Score One for Experience

July 24, 2023

Good morning! It’s SHARK Week! What has been your cup o’ tea?  The British Open?  Barbie?  World Cup?  Messi?  Town Ball?  Oppenheimer? Picked and purchased four (4) ears of fresh-as-it-gets corn on the cob last Friday… right from the field, early in the morning… Rockwellian. Delicious, delicate, flavorful, tender, buttery — with no butter needed, or wanted. Anecdotally there appear to be more Monarch butterflies on the wing than in recent years. We have bees in our tiny little native prairie garden, hundreds of them, really cool; never would have guessed this patch of ground to yield so much joy.

• Those of us inhabiting this planet purchase about $76,000,000,000 worth of Cheetos and Pepsi-Cola — and other brand-related products — each year.
  • Do the math.  That’s $208,000,000 per day for Cheetos and Pepsi-Cola… and PepsiCo’s various brand-related products.
  • What do you think about that?  (Psst:  Pepsi is having a really good year.)
  • BTW, do some more math:  That is $2.60 per day for Cheetos for each man, woman, and child on the planet.
  • And, one of you is spending $5.20 or more per day, because this business is not shouldering anywhere near its fair share of the burden.
• Ever notice how quickly nature and the environment reclaim an abandoned building or parking lot?
  • Notwithstanding the concrete, tar, steel, and plaster, nature perseveres… amazing.
  • And why is it that every abandoned building always has a discarded chair or two left over, just sitting there randomly?
• Saw this the other day, can’t remember the source, the #1 predictor of physician competency is, wait for it, wait for it…
  • the number of patients seen, diagnosed, and treated.
  • Score one for experience.
• It’s 78 years later and we are still working to solve the dilemma of having learned how to split the atom — and to fuse it back together again… and again… and again.
  • And now, having thought about it for three generations, so-called artificial intelligence is befuddling us, epic in another way, though perhaps not dissimilar
  • We will soon learn more about Bob Oppenheimer than just that one factoid from grade #3.
  • “After helping to invent the atomic bomb, the physicist spent (invested?) decades thinking about how to preserve civilization from technological dangers, offering critical lessons for the age of artificial intelligence (AI).”  (Nirenberg)
  • “Oppenheimer believed the challenges of the future could only be met by bringing the technological and the human together.”  (Nirenberg)
    • A thought:  The younger generations are way, way, way advanced, in part because of gaming, those thumb-punching phenomena foretelling A.I. decades ago.
• And this happened 75 years ago:  Hubert Humphrey’s speech in Philadelphia to the 1948 Democratic convention… while he was Mayor of Minneapolis.
  • We don’t know if those were good old days or simply old days, but Hubert had a courageous vision — and he shared it — and he inspired others mightily.
  • Humphrey had witnessed Jim Crow laws firsthand while a graduate student at Louisiana State University; the experience changed his outlook.  (Aldous)
  • Makes one wonder, how did a young lad from South Dakotah end up in the Deep South — and acquire such an amazing bellwether voice?
• “It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.”  (Lehrer)
• “Nearly all creators of utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache.”  (Orwell)
• The broad indices in the U.S. (of A.) stock market are poised to achieve new historic highs; have you been a bear or a bull — or sitting with the sheep on the sidelines?
• “Anyone who is a great leader cares about being a good person.
  • Unfortunately, being a good person doesn’t automatically make you a great leader.
  • Having qualities such as being kind, empathetic, compassionate, helpful, thoughtful, and morally strong are excellent traits, 
  • but they don’t guarantee you help others maximize their potential.”  (Eades)
    • We witness this everyday at Without A Vision Consultancy.
• Pedestrian vs. motorized vehicle deaths in the United States topped 7,500 during calendar year 2022.
  • That’s more than twenty (20) human deaths per day caused by motor vehicles colliding with humans attempting to hike — or run.
  • Physics usually wins.
  • There is a street in Northeast Philadelphia claiming more than its share of this colossal carnage.
  • Doing a fair amount of urban hiking, I have no trouble believing this statistic.
  • There have been many close calls — and more often than you might think, the driver of a motorized vehicle will make an aggressive move, weaponizing his/ her vehicle in a threatening way.
  • We have a Department of Transportation, but no corresponding Department of Pedestrians.
• Seen in the neighbor’s yard:  “If Plan A doesn’t work, there are still 25 more letters in the alphabet.”
• More states are legalizing weed (marijuana/ cannabis) every year.  An estimated 13,200,000 U.S. citizens use the drug every day.
  • So why is it starting to feel like a bad idea?  (Spitznagel, Free Press, 2023)