Purpose – Page 26 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Washington: Musk, Patton, and Jack Daniels all Rolled into . . . the ONE

“I, George Washington, born in 1492, freer of the slaves, and the first president of this, our country, though savagely impeached for the shooting of Abe Lincoln, I will lead us into the demise of all humans!” – Home Movies

General George Washington, 1776, when he was about 44 years old. 44 years old, a billionaire, a war hero from the French and Indian War, and now commanding a rebel group fighting the largest superpower in the world. Hmmm. Maybe that’s why all that stuff is named for him?

There is a time for fighting valiantly and dieting. Then there exists the Thanksgiving/Christmas nexus. I’ve been generally trying to minimize the carb content of what I eat, but Thanksgiving? Yeah, I’m having pumpkin pie. And stuffing. And mashed potatoes. And might drink a bit of gravy. Just a quart or two. Not from the gravy boat – I have standards. I have standards . . . and a mug. A great gravy mug.

Yes, I have willpower, but Thanksgiving and Christmas are more difficult times to stick to diets. So, I don’t. And I don’t spend a lot of time feeling guilty about it, but it’s also a good time to reflect that eating different things changes my mood.

If I’ve had enough potatoes to feed the Soviet Army, I know that I’ll feel differently both physically and mentally. Sugar is similar. Ditto with bread.

So, how do I feel different physically? For me, when I eat carbs I tend to retain a LOT more water. It’s my theory that it’s used to think out my blood so it flows better than maple syrup. When I jump back into the low carb regimen, I know that for the first few days I will dump water faster than the democrats dumped Al Franken.

I’m pretty sure that the extra water does NOT do anything really good for me.

How do I feel different mentally? Again, for me the low carb (very low, like none) zaps me into a state of clarity and stability. Stuff just doesn’t bother me as much. And I seem to get better sleep.

But one thing that’s wonderful about the Holidays is . . . George Washington.

George was really tall for his time and place, and strong enough that he could crush walnuts in his bare hand. British walnuts. And he was known to party (from teachingamericanhistory.org):

First Troop Philadelphia City
Cavalry Archives, 1774

City Tavern
George Washington
Entertainment of

15 Sept., 1787

Light Troop of Horse, September the 14th 1787

	To Edwd Moyston .. Dr.
To 55 Gentlemans Dinners & Fruit
—	Rellishes, Olives etc………………………………………..	20	12	6
—	54 Bottles of Madera……………………………………….	20	5
—	60 of Claret ditto……………………………………………	21
—	8 ditto of Old Stock…………………………………………	3	6	8
—	22 Bottles of Porter ditto………………………………….	2	15
—	8 of Cyder ditto……………………………………………..	16
—	12 ditto Beer…………………………………………………	12
—	7 Large Bowels of Punch………………………………….	4	4
—	Segars Spermacity candles etc………………………….	2	5
To Decantors Wine Glass [e]s & Tumblers Broken etc..		1	2	6
To 16 Servants and Musicians Dinners……………………		2
—	16 Bottles of Claret…………………………………………	5	12
—	5 ditto Madera……………………………………………….	1	17	6
—	7 Bouls of Punch…………………………………………….	2	16
		£89	4	2

If you study the above, you’ll see that George Washington and 54 of his best buddies had 114 bottles of wine, plus cider, beer, and 8 bottles of hard alcohol. I’m thinking our Founding Fathers were knee-walking drunk at this point – you can see that they got well into the “smashing the bottles and glasses” part of the party. And it was the equivalent of something between $15,000 and $20,000 that he spent on the party.

George liked to party.

And he liked to party at Christmas, which brings us to eggnog.

Now, I must tell you that I really, really hate eggnog. Hate it with a passion.

Or I did, until I had George’s eggnog. And it just so happens I’ll share his recipe with you (this will be the 306,001^st place on the Internet that you can get it):

“One quart ye cream, one quart of ye milk, one dozen tablespoons of ye sugar, one pint of ye brandy, ½ pint of ye rye whiskey, ½ pint of ye Jamaica rum, ¼ pint of ye sherry—mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of 12 eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.”

And it’s amazing. It tastes just like Christmas. And George was right – making this stuff and drinking it on day one is NOT advised. It tastes . . . strong. But after three days in the fridge? Amazingly smooth.

So, not only was George a billionaire president general that defeated the world’s largest and best trained armed forces? He knew how to party.

Here’s to you, George!

Your Passion is Stupid

“No, not unpopular, they just have a more selective appeal.” – This is Spinal Tap

Okay, there’s a time when your passion of throwing big rocks in the river should be followed. That’s whenever you’re at the river.

Pop Wilder was a banker. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, John Wilder is the banker’s son, summers in Maine, winters in Switzerland. No. Summers in the forest cutting firewood in Colorado, winters in Colorado on snowmobiles fifty miles into the back country. Okay, winters were better than Switzerland, at least since the CIA stole the secret of the Swiss “hot chocolate” technology and weaponized it in Swiss Miss® cocoa packets.

On occasion, especially after a few bourbon and waters, Pop Wilder would get a bit melancholy. “John Wilder, you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up, but don’t be a banker.” Although by any measure, Pop was successful. And he was passionate about his work. He left every morning before the Sun came up to open the bank. He got home two hours after the bank had closed. He unlocked the place and locked it back up. He never took more than 10 vacation days in any year, and I never saw the man take one day off due to being sick. (An aside: I’m stunned that’s the first time I came to that realization – I haven’t taken a sick day off since 2000. Wonder where that stubbornness comes from?)

Pop Wilder, you see, wasn’t the “snort cocaine off a stripper’s butt” type banker, but rather the “small town banker that drives a car to work that’s eight years old.” I think he might have not abused his power enough . . . I’m not sure. What’s the use of having power, if you don’t abuse it?

What always bothered Pop Wilder the most was when he had to explain to a person who wanted to borrow money that he wouldn’t lend it to them – he didn’t think the loan was based on sound collateral, or the borrower’s income wasn’t enough to cover their living expenses plus their debt. He was proud at the end of his career that he’d never had to foreclose on a single home. To him, the act of lending money was a moral event – you didn’t burden a borrower with more debt than they could pay.

That didn’t make the borrowers who he turned down happy. They were (understandably) upset that Pop had crushed their dreams, but in the process, he’d done them the biggest favor of their lives. In a weird way, his “no” had saved their financial future from the siren song (read The Odyssey or watch Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou (LINK) if you missed that reference) of their dreams and passions . . .

One of my favorite things to see is the garden variety successful person who’s being interviewed. Let’s pretend it’s me, since I’m rich and semi-famous:

Oprah: “What’s your secret, John Wilder? How did you get to the pinnacle of success and yet maintain those superb washboard abs?” (Oprah bites her lip. Perhaps I should have not worn such a tight shirt.)

John Wilder: “I followed my passion, Oprah. My passion is all consuming.”

Fade to Clip of Me Synchronized Snowboarding Off the Top of Mount Everest Accompanied by an Actual Yeti.

You’ve heard that, too: successful people telling you to follow your passion. I probably heard that two dozen times between high school and college. Follow your passion. Invariably it was by short salesmen who were in suits while I was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. And I was (really) thinking about going skiing or checking out the girl of the week. My passion did not and does not involve being an old man in a suit.

Hopefully you haven’t done followed your passion, because your passion is stupid, unless you are the ghost of Steve Jobs. Steve, you can follow your passion. Only you. Namaste.

I’m sorry to tell everyone else a simple fact: your passion is stupid. And my passion? My passion is stupid, too. Maybe even really stupid.

The Mrs. and I have been married roughly since the invention of dirt. We’ve thought about opening our own businesses several times, and even produced a business plan or two. All of them have been based on things we like, things we are passionate about. We’d discuss, fine tune, get the spreadsheets ready, and then decide if we were passionate about it. As you’ve hopefully read in the fine pages of this blog before – the best deals are the ones you don’t do. We’ve passed on most of the deals.

But one in particular we got all of our ducks in a huddle, got a small business loan application together, and went off to the local bank to ask for a small business loan with our spreadsheets and our plan and our proposals and estimates and projections. I didn’t go to the meeting – I was at work. But The Mrs. walked in, and the banker didn’t blink an eye before he got to his response. “No. Not now. Not ever. Please pretend we’ve never met.”

The Mrs. was upset when she got home. I shrugged, and we decided to carry on without opening that business. About a month or two later we read in the local newspaper about how someone had opened a business that was nearly exactly what we’d planned to open up. They did a detailed story on the place, nearly a full page, with color pictures. Amazing amounts of free advertising.

That business closed up before six months had passed. The banker who said “No” had saved us $55,000 of loaned money.

Oh. I get what Pop was doing. Rather than helping people live their passion, he was saving them from their passions.

The people who say that you should follow your passion are generally not passionate about the thing that they’ve done, whether it be roasting coffee beans or creating BookFace®. No. They’re passionate about success. They’re passionate about their business because it brought them success. It’s like pretending you like Tootsie Rolls Lollipops® for the outer candy shell. You don’t. You like the center.

And that’s the secret of success.

I am passionate about playing the guitar. I love to do it. Unfortunately, my guitar is as good as Johnny Depp’s personal hygiene or money management skills. So, of course, I devoted my entire career to playing bad guitar? NO. I suck at guitar. I will never be good at it. But . . . I do math and science-y things really well. I have the intuition on that stuff that Eddie Van Halen has for meth guitar. Maybe not that good, but I found that the combination of the math stuff and the science stuff and the planning stuff and the intuitive grasp of physical systems and processes (with a dash of normal human empathy) pops me into the top 0.1% (hint, that’s the only place the money is). That combination allows me to win where other people would lose (in certain situations). And in one instance the application of those skills allowed an IPO to go through that netted a company a billion or so dollars. Yay me!

And winning in situations like that makes me passionate about combining those skills. So, am I following my passion? Well, I’m following my success, which is a lot like following passion. Except following my passion would make me bankrupt because my guitar is only slightly better than my singing.

So it comes down to . . . what are you good at? I mean, really good at? Not what you’re passionate about. Let’s face it: you can be passionate about drinking bourbon, WWE, MMA or anthropology, but none of those things are helpful unless you’re part of the 0.1% AND you can figure out how to win/make money with that skill combination.

Can you make money with it? Most things you’re good at don’t pay any (really any) money at all. You’re in the top 0.001% of the world at trimming nosehair? No. Next. Your skill should translate into actual income. What does the best person in the world at what you’re good at make? Can you live on 1/10 of that?

Okay. You’re good at it. It’s a rare skill. You can make money at it. Good money. Now your challenge? Get better at it.

Most people take a decade or more of really hard work, over 10,000 hours, to become world class at a skill. Generally, the longer they execute the skill and the more they work at it, the better they become, peaking in their forties or fifties. These aren’t physical skills – those peak about 24, and take a big nosedive once you pass 30 or so, and if your skill is there, strike quickly – age will pull you away faster than you anticipate. What I’m talking about are mental skills that are honed by experience.

Passion? No banker will lend on that. They’ll lend on experience, skill, and excellence. Be passionate about those and the world will allow you to snowmobile in Colorado in winter . . .

People will call you lucky. Just smile and ignore the sweat.

Medieval French, Medieval Warm Period, Medieval Volcano, Medieval Weight Loss Pill

“This is Jenny. She and her family are having a picnic at the foot of a volcano. Oh no! The volcano has erupted! What do you do now Jenny? That’s right. Duck and cover. What do you do Jimmy? Duck and cover. Duck and cover!” – South Park

Thankfully the volcano killed off the giant ice crabs.

On July 17, 1315, Roul returned to his home from a hard day’s farming. He was very tired. He was dirty. He didn’t rank highly on the social scale – he was a serf, and could be bought and sold with the land he lived on. They didn’t call Roul a serf – his social class was called “villeins” in the local language of northern France.

I was very cold – especially strange since it was July. The sunsets, when Roul saw them, were more colorful than any he remembered in his life – he was 28 – but the weather was cold, and wet. At the best of times his wheat harvest might produce seven seeds for each one planted. Subtract saving one seed for next year’s planting, 10% of them for the Church, and 50% of them for the Lord whose land he farmed and taxes and out of each 14 seeds in a good year Roul could keep, at most, five for eating and trading. In 2015 the same field, plowed using modern machinery, planted with hybrid seeds, and with fertilizer levels closely monitored would bring over 30 seeds for each one planted.

But Roul could see none of that. His life was smaller. Not only was a tractor unimaginable, but the amount of real wealth it represented would be greater than the wealth of an entire province in 1300’s France. His income was small. But combined with the barter they got for his wife’s sewing, it was a good, but very tough life.

This year? This was the worst year he had ever seen. And the old graybeards in town said that they had never seen a year like this – ever.

And they hadn’t. The Medieval Warm Period ended around 1300A.D., with temperatures greater than today’s during much of that time, quite optimum for growing plants during the long growing seasons and the population of Europe had expanded. But the Warm Period ended.

But 1315 was even more special: Mount Tarawera erupted. Although Tarawera was almost exactly on the other side of the world from Roul in what would be named New Zealand by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman 320 some years later, its impact on his life was profound. The volcanic dust and ash filled the atmosphere and cooled the Earth for more than two years. The Great Famine followed. Over the next seven years at least 5% (and perhaps as many as 12%) of all northern Europeans died. The world for them contracted and became hungry, mean, and criminal. The Black Plague found easy purchase in the wasted land. The combined impacts of famine and disease caused Europe to experience a significant depopulation during the 1300s, which led to labor being more valuable, which led directly to the values that formed the Renaissance. The birth of modern culture was forged in famine and pestilence.

But we were talking about Roul.

In the bitter cold of winter of 1315 and 1316, Roul and his wife, Cateline resembled hibernating bears more than a farmer and wife in the prime of life. During the intense cold of the winters, they spent most of their time huddled under blankets on their straw bedding trying to do as little as possible to conserve every bit of energy – the harvest had been poor and food was in very short supply. Most days they got up to do the minimum of chores required, and ate very sparingly.

Roul and Cateline didn’t starve. It was a near thing. But the society they saw a decade later scarcely resembled the one that they had left behind in the spring of 1315.

So, how far have we come as a civilization? Right now hunger is still a world problem, but hunger is less prevalent now than at any time in recorded history. Ever. Obesity, however, is as bad as it has ever been, and been getting worse. Stupid Skittles®.

I’ll admit, some dead Roman was right when he said that a pleasure repeated too often becomes a punishment. But being fat is still way better than starving to death. Like a joke The Mrs. loves:

A guy was talking to his dog. “No more food for you, or you’ll get fat.”

The dog responds, “Fat? What’s that?”

The guy: “It’s when you eat and drink too much and sit on the couch and don’t exercise and gain a lot of weight.”

The dog: “Ohhhh, that sounds good. Let’s get fat.”

What people really want is to sit on their couch, eat chips, drink beer, play video games, and look like The Rock after a particularly challenging workout. And there are billions of dollars available to anyone who can make that happen. And people are working on it right now: The Exercise Pill.

They even found one that was awesome: GW501516. Sexy name. All the cool kids call it 516 (really). In the subjects that the scientists gave 516 to, they found that nearly immediately exercise endurance went up by double digit percentages. They lost weight without working out any more than usual.

A perfect pill! With 516 you could have it all. Endurance, an athletic bod, and lower weight. 516 even released the hormones and all the good stuff associated with strenuous exercise.

So, where can you get some?

Well, your doctor won’t prescribe it for you because all the test subjects came down with megasupereverything cancer. Whatever 516 did, it really did a number on the test subjects, giving them every cancer one can imagine.

Thankfully they were mice.

But people are taking 516 right now, body builders and dudes looking to lose weight while getting strong. Seems like you can buy the stuff, it’s just not approved, and it has been banned by multiple sports (I think there’s a Lance Armstrong joke in there, but I’ll skip it). So you can get it, but you’re not supposed to take it, just like animal antibiotics, which people do take, since they can skip going to a doctor and just get the stuff online.

Work hasn’t stopped on bringing 516 (and some other exercise pills) to market, but they’re hoping with 100% less cancer, and the New Yorker (LINK) has a pretty good article on it. I won’t spoil the ending. Okay, I will. We don’t have an exercise pill.

But . . . should we? I guess that, from a perspective of having people live healthier lives, I’ve got to say, yeah, we should. But the very discipline required to keep and maintain a weight, the hard work, the sacrifice, isn’t that part of what makes us stronger, so when life is tough, we know we have the internal strength to stand up to challenges?

Nah.

All that sounds like work.

They’ll have a pill for willpower and inner strength, won’t they?

Creative Destruction and the Fight For Your Eyes

â€œYou know what it is? Â You’re always attracted to someone who doesn’t want you, right? Â Well, here you have somebody who not only doesn’t want you, doesn’t even acknowledge your right to exist, wants your destruction! That’s a turn-on.â€ â€“ Curb Your Enthusiasm

Behold, the chainsaw of Creative Destruction. This one will take care of those pesky optometrists!

There were vast periods of human history where . . . absolutely nothing happened.Â If they had a newspaper, it would be blank for decades at a time.Â Our Neanderthal (many of us) and other cave-dwelling hominids (all of us) ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years with little or no innovation, and that innovation that did show up was not all that exciting.Â My bet is that most of them were fairly stupid, and it took generations of stupid people not having kids until humans were smart enough (and eloquent enough) to make an attempt at civilization.

Even with that first civilization, things changed only very slowly.Â A thousand years of Egyptian dynasties (the pharaohs ruled Egypt for three thousand years) could pass and no one invented Cool WhipÂ®.Â You an Egyptian forward in time a thousand years and the only thing that had changed was that the music the kids listened to these days was too loud and just plain awful.Â To put how very stagnant these civilizations were in perspective:Â Jesus is closer in time to the people living today than He was to the time of the construction of the pyramids.Â This statement will be true for another FIVE HUNDRED YEARS.

The Egyptian empire lasted a really long time, and since nothing changed, like a televised baseball game, it seemed even longer.Â But then?Â The Romans began to change the world, with a much shorter period of dominance.Â And things keep changing faster, and faster.Â More perspective:Â an 85 year old has lived through 37% of the history of the United States.Â An Egyptian 85 year old would have lived through less than 3% of the total length of the 3000+ year span of the pharaohs.

But scientific progress undid the pharaohs in what economist Joseph Schumpeter would call â€œCreative Destruction.â€Â Schumpeter originally derived Creative Destruction from his readings of Marx (Karl, not Groucho).Â Creative Destruction is predicated on technological innovation coupled with entrepreneurial spirit in an effort to make money by disrupting previous economic structures and replacing them with new, more efficient structures.Â An example:Â Live performers were replaced by records.Â That were (briefly) replaced by 8-Tracks.Â That were replaced by cassettes.Â That were replaced by compact discs.Â That were replaced by .mp3 files.Â That were replaced by . . . streaming music.Â Each innovation replaced and (mostly) eradicated the previous iteration, making music more easily and reliably available.Â Unless you have our mobile phone service: Â streaming doesnâ€™t work so well, since our wireless phone provider uses a series of wire coat hangers where we live to broadcast signal.

On Friday (LINK) I wrote about the coming Optopocalypseâ„¢.Â This is another example of Creative Destruction in action.Â Records destroyed local bands â€“ you could hear better at home anytime than the local talent.Â mp3â€™s destroyed record companies.Â And 75%+ of optometrists will be looking for work soon enough because technology will have made most of what they do irrelevant.Â And, outside of their families, the â€œDestructionâ€ part of Creative Destruction results in greater value to all of society â€“ more people will be able to see, since thereâ€™s hardly anyone that wonâ€™t be able to afford the low cost of the EyeQueÂ®.

Another example is Zenni Optical (LINK).Â I got great glasses from them (via my new prescription from EyeQueâ„¢).Â I was testing out that prescription, and wanted to get some glasses.Â I put my order in, and was even allowed to pay via Amazon, so they didnâ€™t get credit card information.Â I ordered my glasses on a Thursday, and got them the following Saturday (nine days later).Â They were perfect in every way!Â I then put in a new order for three more pairs.Â Total cost, including express shipping?Â About $200 for the three pairs, with the best lenses they offered, plus extra slip on sunglass attachments (and bifocals).

I ordered them on Saturday, and tracked progress.Â By Sunday they were complete.

Hereâ€™s the shipping:

Origin Scan
CN
10/25/2017 9:49 P.M.
Order Processed: Ready for UPS

Shanghai, CN
10/25/2017 11:16 P.M.
Departure Scan
Arrival Scan

Anchorage, AK, US
10/25/2017 3:26 P.M.
Brokerage released the package. It will be processed through a clearing agency before final release to UPS.

Anchorage, AK, US
10/25/2017 4:46 P.M.

Departure Scan
10/26/2017 2:54 A.M.

Arrival Scan
Louisville, KY, US
10/26/2017 5:32 A.M.
Departure Scan

10/26/2017 5:51 A.M.

The glasses hit my hands about 2pm that day.Â And, just like the first order, they were perfect.

If you look, it appears the package goes back in time a bit, but remember about the whole date-line thing.Â Regardless, Iâ€™ll go with the story that my glasses came from the future.

Well, they did come from China.Â Express, for $18.

This is certainly a great way to add value, and it (by definition) changes the price that many people will pay for glasses.Â Itâ€™s Creative Destruction on a grand scale â€“ Zenni will make billions.Â But it cuts off another revenue stream that will add to the Optopocalypseâ„¢.Â If you look online, optometrists are out in droves complaining about both EyeQueâ„¢ and ZenniÂ®, some of which take the form of reviews that I think are less than honest.

And the optometrists are also fighting by trying to make innovation illegal â€“ at least innovation that hurts their profit margin and their monopoly over information about your eyes.Â They typically will call the bill a â€œpatient protection actâ€ or something similar, so it makes it sound like itâ€™s really for the benefit of the patient.Â Iâ€™m picking on optometry not because theyâ€™re unusual â€“ theyâ€™re much the same as everyone else who is facing having their entire life and livelihood replaced by a disruptive app or Silicon Valley startup.

These regulations and laws actually end up hurting the economy â€“ they make it more likely that companies like Zenni manufacture outside of the United States and not subject to US or state law rather than creating an eyeglass factory in . . . Kentucky, or Illinois.Â Iâ€™m not unsympathetic to the 55 year old optometrist â€“ and I donâ€™t have a good answer for what he should do.Â Becoming a roustabout in North Dakota in the oilfield is probably not a reasonable answer.Â In times past, however, people displaced by technology and Creative Destruction have found new things to do.

Maybe they could ascend to that highest throne of prestige and power.

Blogging, anyone?

Loneliness vs. Being Happy. A choice?

â€œWhen a man of Scotty’s years falls in love, the loneliness of his life is suddenly revealed to him. Â His whole heart once throbbed only to the ship’s engines.â€ â€“ Star Trek

The Boy at six.Â How much fun is Christmas?

This week the Internet has been aTwitterÂ® about loneliness.Â Itâ€™s part of the cycle â€“ itâ€™s Fall, so itâ€™s time for peak talk about being lonely.Â Weight loss stories go year â€˜round, but they peak after Christmas.Â And the stories have a kicker.Â â€œLoneliness is worse than ______ (obesity, high blood pressure, smoking, or, heck choose your own favorite disease to fill in the blank).â€Â The most recent article that I read seemed to focus on middle aged men, but I think it goes much deeper than just loneliness.Â I think the roots are back to Hope.

When was the last time you were so excited that you could hardly sleep because of the day ahead?Â Thatâ€™s Hope.

Iâ€™m old enough I enjoy giving stuff more than getting it, but Iâ€™ve observed that kind of Hope, that level of anticipation most recently in The Boy and Pugsley.Â The Boy is seventeen, and really surprising and delighting him at Christmas is difficult, now.Â But Pugsley is twelve and would have the Christmas tree up in early September if weâ€™d let him.Â Pugsley dearly loves Christmas, and that spirit is alive in his heart, even when The Mrs. and I play Scrooge and GrinchÂ®.Â The Christmas Spirit (which is really just super-concentrated Hope) is naturally strong in the young.

Iâ€™ve recently discussed Scott Adamsâ€™ Formula for Happiness (LINK),

Happiness = Health + Money + Social + Meaning.

How does it apply to the young?

Health is (generally) a given.Â When a child is sick enough that he leans over the side of his bed and throws up in his brotherâ€™s pants (which just happened to be on the floor there because they shared a room), he tends to remember that.Â (My brother, John Q. Wilder, was not happy.)Â Youth and vitality go together, since they havenâ€™t had time to wreck their health yet.

Money is a hit or miss.Â But (generally, again) money issues donâ€™t weigh heavily on the mind of a kid.Â They know that times might be tight, but they have no perspective to keep them up at night worrying about money.

Social?Â In all but the extreme cases, kids have plenty of chances to interact with other kids and make friendships that last a lifetime.Â Even shy kids.Â They might not be friends with the popular kids, but they can have friends.

Meaning?Â Yes, but like kids, itâ€™s pretty shallow.Â Being good is near enough what constitutes meaning for the younger set.Â Meaning often comes from adequate performance and parental praise.

But as people get older (past their thirties), the equation changes.

Health:Â Yearly you are reminded of increasing limitations, stronger eyeglass prescriptions, and less hair (except on the back, where it grows thicker than an Amazon rain forest).Â Ow.Â My hip hurts.

Money:Â Generally people are better off financially as they get older, with the caveat that their peak earning potential may be in the past.

Social:Â Friendships may have worn away through long hours and distance â€“ most social contacts might even be at work.

Meaning:Â Meaning likely comes from work, spouse, or volunteer organizations, or, in some cases, just making it to another birthday.

What role does hope play?Â Hope is looking forward to time with friends and family, having goals big enough to be worthy of chasing, having plans of things you want to do and experience.Â These things lead to enthusiasm and excitement in life.

What does the opposite side of the Adams Equation look like?

Despair=Poor Health(No Hope)+No Money(No Hope)+Alone Socially(No Hope)+Meaningless Existence(No Hope)

Despair leads to all the bad issues:

Loneliness
Depression
Disappointment
Sadness
Pain (real, not like needing a safe space in college because spaghetti is cultural appropriation)

Itâ€™s a lot like being a fan of a California NFLÂ© team.

A sudden cratering of any one of the factors in the Equation of Despair can bring about a vicious cycle, leading to spiraling sadness.Â This despair is dangerous â€“ fatal if long enough and deep enough.Â How many widows die within a month of their husband?Â How many men die a month after retirement?

Whereas Hope can put you in a bad place and make you stay for too long (bad job/bad marriage/RaidersÂ® fan), Hope is of then the only thing that will keep you alive when things go horribly wrong, as they absolutely will from time to time.

I think the key might be in being able to look at the world, not through the jaded eyes of experience, but by being able to maintain that sure Hope of a six year old on the night before Christmas . . .

Tom Petty, AM Radio, Heavy Metal, and Motivation

â€œIf you ask me, you are both off the mark. Â Last night was about two people ruled by very powerful superegos, tortured by them, who found a chance, however misguided, to break through and rediscover their ids together. Â Call me an old softy, but that’s how I see it.â€ â€“ Frasier

The Boy and Pugsley dancing in the rain, which makes my id sing.

Iâ€™m not sure exactly when I first heard a Tom Petty song.Â Where I grew up was media vacuum.Â On TV, we had three channels, plus PBSÂ® (Who watched PBSÂ©?Â Nobody.).Â Unless it was nighttime, we only got two radio stations, and both of them were AM stations.Â One played country music, so, for me it might as well not have exisited.Â The other played a complicated mix of top 40 from four years previously, news, and an hour of mariachi music at lunchtime.Â It signed off (shut down) at 11PM.

But at night . . . at night the mighty KOMA blasted out 50,000 watts of rock and roll at 1520 on the AM dial, the ionosphere conducted the signal hundreds of miles and back toward earth and over the mountains to my house.Â Itâ€™s probable that I first heard Tom Petty on some cool summer night (down to 50 ËšF most summer nights).Â Maybe it was â€œDonâ€™t Do Me Like That.â€

But Tom was always a bit older than I was, both in age and in the issues he raised in his musical themes.Â Me?Â I gravitated toward metal, mainly hairy metal, Ozzyâ„¢.Â MÃ¶tley CrÃ¼eÂ®.Â The ScorpionsÂ©.Â Despite the previous list, what I liked wasnâ€™t all hair metal.Â I liked â€œnormalâ€ music, too.

I ended up on a strange quest:Â Iâ€™d heard a song, once, and Iâ€™d try to tell people what it sounded like, and say intelligent things like â€œit goes Da Da Dadum dadum de-da dum Ohh-Aiii-Uh . . . Uh.â€Â The record store clerk would nod knowingly, and point to a cassette or album.Â It would turn out to be Judas Priestâ„¢.Â Which I really, really liked.Â Or Molly HatchetÂ©, which was kinda okay. Â Â I would dutifully buy the tape or album, zip home (first on my ten speed, later in my pickup) and then listen to the album.Â Normally, in the first song I would know if it was the same singer.Â Always the answer was it wasnâ€™t.Â But these mistakes were beautiful â€“ I can still remember sitting on the couch on a dim, overcast day, the clouds pregnant with snow that had yet to fall, blasting â€œThe Hellionâ€ and thinking . . . â€œokay, life is really cool.â€

Imagine that this song played every time you entered a room.Â I imagine GoogleÂ® is working on that.

Again, none of them were the band I was looking for.Â I think I spent $300 or so on every single album that featured leather, scantily clad females, and SpandexÂ® that I could find.Â For reference, I had all of these as either cassettes or albums.Â Album cover copyrights belong to their respective corporate overlords.

Funky font? Â Â Check.Â Picture that looks like something the disturbed kid drew in art class?Â Check.

Satan?Â Check.Â Priest in glasses being thrown into a pit of fire?Â Check.

Hmmm.Â I donâ€™t know about you, but something screams, John Wilder, BUY THIS ALBUM NOW!

SpandexÂ®?Â Check.Â Leather?Â Check.Â Canadian?Â Check.Â But . . . theyâ€™re dudes.Â I bought this on cassette, so, thankfully, the picture was tiny.

Swords?Â Check.Â Giant flying leathery chicken?Â Check?Â Leather . . . on a girl this time?Â Check.

Wow.Â Just . . . wow.

I never could figure out what sort of naughty thing they were supposed to be doing.Â In the day.Â At a drive in.Â With both feet out the window.Â Probably ripping the labels off of pillows?

Until . . . like Columbus I discovered what was already there (and broken up by the time I found them): Led Zeppelin.Â True Fact:Â Christopher Columbus first discovered Robert Plant picking onions in a Nevada prison camp, and introduced him to Jimmy Page at a ballet class, but would take no credit because he wanted Led Zeppelin to do disco music.

So, I listened again to Zeppelin. â€œYeah, it might be that guy singing?â€

It was.Â It was this song:

This was the song.Â Yay!Â

But Iâ€™d have to special order the album, since they didnâ€™t have Led Zeppelin III in stock.

Nope.Â Too much commitment.

As you might have been able to tell by the artists and album covers above, my musical tastes were driven by my id.

If you donâ€™t remember your Freud, he broke the brain into three bits:

The Super Ego, which, like your dad, is for criticism and moralizing.
The Ego, which is the organized human who lives on the main floor and deals with society in a realistic manner, and
The Id, where all base instincts (Sex, PEZÂ® and Rock and Roll) live in the basement of your brain.

I listened to a lot of rock that was id driven.Â And why not, I was working on a multi-decade winning streak.Â Sad songs were for people who occasionally lost stuff.Â But Tom Pettyâ€™s music was deeper.Â It spoke to the conflict between the Super Ego and Ego, an intellectual and emotional conflict I really didnâ€™t have.Â I was riding high on year after year of success, slaying dragons and charging the castle.Â Why would I question anything?Â Party on, dudes!!

It wasnâ€™t that Tom and I didnâ€™t get along â€“ he was no Bruce Springsteen or Johnny Depp, who are both dead to me.Â They know why.

Really, it took life kicking me in the teeth more than once to move me from the normal reckless abandon that I attacked life with to a person who asks the kinds of questions that Tom Petty discusses in his songs.Â I still recall having a conversation with The Mrs. when I began to realize that I liked Tom Petty:

Me:Â â€œYou know, the older I get, the more I understand Tom Petty.â€

The Mrs., shaking her head, raising her voice a little:Â â€œCanâ€™t hear you . . . blow dryer on.â€

But now Mr. Petty is speaking to me again â€“ he died.

Itâ€™s not unusual for rock stars to die young â€“ itâ€™s like we pick an unstable, talented personality and then shove massive amounts of cash at them.Â Iâ€™m just surprised that 90% of them arenâ€™t dead by 30.Â Just my luck that after the apocalypse the TwinkieÂ®, the cockroach, and Johnny Depp will still be around.

But Tom Petty wonâ€™t be around, even though The Postman (movie) promised me that he would be.Â His death hit me (oddly) harder than Iâ€™d anticipated.Â He hadnâ€™t been my lifeâ€™s soundtrack, though Iâ€™d clearly been listening to him more recently.

He made it to 66.Â According to the CDC, 83% of white non-Hispanics will make it to 67.Â Only 1% of 66 year olds die.Â If you make it to 66, your mean life expectancy is to make it to 86.Â So, from this data, he died early.Â But he didnâ€™t look out of shape.Â Far from it â€“ heâ€™d just finished a part of a concert tour comprised of 50 dates in five months, which can take a toll on 26 year olds, though I presume at 26 itâ€™s the Jack DanielsÂ® and late nights and not the (presumed) warm tea, oatmeal cookies and obligatory cellophane wrapped butterscotch hard candies that old people like that filled the Heartbreakerâ€™s dressing room.

Though Mr. Petty was quite a bit older than me, I guess his death hit me like it did, because even at 66 it seemed he should be too young to die, just as his voice entered my soundtrack with a greater frequency and volume.Â It makes me feel that much more mortal, and therefore more committed to getting into the best shape possible now so I can be in the 50% that make it to 82 years.

Tom Petty inspired millions in many ways â€“ through emotional ups and downs.Â He inspired artists everywhere that they could pick up a guitar and play and that their music would, like his, give them a slice of immortality.Â And guys like me who want to keep runninâ€™ down our dreams.Â I think this is the part where I get the dragon, right?

Thanks, Tom.

Income, Happiness, and Bad AC/DC

“See, this is what we call an all you can eat buffet. Here you can eat all you want for just $6.99. That why everyone comes here on Tuesday nights, except for Kenny’s family because for them, $6.99 is two years’ income.” – South Park

The purpose of having money is so you can afford to buy things like this.

I remember having a negative net worth and still enjoying most parts of life. I had my health, my youth, good friends, PEZ® and meaningful work. I also remember sleepless nights worried about how I was going to pay this bill or that bill. I clipped . . . coupons. And used them. I’m so ashamed.

Let me back up.

I was married before The Mrs., as I’ve mentioned before. That relationship ended (which made both of us happy) but my previous spouse had been in charge of paying the bills. On her last day in the house she handed me a bulging plastic grocery sack filled with bills. She then handed me a checkbook in a blue plastic cover, the sides of the cover starting to crack at the point where the cover bended to open and close the checkbook.

“I have no idea how much money is in the account,” she said.

The answer was, “not much.” The first bill I pulled off the top of the stack was a credit card that hadn’t been paid in several months.

Wow.

I got out a spreadsheet and started to add up bills. I made a list of minimum payments. I made a pretty ruthless budget ($4 a day for food for three?) and . . . went to work. I took a loan against my 401K and paid all the back payments due on the accounts. Lots of Hamburger Helper®.

But was I happy? Well, yes. My friends said that I hadn’t looked happier in years. And I felt happy.

Now there has been no time in my life where I couldn’t afford to feed my family. Were there times when I was a week of payments away from being at zero cash? Certainly. Did I have an emergency fund? Not really. I could have played the alternate-bill game, slowing payments for the electricity so I could pay the gas. I could have maxed out my credit cards, sold family heirlooms, sold plasma, sold a kidney. I could have averted bankruptcy for a few months. Emergency fund? No, a catastrophe spending plan.

Thankfully, it never came to that. So, a negative net worth and a happy life? Sure. I was young: the future was wide open.

But you don’t have to trust me. Actual Nobel® Prize-winning economists (Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahnemann) did a study where they tried to measure the impact of income on happiness. And, they found (in 2010 dollars, which were less plump and firm compared to today’s inflated dollars) that happiness was maximized at a household income of about $75,000 (that would be $85,000 in today’s dollars). People’s perception of life increased with more money (they thought they were doing better) but they weren’t any happier.

I then began to wonder what factors might influence whether or not $85,000 is enough?

If you’re paying a huge proportion of your income on debt, it will prevent you from spending on other things. In my personal example, I had debt, but I also had a plan: work like the devil to pay it off. Each retired credit card or past due bill was a little victory. There are some forms of debt, though, that are worse than others. The king of bad? Student Loan debt. While education is valuable, the only way to default on a student loan is to die, and I think that’s pretty extreme to get out of a bill.
Location, location, location. New Yorkians and San Franciscainites would scoff at $85,000 per year. Their homeless rat-catchers make more than $85,000 on a bad year. I tried to come up with a city that might be near the national average for cost of living: I ended up with Reno, Nevada. To replicate $85,000 in Reno would require $184,000 in Manhattan, and $143,000 in San Francisco. I’m not sure that this really covers it, because the average house in San Francisco per this survey was $1,000,000, and the last time I looked, $1,000,000 buys you a house with 830 square feet in San Fran. 750 square feet in Manhattan. My college apartment was larger. No free range children there – you probably have to stack cages to keep more than one.
What does your future look like? This is going to impact your overall contentment. Feel like it’s all over and the dark of winter of your life is at hand? Or is it just dawn, and you’re looking at a warm spring day with a lifetime ahead? Your perceptions of yourself, your potential, and your future influence your contentment. Grumpy old men? Yeah, they think that they’re at their winter and are angry that you’re limber enough to touch your toes.
Number of Kids/Parents to Support. Have you ever spent money to buy food for a seventeen year old defensive tackle/noseguard? I have seen The Boy get up from a Sunday dinner and go directly to the fridge to see if there’s anything to eat. How many ribeye steaks can you eat? I’ve seen him eat three. After three or four bratwurst. These are not exaggerations. I went shopping one Sunday with The Mrs. We had a shopping cart filled with food. She looks at me. “This is just for The Boy’s lunch. One week of his lunch.” He has a little brother, Pugsley, who will soon enter Junior High and the high calorie consumption of testosterone and a teenager. Then there’s college. There are cars. Spending money. Have a dozen kids? Yeah, $85,000 for the household seems a bit sparse – you might need to sell some for medical experimentation.
Medical Expenses. The Mrs. listens not to my entreaties that her insulin costs nearly as much as gold per shot. She’s all, “Well, if I don’t take it I’ll die.” The Mrs. has a really crappy pancreas. But if you have medical expenses that are very high? Forget insurance – it’s been awful for years – it’s like paint made for the government: it’s expensive and covers nothing. Have enough of these issues? Jimmy Kimmel will cry for you, and $85,000 might seem woefully small. Note: substituting “homemade” insulin is not recommended. The Mrs. did NOT think that was amusing.
Hobbies. Sure, they’re optional, but we’re talking about being happy. I like collecting 17^th century glassware. And then using it for practicing skeet shooting.
Spending Habits. Being on a budget sucks – the discipline it takes to plan and scrimp and save is rough, but it’s better than homelessness . . . . Sometimes you don’t get to pick the Sam Adams® and have to just pretend Natty Lite© is awesome. My previous post on the money philosophy of Mr. Money Mustache, Financial Samurai, and Early Retirement Extreme still applies (LINK). Read it.

The Kinks understand that nobody likes being a cut-priced person in a low budget land . . .

So the $85,000 is above the median (half of the households above, half below) household income of ~$60,000. As near as I can figure, $85,000 puts a household in the top 35% of income in 2017. Again all of this research doesn’t prove you’re happy or unhappy at any income. It just shows the sweet spot where additional income seems to stop adding additional contentment for most people.

I would (personally) guess a big predictor of long term happiness would be the amount of wealth that you had managed to save. It would certainly add peace of mind, knowing that you had some long term money, and that would remove a lot of the day to day stress from unexpected events – job loss, sickness, needing to buy Cher concert tickets.

But can you have too much money buried in Mason Jars® behind your house? Sure. If it removes your incentive to work, does that remove meaning from your life? I’ve seen more than one person retire and die a month later. And you don’t have to be old to lose your purpose and give up, as Buzz Aldrin proves (LINK). Not everyone will lose their purpose, and I really do recommend working until you’re sick and tired of it – that’ll get you in the right mindset to retire.

But higher income come with issues as well that might detract from the overall contentment that income earners get – don’t think that the $150,000 crowd has it easy. Long hours. Deadlines. Job insecurity (average VP only lasts six years before being canned). Travel. Time away from the family. Awful bosses (CEOs rank high on the range of socio-psychopath). So, at some point, it’s probably better to live cheap rather than live a stressed out life.

Because the future is wide open . . . .

Some bonus content, since we’re thinking about cheap:

The following is almost nine years old, back at my old blog, Wilder by Far. Here’s a link to the original post (LINK).

For your pleasure, I have transcribed an AC/DC™ tune Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, as written by William F. Buckley. Enjoy.

If you’re experiencing difficulty with the school principal
He’s making you quite sad
You wish to complete education without resorting to implied sexual intercourse
Here is a course of action
Grab a telecommunication device, I never leave my domicile
Contact me whenever it’s convenient
E-mail – Bonn.Scott73@acdc.com
I conduct my life through extralegal means

Hey

Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively

You are experiencing difficulty with your life partner
You have serious emotional depression over the relationship
He’s conducting a clandestine illicit possibly romantic relationship with someone with whom you share extremely strong interpersonal ties
You may feel so emotionally distraught that you cry
Grab a telecommunication device, I am currently not in the vicinity of other humans
Or come visit informally with no set purpose or agenda
Enter and remove thoughts about him from your mind
We will cooperatively either stage a fancy dancing party or partake of our own illicit romance

Hey

Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively

You have a female domestic partner whom you wish to no longer have contact with
But you lack courage to take action
Your domestic partner is continually argumentative and critical
Sufficiently so to make you question your mental competence
Grab a telecommunication device, leave your domestic partner without other human companionship
The proximate moment for you to exhibit some sort of courage is now
With reasonable financial remuneration, I would be glad to
a)perform a silent act of assassination while you pursue your own alibi or,
b)have an illicit romantic encounter with your female domestic partner
(the Internet is unclear here, I prefer version a since I see no reason version b would in any way bring the situation described to a favorable conclusion, but there is some scholarly debate)

Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively, yeah
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts and they’re performed inexpensively

Heavy quasi-stone masses intended to sink bodies when attached to the feet
Molecules containing triple-bonded carbon and nitrogen
Tri-nitro-toluene
Performed inexpensively

Ooo, common items used for the purpose of constricting the ability of a subject to breathe
Agreements to do wrong
Large differences in electrical potential
Performed inexpensively, eah

Nefarious acts, I will perform them without regard to what they are, performed inexpensively
Nefarious acts, nefarious acts, nefarious acts, performed inexpensively

Yaaargh

Eclipse, Game of Thrones, Chili’s Restaurant

“Or we could stare at an eclipse while screaming at it!” – Upright Citizens Brigade

This picture of the Sun’s corona is courtesy of The Boy, the number 8, and the letter W.

Like millions of other Americans within a short drive, The Boy, Pugsley and I piled into the Wildermobile and headed for destiny. (For the record, millions of Americans didn’t pile into my car. They got into their own cars.)

Actually, it was a Marriott© instead of destiny, but I hear those things can be related. This was no ordinary Marriott®, rather it was one strategically placed within 90 minutes or so of the Path of the Great American Eclipse, which would snatch from us, momentarily, the Suns Life Giving Yet Deadly rays.

We had packed our Solar Viewing Glasses, which we had gotten for free a week earlier at our local library. “We” is really The Boy, who I had to threaten with the immediate torture of being pulled from the Matrix through restriction of his use of any device invented since 1907 should he not comply. “Later” seemed to be built into his answer. Take away his Tweeter® or his BookFace©? Yeah, that would be like amputating a limb.

A week out at the library? Plenty of eclipse glasses were freely available. Three days out? None. Again, people do NOT plan. It seems like that when it’s bright and sunny out, even when they know that winter’s coming, they don’t put up extra food or even minor emergency preparations. After you’re observed people long enough, you learn that most of them . . . don’t learn. (But not you, dear reader, who likely have an IQ high enough to give a normal person a nosebleed due to altitude sickness.)

The Mrs. was skeptical when I tried to get hotel reservations a scant week before, but Marriott gleefully set up the reservation. Originally, she was going to accompany us, but the day before we were to leave for the hotel, we took a nap, and she slept through the time when she was supposed to take the dogs to the kennel for boarding. The Mrs. sighed . . . happily. I’m not sure she was at all excited about an eight hour trip into the deepest uninhabited part of Upper-Lower Midwestia just to not see the Sun.

The Boy, Pugsley and I planned (prior to leaving) on when and how we were going to leave on our great adventure.

My plan was that I wanted to get there so I had about 90 minutes to eat dinner prior to Game of Thrones (spoiler – Ned gets decapitated at the end of season one). Pugsley, however, had configured some sort of alternate reality that involved us getting there at 3pm. The Boy bought into this alternate reality and stubbornly wore his backpack starting two hours before I started packing.

Keep in mind, The Boy is nearly 17.

I think both The Boy and Pugsley were excited. The Boy was even more excited when I tossed him the keys. He drove us from Stately Wilder Manor to dinner, and then to our hotel. My daughter, Alia S. Featherbottom (nee Wilder) was going to meet us, but forgot we were coming as she fell into a pit of Dungeons and Dragons®.

Now, as a general note, we don’t let Pugsley (12) watch Game of Thrones. The reason for this should be obvious to anyone who has watched the show. Tonight? Single hotel room? He sat and watched Galaxy Quest with headphones on. Although The Mrs. and I normally sit and watch the show together, in this case she and I texted back and forth during the episodes. Here is an example exchange:

The Mrs.: “There’s more walking in this episode than in The Lord of the Rings.”

Me: “At least they’re not singing.”

After that I poured my heart and soul into (yet another) post about how stupid NASA is (LINK), but even I am beginning to feel a bit guilty – picking on NASA is a lot like hitting a kitten. The Boy helped by doing my thermodynamics calculations.

I had carefully selected our site. It was about fifteen miles from the nearest town, and it was on a nice corner where the line of totality exactly passed over. It was perfect. The only problem?

Clouds. They were everywhere. I pulled out my cellphone and had the path of the totality map up. On another cellphone I had the cloud cover map. I reviewed first one phone and then the other, cross referencing one map to the other, sort of like Columbus if he was having trouble getting 3G on the Santa Maria like I was out in the cornfields. At least he had WIFI when the Pinta hit Hispaniola, right?

Plotting one map against the other while The Boy drove, I made a decision. The GPS said to turn right. I told The Boy, “Turn left.”

With that, we moved off plan. We had gone rogue, chasing bits of blue sky.

We navigated farther west, and soon, bluer patches of clear sky were NOT obscuring the Sun. We were getting closer . . . finally we stopped in a small town park.

We pulled into position about 40 minutes before the eclipse.

The park was filled with nice, friendly people. Which makes sense. These are the type of people who are intellectually curious, and were patient enough to drive hours to a small town for a two minute eclipse. These weren’t troublemakers.

The eclipse itself was sublime. The Sun was a fat crescent, a slim crescent, and then it was gone. There were some light clouds, but they weren’t a major eclipse of the eclipse. We had chosen our site very well.

My biggest personal surprise about the eclipse was that it didn’t go completely dark – I guess I had expected that. Venus was very visible in the sky, but the clouds surrounding us (35 miles away) were still lit by the Sun, and that lighting left me feeling like I was under the world’s largest sunshade, which I guess that I was.

My picture of the Sun’s Corona. I prefer Negra Modelo myself.

It had been an oppressively hot and humid day. The temperature dropped a bit during the eclipse, and that brought out thick clouds as the water vapor in the air condensed out. We got in The Wildermobile and The Boy started driving us towards home. The worst traffic jam we saw took place at a T intersection about 30 miles south of totality, and it was about a mile of politely and patiently driven cars that took us about ten extra minutes to get through. The traffic apocalypse foretold by Nostradamus did not emerge.

The above fiberglass squirrels were all over this town, and every squirrel I saw was painted differently, but all of them had eclipse glasses on. Who says Midwesterners don’t know how to party?

The Boy drove us back down to a Chili’s® restaurant 90 miles south of totality. It looked like it was closed, with zero cars in the parking lot. I jumped out to check the door, it was open, and they were open. We ordered food, and the waitress said that there had only been one table that had been there for lunch. Apparently, your willingness to eat at Chili’s™ is some sort of predictor for you to go to see an eclipse.

The Boy drove home, and I slept most of the way.

Most of the way.

On the way back I mused on the events of the day – we had seen a solar eclipse – our first total solar eclipse, and I was reminded of something I heard Tony Robbins say: “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy experience.”

I guess my takeaway is: “Being nice doesn’t get you Eclipse Viewing Glasses, but angry threats do.”

Self Control, Soviet Tanks, and Stanford Marshmallows

“Any problem caused by a tank can be solved by a tank.” – Family Guy

The featured image is geology. Which is way cooler than what the class made it seem. This is one I took in Alaska.

The first all-night study session I that I did involved studying for finals the first semester of my freshman year at college. I do recall getting increasingly tired, and at 4AM I jumped in my car to buy, for the first (and last) time ever: No-Doze®. No-Doze™ was awful. I felt jittery. I felt my teeth moving around in my gums. I felt my eyes moving around in their sockets. It felt like there were bugs walking around on the inside of my skull. Thankfully, I was distracted by actual pain in my stomach (due, I’m pretty sure) to the No-Doze©, which is what kept me awake.

I ended up doing fine in my tests, but can only recall that “Cops On Streets Detain Crime” (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian) and “Miss Pennie’s Panties” (Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene). I think I’m missing a billion or so years of geologic history because there wasn’t a sufficiently naughty mnemonic involving underwear.

Looking back, it seems so simple. A little effort each day would have paid off at finals. Big time. Study a subject (like geology – lots of memorizing) a little bit each day. By the time finals rolled around? With just a few minutes of study, I’d be ready to take the final, and do so on a full night’s sleep.

However, while study may payoff later, not studying always pays off now. Present Me can have a beer, go to a movie, read a book, watch an episode of Twilight Zone®. These are all better than studying geology. Honestly, a dentist visit is more fun than studying geology, though it’s still probably easier to sleep through geology.

What has all of this got to do with Wealth? It’s Wilder Wealthy Wednesday, so how does all of this tie in?

I’m glad I asked.

Everyone makes choices about how they spend their resources. There are the needs of the Present, and those of the Future. Example: if retirement and putting The Boy and Pugsley through college weren’t issues? I would own a tank. You can buy them, you know. (LINK) Real tanks, sold by Eastern European arms merchants. It sounds like Bruce Willis should be in this movie, right? Oh, and I’d also own a swimming pool filled with Pez® that I would swim in like Scrooge McDuck™.

But I won’t. I value Future Me enough to forego the fun of riding around the neighborhood in a fully functional WWII Soviet tank.

Barely.

And it’s mainly so The Boy and Pugsley can get jobs and not have to live in my basement and borrow my tank. Future Me likes that Future.

This is also the way borrowing money works. Present Me decides he wants something, like a house. Present Me obligates Future Me for thirty years’ worth of mortgage payments. Good deal. Let’s pretend I don’t have the cash to buy what I want.

If that’s the case, I find someone who has cash, and trusts me enough that I’ll pay ‘em for the next thirty years. For their trouble, they get, say 5%, of the unpaid balance each month as rent on their money. They like that deal because they’ll have more money when it’s all done. I like the deal, because I get the house now.

An economist would call the interest rate charged to me for borrowing the money a “discount” rate. It’s the amount that the bank charges you so that they have a durable long-term investment that makes sense for them. If you can’t afford to meet their discount rate? The bank is required by Federal law to invest their reserves in Russian tanks and Pez®.

The discount rate in most cases is simply a numerical rating of your will power. If you knew I was going to give you fifty dollars at the end of the month, how much would you give up to get it today? Of you said, oh, five dollars, that means you are willing to give up 10% of the value . . . for one month. That’s (we can quibble about this number, but we won’t for now) a huge premium, the equivalent of 314% annual interest. If I could get a 10% monthly return, I’d retire . . . this afternoon.

So, our “discount” rate is really a numerical measure of our ability, our willpower, in delaying gratification.

Delayed gratification, it turns out, is a pretty significant human characteristic.

In the 1970’s, Stanford was known for several radical psychological experiments:

The Stanford Prison Experiment – A really creepy experiment where students dressed as guards and inmates and completely cost me my faith in Californians.
The Stanford Pizza Experiment – I think this was a 1970’s B-Movie. Adrienne Barbeau – don’t miss it!
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment – The one that goes with this post.

In the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (SME), young children were given a marshmallow. They could eat it now, or be given two marshmallows later. I’m obviously simplifying this – they used cookies, too.

About a third of the children made it long enough to get the second treat. Between this and a previous experiment, there were several primary correlations on just which kids would get the second treat.

The older kids were more likely to get the second marshmallow.
Intact family. If there was a dad in the house? No dads around? No second treat.

So what? A lot, actually:

The longer a child could wait, the:

Better the expected SAT score,
More education the child would likely complete, and
The child would likely be skinnier.

Those are pretty positive, and pretty significant outcomes. And, although there has been complaint about the study (small sample size, flawed methodology) since it matches my biases, I’ll assume it’s right. (Hint: this is how some journalists actually think, or rather, avoid thinking.)

Are there other examples of discount rates/willpower out there? Sure. We keep creating academics, and they have to look busy, so they keep writing papers for each other. Thankfully Jesse Shapiro wrote one (LINK) just to prove a point in my blog. Thanks, Jesse!

Shapiro looked at food stamp recipients. He found that there was a 10% to 15% drop in calorie consumption from the start of the month when the EBT card was filled up to the end of the month. Some people ate enough at the beginning that they had to skip meals at the end. Additionally, it looked like the food that folks ate through the month also was . . . not as good. The overall quality of the food consumed appeared to have dropped during the month as well. Might there be other contributing factors to this? Sure, but the data didn’t seem to indicate that was the case. And that 10-15% discount rate is huge. Over 300% annually (compounded).

So, why should you delay gratification?

When it’s clear that it’s good for you.
When there’s certainty to the payoff.
When the payoff is big enough to make Current You value it almost as much as Future You.

Most of the time we have enough real information to know if it’s good or not and how certain it is. It’s that last bullet point: making Current You care enough. Why do people smoke? Their Current You runs a big discount rate on the first two factors. And maybe Future You just pisses Present You off?

One last thought on willpower. Remember that study that showed intact families mattered? Yeah. If the Mom is impulsive enough to get preggers by a man she can’t have around, or if the man is impulsive enough to bolt?

Bad news for those kids. Willpower and the ability to delay gratification is, like intelligence, highly inheritable. Looks like it’s late nights and No-Doze® for the lot of them.

Elon Musk: The Man Who Sold Mars

“Actually, they theoretically can separate the hydrogen from the oxygen and process that into providing fuel for man’s space flights. Ostensibly, turning Mars into a giant gas station. So it’s a . . . yeah. We live in an amazing time.” – Breaking Bad

The featured picture above the title is of the Saturn V. It’s longer than a Harry Potter novel. This picture shows the engines from the main stage of the Saturn V. About 275,000 horsepower for all five engines, you can totally tell by the lens flare! But it got over two miles per gallon of kerosene used (TRUE)!

This is the third and final part of Elon Musk Week® (sort of like Shark Week©, but with 100% less Discovery™ channel). An annual feature? Maybe!

Part 1 is here (LINK) where we take apart Tesla®, and Part 2 is here (LINK) where we understand Elon’s Matrix® plan.

I first read about Elon in (probably) 1977 or 1978. Oh, sure, you’re saying, that would have made him six or seven years old, and at least a continent and two hemispheres away from me. My only response is, “so what?”

When I was a kid, I lived fifteen miles from the town I went to school in. My house was the farthest away on the school bus line, so I was the first to get on in the morning (7:15, every morning) and the last to get off (4:30, so I missed F-Troop). I could stare out the big picture window and see the bus a mile away – Ma Wilder taught me it would be rude to keep the bus driver waiting – and out I would go to be there waiting when the big yellow bus pulled into my driveway.

For about two hours a day as the bus stopped to pick up and then let off children, I could either stare out at the mountain scenery, or I could drop with Johnny Rico and The Roughnecks into Klendathu. Or I could visit Trantor, first with Hari Seldon, and then later with The Mule. Or ride Sandworms on Arrakis with Paul Atreides. Or be shocked at the mysteries when we Rendezvoused with Rama. Or finish all the science fiction anthologies at the middle school library by the middle of my seventh grade year.

And reading wasn’t confined to just bus time. There were only three channels of television available (no one ever counted PBS, unless Monty Python was on) an half the time nothing interesting was on. So, if I had built all the model kits around (the usual condition – they didn’t last long) and it was too cold to go hiking or fishing, I always had a book ready to read. And Ma Wilder said I had to go to bed, but she never said I had to go to sleep . . . my parents bought me a reading lamp that clipped on my headboard for my tenth birthday.

But I remember reading the Hugo®-winning “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” by Robert A. Heinlein fairly clearly – it wasn’t on a bus, but on the couch by a crackling fire on a cold (-20˚F) winter’s day. And that’s when I met Elon Musk.

(source, Wikimedia)

Delos David Harriman (better known as D.D. Harriman) is the billionaire who decides to go to the Moon. Why?

He envisions a new economy – an opening of the Moon is the first step to opening the Solar System to humanity. Rather than living in a world which with a fixed horizon, D.D. realizes that getting off this rock is the only possible positive future of humanity. But getting there is possible, and only takes will.

To quote Harriman:

“In fact, the real engineering problems of space travel have been solved since World War II. Conquering space has long been a matter of money and politics.”

Contrast with Musk:

“Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame.”

And how was Harriman going to do it?

“I’ll hire the proper brain boys, give them everything they want, see to it they have all the money they can use.”

Contrast this with Musk:

“The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.”

And I could go on and on about the similarities but the one thing I know is this:

Musk read the same stuff I did when he grew up.

Musk knows D.D. Harriman. Just like I did, Musk admired D.D. Harriman. However, Musk has become D.D. Harriman.

And for that, my hat is off to him. D.D. Harriman is much more important than Tony Stark®.

And Harriman was willing to do absolutely anything to open space to humanity, convinced it was too important to leave to governments and bureaucrats. Harriman manipulated stock, forged fake space-diamonds, and extorted advertising dollars from soda companies.

Musk feels the same way. Musk formed SpaceX™. Musk got involved in Tesla®. One is his passion, one (even though he believes in the mission) is there to fund his passion. Make no mistake: Musk has created more applied rocket engineering faster than any person in history except maybe Von Braun (though Bezos is giving him a run for his money and has super-cool biceps for an old man).

Why not NASA? Isn’t it their job?

During the 1960’s, NASA had a mission. It was going to get three guys to the Moon, by the end of the decade. Lots of engineers worked lots of long hours and made it happen. In July of 1969, NASA dropped the mic after “One Small Step” and walked off the stage. Mission done!

Well, almost fifty years on from that date, and six of the twelve men who walked on the Moon are now dead. During the middle? NASA developed one (anemic) space launch system – The Space Shuttle, whose sole purpose appeared to be to construct the International Space Station. Why construct it? So the Shuttle had a place to go, silly.

And now we have no space launch systems available to us except through the Soviets, er, Russians, and . . . Elon’s SpaceX™, which currently plans to have a manned launch of its Dragon/Falcon taking place in early 2018. The first manned Orion flight? Maybe 2023. Maybe.

Why is NASA so sick?

The original group they hired were engineers. Their job? Get into space, get onto the moon. Then they fired most of them, but kept enough to send out a fairly constant stream of unmanned probes as well as lame manned space missions. But during the 1970’s they also hired a lot of administrators. And people who had no connection in any respect to a spacecraft, or science, or aeronautics.

Except for brief bursts of public interest when something worked really well (Viking and Voyager) or when something worked really poorly (Challenger and Columbia), NASA has reached an irrelevance in national policy. NASA appears to only be important when it comes to funding large amounts of money to projects that take place in certain Congressional Districts in certain strategically important states. In Houston they love NASA, or at least NASA dollars. Efficiency? Progress? Why would you need those things? Heck, we can have astronauts but not have spaceships!

These are the depths that NASA has fallen to showcase its technical bankruptcy: it has a division called the “Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.” This division produced 5,000 braille books about the eclipse for the blind.

These are the official shot glasses of the Manned Spaceflight Center. At least it’s one way to blast off?

I am not opposed to a company doing this – I’m not even opposed to a government agency producing books in braille, especially those that aren’t available on audio. But I am opposed to NASA doing it. Why?

NASA’s mission is:

To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.

Nothing at all in there about getting blind people books about an eclipse. Nothing close, so this is a symptom of a system that has gone beyond dysfunctional to trivial. A dysfunctional system (or in this case, organization) just can’t get anything done. A trivial organization works on everything. It invents steps where none need be, make-work (like the books), bureaucracy (credentials for everyone!), and hurdles (did you file the right form?) until Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy is achieved:

From Jerry Pournelle himself:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers’ union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

I think that in NASA they actively look for jobs that they can do that are:

NASA could spend time and effort designing a new hypervelocity spaceplane, but that’s hard! And someone could get hurt, and that would be bad publicity. And we know that we as a society will only allow people to be put upon the equivalent of 2,000 tons of TNT (Saturn V) if it’s totally safe! Otherwise, it’s an outrage!

So, faced between making a new launch system that might help get people into space OR putting together a braille book? Let’s go with the book. It’s A. Easy and B. Safe.

These are the official flip flops of the Manned Spaceflight Center. They look Safe, unless you blow out your flip flop and step on a pop top and cut your heel and have to cruise back home. It’s okay, because there’s booze in the blender and you have the Official Manned Spaceflight Center shot glasses.

The only way to avoid the Iron Law and the A. Easy and B. Safe people is to have a personality that keeps focus on the goal.

And since NASA administrators don’t go in and fire everyone in NASA not involved in the mission, you can be certain that they’re fine with . . . whatever the heck it is that NASA is doing.

How is SpaceX® Different?

Elon Musk is a laser of focus on getting spacecraft into the air. People at SpaceX® want to work long hours, and if you look at jobs on their website, it notes that long hours, working evenings and weekends are probably going to be a thing for you. And, want to get fired? Talk about part of your “mission” at SpaceX® being producing coloring books on planetary nebulae.

Sounds like old Harriman himself, “. . . sweet talk them into long hours – then stand back and watch them produce.”

Some Libertarians HATE Musk because of the government subsidies that have driven money to Tesla® and even SpaceX©. I can understand that, especially if their goal is less government. Heck, I’d like less government. But even though Musk has to go through roundabout ways to get only a portion of NASA’s funding, he’s running circles around them on talent recruitment, technology development, and actual results. We have a choice if want to really get into space. Elon appears to be the only winning answer (unless Bezos is holding back on a few aces).

Musk could fly people in space tomorrow, if they’d let him. NASA is six years out. Six years out.

What does Musk plan to do in the next three? Send a capsule (unmanned) to Mars.

I’d be surprised if Orion ever actually flies people. NASA seems incapable of spaceflight, and, really incapable of anything more complicated than Twitter. But if Orion ever flies, I imagine that in orbit the Orion astronauts will get to see Elon’s butt pressed firmly against the window of his Mars Transfer Ship (Red Dragon 11) as he gives them a full moon (pardon) as a parting gift as he heads to Mars.

It’s a long trip to Mars. I imagine that Elon might take a book or two along with him for the trip. Probably not “The Man Who Sold the Moon.” But maybe Dune, or Starship Troopers.

What would D.D. Harriman read?

I’d like to think he’d bring my blog . . .

Hey, everyone (including you, Elon) you can subscribe, and it gets sent out directly when I hit the publish button.