Simple Solutions

The Truth

2011-09-15T11:32:00.000-06:00

The truth is, no matter the reported conflicts in the world, the state of our debt situation, a tendency towards isolation coupled with increased surface relations, we, all of us in America, are surrounded by well meaning, kind, considerate wonderful people who are a blessing to be in our children's lives.

So why are we conflicted? It is because at every moment in time we subconsciously evaluate our environment with the conditions that existed just a moment before. It is because of this that we sometimes perceive the negative above the positive and have difficulty in focusing on the critical elements in our environment that will seriously effect our future.

In old boxing movies one fighter would swirl the left hand around in the air far to the left of his opponent and hit him with the right hand. Movement is what we track. Our environment is full of movement in the form of news to distract us from serious concerns that will effect our future far more than the waving hand.

It does no good for the fighter, nor us, to focus on a potential punch from a right upper cut or the future problems in the arsenal of history to destroy our future. As any professional athlete knows, training, not planning, supplies the required tools to react appropriately to the threats in our environment. The implication of this statement is that training and preparation are independent of the exact knowledge of a future problem. You can not plan for your opponent's next move and you cannot plan for the planes to hit the trade towers. You can however train and learn to react appropriately to almost all threats and live in peace and happiness without being driven by fear.

This last sentence is the stake driven directly into the heart of the immediate American problem. We are not dealing with a moral dilemma, a problem with integrity, a lack of common sense, or a financial debacle. We are dealing with an attitude of fear perpetrated, not intentionally, by our distraction with a waving left hand. The reason we are distracted is a clear lack of leadership that is distracted by the waving hand. We as leaders of our children and our nation need to focus on practice, discipline, and love of life. In other words we need to expresses the simple concept that attitude is everything.

ITIL - Metrics First (“Groundhog Principle”), Measure Often, Pull not Push, Shake Hands, Point of Utilization

2011-07-07T15:53:00.022-06:00

I have spent a greater part of my work life improving business processes starting with the United States Post Office in San Francisco in 1982. At the time I worked for a company called Acctex Information Systems which captured images of package receipts on microfiche and associated the images with records stored in a database with the name and address of the entity sending and receiving the package. The purpose of this system was to improve the post office’s ability to track a package at a lower cost and meet regulatory requirements for document storage mandated by the post office’s contracts with the government. Configuration management is one of the key components of a service catalog and was being performed by the USPO in 1982. In summation, the function being performed was storage of receipts. The business purpose was to lower costs and improve service delivery. If this same utility could have been achieved with a magic wand the post office would have been completely satisfied. If I told you I could take your Costco warehouse and store all the items in the warehouse in a file cabinet on your desk you would immediately recognize the cost savings in terms of real estate and efficiency of travel. You would not, however, treat the file cabinet any differently than you would any other business unit providing a service. This is is not how most of us think about IT services.

In 1984 I was fortunate enough to work for Prime Denmark delivering to NGS, the largest natural gas distributor in Denmark, an automated email system, which sounds incredibly archaic at this point in time. Email in those days did not have distribution lists and was incapable of being associated to meetings. Our task was to create task assignments with prioritization from email, distribute those tasks to their perspective owners, check on the completion of those tasks, send reminders to the owners and their managers, and keep a public calendar of all the scheduled events. This was an automation description. What were we really doing? We were really delivering a process to ensure customer satisfaction which is now called incident and service delivery management part of the ITIL framework.

In 1989 I was a co-founder of LSR Research and was in charge of meeting our commitment to provide traceability analysis as a sub contractor for Independent Verification & Validation on the Honeywell C-17 Fly By Wire contract. Simply put we were to deliver processes and products that ensured Honeywell’s implementation of the fly by wire system met the requirements defined in their contract. Of course there is more to this. The system must be used to make sure that the engineers are in compliance throughout their design and implementation for all levels of testing including unit, system and integration testing. It does no good to go to final test and find out you are out of compliance.

In 1990 Intel asked me to come help them deliver an offline reporting system that allowed them to easily see what was going on at a macro level within their manufacturing facility. I did this in conjunction with other projects like wafer starts, helping with ISO9002 standards for the European market, and various accounting programs. Intel does not tell manufacturing how to meet their ship to order ratio. They expect a certain number of die from each facility manufacturing that particular process. The facilities have an obligation to deliver. They achieved this directive in the 90’s by using a combination of calculations and simulations. Their calculations were based on number of die required. The die coming off the manufacturing line were calculated by:

die per wafer / number of wafers * yield * number of wafers

The number of wafers is estimated by how many were introduced into a process, when their were introduced, and their cycle time (how long it takes the wafer to go from beginning to the end). Even though you know the current figures for all these variables machines may go down and unexpected events happen. It is an incredibly complex process and Intel is incredibly successful. The real question for any complex manufacturing process is, “How are they successful?”

There are some very interesting business take aways from the manufacturing process.

I. Core, frequently measured, always accounted for metrics drive culture

Intel was a perfect example of frequently measured core business metrics driving the culture and the processes required for accountability including the hand shake, pull versus push, prioritization, and conflict management.

II. All their resources, all of them, are pull technology

Pull technology means when a resource has availability it requests the next job from the queue. The queue has jobs loaded in order of priority determined independently of the operator. Each operation runs verification and validation to see if the quality of the die is within measurable tolerance. If the wafer is rejected it is moved back to the last operation where the errors can be corrected. These are called reworks.

III. Problems are solved based on their negative impact to the bottom line.

When a process has reached completion and after every operation the die are checked on each wafer and the yield is calculated. The yield, cycle time, bubbles in the fab, machine preventative maintenance, expected problems, current problems, and operational inefficiencies are written up and passed to the next shift every 12 hours. Everything is documented and processes are in place to solve problems. Problems are resolved prioritized based on their impact to the viable number of die ready to ship any any given point in time.

IV. The hand off is critical in all aspects of the business

When I first arrived on the scene at Intel they moved Lots (containers of wafers) from one machine to another by hand with a piece of paper (almost no automation). Critical to the whole operation of the facility was the hand off and the documentation associated to it showing that a container of wafers had been delivered from operation x to operation y by person 1 to person 2 at a specified time. Each station performed it’s task based on a recipe either on a piece of paper or accessed through a specific computer. Intel is successful as a company because of culture, defined processes and requirements based on metrics that are evaluated every 12 hours; “What is our yield? What is our cycle time?”.

Operational efficiencies, capacity modeling, pull methodologies, prioritization and hand offs all apply to business process management and ITIL Service Delivery. Pull methodologies are especially useful when considering how to deal with human operations with guidelines established for baseline performance. Pushing more work to an operation that has no more capacity will not improve the work flow in a factory and it certainly will not improve the work flow in business processes and operations. The all important hand off from operation to operation, shift to shift, creates continuity within a complex stream of events. It holds true in manufacturing and it holds true in business. The hand off is an integral part of the ITIL framework.

In 1995 the Intel experience led me to co-found Portalsoft Technologies whose core product was Sales & Project Tracking a collaborative work flow birth to death life cycle process and document repository product for engineering firms meeting all the requirements of a solid ITIL Service Catalog, Configuration Management, Knowledge Management, Incident Management, Problem Management, and Event Management system. In 1995 integration between sales, corresponding to service level negotiations, and the engineering project life cycle from needs analysis through decommissioning was not available or requested in enterprise products.

We were way ahead of the curve in the market places acceptance our product and learned some valuable lessons about timing and utilization. Companies that purchased Sales & Project Tracking without measurable core metrics frequently used less than 1/10 of the product functionality making Sales & Project Tracking little more than a collection of organized public folders.

I founded Logen in 2002 whose main purpose was to deliver quality assurance and vendor verification to AT&T for cell tower installations. AT&T sought us to implement a system that improved vendor contract compliance, quality of service, and lowered the cost of cell tower implementation by putting the burden of proof of the installation onto a verification and validation process. The AT&T process provided some very clear demonstrable results in terms of ITIL Service Delivery. Specifically, it demonstrated the power of contracts with specified metrics tied to processes and their timely delivery all tracked through weekly reports with vendor comparisons. The key lessons learned from the AT&T quality implementation were:

Metrics drive the business
Contracts (SLA’s) need to be tied to the metrics
Pictures are worth a thousand words
Automated implementations should be at the point of utilization (no copy and paste)

Global Competition, Fiduciary Responsibility, Unions, Oh My

2011-06-14T12:40:00.012-06:00

Don’t you just hate it when you are slapped in the face with the fact that you have been myopic, running with the blinders on, had your head in the sand, or could not add two plus two to get four? I have been adamant for years about the irresponsible nature of companies that off-shore. My logic was that of a child, “If you are concerned with your countries economic and emotional health you are duty bound to do business within your borders, as much as possible, in order to pay your neighbors first and promote the general welfare of your community and eventually all those closest to you.”

I had breakfast this morning with the brilliant Jordon Woods, Chief Technical Officer of InnovAsic an application specific replacement IC design and manufacturing company. I told him that I thought we as a country were in bad shape and that some of the cause of this was the concept that off-shoring was a reasonable idea. I asked him, “Would you offshore if you thought you could increase your profits, maintain quality, and lower costs by laying off currently held employees?”

Here is where I need to break and give you a little history of our relationship. We participated in karate for over 15 years together fighting each other for an hour at least a couple times for no less than 8 of those years. We fought to get better. We fought to sharpen the sword. Kicks and punches were controlled but not pulled. If you got hit, it hurt. We wore hand pads and foot pads, small ones. The head was a viable target. The groin was a viable target. Throws were encouraged. It was competitive. The price of failure was pain. Pain was our friend, our instructor. It forced us to the next level.

Jordon said, and I paraphrase, “It is my fiduciary responsibility to offshore if I can increase profits and maintain quality. Doing anything else is acting irresponsibly and setting up a welfare state like we currently have in Detroit. I am not doing anyone any favors paying them when they are not being competitive.”

So there it is, laid out like a shiny penny with two sides. But are there really two sides. Can you really expect to keep your country strong and your people employed if they are not competitive? Isn’t it necessary to suffer some pain, in order to learn the lesson that to be competitive you must make mistakes and compete with those who are rising up through the ranks as global competitors? Shouldn’t we, as corporations, capitalize on the strengths of the world in order to compete rather than limiting our resources and our competitive edge by using inferior products and services?

Here are some articles that might help us all answer these questions for ourselves. Some are before the latest economic debacle but never-the-less pertinent (I promise to add to these references as I find new data):

References

2000 - The Barons of Outsourcing

2006 - Beyond the Outsourcing Angst: Making America More Productive by Thomas F. Siems

2011 - CHART OF THE DAY: Want to grow jobs and cut deficits? Boost manufacturing.

2011 - Where the Jobs are Going?
2011 - Big US Firms Shifting Jobs Abroad

The ROI of Promoting Democracy

2011-03-23T10:43:00.000-06:00

"There is no doubt that Reagan believed democracies to be more peaceful, more trustworthy, and more just in their foreign policy behavior than authoritarian forms of government. Indeed he created the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 to help provide training, technical aid, and financial support toward the promotion of democratic practices including free and fair elections overseas." - Colin Dueck

The keyword is believed. Every form of government is susceptible to corruption. This has proven true for Democracy as well as for Communism. The real question is, "To what extent is it economic, advisable and moral to protect your future by acting against other's who you believe to be in the wrong and in favor or some who you believe to be in the right." It is an extremely difficult question to answer, but I believe we can answer it by using the simple model.

In truth, I believe that almost all comprehensive solutions are simple in nature. They are elegant. They are a formula that works not because it mimics reality but because when used they effectively provide consistent measurable results. In science E=MC² is an excellent example of simple and elegant. I really like Gary Vaynerchuk's simple and elegant three simple rules of life from "Crush It":

Love your family
Work super hard
Live your passion

Can we come up with simple rules of engagement with respect to war? The concept of promoting democracy is not really personal. I think war should be personal. It involves our children and therefore our future. So here is my first stab at simple rules of engagement.

You must be attacked or someone you like must be attacked
The attacker must be clearly identifiable
You must be willing to do what is necessary to win the war in months
The people living where the attackers are positioned must be better off after war than before with regards to food, water, shelter, and subsistence

If anyone would like to strike a number, change the wording, or add an idea, please do.

Marketing For Benefit

2011-03-19T15:10:00.001-06:00

It has been several years now that I have been consumed by the concept of fair value, to the point of offering all our clients a binding contract that states that if we do not deliver real measurable value greater than the agreed upon price of our services they do not have to pay. Over 25 years ago they taught us in Economics that people make economic decisions based on their perceived best advantage. The key to this statement, of course, is perceived. And so we are all sold perceived intangibles that are unmeasurable and impossible to confirm. These values often times take the form of fear, pain, poverty, social and natural disaster.

Thankfully, there are people like Robert Supple DMD, who represent the exact opposite side of this coin. They spend a great deal of their time and money marketing knowledge to the mutual benefit of their consumers and their competitors. Dr. Supple is delivering a message of health based on scientific confirmation of measurements over 30 years pointing the way towards healing the entire bite system, called occlusion, using digital technology, called Digital Occlusion. He provides greater value to his patients than they perceive and spends a great deal of time educating them so that they can be partners in their future health.

Perhaps today is the Thank You Economy. I really appreciate this social point of view and after having heard Gary speak recognize, yes he likes to make money, that he is concerned with the well being of the people he is selling to. I truly believe that there is one more step involved in delivering a moral value added product to those doing business with us. That step is our understanding, and knowledge of the people we are doing business with including their likes and dislikes before we sell them a product or service. This ensures that they get what they really want not what we are able to sell them using intangible values such as fear.

Like Dr. Supple I believe that we can deliver more than a thank you. Using the same technology, we can deliver products and services that add value to our customers. Today may be "The Thank You Economy", but tomorrow companies will be delivering real value without the smoke and mirrors and thanking you for being their customer. Perhaps we should call it, "The Value Economy".

"After the Fact" or "In Progress" -> Decide

2010-06-13T07:39:00.001-06:00

Alright, so we have a situation where police stop someone in their car for doing something and then act in accordance with a law about some perceived criminal activity. Great. The systemic question is, "What do we have police for?" Is the answer, "To enforce the law." Or is the answer, "To protect our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If you believe, like I do, that the second answer is the correct application of police then the very nature of them driving about stopping cars is antithetical to their cause. Yes, people die in autos. Yes, criminals are in autos. But criminal activity that harms others right to life and private property, that is in the neighborhood. Stopping someone in a car does not stop the crime, it catches the criminal after the perpetration so that they can be passed through our criminal justice system.

And here is the beef. Do we want to punish, or avoid. What is our priority. Are we really so naive as to believe that the exercise of law decreases criminal activity, increases the quality of life, and decreases the costs to society. I would argue the converse. That exercising the law in a system based on "after the fact" increases the costs, decreases the quality of life, and may or may not decrease the level of infractions against the whole. After all, one must believe that they will get caught after the fact. Far better to worry about getting stopped in the act.

Most will be saying, "It is impossible to stop criminal acts in progress." I think that it is this thought that limits our ability to actually have a system that works. Instead of "Pants on the ground" America in general, in all facets of our existence, needs to be thinking "Boots on the ground." Freedom is won with eternal vigilance, not prosecution.

So perhaps we should hoist the petard against every infraction of the law, but really, it is the very system of law enforcement that is in question, not the singular erosion of our rights through a system of enforcement that is puritanical and against the very nature of freedom we supposedly support.

Riding Life

2010-04-23T18:06:00.001-06:00

Today, I rode the winds of life. The winds brushed though my town silently sweeping our sidewalks, waving at me through blossoming trees. Pillow, our dog, rubbed against my leg asking me to pet her. She breathed in my presence as I prepared to go outside and throw bags of top soil on our sick lawn, attacked by the dastardly Red Barron of weeds. Last year the weeds mounted a frontal assault on our old lawn bringing down a wildebeest too old to run for it's life. The nature of the world is that one thing is not much different than another. We all, the wind, the grass, the wildebeest, and ourselves dance similar dances. We should all take heed, for the dance is the dance of beauty and existence. Even the dying old wildebeest is dancing his last dance in the beauty of existence. This knowledge should persuade us that we are blessed. And so we, a being of life, are beautiful in our stages of existence.

I threw bags on the lawn, broke them open, spread them about. Later I will throw grass seeds not yet born onto a lawn that just last year had been killed by it's enemy. The youth will rise up and retake the lawn. We all, no matter our circumstances, will rise and retake our place in life.

It's Where You Are At

2010-04-01T14:50:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I went to a meeting at the Blackbird Buvette set up by the New Mexico Technology Council with Brad Feld who is the managing director of the Foundry Group in Boulder Colorado. I want to thank Brad for driving miles and sharing with a small group of us about what he does and how he does it. He works an incredible number of hours and spends a great deal of it trying to help others. I admire this very much. I also think that it is amazing that NMTC made this happen.

One thing that Brad said, he is an intellectual giant, struck a cord with me. He said and I am paraphrasing , "Decide where you want to live, and make your life there." He is a very worldly gentlemen having bought and sold over 300 companies. But, for me, this statement goes against everything I believe in. I believe that your home moves with you and that your center is inside of you. And that, if anything is truly important, it is not where you live but who you share your life with that matters.

Brad may have felt this way also, but might have been trying to say that you don't live somewhere in order to get the best opportunities from business.

Bailouts and Big Business or America - Land of the Indentured, Home of the Fearful

2009-08-13T16:33:00.004-06:00

The future results of recent federal fiscal activity all seems so obvious to me that I find it hard to believe that there is discussion about what is being done with our tax money at all. Here is how I understand the conditions of TARP. The government bought preferred shares from the banks and then allowed the banks to buy them back. In essence banks got a long term loan at no interest with conditions. As an analogy, you go to the bank and ask them to buy a portion of your house with some basic operating restrictions so that you can make home improvements at no cost to you. Even though the bank says it will keep track of the conditions presumed under th loan they do not. After you have used the money to improve your home say by adding an additional two thousand square feet to ensure your future, you buy back the portion of your house that you sold to the government. Wow, what a deal. I'm sure your neighbors can't compete with you in resale value. What is interesting about these transactions is that the books look bad until the shares are bought back and then, pow, record profit.

New York Attorney General is upset over the bonuses paid bank executives of banks that were bailed out with taxpayer money. Of course the bonuses were promised prior to the bailout, and the bailout was more a loan than a pass go and collect $200.

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-wall-street-bonuses-connecti.artaug02,0,6464390.story

I didn't want you to go uninlightened with the banks progress in the greatest casino of all, the American Stock Market, so took the liberty of posting a Rescued Banks Stock Market Chart that shows their progress after the infusion.

Polarization: The New Threat

2009-06-15T21:34:00.003-06:00

I'll never forget the first time a friend of my sisters explained what it meant to be retarded. Her name was Cindy and her brother was retarded. She worked as a special education teacher in the public schools and knew a lot about the subject from both personal experience and educational discipline. What she told me struck a cord and has resonated throughout my life. She said,"A retarded person sees, hears, smells all the same things we do. Perhaps even more." She said. "It is not the input that is the problem, it is the filtering. They are incapable of focusing on something to the exclusion of the inputs bombarding them."

And so I say to you, "We have become socially retarded." Not because we do not see, or understand, but because we cannot focus on what is in front of us. We have trouble deciding what is important and what is not. We are inundated, and thus stupefied. The result in a society as complex as ours is a new type of polarization where both sides are equally ignorant and blind.

On one side there is the promotion of future doom because of economic disparity and environmental damage. They say the culprits are the greedy who without a moral compass sacrifice others and their world for their own personal aggrandizement. On the other side are the those who promote the notion that the world is against us threatening our very existence with communism, Islam, and extremism. They tell us that the mongers who fear greed will sacrifice our future by trying to save it. They will save us through virtuous morals and taking the war to those who threaten our future.

Both sides are wearing the same sheep skin. Both sell us a negative future. Both react against a future horror when there are present exigencies that must be dealt with.

Our future salvation lies in our recognition that we have become retarded and that we must learn to focus excluding exogenous data that doesn't effect our immediate or even reasonably long term future.

We're Definitely Not In Kansas Anymore

2009-04-08T16:45:00.010-06:00

Let's see if you notice the pattern presented by Google News which is really a derivative of the AP:

Who will stop the pirates? - I don't know. Do you often float around pirate infested waters? Maybe they should blow them up.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran is ready to talk to 'honest' Barack ... - Hmmm. Mr. Personality talks with Mr. Honest.
DC vote puts gay marriage in front of Congress - This is important during a financial meltdown.
White House team meets GM to speed restructuring - How nice that we can help them out.
Buffett’s Berkshire Loses Top-Level Credit Rating From Moody’s - The best investor in the world and he's having trouble
AP source: Spies compromised US electric grid

Whoa. We're running out of oil and the oil we do have is being stolen.
The guy we know for a fact hates Israel and by implication the United States wants to talk to Barack Obama who has recently conceded he wants to dismantle our nuclear weapons.
Our economy is supposedly in the toilet, we are fighting a war on two fronts, and the important issue of the day is gay marriage in front of the congress. (I totally believe that if two of anything want to bind their relationship in a court of law they should be able to. After all, what's it to me. )
Thanks heavens the white house team is getting on that GM restructuring deal. We are all perfectly aware of how effective white house teams have been in the past and expect great results.
On a serious note, Mr. Buffett is a pretty smart guy who practices the basics. If things aren't going well for him you can bet that they are not going well for a whole bunch more.
Lastly, isn't it good to see that there are people out there in the world who have nothing better to do with their time than attack an electric grid which is attached to the Internet. Gee, I have an idea, remove the Internet connection to the grid and no one will be able to attack it. Oh yeah, that would cost money and it certainly is not reasonable to protect our energy source with caution when we can negotiate to remove nuclear weapons from our arsenal and let the Iranians enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

I always say our government sells fear. I guess in order for it to be effective they have to be dunderheads enough to ensure that there is something to be fearful of. I really don't like to write about specific events in the news but it's all starting to blur into the "What the heck" category.

What should jump out at you is, hey my life is not so bad, so what is all this stuff and will it really effect me. I can assure you right now, this is without a crystal ball, the current events with regard to nuclear can and will effect you.

First, if you have the big stick, don't put it in the chipper in front of the guy making a big stick who says he hates you.
Second, if a critical thing you care about is being threatened, say oil or electricity, put the proper measures in place to protect it. I suggest separating the electric grid from access by the rest of us bozos and sending military transports along with all large oil freighters.
Third, don't deal with things that aren't critical when critical stuff is going on.

Someone Has to Stay Home with the Kids

2009-04-07T09:56:00.009-06:00

The United States, once a far greater nation, has suffered from the effect of decisions made by all of us. But mostly, our present and future have been determined by decisions made from fear. Decisions based on fear are almost always decisions to avoid a perceived negative future. It is my belief that decisions should almost always be made from a desire for a greater positive future. The whole political climate of the Unites States is based on the principle of selling future fear and our elected candidates ability to mitigate the risk of it occurring. Because we elect candidates that run on the principle of mitigating future disaster we have sacrificed a great deal of what was hard won by our fore bearers. The very essence of our families reflect this nature of fear verses benefit and has thus destabilized our country. The most systemic issue that the United States faces is the lack of parental presence in their children's lives. This lack is most probably based on the need of both partners to have viability should their relationship dissolve and to find value in their existence through others observation of their efforts.

The new book by Gladwell, Outliers, suggests that a few people arrive at a special point and place in time with the correct alignment of stars to determine the future history of events for a large portion of the population. He suggests that often times these people and their effect on history is the result of a random set of events coupled with their unique abilities and proclivities. What he doesn't mention, but infers, is that there is nothing to keep any of us from recognizing our future potential with regard to tipping points we believe may occur in the future and taking action to effect history.

I suggest that the tipping point that we must all work to ferment is the one where one of the two parents is present whenever their children are present. This single social implementation will improve the future welfare of all our children, lower crime, lower the litigious events in our society, improve neighborhood relations, secure our homes, create solidarity of neighborhoods, and provide a stabilizing influence on future decisions.

I suggest that one of the causes of market instability is the moral fiber of our leaders which is a reflection of the strength of the household and neighborhood, which is a reflection on the presence of the parents in their children's lives. Everything about us is trying to equilibrate the equation and we are resisting in an attempt to sustain a system that does not work.

Perhaps we should promote the tipping point and let the jar of fear tip over.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & HAPPY NEW YEAR (2008)

2008-12-22T10:16:00.005-07:00

All of us here in the Regenie, Lopez, Vitale, Ruan, and Penafiel families wish all of you the best of years. Our last year has been fantastic with Anthony’s graduation from New Mexico State University as a crimson scholar, Jordan’s acceptance at Duke University, Matthew’s growing 5 inches, and both of us Barbara and Phil still having jobs.

May your eyes be filled with wonder and your hearts with love in the coming year

BEST WISHES FROM

MATT, ANTHONY, BARBARA, YAN, JORDAN, PHIL & JOSE

This year has made both Barbara and I extremely proud parents but this is the time of year where we have the opportunity to look back on the previous year and get a brief glimpse of all that we have to be thankful for.

I want to express my thankfulness for age as it has allowed me to learn the true treasures that exist in the world and none of them are based on a nice house, a new car, or anything else that money can buy. What age has taught me is that what we have to be most thankful for are the people we have in our lives.

I am particularly thankful for; Barbara’s ability to see our future together and look forward to it, for Anthony’s love of life, for Jordan’s pursuit of knowledge balanced with his joy of family and friends, for Matthew’s brilliance and kind spirit, to Ruan Yan our foreign exchange student from Beijing for her genius and philosophical viewpoint of the world, for Barbara’s parents and their eternal kindness, for my mom’s amazing optimism, for Willie and Jody’s eternal humor (and Jody for her amazing attention to family), for Diana and Tasha’s compassion and demonstration that happiness doesn’t come in some well established package, for Jeff and Steph’s humor and commitment to their children, for Ruan Yan’s parents sharing such an extraordinary person with us, for the Penafiel’s exchanging sons with us (we got Jose for Christmas and they got Anthony) and their eternal friendship, and for all our friends that have shared their children with us and taken care of our children.

I am thankful that we are all healthy of mind, body and spirit (If you don’t have your health you don’t have anything); Barbara and I walk together and she works out at noon in a class at PNM, Anthony rides a bicycle, lifts weights and plays golf, Jordan swims club at Duke, Matthew swims for Duke City and the Academy, and I swim in the masters program at the Academy where Ruan Yan and Matthew go to school.

Sometimes when you listen to others it’s easy to be fooled into believing that we are not as fortunate as we are. All I have to say, is look around, we are all truly blessed and it is because of you. Thanks.

Time, Space, and the Sound Barrier

2008-03-22T13:08:00.005-06:00

Today I was thinking about how people have read tea leaves and other arbitrary patterns created by random chance as a way to predict what might happen in the future. It then occurred to me how many herbal remedies from days of old have actual healing effect and that might there actually, incredibly, be any possibility that a random pattern portended the future.

So, I started to think about how could the future effect the past. Immediately I thought of how maybe time is like air and that as objects and events move through it they compress it at the point of contact. How there can be a point of contact, I do not know. If, however, time has similar properties to a train moving through air then there would be turbulence from events moving through time and that there would be a trailing edge of events that were effected by the future.

If this were true, then maybe the present does reflect the future when an inchoate set of particles is effected by a ripple of time.

Education, Business, and Government

2008-03-01T17:03:00.007-07:00

I want to break down the solution to our problems into easily implemented concepts:

Encourage the majority of businesses to implement 6 hour work days with two shifts scheduled. Organize the shifts to be in sync with reasonable education hours for our children. All businesses must pay in accordance with a schedule that allows for a minimum of 5 weeks off a year corresponding to summer break with their children.
Eliminate the middle man in education and make it a teacher, business centric business paying out all funds directly to the teacher or LLC. Teachers determine the rules and hours of the school day. Parents opt to have their children educated through free enterprise. No government standards or tests. ("Let the buyer beware") Encourage systems that require less time in school and more time in the hands of the people that care most, the parents.
Go to a flat tax system on businesses only. Make it between 15 to 18 percent.
Eliminate special interest groups and packs in Washington.
Eliminate riders and pork on all bills. Any senator or congressman caught adding to a bill that directly redistributes money to their district is immediately removed from office.
Lower the benefits to congress and senate members and eliminate pensions and retirement.
Eliminate financial remuneration for any damages in all legal cases.
Eliminate the prison system and replace it with an education system run from an offshore island that reinforces education and skills. Place heavy emphasis on recognition that you get what you pay for.
Remove the AMA from administering both medical practices and medical education. Open more schools for medicine and change the mechanism used to teach on rotation requiring interns to work 24 hour shifts. Create a website for doctors that shows the number of procedures of a specific type accomplished and patient satisfaction. Use the same system as implemented for EBay.

Infectious Disease - It's the ports and the filth

2008-02-20T16:22:00.002-07:00

It shouldn't be so surprising that infectious disease is located where there are major ports and where there is the most amount of unchecked pollution. This map provided by BBC NEWS pretty much demonstrates that if you want to remain healthy stay away from places where lots of cargo ships from foreign countries dock, places where there is a lot of pollution, and places where there are a lot of livestock near a lot of people.

Hey, you think if we didn't put the livestock in big pens with a bunch of crap around them there would be less disease? How about we not let ships into our ports from any local that has been designated as high risk. That will encourage them to clean up their mess due to a major loss of revenue.

I have no intention of being a scare monger but it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that the major depopulation cycles in mankind's history either come from natural disasters or from the unchecked spread of disease. We have definitely come a long way in the last 100 years towards controlling outbreaks but it is not so far fetched that a disease could run rampant in our jet set cultures in a very short period of time.

Here's two simple solutions, protect our environment by not allowing ships hailing from countries with high levels of infectious disease. Pass stricter laws on animal husbandry in our own country.

54 And Wanting More - How about you?

2008-02-20T13:16:00.002-07:00

Ok, I've read more articles than I have counted about positivism, life improvement, relationship improvement, physical fitness, mental agility, and on and on. If you're reading this you probably have read a lot of the same stuff.

I am not satisfied. I want more. I work out 6 days a week, swim 12 thousand yards, shoot 200 baskets, practice 45 Kata, lift thousands of pounds, do 320 crunches, read a page of "Intellectual Devotionals" every day, ride my bike more than drive my car, eat vegetables, eat apples, drink power shakes with fiber, take naps, read 60 pages of history every week, avoid too much sugar, love my wife, make sure I am home for my kids when they get home from high school, write blogs, go to movies and watch TV.

Have I mentioned that I am not satisfied? Here's the deal. I am not satisfied because I want more for me and more for you. I think you should feel excited about walking out the door, not because you're going to make a difference at work where they employ you to make themselves more money and have someone around to play with as an adult. I think you should feel excited to walk out that door because it is a challenge, not one where you have no hope, but one where opportunity stretches in front of you like a golden field of wheat blowing in the afternoon sun. I am talking about what our forefathers experienced and why there was no crime to speak of and no rape and nobody whining about their right to have food, water, and shelter.

This is what we are giving up with every passing day because there are more people, less land, and a vast machine that does nothing but roll on increasing it's position in whatever it had yesterday. Have I mentioned that we should be providing ourselves with a fresh dark blue sky that stretches across a landscape awash in soothing sound and visions of opportunity.

Maybe I am screaming into the night, yet again. Doesn't it seam that opportunity isn't rested from the world easily. Opportunity seams to come most from large habitable as yet undiscovered land that has no preexisting political structure to stifle humans vision of the future. There sure is a lot of that left, huh. So, here is the point, either a whole bunch of us die off or we go find some more of that uninhabited habitable land, sea, or sky that a new vision of how things ought to work can be overlayed on.

Oh yeah. That's stupid. We have a better chance of changing things here as they are. Really. Have you noticed that population doesn't tend to decrease or that as density is increased more centralized control is imposed? Maybe that's the way humans, probably any animal, work. They have run a lot of experiments on rats in cages and how they respond to density.

Here is my simple proposal. Pursue, fearing for our future, controllable forms of power and material science so that we can supply our ever expanding population with food, water and shelter. With due haste, pursue the discovery of land that is habitable without any political infrastructure or dominant form of life to steal the vision of opportunity. Columbus did it with boats. We need to do it with spacecraft.

It is the only bastion of opportunity left. It's a mistake to think that it's pie in the sky or a ridiculous waste of money. For our species, it may be the only opportunity left.

20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life

2008-02-19T17:17:00.001-07:00

Valuable lessons in life for college students or anyone starting out. You might ignore them anyway, but at least you've been warned.

read more | digg story

Convergence - Sustaining the American Dream

2008-02-07T16:01:00.004-07:00

Super Tuesday is behind us, interpretive articles about the impact and non-impact have flooded the web, candidates gloat, exit the playing field, and sustain positivism. For all the fan fare in politics where is the American hero, not in rhetoric but in action? This question is derived from the confluence of two events; the watching of "Looking for an Icon" on PBS about selecting a photograph to become a symbol of all time, and the reading of John Adams plight in Amsterdam attempting to convince the powers that be to loan money to America to sustain the war in 1780.

The special on PBS showed the lone Chinese man holding grocery bags in front of a line of tanks. When the tanks moved he moved. At one point he climbed up onto the leading tank to talk into the tank.

John Adams was an American hero, not in rhetoric but in action. He sustained unparalleled individual effort in the hopes of resting independence and freedom from England for America. He did this in isolation, without, in the beginning, backing of his own government. His weapons were the mind, the pen, and his indomitable energy. He wrote prolifically about the events taking place in America, the advantage of a free country, the kinsmanship of the Dutch and the Americans, and the economic advantages to any who helped rest America's freedom from England.

I think that we have some of the best choices for Presidential candidacy in the last 34 years, since I have been voting. McCain embodies perseverance and integrity. Obama personifies positivism with great delivery. They are above the crowd of past candidates. But, they are not enough. We do not need rhetoric, we need John Adams. We do not need to sustain, nor should we, failing economic and social programs. We do not need to sustain, nor should we, failing educational programs. We do not need to create, nor should we, more enduring costs for our children in the form of redistribution and federally run programs. We do not need visionaries who see what has been painted by past political artisans. We need vision to see what is right, not by the pain it might remove from society, but by the concept it embodies.

What are our choices for president? At this point in time we have Hillary Clinton, at one time involved in a bank scandal and certainly responsible for presenting a Universal Medical bill that was economically unsustainable. Barack Obama promises a better world with an exceptionally good speaking style but provides no means by which to attain the rhetoric goals. McCain, a hero by imprisonment (not to take away from what he went through or what his internal make up must have been to come out of that situation and become a leading political figure), with seemingly descent integrity, but possibly lacking a compass that points true north and leaves only 3 other points on the compass to make decisions about. In other words, he vacillates on issues that are not necessarily the systemic issues of our times. It might be worth noting here that we, as a country, may have developed too much momentum in our slide down towards the moral abyss to escape inevitable doom. McCain is also circumspect by the very nature of having experienced the horrors of imprisonment. We know not how his Psyche was effected.

None of our choices are a John Adams or Thomas Jefferson. It is my contention that we should settle for nothing less. We should vote in such a fragmented way as to negate the results of the election and force all parties to present candidates that measure up. Without leaders who practice the good to great mentality our slide into the purgatory of moral and financial despair is virtually guaranteed.

Education

2008-02-03T10:41:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I was reading "John Adams" by David McCullough, absolutely my favorite historical author. I was reading about how John Adams had been assigned the task of writing the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780. Here is Chapter 5, Section 2:

CHAPTER V.

Section 2.--The Encouragement of Literature, etc.

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar-schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, and good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments, among the people.

It is astounding that he had the prescience to recognize the importance of education and knowledge in a democratic system. It is our failure to apply this very simple section of the Constitution of Massachusetts that has allowed the American way of life to be threatened; not by insidious outside forces but by the ignorance of our masses. I cannot, in truth, claim to be much better than the masses in terms of my ignorance. Some of my ignorance is in want of trying, or belief that it makes a difference. After all, our country is controlled by the majority. If my opinion is that the majority votes for all forms of reasoning that have little if nothing to do with leadership, then how will my vote have any effect on the outcome? The rest of my ignorance comes from my inability to filter truth from fiction, critical from non-critical, and the general needs from the specific needs of our country. It hardly seems fair to vote for a candidate that is addressing my specific needs at the expense of the general needs.

Where exactly is the failure in our education? First and foremost it appears that our educational system does not have well defined functional goals that are easily measured. Looking back at what John Adams has written it would appear that we should be imparting, "Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties."

How do you preserve your rights and liberties? You don't vote for people who promise to give you something at someone else's expense. In other words, nothing is free in life. I would argue that in order to impart the above life values the educational system must, at the very least, value the understanding of cause and effect in the diverse areas of history, literature, economics, art, science, and math. Cause and effect are not abstract concepts. They do not exist on a piece of paper with 20 pages of reading. If the vast majority of your culture work in stores, on farms, on ranches, or in highly visible occupations where the parents are visible to the children during the work day then abstract paper and book driven education should be prioritized. This is especially true if those being educated are involved in any of the cause and effect activities. Specifically activities that demonstrate a direct relationship between decisions made and the welfare of the family. What I mean by welfare is the abundance of food, shelter, and happiness. In 1780 a vast majority of families could be said to be involved in a lifestyle where children were directly impacted by their own decisions and actions and the decisions and actions of their parents.

I do not think the same can be said for the 21st century life in the United States. Our children live in a world of abstraction where they do not get to see the results of their parents work or the practical results of their own work. A teachers evaluation of performance is not the same as a physical object that has been constructed or a field that has been planted. In both the these examples the work results in an obvious physical output where cause and effect are easily measured against one's prosperity.

To preserve the rights and liberties of our population as well as provide the greatest opportunity for happiness we must entirely change our educational system so that it does not rely on a large number of people who do not directly effect the outcome of our children's education, administrators. We must remove the barriers in our minds where children are taught in square rooms by teachers of two dimensional abstract information with a syllabus and worksheets. We must remove the concept that testing on paper is a reliable mechanism for determining educational excellence.

What then is the solution? It is actually very simple, extremely inexpensive, and guaranteed to work. All we need do is think about what has worked in the past. How were children educated in the 1800's? Quite simply, they were educated by individuals, in small buildings that allowed the individual to make decisions as to the needs of the children being taught. How could that possibly work in today's world? What about sports?

In 2002 the average cost of education per student per year in the United States was approximately $7548. I'm going to hazard a guess that last year, in 2007, the cost per year was more. Why don't we allow individuals who have proved competence to teach our children in facilities that they provide? If an average teacher held 15 students, fully 9 less than the national average for classroom size, they would be compensated $113,220 per year. If they paid the average amount for overhead of any business of 33% their take home after costs would be $75,857. I think if you proposed this concept to most teachers they would jump at the opportunity. No doubt, some teachers would group together to improve the comprehensiveness of their knowledge and improve their profits, and create LLC's or incorporate. To fully implement a system that encourages the absolute best results, performance evaluation programs could be implemented that tested student performance in real applications and reward teachers with a 10 to 20 percent bonus per year per performing student. Industrious, well organized teachers could easily make $300,000 because they are specialized and prepared. This type of pay would attract some of the very best in our society. If industrious teachers approached local businesses and universities with the possibility of training students for a few hours a day and using them in capacities where there was a mutual benefit our children would gain the knowledge of what is done on the job before entering the work force.

Under performing teachers would not be able to maintain a clientele. Over performing teachers and institutions would continually grow offering possibly transportation to and from their facilities for students in outlying areas.

I want to add that the advent of the information age makes the mechanism of distributed competitive teaching much easier to implement and evaluate.

Our populations possession of wisdom, knowledge, and virtue are fundamental to the preservation of our rights, liberties, and opportunities. These qualities are not the product of redistribution of income but the product of educational freedom which, by the very nature of the word freedom, is promoted by competition. Adhering to a system designed by a centralized government, inherently inefficient in it's ability to deliver products, is destroying our country by failing to deliver the key component to our survival, a well educated populace. The only downside to enabling this concept is the flush of administrators and educators into our economy without the tools to compete. Therefore, employing this system requires a process to be put in place to allow those already serving to find a competitive niche in the new educational environment.

Know Your Enemy

2007-11-03T09:51:00.000-06:00

You know what 'they' say, "Know your enemy." I'm at a coffee shop and once again Middle Eastern music is playing. For some unknown reason, I really like it. That, in and of itself, brings about a stream of thought that is bothersome. The overriding question is, "Even though the major religions have sprung from the same well spring, are those practicing Muslim thinking that Christianity is the root of evil and needs to be eliminated for there to be peace and a clear path to heaven? Conversely, are the Christians thinking that the Muslim religion is the root of evil and the world would be better off without it and those practicing it?

There is, of course, validity on both sides of the equation. Certainly, by our standards, the harshness of Muslim law seems barbaric and inappropriate. By their standards, our immersion in momentary satisfaction through any number of thousands of methods of self-satisfaction, are disgusting and revolting. In short, I couldn't agree more with both sides. Perhaps the solution is for all of us to take a good look at ourselves independent of the social system we have been brainwashed with and decide our future course.

Maybe, just maybe, religion is a form of social bigotry and that it is the root of the problem. I'm not saying religion has always been a bad thing. On the contrary, it was, in conjunction with the enlightenment, the ladder out of the dark ages. There is a time and place for everything, and the well spring has run dry on the religious front. It is no longer appropriate for the future of mankind. We must move beyond the simple rhetoric of religious zealotry combining the best of all religions, no longer attributing the glories of mankind to GOD and praying for future salvation based on the judgment of our actions and contrition for our failures.

I know that the overriding response to this concept is abhorrence and fear of a world without order. But think of this, it is quite possible that order does not come from the construct of belief in a system where future judgment is a prerequisite for good behavior. Good behavior can come from present judgment of self based on reasonable expectations of future consequences not only to self but to others.

Oh sure! The world is not full of despots and power mongers. Husbands don't beat wives. Neighbors don't abuse their space. Persons in authority don't control others at their expense in order to serve their present and future welfare. I admit these things will always happen to one degree or another. But look at the common man worldwide. Don't most throw out their garbage, smile and say hello to their neighbor, help a friend, care about the impoverished, rest security from chaos. It is our belief in centralized authority that allows a great deal of inappropriate behavior to continue. Why, because when power becomes established and we believe in authority as the one who judges our actions we take the position of subservience not judging theirs. This is the Achilles heel of authority and belief in a greater power.

In truth there is only one way that leads to enlightenment, to believe in self and others.

Simple Solutions - First Shot

2005-01-18T12:13:00.003-07:00

You can imagine being swept along at 70 miles an hour in a current full of sharp, acrid, debris and the decisions that are made as you go to survive. Those that are capable of simplifying and executing survive, those that aren't perish tragically. There's really more to it than that, there's the element of luck. Being in the right place at the right time. But that element is beyond us, mystified for thousands of years and cherished for it's arbitrary nature.

Simply put, our ability to survive is based on our ability to take complex situations, condense those situations down into a simple understanding that has relevance and act on those understandings.

It is this ability of individuals, cultures, and spiritual groups to survive through relevant simplification that is being lost in a world flooded with information and abstraction. And so we the people of the world jettison ourselves from one crisis to another making decisions based on our attempt to organize and understand infinitely complex situations without the use of relevant simplification.

Our laws, our wars, our prejudice, all based on misplaced models of our universe. And so here we are saving the past because we understand it, fearing the future, fighting wars against each other, all based on inappropriate models of the universe.

Has anyone else noticed that punishment doesn't work with adults or that what goes around doesn't always come around. Has anyone else noticed that we race for productivity but spend 5% of our working lives computing what we owe someone for being alive. Does it make any sense at all to house our children in boxes, school classrooms, 6 hours a day so that they can relate to a 3 dimensional world through the 2 dimensional world of abstraction and paper? There are women in my town crying, starving, with 3 year old children sitting home alone while they work, and I'm sending money to a person who tragically lost everything in a flood in Sri Lanka.

Alright, so here's my point. KISS. We all know what it means:

Help yourself to be happy before your wife. Help your wife before your kids. Help your kids before your relatives. Help your relatives before your neighbors. You get the picture.
Don't lock up adults or punish them. Either send them somewhere where they can't hurt you, like an island, or teach them a better way. Hasn't anybody been watching Super Nanny?
Buy stuff locally so that your neighbors have more money.
Insist on a flat tax.
Accept risk as a part of life.
Always assume it was your fault no matter whether it was or not. Never seek compensation.
Eliminate the overhead in government, schools, churches, relief agencies.
Train to defend and be willing to be absolutely ruthless and capable when necessary to survive.
Don't accept any lottery system or get rich quick systems in your society. They all prey upon the weak.
People first, everything else second.

Just a thought.