Cranky Old Man Gaming
Cranky Old Man Gaming is mostly retired, but occasionally does a bit of work for Plucky Innovation who has kindly agreed to host his website. This is his Blog. If you want to be alerted when he posts, email him with the subject Subscribe.

The blog has two components, the actual blog posts, and a list of shorter comments/quips (last updated 10/23/2023) made on Facebook or Mastodon.




Blazer Thoughts October 2023 Edition

10/23/2023

A lot has happened since my pre-draft update. We drafted Scoot Henderson, traded Lillard, and after all the dust settled, we practically have a brand new roster. I would have liked to try to win a ring with Lillard, but the rebuild approach should be fun too. I am a storyline guy in that I enjoy watching games and following teams much more when I am rooting for more than win/loss percentage and championship probability. Here are my storylines of interest right now:

  1. Winning I believe we have enough youthful talent that development of that talent takes priority over collecting more talent (by tanking). That means more than just giving minutes to youth, it means letting youth discover when they play the right way they win more. You can’t do that without winning (see win total prediction below).
  2. Scoot and Sharpe The franchise future is tied to these two talents, and while I am extremely confident there will be regular flashes of potential, I will be paying close attention to the consistency of their awesomeness.
  3. Veterans Development of our youth is better when they get to play with great teammates. You want them rewarded for making good passes, good cuts, good position defense. You are much more likely to get that playing veterans like Grant, Thybulle, Brogodon, and Robert Willams than youthful alternatives. So, I want to see these folks playing whenever they are increasing our chance to win significantly and rooting for them to do well.
  4. Second Tier Youth We have some fun players well below the Scoot and Sharpe level (Jabari Walker, Toumani Camara, Kris Murray) and while not as impactful to the direction of the franchise as the top talent, I expect to have just as much fun rooting for these young folks to win minutes and do well.
  5. Ayton and Simons These players might be technically veterans, but to me they are still development projects. They are proven, effective players, but want and expect to make big jumps in role and responsibility. This won’t happen without developing new skills and tendencies. Will they? I’ll be watching with interest.
  6. Coach Billups Billups is exactly the type of coach I want to root for. He comes across as someone who usually says their actual opinion instead of a soundbite. He has a vision for how the game should be played but is flexible when necessary. He has a good relationship with players but is not afraid of tough love. He seems good at mentoring young players, and straddles the lines between trying to win now, trying to develop players, and the need to occasionally tank with practical elegance. I don’t know enough about basketball to have a feel for whether he is a good coach, but I want him to be. I’ll be rooting for him to show he can motivate his team, get wins, and develop talent.
  7. GM Cronan Cronan has a subtle management style I enjoy. He surrounds himself with competent basketball minds (Mike Schmitz, Billups) and really relies on them as he should. His trade negotiations weigh both the short-term value to the organization, and longer-term relationship effects with the organizations and players involved. There has been drama with other teams in a couple cases (trade of Gary Payton with Golden State last year, lack of trade with Miami this year) but to me Cronan came out of both situations looking fine. You want a reputation as someone who treats you right if you treat them right, and who won’t work with you if you are being shady…and his transactions appear consistent with that approach. The one red flag is Lillard got pissed at Cronan about something…and Lillard has a deserved reputation for being a straight shooter and a good dude. That said, I am going to be giving Cronan the benefit of the doubt and root for him to navigate this season effectively both as a GM and as a person.
  8. Ownership It is hard to shake the thought that Jody Allen does not want to spend lots of money to develop a championship caliber roster in the same way her brother did. The moves we did not make during our push to win with Lillard are the primary evidence for this. While it is not relevant now, it impacts my enjoyment of the team if it feels like frugal ownership introduces a fundamental limit on how good the team can become. I am rooting for either the team to be sold, or the blazers to show a willingness to spend. That said, Lillard’s positive comments of Jody and the addition of a G league are a good sign.

Prediction: Despite having talent and experience at every position, this is not a playoff team. Most teams that limp into the playoffs have similar talent plus real stars (examples last year include Miami, Lakers, Golden State). Until we grow a Lillard-level replacement this team will not be great. Without giving in to the temptation of building a model and making a real estimate, I would guess in any given game we have about a one in three chance to win, meaning our win total will be around 27-28. If we are looking like a 30+ win team while playing Scoot and Sharpe a lot I will be delighted, even if we end up with a worse record than that due to a bit of tanking during the last 10 games of the season.

Soccer Memories

06/24/2023


My eldest has decided to do robotics instead of soccer next year, which is great but also a little sad and has me reminiscing about the major moments soccer taught me about life. Each is poignant for me, clear still after all these years, and I think I learned more about myself and others through these soccer moments than I did from anything else I did in my youth. Without soccer I would not be the person I am.

  1. My first memory was from my sophomore year of high school. Mr. Ash, my high school coach, made me the starter at left defense and told me my job was to not let their winger get by me or cross the ball. At the end of the year, he told me a new coach was taking over next year and I better learn some skills if I wanted to keep my spot on Varsity. I was dumbfounded. I had been very proud of having followed his directions perfectly. No one had gotten by me or crossed the ball from my side all year, so what was he talking about? A learning moment for me.
  2. My senior year we had no goalkeeper, so my soccer coach, Mike Davis, recruited a player from the basketball team to play keeper and moved me to center defense with the following instructions: tell everyone what to do all the time. Don’t stop talking. Until that moment I pretty much never opened my mouth on the soccer field, just quietly wondered why everyone was out of position all the time. So I learned to talk constantly, and that worked out very well. A learning moment.
  3. I only played one sport and never trained in the off season, and in retrospect it is clear I was not in great shape. At one point with about 30 minutes left in the game I remember limping over to the sidelines with cramps in both major muscle groups in both legs asking to be subbed out. Mike Davis said no, you’re playing the rest of the game. So, I limped back and tried. My legs would not respond normally since I couldn’t really bend or straighten them. Confronted with the interesting problem-solving task of how to play soccer with non-responsive legs, the extreme pain dissipated in importance. I got through the game, our shut-out streak continued, and I learned.
  4. Summer after my senior year a friend invited me to play indoor soccer with some current and future pros, and I ended up hurting my ankles pretty badly. I eventually went to the doctor and was told I had fully torn ligaments in both ankles and was not going to play soccer again without surgery. I decided on no surgery and didn’t play soccer for my first two years of college. By my junior year it felt like I had learned to adapt to the regular ankle-rolls I experienced playing pickup basketball, so I tried walking on to my college soccer team. They let me on, but ended up moving me to midfield, where I watched our highly skilled, super slow defense get burned over and over by fast adversaries playing simple kick-and-run strategies. One of our team captains, who had given me my college nickname “wheels,” took me aside at a party and told me he had no idea why I wasn’t starting in defense. It was clear to both of us that while I lacked many fancy skills, no one was going to run past me and score. The conclusion: Our college coach, who had played at a professional level, was not a good soccer mind. It was a learning moment.

None of these were fun moments, but they are foundational for me as a person, and I treasure them. I am sure my eldest will build his own collection of poignant learning moments, just a little sad it looks like it won’t be through soccer.

Blazer Draft-Day Thoughts

06/21/2023


There are a lot of ways to enjoy sports, but if you believe most professional sports writers and podcasters, there is only one way to run a franchise: try to maximize championships. The common wisdom on how to maximize championships is simple: if you can’t be the best, be as bad as possible while collecting assets to become the best.

Now, I enjoy watching and following the Blazers quite a bit, but I am neither in favor of trying to maximize blazer championships, nor do I think the path to maximizing championships requires being either the best, or really bad. In this post I describe what I enjoy, how to run the franchise to maximize my joy, and how that differs from how to run the team to maximize championships.

What I enjoy: storylines. Watching a basketball season should be like reading a good book. I want characters I want to root for, some plot twists, and for things to turn out well. Characters I want to root for means I want good/nice/interesting people on my team. Damian Lillard is the perfect example: everything about this dude makes you want to cheer for him. James Harden, not so much. Flaws just add interesting storylines for me: Is Lillard too old? Is Sharpe too young? Great stuff. Makes the game more interesting to watch than equal talent with no flaws as it adds interesting sub-plots…more things to enjoy tracking other than win or loss totals. Note: the fun part is when your heroes overcome their flaws, not when the flaws drag them down. That means trying to get a bunch of high character low talent folks (like they tried in the Patterson/Nash era) makes for a terrible experience as a fan. It is fine/great to have some spicy protagonists, like Charles Barkley, Wolverine, or Rasheed Wallace. Likeable with some flaws that they are likely to overcome through sheer awesomeness.

Storyline driven (instead of championship driven) franchises are not a new thought. Many Knicks and pre-Ballmer Clipper teams look like they were run that way, hunting for interesting rookies and stars that people could root for and imagine the team becoming good, without the less flashy parts that makes the team actually good. The problems with this approach are three-fold. First, it involves management lying to the public, claiming each new interesting character added will be the savior when they probably won’t. In the modern era team management is as much part of the character of the team as many of the players, and it is less fun to root for a team with slimy management. Second, the glue-players that help stars win are often the most interesting characters and the most fun to root for. Third, if the team never gets good the storyline gets sad and less believable. You don’t necessarily need to win a championship: I have plenty of good memories from the Clyde Drexler and Arvydas Sabonis eras. But you need some clear-cut moments of extreme victory, ideally against all odds.

Before I get into what this implies for the current Trailblazer situation, let me address how I think you should run a franchise to maximize championships, so the difference is clearer. Most pundits screaming you need to go “all-in” to win now, or burn things to the ground and start over, are wrong. They are wrong because they have an inflated sense on how likely the “top teams” are to win, and how good they are at identifying who the “top teams” are. The Miami Heat, L.A. Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, Portland Trailblazers, and Golden State Warriors, all looked reasonably similar (play-in teams) up until the trade-deadline. Now that the playoffs are over everyone likes to talk about how awesome the Heat is and how much the Blazers suck, but the reality is both were part of a large pack of middling-teams, any of which at their best would have a somewhat similar non-zero chance in any series against anyone, which means a championship is possible for any of them, just not likely. And that is the key to winning championships: keep in the zone where you have a chance, keep collecting assets (talent, youth, draft picks), and almost never “go for it” by trading assets to maximize short-term win chances. Due to the degree of randomness in a season, long-term excellence seems way more likely to win a championship than long-term awfulness peppered with spurts of awesomeness. So, my maximize-championship strategy would be: be smart, put yourself in a position to have a chance to get lucky, and then get lucky.

How does this differ from how I want the Blazers to be run? Well, it is not that different, other than I put a premium on people and storylines I want to root for. Here are my current favorite storylines.

  1. GM Cronin. He himself gives the impression of being a good dude, well liked, with a good plan, who is too transparent to be good at poker (hurting his trade ability). Fun! Watching how Cronin and the “overly honest” flaw plays out will be interesting to watch and rooting for Cronin is easy.
  2. Lillard. His quest to win a championship IN PORTLAND is super fun, and the ticking age clock adds intrigue. Trading this dude would hurt my enjoyment even if we got a good haul, not because it hurts our odds of a championship this decade but because few storylines are more interesting league-wide than will Lillard win.
  3. Sharpe. Love this quiet dude with extreme court presence. A great Sharpe game can be fun even in a losing effort. Trading this dude would hurt my interest even if it slightly increased the chance Lillard gets a ring.
  4. #3 pick. What fun! If this turns into Scoot Henderson I will be delighted, since Scoot is an interesting story himself, and it adds intrigue for Cronin (how will he deal with all that guard talent with Ant, Lillard, Scoot, Sharpe). Slightly less fun would be trading the pick for win-now talent, as it reduces the interesting storylines and may only slightly tweak our championship chance within the next 5 years. Note: if Scoot turns out to be amazing, his trade value will be even higher in a year or two than it is now.
  5. Ant. He seems like a nice person and a good player, but somehow just not as interesting as a character to me as Lillard or Sharpe, so I am hoping we trade him to enhance the Lillard-championship storyline. Meanwhile I am rooting for him to put up great stats to increase his trade value.
  6. Nurkic. Love the big dude, and I think he is generally under-rated by the community. I was never a great soccer player, but my one high-level skill was understanding where people should be given where everyone else is, and Nurkic seems better at that then most. This is an invisible skill to most particularly when not everyone is on the same page but is hugely relevant to team results and will be magnified as team communication improves. Adding the three-point shot last year added a whole new storyline that it fun to watch. I am fine with trading Nurk if it helps the Lillard-championship storyline, but even more fun would be to watch him prove all the haters wrong.
  7. Grant. Coming to Portland to be with Lillard is a great storyline by itself and speaks to the character of Grant, making him very easy to root for. Getting a big contract will add an interesting sub-plot. Can Grant prove he is (more than) worth his new contract? Fun to root for.
  8. Thybulle. Crazy fun to watch on defense. Is he hurting or helping the team chasing steals/blocks? Can his 3 pointer become a reliable weapon? Inquiring minds want to watch and find out.
  9. Justice Winslow. Watching him play every position from Point Guard to Center during the most winning part of our season last year was crazy interesting. What is in store for this guy? I’ll be watching.
  10. Little. Watching him either hit a three pointer or slam full force into someone near the basket and then try to make the shot while falling post-collision is very fun, and the guy is super-likeable. Can he stay healthy, how good will he be when healthy? Interesting stuff.
  11. Watford, Keon, Jabari. Can they be regular NBA players on a good team? I’ll be happy to root for it whether they are Blazers or not.
  12. Drew Eubanks. I hope the Shaq of Troutdale sticks in the NBA, mostly because he is the Shaq of Troutdale. In terms of play-style he is kind of an anti-Nurk, and I have mixed feelings about him playing for the Blazers since I think his poor positional awareness hurts the team a bit on defense (he hustles but it is not always smart hustle) which degrades some of the other storylines.
  13. Reddish, Knox II. Eh.

Overall, the ideal situation for me going into next season would be a lineup like:

PG: Lillard, Scoot
SG: Sharpe, Thybulle
SF: New Dude, Little
PF: Grant, New Dude
C: Nurkic, New Dude

Benchwarmers: Watford, Jabari, ?, ?, ?.

Since Cronin took over it has looked like the team has basically had two agendas: a) holding tryouts to see who should play next to Lillard, and b) gathering as many assets as possible. Note, winning did not look like a priority to my eye…if we accidently won maybe the goal would pivot (and the start of last season hinted at that possibility) but winning hurts asset collection, so we intentionally used the trade deadline to collect assets and hold a new tryout to replace Gary Payton Jr. (Thybulle) while intentionally not addressing weaknesses in order to improve draft position. I enjoyed this storyline (though from all the negativity amongst blazer pundits I suspect most did not). But Lillard is 32 so we have 5-6 years to try to win a championship with him, which means we need to position ourselves to have a punchers chance now, while having enough young talent to, as Lillard ages, let the rest of the team get better as fast or faster than Lillard gets worse. My favorite (for storylines not championships) scenario for doing that involves Scoot and Sharpe getting better faster than Lillard gets worse (highly plausible) while trading Ant/draft pick(s) for a potent starting SF and high-caliber backups at PF/C. Worse but also interesting would be trading the #3 pick for a stud-SF (or a stud-PF with Grant moving to the 3?). The less interesting the person we trade for the more pressure there is for the trade to work. Trading Ant+#3+Sharpe for Zion? Better work. Zion is amazing when playing, but Zion is not as fun a personality to root for, so if he is sitting the bench off and on and the results are mediocre, overall enjoyment would be much less than similar or even slightly worse results while keeping storylines like Scoot/Sharpe on the team.

So, bottom-line, do we need to keep Lillard and win a championship for me to be happy? No. But we need to keep the Lillard-Championship storyline alive until another equally compelling one comes along. And given we have Sharpe, the #3 pick, and Lillard recruiting…that seems plausible.

Transitory thoughts

06/16/2023


As one might expect of a cranky old dude, I don’t know proper terminology or etiquette when discussing Trans stuff. And a couple minutes of googling didn’t help. So, I am going to use bio-male and bio-female to describe biological sex. Sorry for those I offend. Kind-of.

So here is my Trans rant. It seems odd to me that I even have Trans thoughts, but since society has bizarrely decided to pick on this minority to such an extent that anti-trans legislation is regularly being proposed, every U.S. voter’s opinion is becoming relevant. Here’s mine:

I personally think of gender as a cultural thing, not a biological thing. There is a cultural package inherited when you are born based on your biological sex that describes how you are expected to dress, look, talk, and act. I don’t really see much difference in this than the expectations on how you dress, look, talk, and act based on the country you are born in, your affluence, your skin color, or any other artificial segmentation of humanity. As far as I am concerned, whichever package you like better, go for it. Born in the France but want to dress/look/talk/act more like someone born in the U.S.? Great. Bio-male but want to dress/look/talk/act more female? Great. Does that mean I think being trans is cultural appropriation? Yes…I just don’t think cultural appropriation is a bad thing. If you want to adopt a culture you weren’t born into because you like it better, well, I’m happy if you’re happy. As usual, I suspect my perspective that “being trans is cultural appropriation and there is nothing wrong with it” is offensive to almost everyone, since most liberals seem to be against cultural appropriation and anti-trans sentiment seems trendy in conservative circles right now. Oh well. Such is the life of an old cranky retired dude.

So, I think being trans is fine. I guess there are some details to be worked out though, which suddenly everyone seems to think are wildly complicated and important. Things like “What bathroom should people be using” or “What sports teams can they be on.” All this category stuff seems like it should just be worked out on a case-by-case basis based on the purpose of the categorization. When in doubt, let people do what they want. If a bio-female judo league is set up to encourage more bio-females to compete, that makes sense given bio-females are at a big disadvantage in Judo compared to bio-males. Basically, it feels the same as age or weight categories to me: you want a broader range of people to have a chance to win prizes, so you set up separate categories for people unlikely to win in an open section. If you want to have a bio-female category in a chess or math competition that makes less sense, since it is likely that any disadvantages females have in those areas are social/cultural and thus the cultural you are in (male/female) is more relevant than your biology. Thus, it makes sense for areas such as math/chess to have an open (anyone can compete) category and a female category (only social females can compete), and distinctions based solely on biological sex would be odd. Same goes for what bathroom you use...it is a social thing so pick the one associated with your social (not biological) category. It does not seem complicated.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. How entrenched in law do I think they should be? Some. Just like most things, I think private organizations should pick their own rules, but if there seems to be widespread discrimination, laws (or constitutional amendments) seem appropriate. Folks can argue cogently on such things on a case-by-case basis, like whether bio-males have an advantage in ultra-marathons… but no one is confused about the real reason for the swath of anti-trans legislation sweeping across the U.S… And it ain’t a sudden, previously unknown, concern for kids and toilets.

Living Life Without Purpose

05/24/2023


Many analytical folks, including myself, find it difficult to navigate life relying mostly on our inherited instincts. There is an urge to optimize important decisions, but without a metric defining life success, optimization, or even coherent decision making, can feel impossible. Even those with somewhat simple/selfish goals like going to heaven or maximizing joy can find this stuff challenging, as such goals feel like just a part of what it means to have a life-well-lived.

The key to my own journey navigating such issues is absorbing the thought that while I may not have a full definition now for how I define a life-well-lived, there are concrete things I can do to maximize my ability to achieve my future goals once I define them. To the surprise of few I came to this insight when studying chess as a youth. The purpose in chess is well-known: checkmate. But there are few times in a game when you can calculate ways to force checkmate. Instead, it is rewarding to concentrate on a variety of heuristics related to expanding future options, like having more pieces, and having more piece mobility. Concentrating on future flexibility indirectly improves the odds of achieving checkmate later in the game, and it turns out the same heuristics work for a variety of chess variants with different rules/goals, as well as most other board games. In fact, if you teach a computer program to concentrate on these heuristics, and don’t tell it the goal is checkmate until move 20, the computer is almost as strong as if it knew the goal the whole time.

The concentration on flexibility heuristics also works in life. There are things you can do that increase the chance you can achieve future goals, without having yet defined them. To me, the three major life heuristic pillars are: long healthy life, financial flexibility, and a strong/diverse/supportive social network. Concentrating on maximizing these three areas maximizes your ability to achieve most goals. The longer you live, the more money you accumulate, the stronger and more diverse your set of relationships, the better off you are. Even when you have not (yet) found purpose.

So, we have three things to optimize, but what if they are in conflict? Yeah, I have no idea. Heck, I can’t even master the tradeoffs between different chess heuristics. In general, though, I have found that all three pillars are mutually reinforcing, which makes the tradeoff analysis easier given a long-term perspective. For example, decisions that sacrifice health or friends for wealth rarely make sense in that style of analysis, as in the long run a healthier/longer life and strong social relationships vastly improve the chances of future opportunities arising, including financial opportunities.

If these kinds of topics are of interest to you and you want a brainstorming partner, feel free to reach out and I’ll try to be responsive. After all, we all benefit from a strong supportive social network.

Leadership Ladders

05/3/2023


Going to dump some thoughts on mind-set vs. role in companies. I find that even though I have given up company life, it is hard to stop thinking about it, particularly since I am still consulting a bit. I first started thinking about mind-set vs. role through sports in high school. I had noticed that optimistic mentalities were really rewarded on offense, while pessimistic mentalities were rewarded on defense, and that independent of skill set, people did much better in positions associated with their mentality. So, in soccer, if you expect your teammates to make good passes and opponents to make bad passes, you should play offense. If you expect your teammates to make bad passes and opponents to make good passes, you should play defense. Some people were able to adapt based on situation, but that seemed surprisingly rare. The company version of this for me is 1-on-1 communication vs. team communication. People that instinctively aim for 1-on-1 communications are good at tailoring their message to their audience, and that works great for company politics, and business development. Team communicators are good at getting across consistent messaging and keeping everyone on the same page, which is great for team productivity/effectiveness. The challenge is, 1-on-1 skills (politics/business development) lead to promotions and team leadership positions much more often than consistent messaging, so team leads are often people that are good at 1-on-1 skills where they are molding their message to the individual, instead of team communication skills where everyone is on the same page. Teams led this way usually do poorly, particularly when faced with challenging tasks where assignments and priorities are ambiguous and require a lot of judgement and coordination (like most key performance tasks at the companies I have been at). Thus, unlike in sports where people naturally sort out to some extent into the role they are effective at, the opposite seems to happen in large companies. Just like in sports, there are people that can switch mentalities based on role, but to me it seems surprisingly rare. Most 1-on-1 communicators often resort to sound-bite speeches in public without addressing hard topics, and then vary the message to the audience when meeting with teammates individually (leading to poor coordination/focus). Most team communicators are bad at tailoring to the audience when meeting with customers or management, leading to missed opportunities to secure resources or sales for their team. I have seen people that can switch modes, but that is rare.

Anyway, that is my thought for the day. Now off to go read some papers in my hole in the ground. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: a Cranky-hole, and that means comfort.

Originalism

05/1/2023


I have no problems with most musings about whether Marvel is too “woke.” But if you think Mel Gibson should replace Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury, because Fury was white in the comics, you are clearly a Nazi and should not be allowed to hold office. Asking what movie would be better with Samuel Jackson is like asking what meal would be better with bacon. The answer is clearly all of them. Does he want to be Batman? Great! Best batman ever. Does he want to be Obi Wan Kenobi? Great! Best Kenobi ever. Does he want to be the Punisher? Great! Punisher automatically goes from unknown to favorite hero for 1 billion people. Anyone who thinks movies would be better sticking to original material should go back and read some of the x-men from the early sixties (and yes, Samuel Jackson would be the best Professor X…no insult intended to Patrick Stewart who was awesome).

My annoying and ignorant thoughts on socialism

04/20/2023


I have an inherent distrust of flowing prose, as it is very easy to disguise bad ideas as good within it. That said, there have been a couple of times in my life when I have heard phrases that were so beautiful that upon hearing them, they immediately crystalized a life-long philosophy for me that I did not know I had. One of those phrases, learned in high school history class, is: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” I love this phrase. It evokes a team-oriented spirit, where we are all trying to achieve together, and not worrying about who is doing what so much as all doing what we can. Anyone who has participated in team sports knows this feeling. At its best no one cares which teammate is strongest, fastest, or the sharpest of wit, except in the context of what they can best do to help the team. Who scores the goals and who is getting back on defense is equally irrelevant. Everyone is in it together, taking advantage of communal strengths and weaknesses for communal credit. Playing team sports is when the world feels right to me, and nothing feels more wrong than when someone on the team starts getting wrapped up in ideas of personal glory or achievement at the expense of the team.

In my group relationships my first instinct is to try to follow this team-oriented philosophy. In my marriage, my broader family, my friendships, and even at work. And the lessons I have learned about human nature along with (to a lesser extent) societal observations drive my opinions of socialism.

When I say socialism, I mean a system where the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned/regulated by the community as a whole (government). The purpose of this in my mind is to enable a society that embodies the beautiful philosophy that drives my personal relationship instincts: From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Note this is wholly different from the way the term socialism is most commonly used in the U.S.. Currently, when we approve a tax and then vote to spend that tax money for public good people call it socialism. This sounds ridiculous to me. To me, that is democratic capitalism. Individuals own the means of production (so not socialism) and we are voting on how to tax and spend (democracy). I feel like I should be making some clear and coherent argument for why a system of taxation that fuels government spending is different from a government owned means of production but the thought that they are the same is so foreign to me that I don’t know where to start. Society needs some things (mutual defense for example) so if individuals own everything, we need to collect some money from those individuals to fund societal needs. That is pretty much the opposite of socialism, where the government owns things and thus doesn’t need to tax people, they just distribute resources (ideally according to need).

So, given that I love the idea of socialism, and instinctively try to apply its principles within every group I participate in, do I think we should adapt it as a system of government? No. I think that is an awful idea. I have managed to get it working within the context of marriage, but it is way harder than it should be even for wildly team-oriented people. Just because you would die for your spouse does not mean you want to change diapers so she can enjoy her Netflix show. Who is more capable of changing diapers? Who needs to watch Netflix more? I don’t know but let me be on record as saying I am very bad at changing diapers and really need to watch a lot of Netflix.

Luckily, my wife and I have navigated such challenges pretty seamlessly through the years. We are both highly capable, complementary, and empathetic which allows us to both contribute powerfully when we can, recuperate when we need to, and keep the family prospering without too many invasive thoughts/arguments about who is making more money, who is doing more chores, who is consuming more resources, etc.. For the most part it is from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs. But for groups larger than two I have never gotten this philosophy to succeed. There can be time periods at work where, like in team sports, a group has pulled together and worked with almost complete selflessness. During those periods no one is worrying about who is being most productive, who needs the most time away from work for family issues, who is being paid the most. Everyone works as hard as they can, takes breaks when they need to, and succeeds or fails together. But such time periods are limited to short bursts with concrete goals. After that, the people that are doing the most want to be paid the most and are resentful when compensation and productivity feels imbalanced. Would that be solved if people jointly owned the means of production like in marriage? I don’t think so. It still boils down to who gets to watch Netflix, and who must change diapers. In my marriage we have enough shared empathy to turn such questions into trivialities rather than heated negotiations. However, despite being wildly team oriented, I just haven’t felt that way about everyone at work, nor they about me. The idea that you could get such a philosophy working on a grand scale seems completely unrealistic to me. By linking productivity to compensation, we set up a system that incentivizes diaper changes in a way that fundamentally feels fairer and gets more diapers changed. If everyone valued each other as much as they valued themselves, we wouldn’t need to do that. But they don’t so we do.

Can we link productivity to compensation while still having community ownership of the means of production? Not efficiently. The most efficient mechanism of being productive is to set up self-propagating systems of productivity (companies) where you derive value based on the effectiveness of that system (through ownership). That is not just a theoretical conclusion, that is historical data. That doesn’t mean that the only reasonable system is unfettered capitalism. History has also shown capitalism has its own challenges. For example, environmental abuse can harm public good more than the productivity derived from that abuse helps it. Unfettered capitalism can also be highly exploitive in a way that benefits those with lots of resources and hurts those with few such that it hurts the whole system (monopolies being one of the simpler examples). How to best regulate capitalism is a whole different pile of worms, beyond the scope of this discussion. My only point is that, in my opinion, socialism is a beautiful but impractical idea. I believe there should be significant individual ownership of the means of production, because that is the best way of tying compensation with productivity, which is necessary given that humans often value their own experience over the experience of others.

Alright, so I don’t like socialism. But how much do I not like socialism? It seems to have taken on bogeyman status in some republican circles….is it like that for me? Well…in its pure form yes. I think becoming a country like Russia or China would be very very bad. Their systems of government do not look effective, because the incentive structure is bad for productivity and is fertile for the type of corruption that makes it hard to fix the system. What I am not afraid of is democratic socialists like AOC or Bernie Sanders. I don’t follow politics very closely, but whenever I do skim headlines or talking points, I never hear them proposing the government seize the means of production. As far as I can tell they aren’t really proposing America embrace socialism at all. They just want more regulation, more taxes, and more spending on public services. Well, that does not seem scary to me. Every politician is going to fall somewhere on the spectrum, some want more taxing/spending/regulating than I do, some less. As long the democratic process stays intact the will of the people will be known through their votes, and that stuff will all work itself out. The only threat is if we somehow interrupt the democratic process through eliminating our right to vote or corrupting the vote counting or gathering process. And while I have seen some bizarrely concerning events in recent times hinting at such threats, none of them are emanating from people like AOC or Bernie.

Cranky Chess website is up

04/14/2023


I added a chess tab to the website, where I am listing some of my favorite chess books and chess games. The list is pretty small right now, but I expect to be adding to this quite a bit over the next few weeks and months. I actually have quite a sizeable collection of chess books to mine from, though I might take inspiration from book and game videos by my friends over at the Chess Dojo.

Why wildly successful people are often very very dumb

04/11/2023


Many humans have an inherent desire to view the world as fair. A world where random things happen that you have little control over is much scarier than a world where “being good” or “being clever” can insulate you against bad outcomes. When I listen to someone talk about how the poor are poor because they don’t do X, or the rich are rich because they do X’, or bad parenting result Y came from bad parenting decisions, or good parenting result Y’ came from good parenting decisions, I usually think to myself “ah, I see the desire for a fair world peeking through.” It is not that I think actions and outcomes have no link, just that the link is much weaker than people think/wish it was. To me the world seems incredibly stochastic, and smart choices are more about mildly swaying the odds in your favor than ensuring good outcomes. A clean example of industry acceptance of this is choosing stocks: everyone pretty much understands you shouldn’t put all your money in “the best” stock, and instead should have a diverse portfolio so that the impact of your best idea turning out poorly is softened by the performance of your lesser stock thoughts.

The funny statistical outcome of this in the stock market is that those that make the best decisions rarely have the best returns. The best returns are usually achieved by those taking big, non-diverse risks and getting lucky. On average the returns of the population of intelligent decision makers might be superior, but over a short period of time the luckiest of the lucky risk takers outperform everyone…more from the willingness to take great risk than from making good decisions. Keep in mind 1 year, or even 10 years, counts as short time period in my mind for the stock market because of the small number of decisions and the lack of independence between decisions. This is well understood among stock folks, which is why financial advisors don’t recommend their clients invest in the best performing funds. Everyone in that world understands the very best performing funds are getting results because they are doing dumb things and getting lucky.

So, wildly successful mutual funds are usually run in a dumb way…what about wildly successful people? To my eye, the same thing is going on. I define wildly successful in this context pretty shallowly (CEO of big company, super rich, fancy political career). The few people I have met in these categories, even if they might sound bright in small doses, sound dumb as dirt when they stray from the self-promotion pitches that helped get them where they are. To my eye the success outlier formula is:

  1. take massive risks
  2. get lucky
  3. self-promote like crazy
That doesn’t mean I think there is no relationship between good choices and good outcomes. Just like in the stock market, good choices in life help shape the odds in your favor. But be suspicious of outliers…they are usually outliers because of bad decisions with lucky outcomes.

Voting Restrictions

01/18/2022


The first U.S. voting restriction law I was aware of (must show an ID to vote) seemed so obviously common sense I was shocked when I found out it was considered by many to be aimed at reducing voting among certain demographics and not about reducing voter fraud. After reading a bit on the topic I discovered it was a valid interpretation. The whole thing got me thinking about metrics for evaluating vote gathering systems. The obvious one is: how frequently does the result of the vote reflect majority opinion. This type of metric successfully captures the tradeoff between increased voter turnout and increased voter fraud, as well as addressing inequities in voting access between different segments of the population. Given all the polling that already happens it does not seem that hard to estimate what system changes would improve (or make worse) this metric. My interpretation of a lot of the voting-right shenanigans is that there are a lot of people that just don’t want majority opinion to drive elections. I understand. The older I get the more likely it is my opinions will diverge from the majority, since the opinion of youth becomes majority opinion pretty regularly. I just wish people either driving or enabling objectively worse voting systems would just admit they really don’t want to live in a democracy.

Cranky and Annoying Gun Thoughts

08/20/2021


I don’t have many opinions on politically charged positions, mostly because I am terrible at adopting the opinions of my tribe(s) without thinking about them, and most topics are too complicated to form real opinions on without a lot of research and effort. That said, here are some uninformed thoughts on gun laws in the United States.

To me, there seem to be two main pro-gun positions which I categorize as follows: gun-rights and gun-fun. Gun-rights are derived from the second amendment in the following text: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Anything outside of that I consider in the category of gun-fun.

Now, I am sure there is a lot of legal and scholarly thoughts, precedents, and opinions floating around on the meaning of this phrase. I am going to ignore those. These are my thoughts and I’ll do what I want with them. To me, the intention of second amendment is to ensure civilians can coordinate enough violence to counter government shenanigans with armed force if necessary. The second amendment has nothing to do with the right to keep guns to shoot ducks or neighbors. It is to shoot uppity government folks. Shooting ducks and neighbors falls in the category of gun-fun. Two great examples in the last year for appropriate application of gun-rights is to arm Black-Rights-Matter protestors, and to arm January 6th insurrectionists. Note that civilian-on-civilian action (like with the infamous Kyle and his protest of protestors) is not supported under gun-rights. It is considered gun-fun under my definitions.

It is worth noting that arms are not limited to guns in my mind. In the modern era, guns may not be sufficient to combat government abuse. For example, if a president decides to ignore election results, and the government (including military forces) backs him against the will of the people, handguns are not going to cut it. So, to me, the second amendment covers a broader scope of weaponry than guns (cyber weapons, tanks, nukes, whatever). Basically, the second amendment is intended to enable violent overthrow of the government by well-regulated militias. If you want to change that because the repercussions are unnerving, then you should change that constitution. That is allowed you know.

So, the question of appropriate gun regulation comes down to what regulations are appropriate for gun-fun, given gun-rights are protected until the relevant amendment is updated to something more suited to modern day government and armaments. The fact that current gun-fun includes things like school-shootings and various other disturbing civilian-on-civilian violence leads me to think some serious regulation is needed. My current thought is this is best addressed by focusing on the phrase “well-regulated militia.” Just because I think the constitution ensures civilian access to assault rifles and rocket launchers does not mean everyone should get to keep them in their basement. We need two sets of laws, one defining well-regulated militia (which includes how arms are regulated), and one addressing gun-fun. I think the federal government should define well-regulated militia in a set of laws applicable across all states, and that should include extreme control of any weaponry that enables mass-murder. For example, certain categories of weaponry may only be stored and accessed on-site at licensed practice sites. The definition of weaponry that falls under this category should be left to people that know about this stuff (not me). Experts in the military and police for example. And regulations associated with gun-sales should be informed by this expertise, such that weapons that are easily modifiable for mass-murder would not be allowed outside the context of a well-regulated militia. Is that even possible in current weapon designs? I have no idea, but I see no reason we need to stick to current weapon designs when defining our laws and regulations. New designs can be derived from the new regulations, just like in all other regulated industries.

Another appropriate subset of federal regulation relates to who is allowed to own/access a gun. A well-regulated militia is not well-regulated if it is open to any and all people independent of age, history of violence, and mental illness. I don’t have an opinion on what set of rules are appropriate for restricting gun ownership, but I am sure statistics are available to be mined to identify high-risk populations and restrict their access to weapons (both for fun and for revolution).

Do my militia-regulation suggestions mean no guns in homes are allowed? Not necessarily. I am open to fun-gun laws being regulated on a state-by-state basis. If a state wants to outlaw all guns in homes, such that all guns are maintained within the context of a well-regulated militia, fine. If a state wants an anything-goes atmosphere where everyone with a gun-license can wander around like an old western movie with holstered 2-shot pistols (or whatever version of fun-guns end up being outside of federal mass-murder-prevention laws) that is fine as well. Allowing some variety of allowable private-citizen gun access provides additional data to inform federal and state lawmakers for potential refinement. So how do we transition from our current situation, where private guns out-number private citizens? No idea. That is something fun to think about another day.

Words

08/20/2021


I think the two words I have grown to dislike hearing the most since I started following politics are Freedom, and Socialism (the more common and inaccurate usage referring to government spending, not owning the means of production). The bad part is not the topics themselves which I find interesting and important, but the use of the words to avoid real discussion. Obviously not everyone should get to do anything they want, and obviously the government should spend some money on some things, so topics involving Freedom or Socialism don’t make any sense without being accompanied by cost/benefit tradeoff discussion; yet the usage context almost always implies the opposite (any infringement on freedom is bad, and any government spending is bad) such that both words are reduced to zingers thereby circumventing nuanced debate or analysis of important topics.

Foreign Thoughts

08/19/2021


Boy is foreign policy complicated. I think it is important, and good to talk about, but I don’t have many opinions because it is so darn complicated. As with most complicated things I tend to try to get my head around guiding principles rather than specifics, as it gives me a framework to think about the specifics in. Currently I have two thoughts on guiding principles:

  1. the rhetoric of my youth feels right: the United States should be promoting democracy worldwide (or more specifically promoting non/less-corrupt societies). The larger a percentage of the world that believes in honesty and fair play, the better off everyone will be including us. It sucks to try to negotiate with or help highly corrupt governments.
  2. it is fine (and appropriate) for us to prioritize the interests of U.S. citizens over others, but not infinitely. If a pile of money can save 10 American lives, or 1000 others, maybe it makes sense to help the others. I don’t know what the appropriate ratio is, but it is something I think about (it is relevant to figuring out how to prioritize helping family, friends, and others in my personal life as well).

Supreme Rant

06/06/2020


Supreme Rant. OK, I have opinions about the Supreme Court. And my number one opinion is everyone else I hear talk about the Supreme Court is wrong, and wrong in a way that hurts the country. People want folks on the Supreme Court that agree with them on critical issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.). That seems like a terrible way to pick justices. I think you want to vote for congress members that will pass laws you agree with on critical issues, but that should not be the primary criteria for picking a president charged with execution of those laws, and definitely not a criterion for picking Supreme Court Justices. If you just “vote for your team” across all the branches of government, you risk losing all the checks and balances and you risk ending up with major corruption. What is cool and unique about the Supreme Court is it is a lifetime appointment, which means when they get there, they are completely free to do whatever they think is right without risking their job. That is such a great mechanism to keep idiocy and corruption in check from the legislative and executive branch! My goal would be to maximize the decision-making power of the group to interpret the meaning and application of the law. How do you do that? Well…

  1. You want a group of people whose instinctive reaction to a new case is wildly varied (so you need highly diverse opinions). If everyone starts out on the same page, there is way less chance for healthy debate amongst justices which is critical for nuanced decision making.
  2. You also want a group of people that do not naturally devolve into clicks (like liberal and conservative). You really want to avoid an us vs. them mentality, which hurts objective analysis even in the most well-meaning people.
  3. You want people that love the job and work hard and are dedicated with no incentive other than a job well done. This is a lifetime appointment. Not everyone is good at working hard when there is no financial or social incentive to do so. In fact, most people are bad at it. Most people should not be Supreme Court justices.
  4. You want brilliant independent thinkers that are aren’t afraid to change their mind. The best decisions come from groups of people that start out disagreeing, debate vigorously, and reach a consensus through group recognition of the most cogent arguments. That only works if everyone is on relatively even footing intellectually, and people are not wed to their own initial opinions.

OK, that is a lot of verbiage, but kind of impractical. How does it translate to selecting a new justice? Well ….

  1. I want someone outspoken. If their entire public record consists of saying the most politically appropriate thing at all times, I am not getting much data on how they are going to complement the current crop of justices. I would much rather them having been public at some point in their life about their opinions on controversial things like abortion or climate change than not, even if they disagree with me.
  2. I want to see evidence that they can change their mind. If they started out against gay marriage, and later became pro-gay rights, that is not flip-flopping, that is evidence they can adopt new thoughts which is great! Even better is if they regularly make rulings against their public position on a topic, showing they value the law over personal preference.
  3. I want diversity of opinion. Physical trait diversity is good, but only if it reflects an increased likelihood of adding diversity of perspective/initial opinion on new cases. If there are already several Supreme Court justices the new candidate already agrees with on most things, then they are not adding much to the group. Given the current trend of liberal vs. conservative justice grouping, I would strongly weight people that had a mix of conservative/liberal views. There is no logical reason for people that agree on abortion to also agree on climate change and states rights and redistricting and everything else correlated with your political party. If you agree with your party on everything, you probably should not be on the Supreme Court.
  4. Workaholic genius with passion for the job. I want stories of dedication and long hours. I want stories of brilliance and compassion. The kind of person I want would have obviously been amazing at anything they tried, and their passion was law. Only a few people in history ever get to be Supreme Court Justices; we can and should hold out for the best of the best. And you don’t have to dig deep into people’s histories to determine that. How long do you have to talk to Lebron James about basketball, or Warren Buffet about finance, to discover they are brilliant independent thinkers with amazing work ethics and a lifelong passion for their field?

So how does the current nominee stack up? No idea. My cursory glance hints she is pretty much just a cookie-cutter conservative, so not my kind of person (not because she is conservative, but because she is cookie-cutter). What kind of person would I like better? Well, sadly the best example of the kind of person I would want on the Supreme Court was The Notorious R.B.G..

Post Rights

06/01/2020


It is amazing how many people think that posting on company owned websites is a right, protected by free speech. I have heard the idea from erudite professors, and Facebook friends. Lawyers and hipsters. Liberals, and Conservatives. Basically it seems like a common prospective across all walks of like, argued only in specific cases where one disagrees with a particular outcome. The whole idea that posting on company owned websites is protected as free speech just seems ridiculous to me. I think companies have the right to do whatever they want on their own websites, up until the government passes laws regulating them. That includes companies like Twitter and Facebook. So many reasonable people disagree with me though it makes me second guess my position on occasion. Of course, I am strongly in favor of regulation of media (including social media) because of the sharply increasing utilization of media by some politicians and foreign governments for dangerous misinformation campaigns. But in my mind that is regulation of a company, and has nothing to do with free speech. I certainly don't think we should get to sue newspapers for not printing our articles; and the idea that posting a tweet is a god-given right and protected in the constitution seems just as bizarre to me. But from what I can tell my position is the abnormal one.

The Wild Hunt

06/01/2020


What I find most terrifying about the protests are the many many examples of police hunting and attacking people with cameras (press and others). Property damage is wildly irrelevant in comparison to me (and possibly even an enabler of documenting which enforcers react like heroes and which are inspired to propagate atrocities). Anyone violently oppressing media is aiming to commit evil acts so obviously awful that even the evil people don’t want to be seen doing it. The government needs to immediately:

  1. protect those cameras, and
  2. fire and prosecute every policeman caught on camera abusing their power.

Until that process is underway, there is no point in lecturing protestors about law and order, given abuses by those we have entrusted to enforce our laws is what is being protested. Step 3 is giving a big raise to those good cops that remain after a serious cleansing of both those that committed atrocities and those that watched and remained silent. Step 4 is a recruiting/rebranding campaign to repopulate our police department with the kind of people we want protecting us. It is pretty clear right now that the most challenging “critical worker” job is not grocery store worker, or even nurse, but policeman. They need to be held to a higher standard and paid and treated like elite, trusted keepers of truth, justice, and the American way. Because the good ones are. But first, we need a cleansing.

Opening Thoughts

05/04/2020


What disturbs me about the pandemic reopening discussions is everyone seems to be just talking tactics without talking goals/strategy. In my mind there are two basic strategies:

  1. Decide everyone is going to get exposed anyway, so re-open as soon as it can be done without overwhelming our infrastructure and take the losses at current fatality rates, or
  2. Decide it is possible to protect a significant percentage of the population from exposure until such a time as we can reduce the fatality rates via improved treatments/vaccines, and therefore not re-open until improved treatment plans are available.

I would feel much more comfortable if the data scientists were producing models and graphs showing the tradeoff between strategy one and two based on different treatment breakthrough assumptions (timing and effect), and only then derive and promote policy.

A Guide

04/28/2020


One of my favorite childhood books was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Just thought I would share a few quotes. Any relevance you might see to current circumstances is coincidental.

  1. "I'd far rather be happy than right any day." "And are you?" "No. That's were it all falls down, of course." "Pity", said Arthur. "It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise."
  2. "For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."
  3. "So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die." "Yes," said Ford, "except....no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch? he cried. "What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round. "No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all."
  4. "This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
  5. "One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious."
  6. "I don't want to die now! he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!"
  7. "Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and say "Blood...blood....blood...blood..."
  8. "Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe."
  9. "One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid."
  10. "Don't Panic."

Pandemic Impressions

04/17/2020


Repressing my morbid sense of humor has been challenging during this pandemic, but given I have some friends and family really suffering, it seems appropriate. Instead, I’d like to point out two underrated groups that really stepped up and proved their value.

  1. Free Press. The press has been getting a lot of flak the last few years, but the fact is that when things started getting hairy the press was busy getting facts and expert opinion into people’s hands, and even when they contradicted messaging coming from the white house, everyone pretty much believed the press and acted on the information presented. While some of the words coming out of people’s mouths might sound different based on political stance, polls say there is basically no statistical difference in people’s actions. Republicans and Democrats report the same increases in washing their hands, social distancing, etc.. To me, that is attributable to the fact that we have a free press, and while we might talk smack about the media, when it comes to our health the fact is our actions indicate we trust them over the words of our favorite politicians. I suspect if we had a state-run press like many authoritarian regimes do, things would be getting pretty bad here even if the official numbers didn’t reflect it. So thank you founding fathers.
  2. Local government. I must admit I don’t pay much attention to local government and haven’t thought of governors and mayors as terribly important compared to senators and such. However, when the federal government failed to grab the reigns in the early days of the pandemic, local leadership across the country managed a wildly coherent and collective response. Things aren’t perfect, and there are a few governors that acted and continue to act irresponsibly, but in general I’m shocked how well local leadership coordinated, ignored politics and acted responsibly. It was particularly heart-warming to watch states send extra ventilator to where they were needed most, even when it wasn’t always in their best political interest to do so.

So, basically my thought during this pandemic is: good job USA. The federal government’s response might have been job-droppingly odd at times, but the bones of our societal infrastructure are still good, and we have been doing an admirable job shaping a coherent collective response. It will be interesting to see how well we can navigate the economic impact, which feeds into one of our most divisive political topics: social safety nets. My guess is everyone including me will be dissatisfied with how that plays out over the next year or so, but I am way more optimistic now than I would have been before seeing how well the American people have adapted to the challenges the pandemic has presented them so far.

Impeachment

02/01/2020


It seems logical to me not to have a bunch of testimony in the senate on impeachment, for the same reason it was silly to have testimony during Clinton's impeachment. After all, everyone already knew that Clinton committed adultery, and everyone already knows Trump committed treason. The black mark for senators is not voting against testimony. It is the unwavering prioritization of political expediency over the interests of the country. I understand you can't be an effective politician without engaging in politics, but there are times when you just have to do what's right. This moment is going into the history books, and people that don't want to be on the side of good in those moments should not be decision makers on a national scale. While I understand a super-majority is never going to happen, it will sadden me if I don't see at least a few senators cross the aisle and go on record stating treason is an impeachable offense.

Politician Wish List

10/24/2019


So I have been giving some thoughts on how to pick political candidates to support, starting with a presidential candidate. The approach I picked is pretty similar to how I judge the CEO of a company I am considering investing in. I am looking for a vision I buy into, and personal characteristics I trust to achieve that vision. That is about it. I pretty much ignore sound-bites, dumb answers to dumb questions from the media, etc.. I am looking for someone I can trust to consistently make good decisions behind the scenes, not someone who plays well to the crowd. Yesterday's post on my decision to become more political outlines the vision I am looking for. In terms of personal characteristics my wish-list is:


So basically, I am looking for a candidate that is a cross between Obama, George W. Bush, and Bernie Sanders, whose vision for the country is largely consistent with mine. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Note, most major issues and talking points are not a priority for me. Its not that I don’t care about Climate Change, Abortion, Gun Control, Immigration, etc.. The problem is, I want a candidate that is smarter than me, and has given these issues more thought than me, and will make better, more refined decisions than me. So if they agree with all my poorly thought out opinions on popular issues, they are displaying little evidence they meet that criteria. If anything, I am looking for a person able to articulate wildly unpopular opinions cogently, which is much better evidence they have the characteristics I am looking for (Brilliant, Bold, Believer).

Student Debt Forgiveness

10/18/2019


The topic of the government wiping out student loan debt has been raised by several of my Facebook friends, so rather than engage on individual feeds I thought I would share my own thoughts here. I am only intending to discuss forgiving debt in this post, which I view as different from initiatives that improve availability of affordable advanced education, as wiping out debt is retroactive (it changes what decisions would have made sense in the past) while improving education availability/affordability is proactive (it changes decision making in the future). Generally speaking, I agree with many of my friends that retroactive initiatives feel unfair. It feels like if you agreed to take on debt you should pay for it, and if you decided to skip college because of the cost, you shouldn’t have to watch that decision be retroactively degraded. That stuff feels wrong. But just because it feels wrong does not mean that it is wrong, so here is my analysis: fundamentally, I think wiping out debt is a form of economic stimulation, just like tax breaks, company bail outs, or large government spend plans. All of these things are tools for pumping money into the economy. Thought of that way, wiping out debt is a pretty interesting option. The data shows the most effective government stimulation mechanisms involve giving money to those most likely to spend it (as in poor people, not rich people…I guess I believe in trickle-up-economics). I am not convinced student debt forgiveness is the optimal way of boosting the economy, but it is highly likely better than a lot of the recent initiatives (like the last tax break). So basically, my thought is now is not the time for this kind of initiative since the economy is not in need of a boost. But student debt forgiveness is worthy of consideration during the next economic downturn. Right now it feels like we should be doing the opposite of boosting the economy (raise taxes, cut spending) so that we can improve the country financial footing in preparation to be able to act strongly to help the economy during the next down turn. The main spending initiatives I would be considering currently are ones that achieve effects needed now, and help the economy only as a by-product of the spending (green initiatives, critical infrastructure (dams, roads), improving national resistance to cyber attack, etc.. To me, wiping out student debt is not in that category, it is an interesting idea worth studying, it should merit serious consideration in situations where unemployment is rising and the economy is getting bad, but now is not that time.

Sigh...I Guess I Should Be Political

10/18/2019


So for the most part I have pretty weak political opinions. Other than human rights. I think as many people should be as free and happy as possible, but how to achieve that is generally unclear to me. It does feel that we are reaching an historical fulcrum, however, which means it is time for folks, including me, to start paying attention and acting. The reason this moment feels important now has less to do with political specifics than it does the technical backdrop: we are reaching a point where data exists on who is where doing what most of the time, and algorithms exist for automatically capturing/identifying/labeling that information and acting on it. That means businesses or governments that can collect and act on that information can exert a level of control over populations that has never existed before outside of science-fiction novels. Before that potential is fully realized, it is time for humanity to establish systems of governance than can be trusted with that kind of power. Now is not the time to ignore China and their "social credit system," automated law-enforcement in Saudi Arabia, or social engineering misinformation campaigns launched from Russia. Instead it is time for the U.S. to embrace its technical excellence in the very technologies so ripe for abuse, and establish morale leadership on how to responsibly adopt and police them. That includes adapting corporate and government roles and responsibilities for ourselves that constrain use of these technologies to avoid abuse, and actively promoting world-wide adoption of those same principles. In the same way that the U.S. started leaning-in politically after nuclear weapons became a world-wide bogeyman, I think it is time to adopt a proactive leadership role to promote responsible technology/data governance, starting with ourselves, but not limited to ourselves. It might feel too late given the current administration's abdication of the morale high-ground and its advocacy for isolationism, but I don't believe it is. The U.S. is still a leader politically, financially, and technically, and as elections approach us it is my intention to back candidates and positions that pose the highest chance of letting us bridge this historical fulcrum with a maximum amount of human freedom and potential intact worldwide. Somehow, hoping the NBA or Facebook does that for us does not seem like the right answer.



Cranky Thoughts



9/13/2023 My favorite thing about having Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert in Congress is I don’t have to hear as much about how awesome everything would be if only women were in charge of everything.

9/04/2023 Sometimes I envy judges/philosophers/lawyers because it is their job to sound logical, while as a computer science guy my job requires me to actually be logical.

8/25/2023 It would be fun to watch people who don’t read the news trying to guess events from popular search results. Example: guess why there is a giant spike in people reading about that time Ulysses S. Grant got pulled over for driving his horse and buggy too fast.

8/10/2023 Never attribute to design that which is adequately explained by lazy engineering.

8/05/2023 If someone in a movie or tv show is so hideously disfigured that they need to wear a mask, it would be nice if they weren’t still significantly more attractive than me.

7/26/2023 Now that I'm passed the ramen stage of retirement, I’m looking into a few small but necessary home improvement projects; you would not believe how much people want to charge to build a moat.

7/24/2023 After a lot of experimentation, I have discovered the easiest way to lose 10 lbs. is to first gain 20 lbs.

7/23/2023 Is it hypocritical that I pretty much ignore all medical advice from doctors that don’t wear masks, even though I was a computer professional that didn’t use Linux?

7/18/2023 Given the dilution of ADHD diagnosis, I think DSM-5 should categorize anyone diagnosed before 2000 as OG-ADHD.

7/18/2023 I guess I don’t have a good feel for what types of diversity should be valued, and which should not. Luckily we have the best legal minds to tell me.

7/18/2023 Short story based on real events: Woman: you forgot to take out the garbage. Man: Don’t you know who I am? I’m the Juggernaut B*tch! Woman: Of course you are, dear. Juggernaut runs toward the curb holding the garbage, letting nothing stand in his way.

7/16/2023 Songs like Purple Rain remind me a lot of the original Lord of the Rings books. It’s great in theory, but to be honest I am usually not in the mood to wade through page after page of Elvish Poetry.

7/15/2023 What do you call a cabal that's not elite? Is that what a union is?

7/13/2023 I wanted to write a joke about wetting myself because I couldn’t reach my step-counting device, but my wife thinks it’s not funny.

7/10/2023 Is there a pattern to the order of light switches? Like closest affects the room you’re in and farthest affects the room you’re going into? I don’t memorize things easily and having to flip every light switch every time I walk into a room all these years has slowly been driving me crazy.

7/02/2023 Mrs. Cranky loves how much more I cook when I am on a diet. She just hates how much of it is healthy.

6/29/2023 Good to see the Supreme Court’s dedication to equality, without regard to where you’re from or what you look like. There has been too much concern for diversity across our prestigious institutions. For example, did you know the Senate has a quota for Kentuckians, such that there are always 2 Kentuckians in the senate independent of the quality of the candidates? I am looking forward to when all senate seats are based purely on merit, and the end of discrimination against Californians.

6/28/2023 I am trying out an online fitness app where you meet with a trainer, and they send tailored workouts to your phone. So far, I have renamed the first workout “Fasted Arm Circles” and the 2nd “Pooh Bear Pretends he’s a Cloud.” Any guesses on how long it will take the trainer to deduce I want harder workouts? Also, any other name ideas?

6/28/2023 Well, I think it is clear Alito will not be voting to boot Clarence Thomas for accepting bribes.

6/24/2023 So, Russia is worse at defending against a Russian invasion than Ukraine is?

6/23/2023 Very happy with the Blazer’s draft day! There was a lot of public pressure to sell either Lillard or Scoot for pennies on the dollar, and it’s nice to see Cronin do the right thing. Now the pressure’s on to make a trade in the next few months to balance the roster but so far so good.

6/22/2023 You may think your dog wants to go for a walk, but if you teach it two request signals, walk and bacon, 100% of the requests will be bacon.

6/20/2023 This morning I discovered I can magnify the reaction to my dad jokes by ending each with the phrase “Waka Waka.”

6/20/2023 My theoretical-mathematician wife keeps claiming she doesn’t know anything about topology, yet she keeps interrupting when I am trying to explain to the kids why a Mobius-maplebar has infinite frosting.

6/13/2023 Well, it looks like there have been two giant, highly public leaks of classified information to U.S. adversaries, one by Snowden and one by Trump. And yet many Americans still hail these bozos as heroes. Not a fan, 0-stars. I’ll save my 1-star ratings for folks like Ted Kacynski, who makes some good points about the environment and has a relatively modest kill-count.

6/10/2023 My favorite new hobby is finding people bragging on social media about something their kid did and leaving a comment like “don’t be mean, she’s trying her hardest.”

6/04/2023 Cranky Summer Adventure has begun! So far, Youngest is a Paladin Level 2 and found 48.6 gold by: Watering Plants, Yoga, Get Mail, Food and Water Dog, the Soccer Juggling Challenge, 10 minutes of soccer drills, one mile run with Dog, make everyone breakfast (with help from hired mercenary) and winning a hearthstone game. He is now embarking on a laundry folding quest (with help from hired mercenary). Will be interesting to see how much of a lead he can build before his brother wakes up.

5/28/2023 I love listening to long form content by clever authentic people being clever and authentic. The problem is they often run with the premise that it is super important to have all the sex all the time and it always throws me for a loop. I mean, ice cream is also great, but we all understand if someone molds their whole life around maximizing ice cream intake things have gone terribly wrong.

5/24/2023 Did DeSantis ban his own book? Now that is commitment.

5/21/2023 I am not a big fan of the Lakers, but I must admit, I do want to see Lebron just keep winning and winning until everyone finally admits he is better than Jordan ever was.

5/02/2023 It’s nice that teaching today’s teenagers to shave is now “here’s how to plug in an electric razor,” instead of “Here’s how you mop up blood.”

4/30/2023 The wave of U.S. legislation aimed at weakening child labor laws is interesting. I think some people forget, when battling for parental rights, that some laws exist to protect children FROM their parents.

4/30/2023 You know you’re introverted when your response to an urge to increase social connectedness is to learn HTML.

4/29/2023 No one was worried when we made an artificial Garry Kasparov, but now we can make an artificial Cliff Claven everyone is freaking out.

4/25/2023 It’s so funny to watch Ron DeSantis try to convince America that Disney is Woke. Dude, we’ve all seen South Park.

4/25/2023 I wonder how the political landscape would be different if you had to get a security clearance to be on the ballet for any position requiring a security clearance.

4/09/2023 I started regretting getting a dog smarter than me around the time I found out two baby locks were not enough to keep her out of the trash. Now that I have trained her to go into my Eldest’s room at exactly 7am every morning and lick his face until he wakes up, all previous transgressions are forgiven.

4/04/2023 It seems YouTube has become convinced I really, really want to become a “Boss Babe.”

3/30/2023 I have been ordering out a bit too much so I thought it would help overall health to instead stock the house with more highly palatable, easy to prepare food. Big mistake.

1/09/2023 I never really understood the pains of unrequited love until I gave up pizza for a month.

12/31/2022 My 2022 New Year’s resolution is to watch Shanghai Knights before it stops being free on Amazon Prime.

11/11/2022 I am in a healthy eating phase and must admit being a bit annoyed at all the criticism I am getting for eating too much artificial stuff. Does anyone know if they sell a casein/whey protein powder labeled something like “all-natural dehydrated fat-free milk”?

11/10/2022 My eldest has gotten into climbing, and I just wanted friends and family that might interact with us in that context to know that the term I have taught my family is “idiot-climbing,” not “free-climbing.” Please maintain consistency with that terminology in our presence. Thank you. Partial apologies to my friends that have engaged in such activities…but you know.

11/07/2022 I think this week is the most I have ever been on twitter. It is just super entertaining to watch Elon frantically making up rules trying to make twitter more about posting conspiracy theories about Pelosi, and less about making fun of Elon Musk.

11/06/2022 XOR joke: I don’t know why people keep asking me yes or no questions. The answer is always yes.

10/15/2022 The people I respect most are those that can change their mind given additional thought or data. I just wish I wasn’t right all the time so I could have a little more self-respect.

09/14/2022 The kids have finally come to me for soccer advice. The topic: best ways to body and elbow people without being called for a foul.

08/30/2022 Exercise vs. Nutrition literature summary: What you eat is the biggest influence on your weight, but how much you exercise is the biggest influence on your life expectancy. So basically, jogging to McDonalds is good for you.

08/19/2022 I am determined to love the She-Hulk series and nothing the show does will stand in my way.

08/19/2022 I think I am doing something wrong. How long are you supposed to cook cauliflower before it tastes like blueberry muffins?

07/10/2022 I have determined that one cannot Wikipedia one’s was to competence in quantum physics, which means boy-howdy must research funders be getting some bad proposals from the regulars.

03/01/2022 It is times like this that remind me of turning to my brother at my grandmother’s funeral and saying: needs more cowbell.

03/01/2022 Never trust someone who says their preferred IDE is Emacs.

02/09/2022 I have been following the last couple of Blazer trades with interest, and I just gotta say, boy did I pick the right week to start meditating.

02/09/2022 Boy, this Joe Rogan thing sure blew up. Is this a bad time to admit I still listen to some Michael Jackson?

02/08/2022 A friend asked me to write a guide to retiring early, so now I have to do a bunch of research on real-estate scams.

02/08/2022 You know the confederate flag is making a comeback when you start seeing it in Canada.

02/06/2022 Tried out a meditation app today, and it gave me just enough patience to get through the odious meditation app account sign up process. 5 stars.

01/31/2022 It sounds like investing in stocks is now passé, so, should I be putting all my retirement money into doubloons, or pictures of ugly monkeys?

01/30/2022 I fully support Kid Rock’s decision to cancel his shows at venues with mask and vaccine mandates and would encourage him to consider additional cancellations.

01/30/2022 My youngest and I spent last week inventing a song about a superhero named One Trip Man (he might break a lot of things, but he only takes one trip). The look of disappointment yesterday when he watched me bring in groceries a few at a time was palpable.

01/16/2022 I have decided that, even if the opportunity arises, I shall not be nominating Eternals for an Oscar.

01/10/2022 I am adding “urine therapy” to the list of phrases I hope my kids don’t hear anytime soon.

01/08/2022 If college Cranky was magically transported thirty years into the future to the present day, I think the thing he would find most shocking is that Magic Johnson is still around being awesome.

01/03/2022 I have been reading a little bit of history the last week or so, and I can already tell it is going to vastly improve my ability to offend people on social media.

12/24/2021 I am nominating Hawkeye for this year's Christmas movie, knowing full well my unsuspecting family will be horrified to discover it is actually a six part series.

12/15/2021 I have come to the conclusion that people that refer to Americans as exceptionally arrogant and rude really just haven’t played enough video games on European servers.

12/14/2021 I have been telling anyone who asks I want bread and roses for Christmas, and refusing to elaborate. This morning I suddenly got concerned that people might take me literally.

11/24/2021 Minimalism is a fun idea, but shouldn't minimalists stop making so much content all saying the exact same thing?

11/09/2021 Yesterday I was explaining to my boys that the best way to find a mate was dancing like a dad, telling dad jokes, and rocking a dad bod. After all, emulating the successful is pretty much the best strategy for achieving any goal. They are now reporting their mom strongly disagrees which I find wildly confusing and a bit hypocritical.

11/05/2021 A few months ago I stopped sending emoji's (like thumbs up and such) in response to messages from family or friends, and started sending whatever seemed like the most appropriate Far Side comic instead. So now whenever my kids see a Far Side comic (from me or in the wild) they refer to it as a Dad-Meme.

10/21/2021 Anyone who tells you that non-fat Greek yogurt is a worthy substitute for things like butter and sour cream is a damned liar.

09/15/2021 As my book on happiness extols the virtue of appreciating the inherent beauty and grace in the world around us, I am reminded that I really need to renew my NBA league pass. Also, perhaps join one of those fantasy sports gambling sites (nothing is quite as beautiful or graceful as watching statistical analysis translate into cash). Oh, and trees are nice too.

09/13/2021 I am about halfway through a book on happiness, and so far, the author has only covered things proven not to impact happiness. If the punchline turns out to be “focus on the positive, not the negative” then I have a few suggested outline changes for their next book…

09/09/2021 I think I am too old for headlines like: "Ford Hires Apple Car Project Chief" to make sense to me. It just seems like some sort of joke from a movie or Simpson episode.

08/10/2021 I haven't been following all the Cuomo news, but from the little I've read I'm starting to think maybe he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court.

08/10/2021 My fortune cookie seems to be forecasting a need for reading glasses, though it is hard to tell for sure.

06/13/2021 My wife has expressed an interest in the Mediterranean diet. After further investigation, however, I have determined the only part of the diet she wants to do is the part where you drink red wine.

03/05/2021 Have other people tried Apple Pears? We got them from Costco recently, they are pretty good. My youngest described them to his mom like thus: "It was like an Apple and a Pear got together and had a baby, and then we ate that baby."

03/02/2021 Do you think we could improve the number of people willing to take a covid vaccine if we rebranded one of them "new and improved Hydroxychloroquine?" Maybe add a tag-line "now with extra bleach!'"

01/08/2021 Anyone else watch The Queens Gambit and find yourself yelling at the TV during the speed chess scenes "Look how slow their hands are moving! Can't they find any actors that have actually played chess?"

01/07/2021 I'm thinking they should remake Red Dawn, but instead of Russia invading by parachuting troops in, they send a bunch of tweets suggesting Americans go invade their own capital and shoot all the libtard leaders like Pelosi and Pence.

01/07/2021 I remember telling a friend when he last visited me in D.C. about a year and a half ago that I thought the extremes of both parties are equally dumb, but not equally dangerous. Looking forward to seeing if me and my family are burned at the stake for disloyalty to the Führer, or whether we are given free health care against our will.

12/02/2020 Well, it turns out my wife prefers her coffee stirred, not shaken.

11/15/2020 If the zombies think I am going to be lured out of my barricade by offering me a free dental cleaning they are sadly mistaken.

11/04/2020 Well, the markets seem to be crazy positive today. I'm assuming it's in reaction to Kanye conceding his presidential bid.

10/18/2020 My kids have been arguing for about a year and a half that stubbornness is genetic. Would it help or hurt my case to admit that they are right?

10/13/2020 A question for my programming friends: if you and your wife/husband are the only ones in your scrum, is it appropriate to file household chores as bug reports?

10/04/2020 I gotta say it is pretty impressive that the NBA has 1000+ people in its bubble in Florida, and 0 people have tested positive (and everyone is tested daily). Perhaps we should just keep testing people and adding them to the bubble until we are all in the bubble.

09/28/2020 All the Proud Boys rally pictures I am seeing seem to have women in them. Are there really that many women in the Proud Boys club, or are they just more prominently featured in the photos to make the Proud Boys seem more diverse?

09/18/2020 I have been supplementing the kids' remote learning with a few multiple choice questions at the end of the school day. The kids are now strongly defending their answer to my last question by insisting that not only did Jesus turn water into Guinness, he did it every day for lunch, while the wine thing was only for special occasions.

07/24/2020 Portlanders taking legal action against the federal insurgents because they are blocking the bike lanes has got to be the most Portland thing ever. I chuckle every time I think about it.

07/03/2020 I don't think the kids were very impressed with my answer on how to tell if it is time to flip a crepe/pancake, which was something along the lines of "I have no idea, I just burn the first couple and develop an intuition."

06/30/2020 Last week in Daddy Day Camp during cooking class I taught the art of making milk shakes. I just discovered my youngest has been getting up at 6am every morning and making himself a milkshake for breakfast. Well, probably not worse than a bowl of super sugar crisps I guess.

05/31/2020 Man, am I looking forward to a time where everyone feels obligated to at least pretend not to be racist again. This is getting hard to bear.

04/14/2020 Does anyone know if there is truth to the rumor that the NBA is reopening but requiring all players, refs, and fans to wear burqas at all times?

04/14/2020 I thought it would be a great idea for anyone leaving the house to do the dishes when they return, as a good way to make sure their hands are super clean. The disadvantage, I'm finding, is that I am the only one that leaves the house.

03/26/2020 Whelp, looks like half the population is getting a reminder that it is good to elect leaders that value data, science, and logic; and the other half of the population got reminded to elect leaders to tell those stupid eggheads to shut up and stop telling them what to do.

03/12/2020 The kids have decided the Coronavirus is dangerous enough that they should stop going to school, but not so dangerous that they should be washing their hands for a full twenty seconds.

03/09/2020 For reasons I don’t fully understand I have picked up a book on copyediting and am now completely wowed. I have uncovered a new world of mystery and intrigue! For example: it seems I completely missed out on the great “hopefully” debate which lasted for about 30 years, but apparently has been settled now. I wonder what else have I been missing.

02/29/2020 Not sure why Trump has been downplaying coronavirus so much. Shouldn't he be blaming the immigrants, banning all foreigners, and funneling healthcare funds to building a wall to protect us from the virus?

01/14/2020 I got to admit, whenever I think of Trump's advisors trying to teach him not to tweet about doing obviously dumb/illegal/immoral things, I always think of rocket-raccoon trying to teach baby Groot not to press the death button.

01/13/2020 My wife has been helping me design a workout scheme for 2020 to help me get "farmer strong." It seems to mostly involve doing chores around the house.

01/05/2020 Apparently my youngest has taken to wandering into the room when I am not around and telling my wife "Dad is my role model" and then running away giggling. While we both know he is probably trolling, there is a legitimate concern that he may be up to something nefarious.

12/17/2019 While it’s hard to say no to free stuff, I am starting to think it’s unhealthy to get this many flu shots.

12/09/2019 So my eldest was saying this morning how much he enjoyed our family dinner routine and that maybe we should do family breakfast , and also family lunch on weekends. Which is quite a coincidence, because I was just thinking we should cancel family dinner and everyone should get their own damn food themselves.

06/24/2019 I had forgotten how annoying programming was until I started trying to teach it to my kids.

05/25/2019 When is a good time to pay your kids back for the atrocities they committed against you when they were 2? I was thinking maybe Memorial Day weekend.

05/23/2019 Eating a bowl of grape nuts without sugar reminds me of childhood. Except with all the good parts missing.

05/18/2019 I have been making good progress on step 1 of my happiness plan: getting more sleep. I am starting to think for that to pay dividends step 2 is going to have to be: helping my wife get more sleep.

04/10/2019 My youngest has an urge for grapes, but all we have is raisins. And thus starts the great grape rehydration experiment.

04/01/2019 It seems odd that the average comic book movie seems to have better (richer, more layered, more engaging) characters and plot than the average book based movie. Books really need to step it up.

12/15/2018 I watched a video on trail running last week that said you should not try to dodge all the obstacles, but instead flow like water down the trail. You know what else flows like water? Water. #mudisnotyourfriend #ithinkilostashoebutiamnotsure

07/18/2018 It is interesting to see how many ultra endurance record holders are old geezers. Seems hard to believe there is some physical advantage to being 40+. Perhaps it just takes a while to really curate an appreciation for long-term intense suffering.

11/12/2018 It is baffling how hard it is to explain to most doctors that chili dogs are a health food. It is almost as if the selection process for becoming a doctor is based on self-deprivation and long term suffering instead of living a balanced life well worth living. It seems to me medical doctors should be required to learn to love life before they are taught to save it. Well, off to have a nice healthy breakfast...

11/08/2018 I was having some trouble figuring out what to get my wife for her birthday, so I tried putting myself in her shoes: what would I want if I was a highly empathetic woman whose unemployed husband was severely lacking in beer and video games?

10/31/2018 I was playing hangman with my youngest at his school with his friend watching. 2 letter word. I tried all the vowels, no luck. After I gave up, he reported the word was ‘gg’ and then him and his friend laughed and laughed. Sigh...gamers.

10/07/2018 After collecting 15+ years of domestic chore data, I must reluctantly conclude that calling "not it" has ~100% chance of my becoming "it." Still, correlation is not causation...time to go collect more data.

09/30/2018 I hate to admit it, but the kids have a point. There are two equally valid interpretations of the phrase "anything worth doing is worth doing well."

08/28/2018 Have you ever met anything that makes you a better father, a better husband, a better friend? That is the way I feel about Advil.

08/04/2018 Hi fellow animal lovers. I know every life is precious and I don't want to panic you, but I am starting to think ants die immediately when sprayed with Mr. Clean. At least that is what happened first 30-40 times I tried it. I may need to try a few more times to confirm.

08/04/2018 Things my wife has encouraged me to do more of: eat bacon, eat french fries, gamble, play video games. Things my wife has encouraged me to do less of: eat healthy, exercise, lose weight. I don't think 80's sitcoms prepared me very well to understand married life.

07/28/2018 Does anyone know if they sell water wicking running shirts with the nipples cut out, or do I have to make my own?

03/03/2018 Sometimes I wish security software designers understood less about persistence.

03/03/2018 My wife caught me watching a video about running a hundred miles. Things were not going well for the protagonists. When asked what I thought the moral was I answered what I think would have been obvious to anyone: when training to run a 100 mile race you get to eat as many burritos as you want. Somehow that did not inspire her to join me for my morning run. ‪

11/17/2017 We sometimes do math problems when we drive to school. Today I asked my eldest what 1/32 + 1/32 was. His answer: 60 seconds.‬ ‪

11/17/2017 Yet again, management at my company has officially labeled me as an extrovert. What kind of crazy industry would keep labeling me as extroverted. I plan to continue wining, dining and generally talking everyone's ear off until they all admit I am an introvert. ‪

11/03/2017 I am starting to think there may be a downside to introducing the kids to shredding as a chore. ‪

11/03/2017 My wife seems to be under the impression chocolate and red wine are good for you. So I guess I'm off to the fudge and wine shop for health food. ‪

04/29/2017 I am on day 4 of having quit consuming artificial sweetener, and the whole process has just got a lot easier with my discovering something even better: real sugar.

02/09/2017 I have been reading some headlines that say things like "more Americans are shot dead by toddlers than killed by terrorists." I have never looked at the raw data, but I do believe toddlers pose a very real threat to me, my friends, my family, and everything I stand for. Any politician running on an anti-toddler policy has my vote.

01/28/2017 It is starting to feel like my publicly anti-trump friends should start being very nice to their publicly pro-trump friends. You never know when you might need a basement to hide in.

01/12/2017 I don't know why my Doctor keeps insisting my flu shot did not make me invincible. I am pretty sure I would not have signed up for medical experimentation if I wasn't going to gain super powers from it.

02/07/2016 Question: How many raspberries should you put into a kid's smoothie to cover up the taste of one scoop of Green Superfood (raw plant-based nutrition now with a new finer grind)? Answer: Don't EVER put Green Superfood in a kid's smoothie. They may never be willing to eat anything green again.

07/18/2015 Just finished competing in the World Computer Rapid Chess Championships. My chess program (Hannibal) ended up coming in 2nd place.

11/19/2014 At our last management retreat I made a speech about putting your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. I am not sure I thought things all the way through when I said that. The good news is I have always been a pretty good problem solver.

11/19/2014 My eldest went to his first day of first grade today. Apparently he has classes in archery, sword & shield, spanish, and art. Also, it seems that the Wizard school attacked his school today. He has promised to tell me all about his second day tomorrow. From what I can tell, his school seems to be planning a counterattack against the Wizard School. Sounds like everyone is in for an exciting school year.

07/28/2014 Just played my first soccer game in quite sometime. Apparently I am about the age of some of my teammate's parents. It has got me seriously thinking about maybe doing some stretching or warming up or something before games. If memory serves, that is the kind of thing old people are supposed to do.

03/23/2014 My youngest went to his first movie theater this week and the kids have been singing the lego movie theme song incessantly: "Everything is Awesome." They have also been extending it with verses like "Everything is awesome, even kicking dad in the knee." It's nice to see the kids exploring the concept of logical consistency, but I think it may be time to introduce them to the idea of proof by contradiction.

12/19/2013 Can anyone tell me what the most powerful, most expensive, most manly razor is? I need something for my wife so she stops using mine.

09/26/2013 They said eating that many donuts would kill me. It didn't. I guess that means it made me stronger.

03/11/2013 My two year old is now insisting that I call him only by the name "God of Thunder." He has a lot of his mom in him.

11/05/2012 In college I needed to be able to run 3 miles in 18 minutes to play soccer. After grad school I needed to be able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes to run a marathon. Now I need to be able to run 3 miles in a week to maintain my health. They say all you need is 3 data points to draw a curve, but I am not sure I like where this curve is heading.

09/19/2012 Since 2010, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have convinced 92 billionaires to give at least half their money to charity. There is just something I find delightful about 2 hard nosed business men giving so much back to the community, not so much because they have strong charitable instincts, but because it's the logical thing to do. After all, at some point, you really don't need any more money and you might as well turn your attention to the betterment of the human race.

09/13/2012 Two bad things happened to me yesterday. The first one was I lost my phone. And if that wasn't bad enough, the second bad thing was I found my phone.

09/05/2012 It's kind of annoying to have a lot of Democrat AND a lot of Republican friends. I keep forgetting which people I am supposed to be calling Nazis.

08/08/2012 Recent events have reminded me of Proverb 23:20 NIV: "Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat; unless its chicken with bacon and cheese on it, cause that stuff is delicious."

07/16/2012 I hate it when politicians use the phrase "people are not dumb." You expect people to believe that? How dumb do they think we are?

07/13/2012 My wife has somehow translated my theory that attractiveness is a career advantage into the idea that I should go on a diet. I don't think she understands that when the primary cook goes on a diet it does NOT mean more bacon for everyone else.

06/30/2012 Sometimes I think life would be easier if I was an "accept the things you cannot change" kind of guy, rather than a "Max(change% * changeValue)" kind of guy.

05/22/2012 I was explaining to the kids that when bacon demand outstrips bacon production, it's the proletariat that suffer. When I starting going on and on about those that control the means of production, however, I think my wife started suspecting that I was just trying to get out of my breakfast making duties.

05/10/2012 To excel at sports some part of you needs to kind of like getting elbowed in the face. After some thought, I have reluctantly decided not to try teaching my kids this trait. Perhaps they will pick it up at school.

05/08/2012 One of my pet peeves is when people want to do a lot of bidirectional chatting when I'm sick and have lost my voice. I was trying to explain this to my 4 year old, but he just kept asking me to repeat myself. I don't know where he gets his sense of humor.

05/08/2012 We try to put a vegetable in the boy's lunch boxes everyday. The question arises, does it count as a vegetable if you know they won't eat it? I say yes. Furthermore, not putting a vegetable in is functionally equivalent to putting one in that they won't eat. Therefore, not putting one in is functionally equivalent to putting one in. So, I conclude, I don't need to put vegetables in their lunch boxes. My wife got a little cranky when I presented this reasoning to her, I guess I should have waited until after she had her coffee.

02/26/2012 After 40 kicks to the head I have finally come to a conclusion. My youngest is left footed. Don't ask me how I figured out he is left handed.

12/31/2011 I think my neighbor is getting annoyed that every time I see her walking her dog I bellow "it looks like meat is back on the menu boys!" It doesn't help that my kids have started doing it too. The cats seem to get a kick out of it though.

07/03/2011 hmmm ... someone just told me the 7th anniversary is NOT the bacon anniversary. Well, too late now.