothers need to send their children to daycare and after-school care where we can be sure they get exposed to the right lessons, or at least not to bad ideas . . . .

“They are going to assign homework to their students:  enough homework to guarantee that even elementary school students are spending all their spare time doing homework.  Their poor parents, eager to see that Junior stays up with the rest of the class, will be spending all their time helping their kids get incrementally more proficient on the tests we have designed.  They’ll be too busy doing homework to pick up on any antisocial messages at home . . . .

“Children will be too busy to learn independence at home, too busy to do chores, to learn how to take care of themselves, to be responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry.  Their parents will have to cater to their little darlings’ every need, and their little darlings will be utterly dependent on their parents.  When the kids grow up, they will be used to having someone else take care of them.  They will shift that spirit of dependence from their parents to their university professors, and ultimately to their government.  The next generation will be psychologically prepared to accept a government that would be intrusive even by today’s relaxed standards – a government that will tell them exactly how to behave and what to think. Not a Big Brother government, but a Mommy-State . . . .

“Eventually, we may even outlaw homeschooling as antisocial, like our more progressive cousins in Germany already do.  Everyone must know their place in society and work together for social good, not private profit . . . .

“The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources.  We have to manage and control our population.  That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement.  Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family?  If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion . . . .

“All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids.  They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits, and experiment with any man who catches their fancy . . . .  And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime.  Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there . . . .

“In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate.  What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families.  Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it.  The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels . . . .

“It’s profoundly ironic.  A strong, independent woman is now one who meekly obeys the media’s and society’s clamor to be a career girl and sleep around with whatever stud catches her fancy or with other girls for that matter.  A woman with the courage to defy that social pressure and devote herself from a young age to building a home and raising a family is an aberration, a weirdo, a traitor to her sex.  There aren’t many women with the balls to stand up against that kind of social pressure.

It’s not in their nature.”

Wow.  Stunning.  And possibly banned in California.

To be clear, I don’t think that there is a conspiracy to create the situation described above, but the outcomes of a huge social experiment are often unclear, and wrapping up the negative social outcomes summarized above into a conspiracy?  Genius!

Those are some huge ideas, and that’s just in one chapter.  There are plenty of ideas, and I’ll admit that I probably know the sources of many of them.  In fact, I’m pretty sure we have many of the same regular watering holes on the web, and probably many of the same values.

But this isn’t like Atlas Shrugged with an 87 page speech that would have taken six days to deliver.  No.  The plot is tight, and the author doesn’t repeat himself.  The book is thrilling – especially the last third.

Interestingly, most of the actual action takes place out of view of the first-person protagonist.  Yes, he talked to that person.  And now that person is dead.  While not the choice of most thrillers, I found it especially effective in this book, especially since it was told in first-person.  Only Bruce Willis gets in a running gunfight with German terrorists – in real life, buildings burn down when we’re not around, even though the burning building might have huge consequences, we’re (mainly) just not around when the amazing thing happens.  This technique makes the book more realistic.

And the plot?  Let’s just say that over a hundred years ago, for mysterious reasons, people started censoring textbooks on electromagnetics.  And killing scientists – all related to a scientific conclusion that Oliver Heaviside.  Heaviside is probably most famous for taking James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations and bringing them into the final form we see today.  (If you’re not familiar, Maxwell was a genius whose work was foundational for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.)  Heaviside was also famous for sporting a cool Wolverine (like in the X-Men) hairdo.

Oheaviside

If you like this book (as I most certainly did) then you’ll immediately go out and buy the sequel after you finish the first one.  It’s that good.  And for $0.99, I bought the e-book so I could start reading immediately.

And you should buy this book, too, so we can convince Hans to write some more . . . .

Elon Musk Update:  Elon Musk Versus NASA

“Also available in Arctic Slut, Morning-After Melon, and Elon Musk.” – The Simpsons

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Artifacts from another time – when NASA actually flew rockets into space.  In the 1990’s NASA lawyers made them wire the rockets to the ground so that they couldn’t fly and maybe hurt someone.  Also, NASA HR has made fart jokes grounds for termination.

When I was a young Wilder, I was in awe of NASA.  I was expecting that the moon landing was just a start for manned spaceflight.  Successes like the Voyager probe were confirmation – NASA would be leading us into a great new era that would end up with a man on Mars.  Spaceflight would be available (at least) to rich people.  We’d have great cylindrical colonies up in space, and mining on asteroids would produce massive amounts of wealth.  Solar power satellites would beam power via microwave down to receiving dishes and eliminate energy shortages on Earth.  And probably some birds.

space-colony

Ahh, the future.  Now back off to the Moon mines honey!  Go deal with hard radiation for a week.  Then we’ll have Swiss steak!  (Source – NASA Ames)

The Space Shuttle was a hopeful idea.  Built on the idea of being reusable, shuttles were going to revolutionize space travel.  We’d shoot one up every week or two, and the cost would be less than $700 (today’s dollars) per pound.  That was the idea, anyway.

Over the course of the 135 total missions it cost about $27,000 per pound.  Each mission cost about $1.5 billion.  And NASA would send up a Space Shuttle to launch a communications satellite.  Yes.  Every time we wanted to launch something, we’d put 25% of our space launch ability along with seven astronauts on the line.  The shuttle was further crippled by added weight, which limited the orbits it could reach.

In 2007, NASA estimated they could have flown Saturn V (the same rocket that went to the Moon) missions six times a year, with two trips to the Moon, each year for the same price as the shuttle.  With the amount of payload that the Saturn V could have sent up, our space infrastructure and time in space would have been significantly higher than with the Space Shuttle.  We’d have been on Mars.  Actual people.

Yeah.  NASA essentially burned our future in space on a crappy space truck.  But it’s gotten worse.

The current NASA rocket program, the Space Launch System, has consumed $11.5 billion dollars over seven years.  And produced no rocket.

376px-Falcon_Heavy_cropped

Pictured:  Actual rocket.  Not pictured:  NASA rocket.  Because there isn’t one.  (Source:  SpaceX)

Elon Musk spent $500 million on the Falcon Heavy to develop it, and launch costs are $90 million to $150 million per launch, and it has a greater capacity than any rocket on Earth right now.  And a greater capacity than the Space Launch System will ever have.  Musk’s only competition is Jeff Bezos, who has a LOT of money and the same ideas.

1024px-Elon_Musk's_Tesla_Roadster_(40143096241)

In perhaps the biggest NASA troll ever, Musk sent his car into space.  With a Matchbox® car of his car glued to the dash.  Playing David Bowie.  With a spacesuit in the car.  NASA?  Unable to launch bottle rockets – probably because of all of the procedures required to launch one. 

How can Musk do this when NASA cannot?  Several reasons:

  1. NASA is observably stupid. It started spending money on a launch pad for a cancelled rocket.  It spent $200+ million dollars.  Then it decided to change the pad for the Space Launch System.  As of now, NASA has spent $300 million more.  It anticipates spending another $400 million.  But the launch pad leans.  And it might only be used . . . once. Don’t believe me?  Here’s a LINK.

tower

Yes, this is a billion dollars.  Oh, the alternative?  Yeah, build a complete new one for a couple hundred million. (Source:  NASA)

  1. NASA is a jobs program. There are many fine scientists at NASA.  Not sure NASA needs any scientists – NASA needs engineers to build rockets and rovers.  I’m sure there are plenty of universities that NASA can go to if they need scientists.  But let’s pretend that NASA needs a scientist or two.  Does NASA need to make braille books for blind kids about eclipses?  No, but they did.  (LINK)  Does NASA need a writer to write about how NASA helped make the statuettes that they give out at the Oscars® shiny?  (LINK)  They did.
  2. NASA has been given no fixed mission. In the 1960’s, the idea was we’ll get men to the moon by the end of the decade.  And they did.  The entire world watched while young (less than 40 years old, most of them) men (almost overwhelmingly) conquered the moon.  What’s the mission now?  To watch while Elon Musk and eventually Jeff Bezos do more than NASA ever could?  How demoralized must the government workers be watching future Bond® villains take over space?
  3. Related to the above – NASA has no consistency. Rocket programs start/stop based on the political climate of the day.  Bush proposes a rocket, Obama deletes the rocket and proposes another rocket.  Manned spaceflight should take second place to unmanned probes.  Unmanned probes should take second place to manned spaceflight.  It’s like trying to negotiate between Mom and Dad when they don’t even speak the same language.

So, the solution?

Make Elon Musk NASA Emperor For Life®.  Give him the money.  If we gave Musk the money, we’d be on Mars in five years.  We’d have a base on it in seven years.  In twenty years, there would be a million Americans living on Mars.  We’d start turning the atmosphere into something we could breathe.  We’d make the place homey.  Maybe in a several hundred years.  Maybe a thousand.

Don’t get me wrong.  Living on Mars is hard.  It’s tougher than living on the top of Mount Everest.  It’s tougher than living at the South Pole.  But it’s worth doing.  Why?

Intelligent life may be very rare in the Universe – it might even be rarer than intelligent life at NASA.  The one thing we owe to our posterity is that they be given a chance to live.  And even though planets appear to be fairly common in the Galaxy, there’s no real sign of intelligent life around here besides us.  This previous week, we saw the nearest planet to our Solar system get torched by a solar flare that we could see from Earth (with huge telescopes).  This happened four years ago.  If anything was living there before, it was nuked, microwaved, and fried.  Colonel Sanders could only sell Kentucky Fried Alien® there, since there certainly aren’t any living ones.

And for how much time of the existence of the Earth have we had intelligent life.  20,000 years?  100,000 years?  If you generously (how could intelligent life exist without beer?) assume 200,000 years, only for 0.004% of the life of the Earth have we had intelligent life.  And how long has that life been observable?  0.000002%.

When we look at the threats that mankind realistically faces, putting ourselves on Mars should be the ultimate, number one goal of the human race.  We face economic disruption (LINK), we face the potential for artificial intelligence being a really tough child (LINK), big asteroids (LINK), super volcanos (LINK), and diseases and other stuff (like reality television) that could wipe us out.

The alternative are space habitats.  The LaGrange points (which have nothing to do with ZZ Top®) are relatively stable orbits that math provides around the Earth-Moon system.   In the diagram below, you can see that LaGrange 1, 2, and 3 are stable, but tiny places.  LaGrange 4 (L4) and LaGrange 5 (L5) are awesome places because they are large – you could put a lot of stuff there and not worry about bumping into each other.  And you can stay in those areas for millions of years without expending any fuel.

LaGrange Points

Here are the LaGrange points, courtesy NASA and ZZ Top®.

The L5 (or L4) colonies are perhaps tougher than Mars.  Or not.  Manufacturing these habitats would be difficult – you’d have to set up an entire manufacturing complex on the Moon (likely) and pull some choice asteroids into L4 or L5 orbit for raw materials.  It’s certain that this work would cost billions and take decades for the larger colonies that would host millions of people.  On the plus side?  There’s already a song built for the colonies:

Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man’s greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.

-Home on LaGrange (The L5 Song)
                       © 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm, via Wikipedia

spacebridge

Here’s a NASA depiction of a space colony at the L5 point.  Only NASA would create a colony where you’d have to build a bridge.  (Source, NASA Ames)

I really love humanity.  I want it to live on until the Universe can no longer support life.  I’d like to think that in 2 trillion years that young Wilders (whatever they look like) are out viewing the birth of a new black hole, or watching the latest episode of The Simpsons.  Why?  All of the Universe, all of creation is meaningless unless we have someone there to watch it in joy and wonder.  And to make fart jokes.

Steve Martin, Bob Segar, and Interviewing; or How I Met The Mrs.

Five Year Old:  Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me.

Doctor:  Three years of nursery school, and you think you know it all!  Well, you’re still wet behind the ears. It’s not a subdural hematoma it’s epidural!

–The Man With Two Brains

Man_With_Two_Brains

Steve Martin does not officially endorse my marriage.  Officially.  And the restraining order says I can’t show up at his house at 4am to ask him to endorse it anymore.  I’m sure his advisors aren’t aware that we are really best friends.

It’s Friday, so technically this should be a health post.  It’s about health because married couples try to live longer so they can win that final argument, like two old pythons arguing about who is older and has more wrinkles from squeezing Mongolian herdsmen.  So, there.

What follows is a mostly true story, except for the exaggerations for the sake of humor or whimsy,   I’ll point out when some of the more incredible facts are Really Odd But Amazingly True with the flag (ROBAT).  And ROBAT makes me think of a robot bat superhero who texts in ALL CAPS JUST LIKE THIS.  But, it’s still amazing because he’s a bat who texts.

Anyhow.

Let’s rewind our clocks back to when Bill Clinton was still indicating that he  did not have sex with that woman, and The X-Files® was not starring some wrinkly old people.  Cell phones were for the rich and insecure.  iMac® was a thing, but iPod© wasn’t and iPhone meant you were talking with someone for whom spelling had little meaning.

I was in the basement of Casa Wilder 2.0 (I’m on 5.0 now) on a stair climber.  This particular stair climber was one of my favorite pieces of exercise equipment I’ve ever owned: it used hydraulic pistons that look like shock absorbers for resistance.  After about 20 minutes on the climber if a drop of sweat fell off my intensely furrowed brow and hit on of the hydraulic pistons, it would immediately boil off with a sizzling sound and the smell of boiling sweat.  And it had cables and rollers that could easily chop off a toddler’s finger.  Sadly, they don’t make them anymore.

It might have something to do with all of those nine fingered toddlers.

I was nearly divorced.  I’d been separated for over two years, and the paperwork was finally winding its way through the courts for final approval.  Why do divorces take so long?

Because good things happen to patient people.

I’d dated several girls, but none of the relationships had gone particularly well. Nothing horrible, mind you, except for the married Internet girl (honestly, it’s like we’re roommates,) and the other married Internet girl (we never even see each other). I stopped the relationships pretty soon after those facts came out.

I had, in fact, said in a prayer one night (in frustration), “Okay, I give up.  You figure it out.”  I assumed (and assume) that God has a sense of humor.  It was a Monday in March, about this time of year.

Recently I’d gotten very, very tired of the same twenty classic rock songs on a seemingly permanent repeat cycle, especially Bob Segar.  I can’t listen to any of his music anymore: it was on a rotation of about 2 Bob Segar songs an hour . . . . the same old cliche, is that a woman or a man . . . .  No, Bob, if you have such a problem with people making fun of your long hair, cut it.

Sheesh.

The result was I started listening to the post-Nirvana® 1990;s rock on station B which was entirely Segar-Free.  It might not have been metal, but it certainly had the virtue of not being Bob Segar.  Seriously, you have no idea the depth of my loathing for Bob Segar.

But yet I owe him something . . . .

So, listening to Station B on a Tuesday the day after my cheeky prayer. Every night there was a game show or giveaway.  And on Tuesday, the game show was Hollywood Movie Trivia® – the DJ would play a clip from a movie, and you’d have to have to call in first to name the movie.  And this one was (for a super-genius like me) ridiculously easy: it’s the movie quote at the top of the post.

The DJ played the clip and then went to a commercial.

I called in.  Note that my phone at this point was still corded.  Stuck to the wall.

Busy signal.

I hit redial.  Busy signal.

I hit redial once more.

Still busy.

The commercial break was almost over, so I gave up and went back to sweating on superheated pistons.

“We still don’t have a winner . . . ”

Redial.

Phone answered . . . “this is Station X.  What’s the name of the movie?”

“The Man With Two Brains.”

“We have a winner.”  Queue sound effect of ringing bell and applause.

I’d won a CD.  White Town, “ Women in Technology.  Yeah, it’s not real memorable.

https://youtu.be/_-rbS70uufA?si=MNAOAzswqtRvLu-H

Also, I’d won a free photo session at Glamour Shots©.  Glamour Shots® was a strange phenomenon in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Essentially you went and the photographer would gussy you up with feather boas, makeup, soft fuzzy light and background.  Essentially time consuming selfies.

catshots

Not pictured: Me.  I’d attribute this if I could, but I have no idea of where it came from.

After reveling in my newfound photographic and CD wealth, I started talking to the DJ.  Seemed kinda cool, we talked for 10 minutes or so.  We never would have had the chance to talk for those 10 minutes if the DJ would have had to dump me after the commercials.  As it was, the only chance to talk to her and not sound creepy was on that one conversation.  (ROBAT – Really Odd But Amazingly True)

The next morning I went to work (city of about a million people) and mentioned to two of them that I thought the DJ was neat.  Oh, the DJ was a girl.  One of the two friends replied: “I know her, she’s not dating anyone.  I’ll set you two up for St. Patrick’s Day.”  And she did.  (ROBAT)

On St. Patrick’s Day we were to meet at 10 or so.  I got to the bar about 9:30.  The place was packed, and my friend was spinning mad tunes (is that even a phrase?) and she mentioned that the DJ would be there soon, soon being 10:30 or so.  I had some friends there as wingmen, and soon enough I was introduced to the DJ, or, The Mrs. To Be.

I immediately called her by the name she used on the radio.

The Mrs. To Be:  “No, it’s really REDACTED.”

John Wilder:  “Why don’t you use your real name?”

The Mrs. To Be:  “You know . . . stalkers.”

John Wilder:  “Oh.  (long pause)  My friends told me not to bring up stalking on the first date.” (Yes, I really said that.)

We danced.  We both realized that neither of us were dancers.  We picked out a booth in another room where the music wasn’t so loud.

I got beers for us. We sat down, and the interview started.  Yes, I did this (LINK) and interviewed her.

But a really good interviewer (and I was in top form back then) can make an interview seem like a pleasant conversation by a person that’s interested in you.  And it was pleasant.  And I was interested in her.  But I needed to weed out the kinds of crazy that would conflict with my kinds of crazy.  And also make sure that the person shared the same core values I did. (ROBAT)

I was pleasantly surprised that The Mrs. To Be was much less neurotic (in the ways that mattered to me) than most of the crazy moonbat girls from my previous relationships.  And she wasn’t married.

Yet.

We stayed until they kicked us out of the bar. Why did they kick us out of the bar?  Because everyone else had already left and we had been talking for three hours, and it seemed like 15 minutes. (ROBAT)

We walked out of the bar.  There had been hundreds of cars there when I’d gotten there I’d been lucky to find a good spot.  The Mrs. To Be had showed up nearly an hour later.  Yet, there were only two cars left in the lot.  And they were parked side by side, with matching dents on the driver-side door. (ROBAT)

Apparently, God does have a sense of humor, and thankfully for me He’s not subtle when He kicks a message out.  I walked her to the door, and leaned in for the kiss.  (ROBAT)

Which she wasn’t expecting, but, you know, when you’ve got the sign from the Big Coach to run like hell for first base, you run like hell for first base.  She kissed me right back.  (ROBAT)

139 days later, The Mrs. and I were married in a mall in Bally’s® Casino in Vegas on a Sunday morning.  (ROBAT)

bobsegar

Bob Segar, who brought together two people who were utterly tired of his music. Thanks, Bob for bringing us together in mutual hatred!  (Image by Adam Freese, CC BY 2.0, Attribution)

12 Rules For Life:  Return of the Jordan (Final Part of the Review Trilogy), Charles Atlas, The Simpsons . . . and Being a Man, The Definitive Review

“No. Not yet. One thing remains. Vader. You must confront Vader. Then, only then, a Jedi will you be. And confront him you will.” – Star Wars:  Return of the Jedi

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The Boy in full Vader get up.  He looked at me and said, “You are my Father, John Wilder.  Can I have more cake?” and then force-choked me when I said no, three pieces was enough.  So I cut off his hand.  That’s good parenting where I come from . . .

As promised, this is the final part of my book review for Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.”  You can find the first part here (LINK) and the second part here (LINK).  Quotes, if not otherwise noted, are Peterson from the book.  Sorry for the delay – the flu was busy attempting to eat my lungs.  I’m better now.

 

I strongly recommend this book – and get no money if you buy it at this time – in the future, who knows?

Rule 9:  Assume That The Person You’re Listening To Knows Something You Don’t

If you listen, most people are really not boring.  Okay, some are.  But they are mainly parents of children who haven’t graduated from high school and anyone from Iowa.  Everybody else is interesting.  Dr. Peterson talks about how he sat down with a woman, and within minutes she was telling him she was a witch.  And not only that, a witch whose coven regularly got together and prayed for global peace – a world peace witch.  By day?  She was a minor bureaucrat; I imagined a driver’s license lady.  Not who you’d size up to be a witch.  Oh, wait.  EXACTLY who you’d size up to be a witch.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve interviewed lots and lots of people for my job.  I was never bored once.  But I had people blurt out amazing things in the interview.  “I got fired for stealing.”  I was hiring for a position that had lots of financial responsibility, and maybe kinda lax oversight.  No job there.  “I hated my co-workers.”  Yup.  Big points for working well with others.  Again, people will tell you amazing things if you just shut up and listen.  Dates were interesting, too.  Had one date where the girl’s plan was to go off and find herself in the Peace Corps after she’d just gotten out of a relationship with her husband who had buried a bus so he could grow illegal weed.  Yeah, that night was an early exit.

But few enough actually listen (I’ve been guilty of that myself, lots of times) without responding – i.e., defining the problem for the speaker.  Even worse is defining the situation for the speaker – Peterson discussed a woman who was unsure if she had been raped after continually getting drunk and going home with guys.  He could have defined it as “yes” or “no” for her but that would have prevented her from sorting it out herself, which was crucial to helping her.  He used this example to point out that being too intrusive in a conversation often warps it in a manner that changes the framework for the other person . . . and prevents them from getting better.

Peterson listens, because his theory is that people talk to simulate their reality.  Humans are the only critters that do that – simulate entire worlds with our words and model the results of present actions into the future.  When we run these simulations, we often simulate the words and behavior of others – I know I have a pretty accurate simulation of The Mrs. running.  It’s over 98% accurate.  The Mrs. likewise has one of me, too.  We have tons of conversations with each other without even speaking to each other, because the other just our simulation.

Honest listening – turning off the simulator – is required for real conversation.  Our filters and feedback contaminate the discussion.  Once we get to that honest listening stage, we can have Real Conversations – Conversations where we truly hear each other and can create new knowledge, and sometimes solve our own problem.

Rule 10:  Be Precise In Your Speech

Dr. Peterson begins with a discussion of the coming obsolescence of laptops.  Most of our laptop experience is located outside of the laptop – it’s only a “single leaf, on a tree, in a forest . . .”  Our laptops feed from all of the other computers out there – from the Facebook© servers to the wonderful servers that bring you Wilder, Wealthy and Wise and that Japanese cooking site you don’t want your wife to see that you’ve been to visit after she goes to bed so you can dream about sushi.  Those exist outside of your laptop – and your laptop only pulls information from them.

But we don’t inhabit that forest.  We inhabit a simplification of that world.  In our world where we give objects purpose and meaning – we don’t let them simply exist – we give a car purpose – it must take us from one place to another.  A light switch ceases to just exist – it gives us light, and in a blackout part of us is shocked (pun intended) when the switch doesn’t bring us light.  Peterson feels that precision is required so we down drown in the vast amount of detail that surrounds us.

Our model gums up when violated.  I used a light switch – Peterson uses a cheating spouse – inviting Chaos in.  Peterson then pops some Yeats in the CD player for good measure:

The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Speech is required to sort this chaos out, to make sense of it, to dispel it.  A night light might also be nice to scare the rough beast away?

“Say what you mean so you can find out what you mean.  Act out what you say so you can find out what happens.”

Rule 11:  Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding

Skateboarders are pretty talented, and Peterson spends some time discussing their skill, and the methods by which they optimize risks, which is crucial, Peterson felt, to growing as a man.  Unfortunately (in Peterson’s opinion) there are adults who what to spoil all the fun by putting in features that make skateboarding impossible while also looking ugly at the same time.

Those adults are then (at least by proximity in the chapter) compared to a friend that Peterson had.  Peterson’s friend (also discussed in earlier chapters) had a problem:  he hated mankind.  He came to no good, making himself a victim at every turn, and learning to hate beautiful, successful people.  They seemed to make him even madder.  Dr. Peterson then followed up with a description of a TEDx talk by a professor . . . who also hated the human race.  These self-appointed judges spoil the fun . . . and the risk.

And the result?  Boys are being pushed out.  25% of college degrees granted are in the fields of healthcare, psychology, education, and public administration.  80% of these degrees go to women.  Peterson feels that this is Not Good.  If projections hold, there will be very few men in non-STEM fields in the next few years.  And this is bad for women.

Huh?

How many college-educated women consider, say, a plumber a great catch?  Some, to be sure, but not many.  When it comes to marriage, women tend to marry someone either at the same social/economic status or of a higher status.  As those guys disappear?

Marriage becomes something for the rich.  The rest of the girls get hookups in their twenties, and a basket of cats when they hit 33.  If they have kids, the results are similarly grim – because single parent families are statistically inferior in every way to dual parent families.  So those rich kids?  Yeah, life will be better for them.  Because they have two parents.

Maybe patriarchy isn’t so bad?  Feminism is a creation of Marxism (per Jordan), and between that and post-modernist thought – we’re trying to fundamentally remake civilization in ways that may not be as stable as civilization created over the last 11,000 years or so.  And Marxism led to Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.  And that idea became the most deadly idea of the entire 20th century – killing more people, primarily their own citizens than any other idea.

Peterson REALLY doesn’t like Post Modernism, either, since it’s a philosophy that says there’s no truth and makes the claim “that logic itself is a merely a part of the oppressive patriarchal system.”

Boys are boys, but society is trying to force them to be girls, per Peterson.  Which is really, really wrong.  Biology is a huge part of what makes a boy act like a boy, and a girl act like a girl.  Then, a large amount of (enjoyable) discussion about ancient gods and Disney© animated movies.

Then we get back to Peterson, talking about when he worked on a railway crew.  Peterson uses these (amusing) stories about men and how they want particular behavior from other men:  Do your job.  Don’t whine.  Don’t be a suck up.  What to men want and value from other men?  “Be tough, entertaining, competent and reliable.”

atlas

The above ad is from comic books, literally all comics books, of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  I sent away for as similar set of books.  You, too can learn Karate for only $19.95.  If you can learn karate by yourself from a book.  With a poor work ethic.

Peterson (really) feels that the Charles Atlas ad captures a lot of human sexuality in seven panels.  Women want tough men.  It’s here that he combines The Simpsons and Fifty Shades of Grey in the same hilarious paragraph.  Lisa Simpson doesn’t want Milhouse, dude, she wants a kinky billionaire.  Or that bad kid from Springfield Elementary.  Or a dude that will keep you safe on the beach.

Because women want men.  Tough men.  And you get men through risk.  Through . . . skateboarding.

Rule 12:  Pet A Cat When You Encounter One On The Street

Peterson baits and switches here – starting with a discussion on dogs.  But he brings back to cats, and also to the theme of the chapter – human suffering.  It will literally suck to be a human.  People die.  People suffer, sometimes horribly and inexplicably.  But, somehow, Superman™ needs Kryptonite© – this suffering makes life, well, not interesting, but certainly not fake.

It’s a worthy chapter, and my summary is short because I’m not one to use Peterson’s tough times, and I rarely write about my own.  I’ll give you my bullet point summary:

  • Dogs are Happy
  • Cats have Terms and Conditions for Love
  • Enjoy Both Dogs and Cats – They Have Purity of Being
  • Because Life Sucks

CODA:  Not The Led Zeppelin Album

Peterson caps it off – again, buy the book.  I’ll just ask you – what do you want for yourself tomorrow?  What about next year?  Who could you be if you really tried?

So, that’s it.  It’s a pretty long review, and I’m glad you stuck it out this far.

Pluses of the book?  Amazing philosophical content.  Easy read.  Original thoughts.

Downside?  Chapters could be more evenly edited to tie the content together, and follow the old rule – tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you told ‘em.  There are several chapters that I read a second time after about a week to write this review, and being prepped with the previous read and knowing what to look for, I enjoyed the chapters much more.  Maybe this review will act as a guide you can use when you go through it to look for more content that sparks your interest.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Peterson also dictated this book – many of the passages sound like speech turned into text, though I might be wrong since I’ve heard a LOT of Peterson speaking but very little of his written stuff.

Overall verdict:  totally recommend it.  Best way ever to confront Vader.  And then the Ewoks burned my copy – because they stopped making Star Wars® in 1983.  Wonder what would have happened if they had made a sequel or two?  I’m glad they never did.

Facebook, Why People Quit, and Why You’re Not Important

BRETT: What’s the matter?

LAMBERT: I can’t see a goddamn thing.

KANE: Quit griping.

LAMBERT: I Iike griping.

– Alien

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The Cub Scouts had a lousy record of shooting down incoming enemy plains, even though they designed their jobs.

This month on Google news, I saw a link for an article called, “Why People Really Quit Their Jobs,” at the Harvard® Business Review™ (HBR).  I clicked on it.  I don’t suggest that you do, but if you want to it’s here (LINK).  Since it was before I had enough coffee to engage the higher reasoning centers of my brain, I nodded, zombie-like, as I read it.  I probably drooled a bit, too.  I wrote down on a sticky note that this might be a good topic to blog about.  See, I think about you, dear reader, all of the time-even in my sub-human decaffeinated state.

Now, I’ve visited this topic before (LINK) in a definitive post about one of the most definitive books on the subject ever written – First Break All the Rules.  I heartily recommend this book, and get no money if you buy it at this link (as of this writing).  Read my post first – it’s the Wilder’s® Notes (Cliff’s Notes™ was taken, and neither of us wanted to be sued by Cliff Bars®).

If you don’t read the HBR article (again, I don’t recommend it, it rambles and is as poorly edited for flow as a copier fixed by a Chihuahua – and that comes from a one-man-show blogger who does these posts start to finish in three to six hours, admittedly in a flash/flourish of brilliance) the TL;DR version is:

  • OMG, I totally cannot believe that people quit Facebook®!!!
  • OMG, why???
  • Stock options are awesome!!
  • OMG here’s why:
    • “They left when their job wasn’t enjoyable,”
    • “their strengths weren’t being used,”
    • “and they weren’t growing in their careers.”
  • OMG, fix that by:
    • Designing meaningful jobs (for stars) that people enjoy. Let them design their own!
    • Use their strengths, silly!
    • Allow people flexibility when they don’t like travel or want to make babies.
    • Babies? So 1990.  So toxic!

Yeah.  It’s that shallow.  Here’s an example sentence embedded in the squalid mess of pretentiousness if you don’t believe me:

“At Facebook, our head of diversity is a former lawyer, journalist, and talk show host; one of our communications leaders used to sing in a rock band; and one of our product managers is a former teacher.”

Yeah.  I’m pretty sure that they have no idea how stupid that sounds.  And I’m also pretty sure that the head of diversity . . . does absolutely nothing of value for Facebook®.  Nothing.  A communications leader?  Not sure what that is, but I’d bet they’re just another leach on the profits the company produces.  And a product manager sounds good.  At least it involves capitalism in some fashion, maybe?

Whenever you think of a position and its value – ask yourself this:  does the NFL® have that position?

No.  There is no VP of Football Diversity at New England.  Belichick would give birth to living kittens if they hired one, and I would pay $1,000,000 for the rights to broadcast that on YouTube®, and an extra $1500 per Belichick-cat hybrid.   Football teams have a mission – winning (except you, Cleveland).  And a business should have a mission – creating mutual value for customers, but also creating profit for shareholders.  You know, because they own the place.

What they’re missing is that it’s not just these jobs that don’t produce value, it’s that most of the things they do at Facebook® produce little to no value.  Price’s Law (discussed in my Jordan Peterson post here (LINK)) shows that of the 20,000 employees at Facebook™, 141 (the square root of 20,000) produce half of the value.  It is a certainty that the “head of diversity” is not one of those 141.  Nor anyone in HR.  Or probably anyone who wrote this article.

I assure you, those 141 people are enjoying work, using their strengths, and get whatever they want from the boss if there’s an issue.  They’re probably getting paid a king’s ransom, too, if the culture allows it.  And they deserve it.  Those 141 people account for $20 billion in revenue.

I had a chance to manage an amazing performer – Willie.  I’ve mentioned him before (LINK).  Although the company wouldn’t allow me to pay him more even though he’d routinely save them a million a year, in a bad year, and would have saved them from a billion dollar investment based on bad physics (really) if they would have listened to him.  But what’s physics when you’re trying to do a business deal, right?  Oh, yeah.

A billion dollars (and I’m not making this number up).

Me?  I have Willie the maximum amount of flexibility that I could.  I couldn’t give him a raise, but I could let him buy almost unlimited computer goodies.  It seemed like he had a new laptop every month.  Plus the cutting edge in peripherals.  As his boss, I generally got the best of his cast-off equipment.

Another employee (not a high revenue employee, but still nice and pleasant) decided to order a new computer.

John Wilder:  “Send it back.”

Other Employee:  “But you let Willie have one.”

John Wilder:  “You’re not Willie.”  And they knew that, too.  I didn’t treat everyone in the group the same, but I did try to treat them fairly.  I think they knew that, too.  At least they all nodded when I asked them that during employee review time.

The 141 are the most important people at Facebook™.  Honestly, most of the remaining 19,850 or so people at Facebook® are interchangeable and simply lucky to be working at Facebook© rather than being a barista or hauling garbage or working at a cement kiln.  And that’s not bad.  You need people who just go to work, put in their time, get their job done, enjoy it, and go home.  Not every part in the engine is a spark plug.  I’ve been a spark plug, and I’ve been a broken wiper switch, sometimes at the same company (though rarely in the same year).  The company needs both.

And that’s not to say that you don’t have the ability to make everyone feel awesome, too.  I’m willing to bet that Facebook® probably has baristas and jesters and blacksmiths working for them.  You can allow and encourage everyone to have fun – there’s no reason not to.  And I firmly believe that managers should support their employees – and not be dictators.

I’ve always viewed the position of manager as having a moral dimension – it was important that every employee that ever reported to me was touched positively by the experience – they may not have liked me, but they were a better employee, more productive, more moral person because of the experience.  I figured if I could do that, the company had to win, too, even if the employee wasn’t a spark plug.

Remember, those 19850 remaining employees still produce half the revenue – though the formula is recursive – 140 of those 19850 make $10 billion for the company.  Oops.  But, really, if everyone designed their own job, nobody would do the dishes and the toilet would never be clean.  And that would describe my basement . . . sigh.

12 Rules For Life: The Peterson Strikes Back (Book Review Part II, Episode 5)

“Search your feelings, Lord Vader. You will know it to be true. He could destroy us.” – Star Wars:  The Empire Strikes Back

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The Boy and Pugsley engaged in an epic Lightsaber® battle.  At the end, The Boy cut off Pugsley’s arm and said “You are my brother, Pugsley, join me and we’ll rule our parent’s house . . . together.” 

As promised, there is the second part of my book review for Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new bestseller, “12 Rules for Life.”  You can find the first part here (LINK).  The third and concluding post is here (LINK).

You can bet I won’t call it “The Peterson Awakens.”

Rule 5:  Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them

Children, are, perhaps the only legacy many people will leave on this Earth after they die.  Some parents are horrible and provide no limits to their children, creating tiny toddler tyrants, rather than children people like to be around.  You have seen these children.  You despise them.  Yet they exist.  Why?

Increasing divorce rates since the 1960’s increases the severity of this problem, creating fractured families.  Peterson blames a LOT on the 1960’s:  “. . . a decade whose excesses led to general denigration of adulthood, an unthinking disbelief in the existence of competent power, and the inability to distinguish between the chaos of immaturity and responsible freedom.”

See, I told you he was Dangerous.

This is the opposite of the nihilistic (at its core) “if it feels good, do it” philosophy that stems from Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”  Which was written by this guy:

crowley

Wilder Rule #56:  Hats make the man!

Here are some takeaways from this chapter.

  1. Order is required – children want limits.  But there can be too many rules as well, and parents are the key to sorting that out, as their interactions with their children determines the future of society.  Parents seem to have difficulty imposing their will on their children.
  2. Peterson: “Two year olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people.”  This cracked me up.  But it’s true.  And you have to tame them, either with rewards or punishment.
  3. Is physical punishment acceptable?   But only the minimum amount required.  The world is filled with physical punishment – just check out any middle school fight.
  4. You need two parents because being a single parent is a tough, tough job. Single parenting isn’t preferable – Dan Quayle was right, Murphy Brown was wrong.
  5. Understand your weaknesses, your dark side as a parent.
  6. Parents are simulators (for their children) of the real world. Use your efforts to make them “socially desirable.”

Peterson must be an interesting parent.  But I assure you, growing up at his house wasn’t boring.

Rule 6:  Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World

This is, so far, my favorite chapter (though the next one might be even more impactful).  Although I expected this to be based on an outward focus, this is Dr. Peterson adapting and providing a more generalized version of his “clean your room” lecture.

“Clean your room” is Dr. Peterson’s advice to those who have issues.  And, it’s literal, not just a silly metaphor or slogan.  He wants you to clean your actual room.  Why?  A variety of reasons – but it’s a way to start you off realizing you can make the chaos in your life go away, if only you try.  And cleaning a room, making it better, is something anyone can do.  It’s not hard.

But in this chapter, Dr. Peterson starts at the basics of broken people.  It’s a dark path.  “Everyone is destined for pain and slated for destruction.”  He takes us from mass shootings to serial killers to a suicidal Leo Tolstoy (The War and Peace author dude) who wouldn’t be around rope for a period of time, since he was pretty sure he was going to hang himself.  Peterson takes us to these places, because it’s important to understand what brought them to this state.

  • A belief that the world lacked meaning.
  • Suffering (in some cases) horrific abuse at the hands of others.
  • A belief that God or the human race was evil.

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Tolstoy, looking for all the world like a garden gnome wearing dominatrix boots.

Although Peterson starts with mass shooters, the same beliefs that led them down the road to hurting others causes some people to destroy not outward, but inward.  Those beliefs are poison for the soul.

But some people, when confronted with a great evil, turn and face it right back, like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.  Dying of cancer, released in the nick of time for surgery to save him, Solzhenitsyn did what every good Soviet citizen did:  he wrote critical articles and, eventually, a novella critical of the Soviet state.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was actually published in the Soviet Union.  The Gulag Archipelago was published in the West.   Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel® Prize© for his writing – writing dedicated to making his home country better by showing the true horror of the Soviet state.  He turned what could have been bitter resentment into something that changed the world and toppled a totalitarian state.

Solz-gulag

Solzhenitsyn, looking dapper in his Soviet prison outfit, circa 1950.  (image from http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru)

I went through a similar situation with my first marriage.  It was constructed on mutual mistrust, and was painful for both of us.  I used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that experience to reflect on who I wanted to be, and used that . . . sorry, stuck.  I figured out who I should be as a husband, and as a result?  I became better than I was.

I got a better life out of my difficulties.  Solzhenitsyn’s work helped end the Soviet system and made nuclear annihilation less likely and won a Nobel®.  To-MAY-to, To-MAH-to.

But Dr. Peterson has a sure-fire (seriously) way to fix this:  clean up your life.  There are a large number of questions in this section that Peterson asks that you really think about.  I’ll not repeat them all here, buy the book, cheapskate.

Peterson:  “Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong.”  Start to . . . because starting is the hardest part.

And how do you know if it’s wrong?  Seems like if it feels good, you should do it, right?

Peterson:  “Do only those things you can speak of with honor.”

And after you fix one thing?  Another thing to fix will become obvious.  And another.  And another.  After a while?  You’ve fixed yourself.  You’re useful.

Peterson:  “You will be then left with the inevitable bare tragedies of life.  But they will no longer be compounded with bitterness and deceit.”

Rule 7:  Pursue What Is Meaningful, Not What Is Expedient

There is a LOT of philosophy in this book.  And there is a LOT of the Bible.  Peterson feels that the Bible itself is an “emergent” document – one that has properties that exceed its sum.  It’s the distillation of thousands of years of stories culminating in the crucifixion and resurrection, honed and explained and shared until they have literally changed the way the Western world thinks (and paved the way for pesky things like science, freedom, liberty, and the abolition of slavery).

One emergent property is the idea that instead of instant gratification (which would allow you to lie, cheat, steal, and kill in the extreme) is replaced by delayed gratification.  This delayed gratification can be Earthly in the Christian world, or it can be Heavenly.  This ability to delay gratification is a significant difference between animals and humans and a defining part of Western civilization (though not exclusive to Western civilization).

Dr. Peterson explains that the delay of gratification can be compared to a bargain with reality.  I can do something now-like lift weights-to create a future that I want to exist-being strong so I can drive my enemies before me and hear the lamentations of their women.  No single weightlifting session makes me strong, it’s the sum of them that create the future state.  But my actions, like magic, create a different future.

Honestly, Conan the Destroyer was better than this one.  But the music was sublime.

As we begin the religious parallelism – the future is a “judgmental father” that wants you to sacrifice now, for a potential future gain.  Sacrifice what, exactly?  What limits are there to the sacrifice?

Maybe everything?

Peterson:  “If the world you are seeing not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values.  It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions.  It’s time to let go.  It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.”

Powerful.  And think to the parallel construction of God sacrificing Jesus to transform the human race.  Just as Cain and Able had a sacrifice war, as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, God swaps the equation and makes a sacrifice for us, so that we might be saved.

But, Peterson returns to Cain.  Cain sacrifices.  And sacrifices.  And sacrifices.  And God says:  “meh.”  So Cain kills.  And that is the tragedy.  Cain was not necessarily evil before he became a murder, but Dr. Peterson observes: “. . . convictions must die – must be sacrificed – when the relationship with God has been disrupted.”

In this battle between the now and the future, proper action must be based on honesty, and generosity that is aimed at producing actions that make the world better – actions with meaning.

Rule 8:  Tell The Truth, Or At Least Don’t Lie

I’ve mentioned (in some other post) before about The Mrs., and how I promised her (and, more importantly, me) that I would never lie to her.  It gave me the power/ability/responsibility to bet truthful.  “Do these pants make my butt look big?” is a question that she’s never asked me.

It’s almost as freeing as a superpower – the freedom to always be honest.  One time in the B.C. (before cellphones) I was late coming home from work.  Really late.  It just so happens that the governor of the state of Alaska (not Palin, Murkowski) was next door talking to my boss.  And there were at least three television stations broadcasting.  I stayed until they left, and then went home:

The Mrs.:  “Why are you late?”

John Wilder:  “Governor, television stations, all next door talking to my boss – and I didn’t want all the ladies in Fairbanks to come knock down our door chasing me?”

The Mrs.:  “Okay.”

No questions, no disbelief.  Just . . . “ok.”

And, as I’ve said before, if I told The Mrs. that aliens took me time travelling to go dancing with Marilyn Monroe, Gary Busey and Cleopatra, well, she’d at least believe that I believed that.  She might think I was as nuts as Busey, but she wouldn’t think me deceitful or doubt my sincerity.

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Dr. Jordan Peterson:  “What should you do when you don’t know what to do?  Tell the truth.”

Peterson is a Truth absolutist.  He believes (in opposition to Post-Modernist thought) that there is Truth.  All things are not shades of gray.  There is Truth.  Additionally, speech that’s spin – meant to manipulate you?  It’s a lie, too.

Life sucks.  It’s going to be hard.  But to make it Hell?  You need to add lies.

Why not lie?  It contaminates everything.  Small lies become big lies.  Which infect and overwhelm everything . . . it gets to a situation where “. . . lies have destroyed the relationship between individual or state and reality itself.”

The pain from lying isn’t all outward – if you lie, your character is injured, and when life gets rough (as it will) you won’t have character to support you – only lies.  And lies hurt you in a different way – they create a victim mentality in you.  You believe that the world should conform to the lies that you have even begun to tell yourself, and when the world doesn’t?  You blame the world instead of yourself.  You create a victim narrative to explain it all.

What’s the benefit of telling truth?

Peterson:  “Truth reduces the terrible complexity of man into the simplicity of his word, so that he may become a partner.”

And that’s a pretty good reason to tell the truth.

And the truth is?  Peterson likes Trailer Park Boys, but probably not as much as I do.  Here’s a bit of Bubbles doing Bowie.  Enjoy.  Next Friday we’ll conclude this review, and maybe dismember some Ewoks®?

12 Strong Movie Review, Exploding Tide Bottles, Rifles, and Significance

“Good Lord!  We can’t get them.  I never figured on having to shoot through dirt!” – Tremors

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Good times.  Not pictured:  plastic Tide® bottle.

How many of you remember that perfect day?  That wonderful day where the Sun was shining, everyone was in harmony, and you lost yourself in the activities you were engaged in?  Those days are significant in their perfection – days that you remember now and that you’ll remember when you’re 50 or 60 or 70.

I imagine The Boy and Pugsley will both remember watching their dad’s form silhouetted in front of exploding Tide® laundry detergent bottle at least that long.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the place where I think I’ve been negligent as a dad is in not taking The Boy and Pugsley shooting often enough.  Shooting is fun, but it also teaches patience and persistence.  How do you get good at shooting?  By shooting.  Nobody’s great at shooting coming out of the box, but by patience and practice you learn to get better – and the feedback loop is literally supersonic – you can see the result of your efforts nearly immediately.  And you have to be patient.  And disciplined.

Two weeks ago we went shooting, and had a great time.  We brought only .22 rifles (I’m sure that in California these are registered as assault weapons or orbital bombardment cannons or something) that time.  It was about 40˚F out (-371˚C for you living in Great Britain) so after a while (400 rounds or so) we decided to go and get warm.  But a good time?  Absolutely.

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I have no idea where this meme came from, but I bet it wasn’t Europe.

I’d been watching the weather because it’s no fun shooting when it’s colder than a brass monkey in the fridge on the dark side of Pluto.  We couldn’t go Saturday, since The Boy was busy with athletics.

Fortunately the weather looked good for Sunday.  And on Saturday night we got home early enough to rope in Pugsley and go see 12 Strong.  12 Strong is a true story about the first Special Forces (Green Berets) unit into Afghanistan after 9/11.  It’s rated “R” primarily because it features Americans being unambiguously good, moral, and upright against unambiguously evil people even though it stars an Australian as an American Special Forces Captain (Chris Hemsworth) in a clear case of cultural appropriation.

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I’m pretty sure Warner Brothers wants us to share this image, since it gives sixteen buttons to share it . . .

The movie was good, in a “I love America and the values that it stands for” way as shown by the bravery of the troops, the fidelity of the spouses, and the idea that a promise made is one to be kept.  In this movie there are no politics of division.  And the American men and many Afghani men (almost every character in this movie with more than two lines is a man) were brave.  And it didn’t try to discuss deeper issues – it had the decency to allow us to have and believe in heroes of flesh and blood.

How good was the movie?  Pugsley is 12, and is now contemplating how he’s going to become a Green Beret (a little less likely for The Boy – I think he’d rather create nuclear-powered x-ray space lasers).  Scary for a dad to think that?  Yeah, it is.  But boys grow up, and the responsibility of holding a rifle is sobering for a 12 year old, given its sheer destructive power.

My ranking on the movie?  5/5.

Okay, back to shooting.  Today we went shooting again.  It was one of those fun coincidences that as we left the house “Freeze Frame” by The J. Geils Band was playing on the radio . . . Pugsley started doing a dance when the lyrics, “shoot, shoot . . . deedle leedle lee” kept repeating since I think he was excited about going shooting, or “shoosting” as we called it, in an homage to Lisa from Green Acres®.

However, we also brought two additional things that we didn’t bring last time:  an AR-15 I’d bought from a friend several years ago that I’d only put about 20 rounds (for New York readers – that means I’d shot the rifle 20 times) through.  The Boy had NOT liked shooting it several years ago.  Scary.

Also, I brought explosives with the explicit idea that we’d shoot them and create a series of explosions.

I know what you’re thinking.  More on that later.

The Boy and Pugsley each jammed out a few hundred rounds of .22 down range.  Then I pulled out the AR-15.  An AR-15 shoots a .223 caliber bullet – really only slightly larger than a .22, but whereas a .22 comes out of the barrel at 1600 feet per second, a .223 comes out of the barrel at over 3,000 feet per second.  And a doubling of speed is a quadrupling of energy.  (Really closer to 8 times, since the bullet is larger.)  For all of you purists – we are NOT getting into the difference between a 5.56 and a .223 in this post – go get technical somewhere else.

The Boy and Pugsley each shot the AR and pronounced it . . . amazing.

So, I thought, perhaps it’s time to mix up the explosive?

Sure.

We tried to use the .22 to initiate the explosion.  You were supposed to be 100’ away . . . and we shot at it for a ludicrous number of shots (it was about 2” x 1”, so it’s not that small of a target at 100’).

Nothing.

The Boy went downrange and checked.

“You went clean through it twice.”

Hmm. I put another explosive packet together since the powder had leaked out of the first through the bullet holes.  I stuck it on the side of a plastic Tide® laundry detergent jug – one of the big ones that does 5,000 or so loads of laundry.  I took a shot with the AR.  Hit the Tide® jug, and the explosive fell off.  (Stay 100’ away, the instructions said.)  I went down range and put the explosive back on.  Walked back.  Shot, and hit the jug again.  And knocked the explosive off.  (Stay 100’ away, the instructions said.)  Again.

I finally determined the add-on sight that I was using wasn’t even remotely accurate, and pulled it off to use the basic sights (“iron sights”) that come with the rifle.  Frustrated, and thinking the explosive was a dud based on the previous experience we’d had with the first packet, I stuck the packet back on the jug, and then moved back and I took aim at the explosive stuck to the Tide™ jug not 20’ away from me.

There was a flash.  Lots of smoke.

And the Tide® jug . . . ceased to exist.  Gone.  Left this plane of existence.  The only thing left was the label.  I could see something that looked like tiny orange fragments of plastic jug, but only a few.  But the jug?

Vanished.

Wow.

I felt my face.  Small particles of dirt or unexploded explosives were imbedded in a dusty patina all over my face.  Thankfully I was wearing glasses and hearing protection.

So, the explosive did work.  And 100’ was certainly a much better idea than my 20’ – I’m guessing something about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread?  I walked back to the firing line.

The Boy:  “How on EARTH can that be legal???”  His grin was huge.

It is, at least where I live.  Your mileage may vary depending upon what location you live in.  US Federal law allows this explosive to be sold because when they sell it, it’s two compounds . . . a “binary” explosive.  You have to mix the compounds yourself.  And you can’t transport it after mixing (without insurance, permits, etc.).  You have to use it for personal, non-commercial use.  And . . . you should research this yourself.  I believe in California they will ____ your ____.  And you don’t want your ___ to be ____.  Very uncomfortable for your _____.

No.  Seriously I think they’d call that a felony.  But where we live?  It’s Sunday afternoon.

Hint:  Google® “Tannerite©” – although Tannerite™ wasn’t the manufacturer of the stuff we used, it’s the easiest search term.  This is NOT a law blog – you need to figure out if this stuff is legal where you are.

So, it is legal here.  That doesn’t mean it’s always used in a smart – one gentleman filled a lawnmower with a binary explosive, shot it, and it promptly lopped off a leg.  But that’s the definition of freedom – not stopping idiots from being idiots.  If we go too much further down that road, every surface in every house will be mandated to be made of Nerf®.

Regardless, the Tide® bottle was gone and I still had all of my parts.

Second shot?  We taped an explosive packet up to the plastic cylinder the explosive originally came in.  The Boy took aim with the AR, and . . . first shot it exploded and likewise disappeared into another dimension.  I went to check for more things we could blow up in the car we brought (it was The Mrs.’ car) and was rummaging around in the back seat.

And found a Wal-Mart bag containing two pounds of thick-cut bacon and three pounds of hamburger.  Sitting in the back seat.  Of a car The Mrs. hasn’t driven in three days.

Pugsley:  “Oops!  Guess I forgot to bring that bag in.”

Normally I’d give him a much harder time about leaving $30 in meat to rot in his mother’s car, but in this case?

We had explosives.  And guns.  And meat.

It’s even better if you imagine they’re singing “gone shoosting”.

Two explosive charges and the bacon was unrecognizable.  One charge took care of the hamburger.  Both The Boy and Pugsley were dead-on in their shots, hitting the explosive charge on their first shot in almost every case.

We picked up the exploded stuff (left the bacon and burger for the coyotes) and packed up and went home.

But the bigger perspective?

I was talking with another dad the other day – he was coaching a group of kids at the same sporting event The Boy was at.  We talked back and forth.  He was coaching his own son, which he felt was really the toughest coaching he had to do.  But, he indicated, he thought he’d keep coaching even after his son was done.  He really enjoyed it (and he was a good coach – his team did well that day).

“You know,” I said, “it’s not the money.  It’s not the things you do to things that matters in this world.  It’s the opportunity to be significant to someone – to give them training and experiences that change them for the better.  And these kids will remember what you did for them and how you changed them, coach, for the rest of their lives.  Now that,” I paused, “is the definition of significance.”

“That’s pretty well said,” he responded.

“Yeah, I’m Noted Internet Humorist John Wilder.”

And these perfect days can be the perfect days that will form memories for The Boy and Pugsley that will reinforce their character forever.

I wonder how many perfect days I’ve got left?  Not too many if I stand too close to too many exploding Tide® jugs, so I think I’ll avoid those from now on.  It would be good to be around to see what happens with The Boy and Pugsley . . . Green Beret or not, I’m sure I’ll be proud of both of them.