Tax and Spend vs. Tax Cuts and Trickle Down

In the Social Sciences, it's pretty hard to run an experiment like the physical sciences. When I was in the chemistry lab, I could hold all the variables constant save one, perhaps changing from one stereoisomer to another or increasing the concentration of the reactants or adding an enzyme. In the social sciences, that is, in the real world, there are so many variables involved, and indeed, the ethics of dealing with people, makes it very difficult to control the factors involved to really call it an experiment. Nevertheless, social scientists, economists and politicians are experimenting all the time and telling us how the world should operate.

That's why I think it's so interesting to look at what's going on in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In case you have forgotten what they look like, I've included a map:

They are right next door and share a common border, so they share a common environment. Both states shared a common heritage of a century of midwestern progressive politics. But in 2010, Scott Walker was elected Governor in Wisconsin, and started down a road of Conservatism that has delighted the Republican party and led to his presidential run in the 2016 race. It has also led to Wisconsin's slide to 44th in job growth¹ amongst the 50 states.

In Minnesota, right next door, Mark Dayton has been pursuing the kind of tax and spend policies that Republicans love to pan, a la The Donald, but it has been leading to job growth in Minnesota's favor. Dayton is the great-grandson of the founder of the department store which became Target, and was coined a "failed" single term senator, and came home to run the state to the left.

In the two states, you have the two parties, operating to their respective core beliefs. On the right, Wisconsin, starve the government, cut-taxes, cut government job, restrict workers rights, bolster business options, restrict labor bargaining. On the left, Minnesota, raised the minimum wage, increased taxes on the top 2% of wage earners, increased expenditures for education and infrastructure, and funding for state level of the Affordable Care Act.

There is one difference between the two: Dayton isn't going anywhere. He has no ambition for higher office. Walker, of course, has his sights on the oval office; more than that, his hat's in the ring. He's already stomped on Wisconsin. Now he wants to walk all over the whole country.

Interestingly enough, republicans in Wisconsin are starting to rebel. The budget shortfall is starting to worry them, and they are balking at any more tax cuts. Walker is still pushing, and is dead set against raising taxes or fees. How low can you go?

^{1. Daily Beast Article 07.10.15 "Scott Walker Gets Schooled By His Neighbor" ↩}

Let's Hear It For Honesty!

There's a great new article in the September issue of The Atlantic Magazine entitled The New Science of Bad Science. There has been a surge of retractions and a wave of examinations of published findings. The Atlantic article cites study after study, including the Andrew Wakefield study linking Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine to Autism, which is the poster child for the anti-vaccination crowd (think Jenny McCarty).

There are many reasons why retractions are on the rise. New software can scan the data and model whether the data fits an expected distribution. Plagiarism-detecting software is more commonly used by journals, prior to publication. A number of researchers have been trying to replicate findings - with disastrous results. In 2012, a team at Amgen tried to reproduce 53 landmark cancer studies, and could replicate just 6 (11%). A news report in Nature attempting to reproduce the findings of 100 psychology papers has managed to replicate the results of only 39 of them (39%) - the results are still under peer review, where they may or may not be accepted or retracted.

And while we are talking honesty, let's hear it for the Republicans, and their attempt to rewrite the story of the Iraq war. Every Republican candidate, with the exception of Rand Paul, is in a hurry to put American boots on the ground in Iraq to battle ISIS, and it all stems from the fallacious notion that the surge won the Iraq war and that Obama's withdrawal of US troops caused ISIS. It is erroneous, dishonest, fallacious. It is also very appealing to voters, who simply don't know history. It is also appealing to the media, which makes no attempt to do fact checking. It has happened before.

There was a rumor started by Melvin Laird, Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense, that Congress cut of all aid to South Vietnam and that this was the cause of their defeat in 1975. "Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975." In the late 1970s, the legend - and it was a legend; Congress reduced, but never cut off funding to South Vietnam - spurred the hawkish revival that helped to elect Ronald Reagan. In 2016, the legend of the surge is playing a similar role for republican candidates.

The legend of the surge is this era's equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam

On Being Engaged

I realize that English is a non-context free grammar, so I will try to be clear what I mean by engaged through the context of my post.

I saw I Will See You In My Dreams this past Friday. If you haven't seen it, Blyth Danner does a great job and Sam Elliot gets a cameo also. The story line is Carol (Blyth Danner) is a songstress/widow living in LA 20 years after the death of her husband. She is completely satisfied with her daily routine of breakfast, paper, bridge, golf, dinner, sleep, until the death of her dog and the appearance of a mouse shake up her world. She enlists the pool man (Martin Starr) in a failed attempt to find the rodent, but it turns out that the pool boy has musical yearnings of his own. Suddenly, the urgings of the pool man to go out for karaoke, the appearance of Bill (Sam Elliot), a new retire, and the return of Carol's daughter (Malin Akerman), force Carol's re-engagement with the world, with song, and with romance.

Many times we decide that life is too painful to live outside our comfort zone. We have a circle of friends that keep us comfortable, that make us feel safe. Maybe we had a parent that got angry with us when we were young, or didn't hold us when we were crying. So we grew up feeling scared to commit, afraid to become engaged, afraid to depend on others. Or maybe we had that one perfect partner and life took them away from us, and now we are afraid of trying again, afraid that, like Carol, if we try again with Bill, he will also get taken away. Because nothing in life comes with a guarantee.

But of course in trying to seek a guarantee of forever, which we will never get, because none of us live for forever, we give up the beauty of today.

There are all sorts of what ifs that keep us from becoming engaged. Too Young, too old, too fat, too thin, too rich, too poor, too smart, too dumb. When I applied to Notre Dame as a Freshman, we had to submit a photograph with our application. When we arrived, there was a book waiting for us with a summary of our high school "careers". It was supposed to help us "network". Everyone called it the dog book. Such is the cruelty of young people. But that same cruelty is ingrained in our psyche, and leads to the regular dishonesty rampant in online dating today. So who would want to become engaged, all things considered.

For those of you who don't want to pay the tenspot to find out what happens to Carol, or wait for Netflix, I'll tell you that I hope to be like Carol, shocked out of my complacency, taking a chance on engagement, taking a chance on romance, and finding someone, even if it only lasts a few moments (yup, Bill dies too), getting another dog, singing again, getting back out in the world, getting out of my comfort zone, and taking care of...me. Becoming engaged again.

No More Mister Nice Guy

I meet with a great bunch of guys on Saturday morning. We sit around for a couple of hours and discuss issues of relevance, and this week we were discussing the book No More Mr. Nice Guys by Robert Glover PhD. These guys don't pul any punches, cause one pointed out to me, about my latest encounter, that, yes, I had compromised in an attempt for short term gains, but now it was time to accept what ever gains I had achieved, be a man about it and move on. We all have a tendency to dwell in the past rather than set our sites on the future.

I realized that I had been living my life as the "Mr. Nice Guy" and seeking my love and affection through the affirmation of those around me rather than through my own self needs and wants. I was always told not to be selfish, to be self-less. I am now at 57, realizing that I have lived my life, worrying what others think and letting others' opinions of me matter and not worrying about what my own opinion of myself matter to me.

I have had 57 years worth of relationships oriented towards other's needs. It's about time to have some time oriented towards my own.

Generative Design - Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing

Every once in a while along comes some one or some thing exceptional. You have heard that expression: The sum is greater than the total of the parts.

Generative Design is such a book. It starts with the cover diagram which is a graphic of many colored bands, each of which represents a section of a book page and uses the section's colors, which have also been sorted by grade. The back cover of the book features a tag cloud. Processing is the open source visual design language and IDE by Casey Reas and Ben Fry, and this book, and the downloadable examples, including cover.pde, will certainly inspire.

The books approach is interesting. There are six introductory sections on how to use the book. Then there are thirty five project selections from the world of art and architecture. Then there are six complex methods that teach processing. Finally there is an appendix, which is a reflexion, a summary of the authors thoughts about the changing processes that a generative design has to offer.

The publisher is Princeton Architectural Press. The website is http://www.generative-gestaltung.de/. The works range from architecture to typography to illustration to computer science to data science to art.

The book can provide a complete programming course in the processing language and IDE. Starting from the beginning:

one can progress all the way to complicated data structures

and force directed layouts:

While Hadoop, R and Python are the usual staples of the data scientist, and processing is the more the province of the artist, information is information and a tool is a tool. The job is to help the user to understand, and anything that can get the point across is an aid to the job. Processing can join Hadoop, R, Python, D3, ggplot, matplotlib, and a whole host of others. Generative Design is a real aid to helping to use processing in the design process.

Why Nukes?

Today is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the most recent, and we certainly hope, the last atomic bombing of a city. It was only the second time a city had been subject to the effects of uncontrolled nuclear fission, and it was a factor in the end of World War II, the most destructive, but not the most costly, war in the history of mankind. I have had a number of people ask me about my fascination with nukes. So it is perhaps an appropriate date to set down the reasons why I have such interest is what many feel is an esoteric area.

Nukes are the most destructive tool in man's tool belt of weapons. We tend to think of the big bad three: NBC, nuclear, biological and chemical, but of the three, nuclear weapons remain by far the most deadly and destructive of them all. Biological weapons tend to be difficult to control and deliver. Chemical weapons are awful in their effects, but are point weapons. Nukes are big and bad. Even the smallest of nukes creates a big bang. The biggest? Well, physics has yet to create the biggest, because with thermonuclear devices, there is no limit. Russia's Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба; "Tsar of bombs", or AN602) was 50MT (210PJ), and was only half of the weapon's potential yield, since allowing the device to achieve it's theoretical yield of 100MT would have destroyed the aircraft delivering the bomb and contaminated populated Russian (then Soviet) territory. For comparison purposes, that one detonation in 1961 was roughly equivalent to 1400 times the power of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, 10 times the power of all the weapons detonated during World War II, 1/4 the power of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, or about 10% of all the nuclear detonations to date. Man is slipping up on Mother Nature in destructiveness.

My undergraduate degree was in chemistry and I was especially interested in physical organic chemistry. Quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, nuclear reactions, all are a continuum of the way the Universe works at the atomic level. A hydrogen bomb is the sun on earth in a microsecond. The fact that man plays God or Mother Nature to tap elemental forces is the fascination, I suppose.

The online dating service OkCupid has hundreds of questions they ask you to answer for comparison purposes. I am probably in the vast minority of the people that answer the question "Would a nuclear war be interesting?" in the affirmative. Of course, I qualify that by saying "Only in the theoretical sense, since in practice the results would probably be the end of civilization".

The science fiction writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote an end of the world novel "Lucifer's Hammer" in which an asteroid hits the earth. In it, as the asteroid approaches, a documentary filmmaker does man in the street interviews and discovers that people want the asteroid to hit, want civilization to be destroyed. They are bored with their lives, tired of their dead-end jobs, tired of having to sleep with the boss, whatever. Of course, once the end occurs, once the grocery stores are gone and the police are gone and electricity is gone they realize exactly what they lost.

Most people don't realize what they have in modern society. Most people don't appreciate the technology they have. Most people don't know and don't care how an iPhone is made or how it works. And because they don't know and don't care, they don't appreciate how fragile their world is. Nor do they appreciate how quickly things could slip out of control.

Since it has been 70 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki most of the victims are gone. Most of the participants are gone. Most of the people that want to end the use of these weapons are gone. The gang of four, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Schultz, who came out so courageously in favor of ending our reliance on nuclear weapons are no longer on a position of influence. The desire for change that won Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 when he called for the elimination of nuclear weapons is gone, and now both the U.S. and Russia are instead looking at new nuclear weapons to solve the new competition taking place in Eastern Europe. China is modernizing its forces as the U.S. completes its Pivot and faces up as China focuses on the South China Sea. North Korea successfully tested a three stage ballistic missile and launched a satellite into orbit, which is the successful test for an ICBM.

So it looks like the Nuke Race is back on, and in a newer, deadlier fashion. No longer a two party race, now it is a many headed hydra.

About the Supreme Court

One of my favorite pieces of post-apocalyptic science fiction is Alas Babylonby Pat Frank. Set in the late 1950s, the novel's hero is Randy Bragg, a mid-30s attorney coasting through life in Florida with a middlin' law practice, a young new romance and a failed political career who must lead his community to survival after a U.S.-Soviet missile exchange. In a flashback to his failed run for state Representative Randy is faced with the question: "How do you stand on the Supreme Court?" At that time, of course, the issue was whether segregation would end whether blacks and whites would get equal access to American rights.

Today, I would like to think that issue is settled, at least on a legal basis. We have a black president, and one of the top ten Republican hopefuls, Ben Carson, is black. Yet we have several equally controversial disagreements in the country, and division amongst the Supreme Court Justices. We have Americans still wondering where they stand on the Supreme Court.

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954) was a 9-0 decision. Loving vs. Virginia, the case that found race-based bans to marriage was also 9-0. That is a symbol of one difference in politics and affairs 50 years ago: consensus. Americans have always had differences of opinion, sometimes very extreme. But it seems that in the past there was a greater emphasis on trying to form consensus and to work together. Since the late 1970's there has been an approach by some in politics to foment dissent rather than to work together. Lewis Powell advocated this approach to American businesses in his letter to the American Chamber of Commerce in 1971. Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove both did so in politics. And the conservative justices, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito on the Supreme Court have taken this approach also.

I find it incredibly irritating that these people insist on regulating everyone's behavior to their standards, as if their way is the only way. There is no aspect of "live and let live" or coexistence to them. I get that you might not want your wife or daughter to have an abortion. So, lock them up and take away the key, but why should you every other woman from that which they wish. You don't like your gay son or lesbian daughter's choice: so go ahead and try to de-program them or whatever. But why you want to make every other gay or lesbian unhappy? You don't want your money to fund abortions. Go ahead and get Congress to defund Planned Parenthood's abortions, but defunding their women's health care (non-abortion) measures is just mean.

Reading the dissenting comments to ObergefellI was struck by that meanness. And perhaps a touch of hysteria. Could that be because the opinions are turning against them? For example, the number of Americans approving of same-sex marriage has gone from 35% in 2001 to 55% in 2015 (statistics and charts from the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life):

Only among Conservatives and older-generations are there majorities opposing same-sex marriage:

Maybe age is the key. Just wait for the dinosaurs to die off. Too bad for the pain they caused.

There used to be an expression "Reasonable men can disagree reasonably." Reading some of the dissenting opinions, I didn't find a shred of reasonableness. One begets the other.

Seeking My Better Half

In past times a man might introduce his partner, generally his wife, as "My Better Half". I haven't heard that introduction in quite a while, and I started to think about it. There is a school of thought that to be manly a man should do his thing and not apologize. That's BS. Men, as well as women, are imperfect, and make mistakes all the time. A true man recognizes when he is in error, corrects the mistakes, apologizes for any harm and moves on. Now the man who isn't confidant of what he is and what he does and makes apologies for his every action is another story. But recognizing your faults and correcting them is a sign of a true man.

And in my mind, a man with a partner that helps him correct his faults, works with him toward common goals, supports him in his dreams, is the kind of partner a true man wishes to find. We have bought into the notion of codependency and individuality to such an extent that we miss the real value and need for a pair of human beings to form a partnership that is complementary in nature and in which the real human needs of intimacy, sharing, love, warmth, passion, touch, sensuality are recognized, shared, and met. In wanting to avoid the pairing of two needy people, we are in danger of missing the ideal of two adults, responsible for their own needs, forming a bond and helping each other.

That brings to mind that other descriptor, "helpmate". Who doesn't want a little help from time to time? And a partner who sees your needs, accepts them, fulfills them, and gives you the gift of being able to fulfill theirs in turn?

I have known some awesome couples. Couples that seemed to read each others minds. Couples that shared great life goals. Couples that moved in concert with one another. There is an old saying in the military: "Any man can make colonel. It takes a great wife to make general." (Of course today, everything can be reversed for the woman in today's military.) Setting aside the images of a wife wearing her husband's rank, or of the woman subsuming her life to her husband's career, the saying speaks to recognizing one's situation, setting goals, and achieving them through the help of one's partner. None of this "Me an island" stuff. Doesn't everyone need and want a little assistance?

Loving Factually

I have been married twice and divorced twice. While I don't intend to marry again I am looking to find a partner for my last loving commited relationship. Third time's the charm, right? But things run in threes.  Mutually exclusive sayings. 

Regardless, this time around I am hoping to bring some wisdom and maturity to the process. After 57 years of living I would hope that I could manage a modicum of the two. I read the book Love Factually by Duana C. Welch (hereafter LF) which offers considerable insight into the mating process. In fact, its science based approach has considerable appeal to a techie-type like me.

LF stresses the importance of determining exactly what you want in a partner, what "must haves" and "like-to-haves" you desire. Of course, remaining aware of your thought processes and emotions is critical so that you can decide if the current candidate is worth continued consideration. LF places an emphasis on positive affirmation of necessary and desirable characteristics as opposed to a laundry list of deal breakers, but I know there will always be some things that are flat-out "no goes".

I started LF right about the start of the end of my latest relationship so I didn't get a chance to apply what I learned to that one. In my work, which consists of short-term consulting engagements, I perform a post-mortem and write up a project report, so I applied the same plus my budding list of requirements to an analysis ex post facto, and I got some valuable insights.

Incidentally, I have always believed the saying that insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results, so any process that can save me from my insanity is highly desirable.

I also find that the postmortem analysis pulls things out of my subconscious, where I have relegated or pushed them. Sometimes they got pushed there because they were undesirable or painful. Some things I didn't get at the time, and my subconscious seems to ruminate on them for later digestion.

My last relationship hit a speed bump over money. What relationship doesn't? (I bet even The Donald has had issues with Ivana, Marla and Melanie.) Jane (names have been changed to protect the innocent) and I both determined that we were somewhat old-fashioned about dating customs, with the man paying the way, etc. etc. So when I was hit unexpectedly with $25k of medical bills and needed to conserve due to a short-term cash crunch, Jane was not happy. She told me that her past relationships had been with guys that had money problems and she thought she was past that, and didn't want to deal with that. Fair enough, she was keeping track of her must-haves and wants.

What I was ignoring was my own need for a partner that was not money-centric. Now we should bring into consideration the biologic drives of men and women. Both men and women seek mates that can produce children and perpetuate the species. Men look (really look, as opposed to seek) for a woman that is attractive and has that 0.7 waist/hip ratio as markers of fertility, and women look for money, status, and behavior that are symbols of a good procreator. So resources, and the desire to share, are things that women seek to determine a good mate. Bottom line though is I want a partner that appreciates the totality of me, and wants to spend time with me, as opposed to someone that appreciates my money, and wants me for what I can do.

And I ignored that. For example, Jane had problems with her living room TV/stereo. Nice setup, but her receiver wasn't passing though HDMI to the speakers, so her TV only played through its own speakers. So, I went with her to Fry's and Best Buy and redid her system twice, for two different receivers, to get it right. I have had numerous AV setups and I like electronics and computer hardware (I'm not just a SW geek) so it was fun. But towards the end, there was some issue with the last setup, and Jane said to me "I want to take you to brunch, and then you can fix the speaker balance". The idea that she felt she needed to buy my services was so unappealing that I pushed it back into my subconscious. But it was a marker of the extent that money was THE thing in the relationship. She felt she had to buy my service.

As I said, I was hit with a $25k bill, and so I told Jane that weekend I wanted to stay in that weekend, and not go out. I got back a text message that read: "I liked the Bob I first met. I don't think I like this Bob so much." HUH? Two days later, a conversation about money and finances led to the statement that Jane had pretty much only had relationships with guys with money problems. Well, maybe. But maybe that was just a rationalization.

Jane once remarked that her ex-husband was really cheap. I wonder if she was confusing lack of resources with lack of sharing of those resources?

When I first met Jane face-to-face, it was after correspondence on Match.com, where she had listed her age at 58 (I was 56 at the time). A couple of hours in to the conversation, she told me that she was really 64, and she shaved the 8 years because otherwise no one would contact her. Another item I pushed into the subconscious to ruminate over.

I am not beating up Jane here. After 50, everyone should relax and do what they want. Everyone is an adult, is responsible to themselves, and can do what they want. I am beating up myself, for not staying true to myself. I believe that honesty and openness are very important to a lasting relationship. So why did I ignore one of my key requirements? I let my guard down. I got tired, and I got lonely. It is hard.

The bottom line is that it takes some real effort to keep your emotions in check and your intellect engaged so that you can keep looking to make sure your "laundry list" is met and that you don't sail by the deal breakers. My philosophy is that every relationship has problems and frequently. The degree of commitment and the desire to work on the relationship is what determines if the relationship will last. A strong friendship, common goals, communication, all those good things are prerequisites to forming a relationship in which there is commitment and desire to maintain the relationship.

Well, time to head out on another date! Kona Grill, no less. ;-)

Mr. Robot

I have a confession to make: In the recent past, I didn't own a TV. From November 2013 to August 2013 I did without and didn't miss it. When I was hired by Avalon Consulting LLC, the man who hired me, the CEO of Avalon, also graduated from Notre Dame. I decided I better buy a TV so that I could follow and discuss the football season. From there, Netflix was ordered, and eventually, TWC.

Still, though, I have resisted taking up any series on the TV. Between the travel I do for work and the general low quality of programming available I really didn't feel like there was any good reason to take up a series. I guess that appeared odd to some; I was dating a lady with a number of "regular" shows and to her I appeared quite odd.

The start of the USA Series Mr. Robot caught me though. That's not surprising since the series subjects, hacking, and IT security are all components of my specialty as a Hadoop Security consultant. There are plenty of other subjects in the series that strike a cord: Mega corporations dominating the economy, fantasies of a simpler lifestyle, the hacker lifestyle.

Evil Corp, the dominating corporate entity responsible for all the world's ills and the death of Elliot's and Angela's Fathers, is almost too perfectly evil, especially since the face of Evil Corp is Tyrell Wellick, the CTO-wannabe who gets passed over. Between scenes of Tyrell taking out his frustrations by beating a homeless man and his plotting corporate intrigue with his pregnant wife (while he plays his S&M games with her), we can't help conclude that Evil Corp must be evil to have such a deviant vying for a C-Level position.

Then of course there is the role of Elliot, the security engineer that is coopted by fsociety. Elliot, with his social anxiety disorder, is the poster child of the lone geek, the one that can't relate, can't communicate, and remains forever isolated and lonely. I have to admit that I feel affinity for Elliot. As an only child in a neighborhood without children, I felt some of those fears. We watch from show to show to see if Elliot can ever surmount his isolation, the way all of us must if we are to have any connection or relations with other humans.

Sam Esmail, the series creator and Executive Producer, does a great job of isolating Elliot further be ensuring that he loses the one person he becomes close to, Shayla. And we are left to decide if we should accept Elliot's rational, that he helps the people that he hacks, or held him accountable for the wrong he does in the act of hacking. For Elliot's argument might be Jesuitical, but would we accept a Jesuit doing the hacking?

What Does It Take To Be A Success?

Ours is a quick-fix, get rich quick, one-shot success society. We go the doctor and demand a cure. We want instant success. We think we can buy a lottery ticket and become a millionaire. Is it any wonder we're not happy?

A couple of months ago I got to see a jazz-funk guitarist here in Austin that I had been following online for a couple of years. He mostly tours in the midwest, and finally got to Austin. He played on a Friday night at 10:30 to the grand total of 12 people. I loved the show, but it got me wondering about how hard it would be to tour, night after night, living in cheap motels and playing my gig in front of but a double handful of people.

Think of that star quarterback. The one that started playing football at 5. Or the basketball player drafted into the pros. Maybe dribbling since 6? Two a days in the hot summer, j.v. practice at 5:30 a.m. Practice year 'round for years. Success is so sweet because it is earned.

I am a Hadoop security consultant. I am happy to consultant to Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. Right now, Hadoop is hot. Companies big and small are adopting Hadoop because they need to be able to process their data to stay or become competitive. The two biggest barriers to Enterprise adoption of Hadoop are a lack of personnel with Hadoop skills and concerns about securing Hadoop implementation. Is it any wonder that a Hadoop security consultant would be in demand?

The route that brought me to where I am today started in 1999 when I left the USAA insurance company and started my own company. I wanted to architect clusters, harnessing multiple computers in a distributed network that would work together on problems too big for a single computer. I designed and built clusters for the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed, among others. Contracts lead to other contracts. Originally an IBM mainframe programmer, I had to teach myself Unix, C++, security, Python, MySQL, Linux, among others.

Then, in 2008, I was in an automobile accident and suffered major injuries. I spent 2008 in rehab and couldn't work, and my business was shuttered.

It took me until 2010 before I worked again, and I had to start over. I had to re-certify in security. I taught myself Hadoop. I worked for a year as a Virtualization Engineer and gained DevOps experience on a global network. I moved to Austin in 2012 to work as a Python security developer. I worked for a year developing system monitoring software for Hadoop. Finally in 2013 I was hired as a field engineer to install Hadoop on data appliances. But 2 months into that job and the contract was eliminated. So I had to move laterally and work as a Cloud developer. Finally, one year ago, I was hired to do Hadoop consulting.

I have 30 years of IT experience. For most of those years, I have been successful at my work, but it has taken me 15 years of work to get where I am today, doing exactly what I want to do. How many people are doing exactly what they want to do?

I used to have this discussion with my Mom. "Bob, most people don't get to do what they want. They do what they have to to survive." "But mom, maybe if they would want more, they would work more to do what they want." I am so grateful that I am able to do what desire to do, and I thank my mom, my teachers, God and the Great Pumpkin for making me see long ago that if I just continued to work for what I wanted that I could get it.

Now, where do I buy that lottery ticket?

Hiroshima and Austin - 70 Years and Counting

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb on a populated city - Hiroshima. Since the end of the cold war, nukes have tended to recede from our consciousness, Iran and North Korea not withstanding. With Russia and China modernizing their delivery systems, Iran pursuing the capability to produce a device (and surviving the Stuxnet induced centrifuge self-destruction) and the continued proliferation of secrets to non-nuclear states and entities (Al Quida was pursuing enriched materials; surely ISIS is too) I thought it might be a good moment to think about where all this activity leads - the destruction of human lives.

Many strategic thinkers tend to divorce themselves from the end result of their plans. To them, the end result of building and owning nuclear weapons is to influence other players, bend opponents to their will, deter that which is not wanted. And while I accept that 70 years have passed since the last use of a nuclear weapon, I wonder if that is due to the horribleness of the weapons themselves and the loss of life they induced or if it was due to other factors that no longer apply. Let us not forget that at the end of World War II most of the world was damaged, if not destroyed, and that there was one superpower that had the predominate economy and the vast majority of the modern tools of warfare - America. The United States was able to export its type of economy, influence military affairs, settle the majority of trade transactions with its reserve currency, in short shelter the free world. America did a god job of financing the rebuilding of Europe through the Marshall plan (and gained a huge amount of business through the mandates to use the credits with American businesses). So did we prevent WW III and a nuclear exchange through the stick (i.e. avoidance of destruction) or through the carrot (i.e. the acceptance and pursuit of prosperity and economic growth).

Fast forward to today, when the memory of the bombings are not so fresh. We are 25 years post-cold war. We are once again competing with Russia in Eastern Europe. We are competing in China in the South China Sea. We are trying to bottle up North Korea. We are trying to negotiate with Iran. All of those actors are using nukes (or the threat of nukes) as bargaining chips. Russia and China are modernizing. Have we forgotten what these weapons can do?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock is at 3 minutes to Midnight. It was at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 when the cold war was officially declared over and Russia and the U.S. started making deep cuts to their arsenals. A number of factors are considered in setting the Doomsday Clock (the Doomsday Dashboard), but one thing struck me: Russia has 12 metric tons of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and 2 metric tons of Plutonium (Pu) and the U.S. has 8 metric tons of HEU and 1 metric ton of Pu. The Hiroshima bomb (15kt yield) used about 144 pounds of HEU. A modern U.S. warhead, such as the W-87 that sits atop our remaining Minuteman III missiles, uses about 12 pounds of Pu (and some HEU as a pusher). So the U.S. and Russia combined have enough nuclear material for, well lots of weapons. The U.S. has had 27 incidents of stolen nuclear material, 14 incidents of lost nuclear material and 8 incidents of "delivery failure".

So perhaps we are not so worried about nukes as we were 70 years ago, just after we used them, when Kenneth Bainbridge, the director of the Trinity project, the first test detonation in New Mexico in 1945, declared "Now we are all sons of bitches". So I decided, as a reminder, to post images of Alex Wellersteins' Nukemap, configured for my hometown, Austin, as a touchstone. Something to remember.

Since it is unlikely (although not impossible - think the TV series Jericho) that the U.S. will nuke itself, I chose as a warhead the 800kt warhead atop Russia's latest missile, the RT-2PM2 (SS-27) Topol-M (Sickle-M) road mobile strategic weapon that Russia is modernizing on. I chose as ground zero the UT Tower.

It turns out that it wouldn't be so bad. 300k deaths in an 800k city. If you were getting out of a cab at Bergstrom airport, you would be right on the line between 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Out near Pflugerville, where I live, you would probably be ok. Of course, if you were a UT student, you would be toast, literally. Downtown Austin wouldn't stand a chance, crushed under a 20 psi overpressure that would crush a person's lungs. West Lake Hills - all dead. Barton Creek, well, I hope you have on more than a bathing suit because you are going home (if you have one left) with 2nd degree burns on your exposed side.

For a little different look, this is from Alex Wellerstien's Nukemap3D simulation. Again, 800kt Russian nuke atop the UT Tower. This time, we managed to escape from Bergstrom in an airplane. We are about 15 miles south, at 30,000 feet, looking back over our shoulder. The city looks dark, because the mushroom cloud is hanging over the area. You can see Bergstom off to the right. I-35 is exiting the picture to the lower left towards San Antonio, which, with Joint Base San Antonio, the Army Burn Facility at Ft. Sam, Randolph, Lackland, etc. undoubtably got at least one too. It's so dark under the mushroom cloud, you can't make out details of the city, but you can see Lake Travis in the upper left.

And lest we become too complacent with conventional weapons, here is a nice little map comparing the effects of our firebombing of Japan (conventional) with the comparable cities of the U.S.

There is a good reason we haven't had a nuclear bombing in 70 years. The two at Hiroshima and Nagasaki scared the shit out of everyone alive at that time. With most of those people no longer around, are we ready for another one?

Evolutionary Biology and Modern Dating – Or, Why Do Men Fall In Love So Fast?

“I Fall In Love Too Easily, I Fall In Love Too Fast” – Chet Baker song

Despite the conventional wisdom that women are more emotional than men, research shows that men fall in love far more quickly and easily than women, while women take much longer to trust and commit.¹ Why would this be the case?

Any organism has two problems: survive long enough to reproduce and disperse your genes as wide as possible by actually reproducing. By solving those problems, a being survives through its offspring. Those characteristics that make us who and what we are get passed down through our offspring. Our thoughts, desires, behaviors, and emotions all get passed down, just like our hair color or physique.

Human beings’ behavior has evolved to solve their needs. Yet the forces of evolution that shape these behaviors change very slowly, while human society changes much faster. As an example, when humans were hunter-gathers living in caves, finding food was difficult. Those that had a taste for fats and sweets took in more calories and survived to become our ancestors. Yet today, the preference for fats and sweets is causing an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Our behavior lags our culture.

Most of the time, men and women solve their problems of survival in the same manner. While living in a cave, boys and girls could be abducted or raped by strangers, or eaten by predators. Children that were scared of the unknown and darkness were much more likely to not be harmed. Today, a baby has the same fears, no matter if it is a boy or girl.

When it comes to dating and relationships, though, men and women differ greatly because of simple biology. Yet men and women make the mistake of thinking that the opposite sex thinks and wants the same. This gender-centric thinking really causes problems when it comes to dating.

In the recent past, say, after 1960, society has changed to where male and female equality was the goal, if not the norm. But men and women are very different when it comes to mating psychology.

The goal of mating, biologically speaking, is to make a baby. Men and women contribute equally of their genetic material. But men and women invest unequally of themselves when it comes to mating. A man manufactures sperm continuously and does so for life, and the mating process is over once he has made his donation. A woman ripens a single egg per month, and only for a limited number of years. Once she has accepted the donation, that is the start of a nine month period that has a heavy impact on her life.

Think about cave man days. What does it cost your average cave man to mate? It costs a few moments of his time. The more times he could mate the wider he spread his genetic material and the more likely his genes survived. The man who preferred casual sex reproduced better than the man who preferred monogamy. So the biological pressure is for men to prefer casual sex, whether he acts on it or not.

For the cave woman, the costs are much higher. Pregnancy is a high-risk operation in the cave. She may die in childbirth. While pregnant, and later, while caring for the child, she is in a poor position to gather the food she needs for herself and her offspring. Is there any wondering why she would prefer casual sex?²

In caveman times the woman that plays around dies. The woman that is picky survives through her child. Even today, women that are casual about their partners tend to live shorter lives, as do their children. Women that choose providing, protecting dads tend to live longer and so do their children.³

In ancient times, women who cared about resources and commitment solved some nasty biological problems. Today, that same need is expressed in women’s psychology that is finely tuned to whatever signs of wealth in their culture, whether that is an advanced degree or a nice car or a larger farm. Straight or lesbian, young or old and regardless of the society. Women want men with resources.⁴

But even more important that having resources is the desire to share what you have. In a survey on dates, the most common “worst” that women mentioned is a man that is cheap. For even though a man has resources, if he won’t share, he won’t provide. And the evolutionary requirement is for a provider, not a banker.

If a man is young, the ability to improve his resources, through education, hard work, starting a business, is a demonstrable sign of potential resources. Many a man has been supported through school or the lean times of a startup. For older men, attained wealth is more important.

And the most important sign of willingness to provide is commitment. Pursuit is the strongest signs of commitment. Calling regularly, planning future dates, old-fashioned manners like holding the door, all are symbols of pursuit, which equals desire and commitment.

Women are seeking someone who is both willing and able to provide and protect.

Men have desires and needs, also. What do they want?

When men are choosing a life partner, they are just as picky as women, just not about the same things.

Remember, men are producing sperm all the time. But women have a limited window of fertility. Just about any man will do, when a woman wishes to become pregnant. But a given woman may not be able to bear a child. Too young, too old, nursing, ill. Men who were attracted to wrinkles and a round waist may have existed, but they didn’t perpetuate their genes. Instead, modern men are descended from ancients that valued youth and beauty.

What do men value: clear skin, white teeth, an hourglass shape (the perfect 0.7 waist/hip ratio). All these are signs that a woman is fertile. These are all inherited and are subconscious. Blind men that have never seen a woman still prefer women with a 0.7 waist/hip ration – they choose by feel!

That’s why straight women and gay men try to appear as youthful and beautiful as possible. One simple way for woman to do this: date men 10 or more years your senior.⁵

The takeaway is that we are ruled by our inherited behaviors. Even though our culture or our personal situation might say that we be different, we will still tend to behave the way our ancestors did. To be successful at modern day dating, we need to think and act to meet the needs of the other sex.

^{1. In a Journal of Social Psychology paper, Marissa Harrison interviewed 172 college students if they had ever been in love. The men were prone to fall in love much quicker, declaring their love in weeks, while the women were more cautious, typically taking months.↩}

^{2. In fact, many times, the casual sex isn’t casual for the woman. In a Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality paper (11, 1-24), 44% of woman versus 9% of men said they engaged in casual sex to try to get a long-term relationship. After attraction, the second most common reason for casual sex was “I actually wanted a long-term relationship with this person, and I though sex would lead to something more long lasting”.↩}

^{3. The Evolution of Desire, 4th ed., David M Buss, Basic Books, 2003.↩}

^{4. Buss, Strategies of Human Mating, American Scientist, 82, p. 238↩}

^{5. D. T. Kenrick, Age preferences in mates reflect sex differences in reproductive strategies, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 75-133.↩}