Tag: Drought

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S3 E47 — Why’s and How’s of the Genius Art of Procrastination

Something is missing.  I can’t put my finger on it.  I just don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.  I thought it was something Marshall McLuhan said and was fully prepared to follow the search for it.  But, that impulse dried up.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “In a moment of complete relaxation, an answer will come to you accompanied by all the relief and satisfaction of finding a set of lost keys. Indeed, this will unlock future doors.” Leo

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s Episode 47 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 16th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams; S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E46 — Whimsy Passion Project or Epic Novel of Adventure?; S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E46 — Day 46 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day

Context

Sitting quietly for a moment after I asked “What would Leo da V do?” the answer arrived.  

Curiosity.  

That’s what’s been missing from the 1-Year Natural Experiment Report.  Living life as an art form in a natural experiment.

Why?  

I’d been skipping over “Why: What Makes Us Curious?” by Mario Livio.  

Guess who figures prominently in Mario’s tale, besides Richard Feynman, my Leo!

“Leonardo’s boundless interests spanned such broad swaths of art, science, and technology that he remains to this day the quintessential Renaissance man. Art historian Kenneth Clark appropriately called him ‘the most relentlessly curious man in history.’” 

“Feynman’s genius and achievements in numerous branches of physics are legendary, but he also pursued fascinations with biology, painting, safecracking, bongo playing, attractive women, and studying Mayan hieroglyphs.”

Leonardo’s apparent inability to complete assignments, or his lack of interest in finalizing some of his projects pose further questions laid out by Livio, but really relevant to my behavior too: 

    • What was it that made Leonardo curious, and why? 
    • What did he do to satisfy his curiosity? 
    • At what point, if any, did he actually lose interest in a particular topic? 

Leonardo was curious about almost everything in the complex world surrounding him, and compulsive about note taking.  He sketched drawings and notes as part of his “artistic”output, estimated by some researchers to be 15,000 pages.

Why include curiosity now?  

Livio says the emergence of the unique human curiosity and emergence of the distinct human language were strongly correlated.  Which is a polite way of elevating gossip! 

Livio believes curiosity is at the core of human symbolic culture.

“… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity.”

How?

“The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

The basic characteristic of curiosity is the desire to pose a question, thereby risking generating even more uncertainty, which in the context of an information-gap model is perceived as distressing.  Einstein once said: 

“The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.”

Why?

Curiosity is really an engine of discovery. The seed of creativity is curiosity, and that potential for imagination comes from wondering, filled with self-awareness and a rich inner life.

Evidence

So, let’s turn to wondering which of the Steves offers relevant TauBits of Wisdom for the day.  If complaining identifies a problem and that problem is really an information-gap itching to be closed, then I like what you can offer Zahnny.

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Complaining comes easily to most. Just about anyone can describe a problem. The next steps — brainstorming solutions, settling on a few to try, gaining the cooperation of others, etc. — are for the advanced corps. That’s you.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

However comma, as Emma the Baroness is fond of saying, I believe it takes an inventor and two comedians to describe my early in the morning “What would Leo da V do?” moment when I switched from McLuhan to curiosity, more precisely.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “In a moment of complete relaxation, an answer will come to you accompanied by all the relief and satisfaction of finding a set of lost keys. Indeed, this will unlock future doors.” Leo

So, Steve your Holiday Tau is saying book learning is one thing, but application is what matters, right?  Couldn’t agree more.  I’m on the back end of teasing out lessons learned from experience and building the theory it supports.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “The theories that work out on the page but don’t work out in real life can be considered exercises or games, not serious contenders. Actual results trump theory every time.”Pisces

I was surprised late yesterday afternoon when just like your Holiday Tau describes, wave after wave washed through me while I watched Vanessa’s tribute to Kobe Bryant at his induction into the NBA’s hall of fame.  

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Feelings are waves. They rise into an identifiable shape and then hit the shore and go back to being part of the big ocean of emotion. Don’t fear the feeling. It’s just another form for energy to be for a while.”  Aries

I saw Michael Jordan, duh, since he introduced Kobe for his induction, but not you.  Okay I have to admit I taped the whole show so I could fast forward through Tim Duncan’s and Kevin Garnett’s to get to Kobe , so you may have been there. Now I’m wondering if the socially distanced audience were already inducted members and family?

“4”  Steve Kerr, 54: “When dealing with distracted people (and it’s safe to say that most people you’ll deal with today will have an attention deficit), assume that you must capture their attention several times throughout the interaction.” Libra

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1. 
    • “Why?: What Makes Us Curious,” by Mario Livio. “… socially shared myths, rituals, and symbolism were most likely the first sophisticated responses to nagging why and how questions and were therefore the fruits of curiosity. The chain reaction that resulted from the positive feedback between curiosity and language turned Homo sapiens into a powerful intellect, with self-awareness and an inner life.”

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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S4 E38 — Billy and Buckey Blow My Brain in Whiskey Row’s Palace

He was a sheriff, newspaper editor, miner, politician,Georgist, gambler and lawyer, mainly in Arizona. His nickname came from his tendency to “buck the tiger” (play contrary to the odds) at faro or other card games. He later became a captain in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and died in battle.

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

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Knowledge ATMs 

A peak behind the scenes of self-publishing, crowdfunding, and working for yourself

Table of Contents

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s 38th Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 12th day of May in the spring of 2022.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12880 this week to 12943 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 220 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Context

As we strolled around, waiting for the cycling race to slow down so we could safely cross Whiskey Row without altering the race results, I wondered who that statue represented — somebody like Wyatt Earp? 

Image Credit: https://www.visitarizona.com/

It would makes sense, because Prescott tourism definitely played up the Old West Themes.

“No,” Jay said as we entered the dark wood old west bordello and saloon-themed restaurant “he’s a Rough Rider named Buckey somebody who was a mayor.“ 

Turns out a little later on Wikipedia I discovered  Bucky O’Neill was a man of his time like Wyatt Earp — a Permanently Temporary.

He was a sheriff, newspaper editor, miner, politician, Geologist, gambler and lawyer, mainly in Arizona. His nickname came from his tendency to “buck the tiger” (play contrary to the odds) at faro or other card games. He later became a captain in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and died in battle.

But, a Georgist, WTF? Not a typo? I never heard of that and it can’t be a version of his name like Esquire, right? 

Single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society.

He believed in what today’s Representative to Congress from his district, Paul Gosar, would openly consider as socialism.

But, I couldn’t contain myself once my eyes grew accustomed to the dark interior having passed the famous western bar — brown wood walls with dark wood trim — and pictures and paintings and drawing on every wall. I browsed one wall after another.

After we ordered some appetizers to share and I took pull on a long neck bottle of Corona I excused myself to visit more history on both sides of the hallway to the lavatory.  Once in the head standing at the urinal I couldn’t help but laugh.  

Image Credit: WikiCommons

Not everyone remembers William Boyd aka Hopalong Cassidy a stable of cowboy westerns filmed around WWII and later shown on television in the ‘50s, but there he was with his white hair in black hat and black shirt and pants looking down at me in what seemed like a 4-foot poster astride his trademark white horse.

“Anybody remember the name of Hopalong Cassidy’s horse,” I teased Jay, Elle and Emma.  Jay had it on the tip of his tongue.  I then said, “Champion and I’m pretty sure I peed on his feet.”  They laughed and Jay announced he wanted to see for himself. 

Anyone driving towards Mammoth Mountain for a ski holiday slows down to 35 mph while passing through three small towns before accelerating back to 70 on Hwy 395.  

Is it Independence?  Or Lone Pine? I should look it up, right?

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard Copyright 2022

Each time we pass we tell ourselves we should stop one time and explore the museum dedicated to all those western movies filmed in the Alabama Hills, including those staring William Boyd.

As Betsy, our dyed blonde server sauntered over in her corseted costume with a knife in a sheath fastened over the small of her back, you know like you’d expect for sex workers here at the faux brothel upstairs, I noticed a little history on the menu.

The Palace is the oldest frontier saloon in Arizona, and the most well-known and historic restaurant and bar in the state.  Past patrons include Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate. Virgil was Prescott’s Town Constable.  Originally built in 1877, The Palace was destroyed in the Whiskey Row fire in 1900.  Patrons moved the bar and lower back bar across the street and drank and watched Whiskey Row burn to the ground.  It was rebuilt in 1901.  Today, The Palace maintains its history, grandeur and old west atmosphere, is a favorite for locals, and attracts visitors from all over the world.

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard Copyright 2022

Sitting at our round wood table I glanced at the wall almost directly behind Jay’s shoulder.  A glass display of mining tools used back in the day caught my eye. 

But immediately to the left of the display I saw a small brown framed black and white picture with a brass black below the photo, 

 

“Yavapai County, Burro Man Circa 1890s.”

Two seemingly unrelated factoids tumbled in my mind and came together like a conspiracy theory.  

Could it be?

In the photo a gold seeker in a broad-brimmed hat kneels next to a small makeshift wooden sifting structure.  To his right you can see two pails and a home made scooper — a short wooden handle attached somehow to a metal can.

I vaguely recall pieces of a family story about someone my father’s aunts wrote about in a newsletter which told the story of our extended family ancestors.

Image Credit: WikiCommons

And something I discovered about O’Neill.

O’Neill arrived in Prescott in the spring of 1882. There he rapidly progressed in his journalistic career. Starting as a court reporter, he soon founded his own newspaper, Hoof and Horn, a paper for the livestock industry. He became the editor of the Arizona Miner weekly newspaper in 1884 to February 1885.

That’s it.  Uncle Billy ended up in two Prescott articles and with a little research I discovered one story appeared in the Arizona Miner.  Is it possible Bucky interviewed Billy?

Roughly five years apart Uncle Billy made both the Arizona Miner and the Prescott Enterprise.  Seems as though my great, great uncle’s letter got published in the Prescott Enterprise in 1871.

In the summer of 2005 here’s what I wrote about him in, Uncle Billy, the Earl of Dunraven, Pearl Street & Emaciated Mountain Goats” 

He wrote it to the Honorable S.C. Miller telling him he is living in Castle Rock in Douglas County, Colorado. Uncle Billy wandered from Osage County, Missouri sometime after the 1850 census listed him – as it had Confederate War casualty Nathan – my great, great grandfather.

That got me thinking about Samuel Clemons who began his writing career by sending letters to newspapers signing them “Mark Twain”.  Like Mark Twain, he was drawn to the West to find his fortune working mining claims. 

Twain roamed California and Nevada, while Billy mined his 400 feet lode on Lynx Creek in what is today a quaint vacation spot near Prescott, Arizona – north of Phoenix and south of Flagstaff.

Did he strike it rich? 

Like almost everybody else, he made and lost a fortune in the Gilpin County gold leads. 

In an 1871 report on mining, he’s described as “… a fine specimen of a Western Pioneer, one of the men who have always kept in advance of railroads, and who doesn’t feel well unless separated from civilization by hundreds of miles of Indian country.”

Indian country before trains, huh?

Continuing in the 1871 Arizona Miner interview he describes an incident while going from Prescott to Walker’s Camp, at the head of Lynx Creek. 

Near Yellow Jacket Gulch, he sees a huge fire and rising smoke. He says parties recently from Skull and Kirkland valleys “report Indians aplenty down that way. They are around, sure, and there is no telling when or where they will strike the first blow.”

Image Credit: Stephen G. Howard Copyright 2022

So, I’m not saying that photo on the wall next to the glass display is Uncle Billy, but I do know we passed through Skull and Kirkland valleys on the way to Jay and Elle’s Prescott home.

And, the timing is off by a decade or more for Bucky O’Neill to have interviewed Billy, like it sometimes is when you do any ancestry research.  

In letters he wrote back home to Missouri he describes the struggle between guarding against Indian attacks, robbers and the long distance he has to travel for supplies. 

Before Bucky sauntered into Prescott, I’m fairly certain Billy had pulled up stakes already.

Forced to move on due to bad luck, he tries his hand mining in the Black Hills and tries settling for a short time in Castle Rock, before finally returning to his family farm in Missouri.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

“5”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “Everyone is not on the same page. Some around you are not even in the same book. For this story to go right you must establish common ground and build from there.” Taurus

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E37 — Racing a Little Wobbly on Whiskey Row; S4 E36 — Big Rigs, Skull Valley and Yarnell Hotshots ; S4 E35 — Prescott Pitstop Knocks Me Off Balance

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E38 — Sliding on a Super Slippery Slope to 2nd or 3rd Cousins; S3 E37 — Tell Me More Lies I Can Believe In; S3 E36 — Placebo, Meaningful Coincidence or Just Feeling Lucky; S3 E35 — This Ain’t No Zemblanity

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E38 — What Should You Do If You Stumble Across Loaded Information?; S2 E37 — How Deep is the Chasm? What Do We Do?; S2 E36 — Turning Lemons into Margaritas; S2 E35 — Was this Pandemic Year a 1-Off or New Way of Life?

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E38 — Day 38 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E37 — Day 37 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E36 — Day 36 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E35 — Day 35 of My 1-Year Experiment;

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

Your victories will be satisfying and numerous. Through the next 10 weeks you work unwaveringly, with unshakeable focus and resilient intelligence. A complicated relationship irons out. As a result of your efforts to broaden your intellectual horizons, your earning potential will increase.

Ten weeks you say?  That’s ending sometime after the middle or the end of July, but I shouldn’t get my hopes up because this is probably your birthday and not mine.

“5”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “Everyone is not on the same page. Some around you are not even in the same book. For this story to go right you must establish common ground and build from there.” Taurus

Well, so far so good.  Elle and Jay have been long-time friends even having traveled to Italy for our anniversary vacation.  But, in terms of politics I don’t hold out any hope that we’d be in the same chapter.  Common ground, yeah that’s the ticket.  Fingers crossed. 

“3”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “You may decide to do things differently from how your predecessors did because new tools are available. Experimentation takes time and the risk doesn’t always pay off, but you’d be remiss not to try. The future is for the brave!” Virgo

So my predecessors wrote long-hand letters, but my mother typed all of hers and posted them by mail.  She included clipped articles from her newspapers or magazine subscriptions.  Me?  I didn’t want all the clutter from paper and files, so I always looked for digital alternatives.  But, even now I feel I can’t keep up.

“4”  Steve Kerr, 54: “As for the one who doesn’t understand what you’re doing… it could be a perceptual limitation of theirs, but it could also be that you’ve yet to effectively impart the vision. How can you explain it differently?” Libra

So true, I’m in the weeds on most of my passion projects.  And, because I’m one of those endangered introverts, at least by percentage of similar temperaments, I get how most (95 to 97%) won’t understand what I’m doing until I can simplify and simplify some more.  Am I getting closer?

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Here’s an argument for keeping it simple: If the issue at hand grows more complex, and the stakes are raised too, the analysis of choices will consume more energy, which may lead to decision fatigue and delays.” Pisces

WTF have you been eavesdropping?  I couldn’t put it any better than that.  Nailed it!

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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S3 E46 — Twisting Meaning to Fit Is Still a Misdemeanor in My Book

I started down this path a week ago on Friday when I felt lost. What I did next didn’t fill me with pride. 

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Take a step back and remember why you wanted to do a thing in the first place. Much has happened since; your purpose has evolved to fit the circumstances. But that initial kernel of intention is still the heart of this venture.

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 46 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 15th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab; S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run

Context

I stole Steve Kerr’s TauBit of Wisdom:

“Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” 

Thanks to Coach Kerr and the Los Angeles Lakers living legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar I’ve been reworking the 1-Year Natural Experiment Report.

Intelligent imagination is vital to this sort of deduction! However improbable a hypothesis, it cannot be discarded. 

“Mycroft and Sherlock” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Introduction

  • Definitions
  • What Does Tau Mean?
  • Life as an Art Form
  • Life as a Natural Experiment

Chain of Events Leading to the 1-year Experiment

  • Two Fortune Cookies and Dove Dark Chocolates
  • Here’s the Pitch for Bringing More Steves into the World
  • Steve is on an Endangered List
  • Top 10 Steves Organized by Horoscope = 120!

Three Phases

  • Finding Aphorisms Worth Handing Down
  • Priming the Pump for Input from Real Steves
  • Soliciting Wisdom from Steves with Identical Names

Methodology for Phase One

  • Changes along the Way
  • Extension to total 1-Year
  • Day 196 of 1-Year (Pre-Pandemic) overlaps with Day 20 of Pandemic Year

Findings for Phase One

  • Total Possible Horoscopes, Originally 4536 vs. Extension 4548
  • From Representative Sample of Famous Steves
  • Break Down: Practical Projects, Work, Legacy, Dreams and Relationships

Results Relevant to Me

  • Specific to Scorpios
  • From Any of the Remaining 11 Signs

Conclusion

  • Horoscopes
  • Biases
  • Intuition
  • Synchronicity
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Serendipity
  • Do I Feel Lucky?
  • Superstitions
  • Rituals
  • Super Simplification
  • True Believers
  • Filters
  • Selves
  • Heuristics
  • Associative and Lateral Thinking

Appendix:

Holiday TauBits of Wisdom From Representative Sample

  • Steve McQueen
  • Steve Carell, Steve Martin and Steve Wozniak
  • Steve Jobs

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

I guess if I had known I would have added our Patron Saint, Steve McQueen to Kerr and Kareem’s inspirations. 

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Take a step back and remember why you wanted to do a thing in the first place. Much has happened since; your purpose has evolved to fit the circumstances. But that initial kernel of intention is still the heart of this venture.” Aries

If I twist the meaning of your Holiday Tau slightly Howey, I interpreting your message as confirmation of this whimsey passion project which led to more tangible and practical insights I’m working through in the “Conclusions” section of the report, right?

“4”  Steve Howey, 42: “Whether consciously or unconsciously, you keep placing yourself on the path of self-discovery. The respect and love you gather up is a natural byproduct you’ve earned along the way.” Cancer

Don’t get me wrong Coach Nash, but I’m not feeling the relevance for today.  But thanks anyway.

“2” Steve Nash, 45: “When loved ones want your assistance, your response is automatic. Today’s situation warrants a contemplative pause. Consider that, sometimes, the very best way to help is by not helping.”  Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S3 E45 — Tacit Heuristics Blinding Fast-Track Teams

I’ve learned that I am really susceptible to the downsides.  But, I’m a sucker for that aha! experience, so naturally I’d latch on to a word (heuristic) that comes from the same root as eureka.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’ll discover that a belief you held was wrong or incomplete — oh, sweet liberation! This levels the mental ground where you’ll be building something sturdier and more beautiful to dwell inside.”  Aries

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 45 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 14th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E44 — Make It Rhyme To Work Each Time; S3 E43 — Add a Little Foresight to My Misdemeanor Tab; S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E45 — Wildcard What Ifs and Doobie Bros Bias; S2 E44 — Celebrating Emma the Baroness Tribal Quarantine Style; S2 E43 — See What You’ve Been Missing …; S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E45 — Day 45 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E44 — Google Me Some Chopped Liver; S1 E43 — Desperation on Such a Summer’s Day; S1 E42 — Love on the Run

Context

When knowledge management gained purchase as an emerging profession I attended a week-long online conference with early practitioners and discussed “distinctions” of what it was all about.  

It was too soon to define it with hard boundaries.  

One of the pioneers advocated heuristics as a practice for sharing and refining knowledge that wasn’t already explicitly in use. 

 I’d never heard of heuristics before, but I caught a flavor of his meaning for what he called tacit knowledge — what people on a team knew and shared intuitively with each other.

Team members learn something by bringing products to market like the one they’re up against the looming release date.  

The team is stumped.  

Someone pitches a solution based on a similar product she engineered in the recent past and it works. Crisis averted.  That solution is passed on again and again. 

More formally a heuristic is like a rule of thumb — a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind.

I’ve learned that I am really susceptible to the downsides.  I’m a sucker for that aha! experience, so naturally I’d latch on to a word (heuristic) that comes from the same root as eureka.

If you knew me you’d know I always look for a simple procedure that helps me find answers to difficult questions —  adequate, but often imperfect as they may be to move forward. 

But,  now I’ve come to learn what I’m most likely guilty of is some kind of mental trick, a kind of a bait and switch without noticing.  

I  sometimes automatically substitute an easier question for a difficult one, answer it and congratulate myself on my brilliance.

As Daniel Kahneman says, “(A) lazy System 2 often follows the path of least effort and endorses a heuristic answer without much scrutiny of whether it is truly appropriate.”

How does it work? 

While l’m engaged in searching for an answer to one question, my “System 1” simultaneously generates the answers to related questions. 

Often it may substitute a response that more easily comes to my mind for the one that was requested and more complicated.  

“The heuristic answer is not necessarily simpler or more frugal than the original question, but it is accessible, computed more quickly and easily.” 

The answers are not random.  They are often approximately correct and frequently that’s all you need. 

As in technology heuristic of inserting a good enough product into the customers hands and get them to tell you about all the flaws so you can iterate and release new versions.

But, sometimes they are quite wrong. Which can come back and bite you in your own life if you’ve got a lot on the line.  

Evidence

But, Zahnny, am I wrong in assuming focus and concentration won’t short circuit my intuitive self no matter how flawed?

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “The work worth doing centers around your energy, perception and ability. Focus there, and so much else will naturally come together. Focusing elsewhere will be ineffective.” Scorpio

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

You know, Steve sometimes your Holiday Tau hits the nail on the head.  It wasn’t until these last weeks while working on the Conclusions section of my Report that I discovered heuristics, good as they may be in general, weren’t the end all and be all of knowledge management.  In fact they may have accounted for blinding fast-track teams under pressure to deliver tech products at a faster and faster pace.  Mea culpa.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You’ll discover that a belief you held was wrong or incomplete — oh, sweet liberation! This levels the mental ground where you’ll be building something sturdier and more beautiful to dwell inside.”  Aries

Eureka G&G.  Here’s my take on this passion project at 5:45 am this morning. Looking back through the report I grow tired and weary because of the disconnects and disjointed sections.  My plan was to write the end and then go back to the beginning and clean up portions as I made progress towards the conclusion.

“5”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “The interaction of opposing forces in your mind creates friction, hot moods and frustrating mental traffic jams. Alignment changes everything. Thoughts flowing in the same direction create momentous forward movement.”  Virgo

Did someone say, aha! or eureka?  Count me in. Anything to distract me, like a squirrel does for a dog, from this ongoing national political disgrace.

“4”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “Heavy topics and serious matters just don’t have appeal to you now, though you’re quite excited by novelty and the lighter side of life. This mood is perfect for building rapport with others.” Pisces

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8138 to 8193 organically grown followers

Foresight

Quality-of-Life 

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S3 E42 — Greta, Juliette and the Partridge Family at Trestles

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s Episode 42 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 8th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?; S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize; S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E42 — It Was Short and Sweet, but Heart-Felt; S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns; S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E42 — Love on the Run; S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?

Context

First, the public service announcement — while it may be too late for flowers, don’t forget to call your mother tomorrow.  

Is there a theme for today?  

Virginia Heffernan evokes the “Gen-X Generation” in her column about how the current baby bust — couples not doing their duty to their ancestors — and probably exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic isolation, will produce another overlooked generation in the grand scheme of things.  

But, who can blame them?  

Unless you believe card carrying Baby Boomer Bill Gates has planted chips in COVID-19 arms and single-handedly smeared the fossil fuels industry you might empathize with the teenagers — older than the unborn (in the even grander, Karma kind of scheme) — and agree with their Gen-Z spokesperson, Greta from Finland in her streaming series, ”Greta Thunberg – A Year To Change The World.” 

In a rare moment after visiting with coal miners who actually applaud her message — yes, that’s right — you see a candid Greta when she shares how deflated she feels, like a powerless little girl, compared to Trump’s grade-school bullying before and after they co-headlined a conference of international leaders.

Yet she’s the one acting like the only adult in the room.

Her generation, she reminds us, will still be here when the Baby Boomers are extinct, having done nothing in this critical moment,  leaving them on the wrong side of planetary history, and judged harshly in the future for their inaction.

And finally, Juliette Paskowitz the “beatnik matriarch” of San Onofre surf camp clan dies in a care facility at age 89 in nearby San Clemente, California. From her obituary by Steve Marble in the LA Times:

Juliette Paskowitz and her husband embraced a Jack Kerouac lifestyle: boundless, free-spirited, going where the road took them — most often in the direction of the beach. It was the life any kid could only dream of, bounding across the country in an overstuffed camper — from San Clemente to Pensacola to the shoreline of Venezuela, always searching for the perfect wave. 

With Dorian Paskowitz at the wheel, nine kids jammed in the back and Juliette riding shotgun, the family finally parked the rig on the sand in San Onofre, opened a surf camp and spent their days riding the glassy curls, playing in the whitewash and chasing one another from lifeguard tower to lifeguard tower. 

“If ‘Nomadland’ was a 2, we were at a 10 as far as sheer adventure, uncertainty, homelessness and never knowing what the next day might bring,” said Israel “Izzy” Paskowitz, the fourth-oldest child in the clan. 

“It was wonderful.” Juliette Paskowitz, the matriarch who held “the first family of surfing” all together, often singing arias while listening to opera on a small transistor radio in the camper…. 

Dorian preached the rewards of surfing so relentlessly that it caught the attention of sportswear designer Tommy Hilfiger, who applied the family name to his line. 

A record label, perhaps thinking they’d found the sun-bleached version of “The Partridge Family,” invited the family to cut a record. A filmmaker made a 2008 documentary on the family titled “Surfwise.”

A theme?

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Huh? Liberation.  Getting your habits to march along like ducklings following their mother, all in a row? Interesting.  But, it ain’t my birthday.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

There’s a liberation taking place. A year from now, you’ll look back and celebrate this moment when you cease to needlessly judge yourself. You’ll opt for new ways of pulling your habits into line. You’ll enjoy what you create because you dared to go in a new direction. Work leads to new interests; new interests pay you.

Knowing when to examine and when to let it go, is that right, Stevie?

“3”  Steve Smith, 30, Stevie Nicks, 72: “A few people will make an initial decision and many others will uncritically accept it. You, however, will push pause and do your own evaluation. You can’t personally examine everything, but this is within your realm.” Gemini

Haha, you two comedians break me up.  And you, Woz seriously your Holiday Tau feels like how you persisted along with that other Steve to build it before knowing they would come, eh?

“4”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “Your wisdom shines through your choice of what to get involved with and when. Trust those initial prescient instincts, even when (especially when!) you can’t reason them out.” Leo

How is it that your Holiday Tau feels a cut above the TauBits offered by the other Steves today?  I’m thanking you for you more practical take.

“5”  Steve Nash, 45: “Knowing that someone will only remember two or three things you talk about, you pick the most important topics and find an artful and memorable way to put those ideas across.”  Aquarius

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

 Quality-of-Life   

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

Posted on

S4 E33 — When Was The Last Time Honesty and Character Counted?

As the worm turns, right?  Let me just summarize what’s taken place so far in the Season Four — a baker’s dozen of episodes shifting away from Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and to the ongoing greasing of the wheels for a triumphant comeback for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “There’s a change in you. However subtle the change may be, it will land you in a completely different place than you would be if you had remained the same.” Pisces

Hi and welcome to Thursday’s 33rd Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 28th day of April in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E32 — A Rudy By Any Other Name Still Smells …; S4 E31 — Butt Dialing Your Way to a $Billion, What Could Go Wrong?; S4 E30 — Green Bay’s Conspiracy-Theories-R-Us from The OC 

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E33 — Do Meaningful Coincidences Really Exist?; S3 E32 — But, Why Should You Care?; S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things; S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E33 — What Happens When Your Business Collapses?; S2 E32 — Trapped and Bored? Or Unleashing a Reinvention Wave?; S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t? 

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E33 — Day 33 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E32 — Day 32 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment;

Context

As the worm turns, right?  Let me just summarize what’s taken place so far in Season Four’s bakers dozen of episodes shifting away from Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and to the ongoing greasing of the wheels for a triumphant comeback for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Not so fast.  Even before the rest of his cabinet members negotiated book deals for after they left his service, one began writing articles about what it was like trying to follow traditional conservative principles, but witnessed Trump’s bizarre behavior all too frequently. 

Anonymous better known as Miles Taylor documented his character.

S4 E19 — The Reason Character and Honesty Don’t Count Anymore

And profiled his work ethic, which seems like two words that don’t apply to what President’s actually do in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.  Looking in from the outside many of us wondered why his cabinet never activated Article 25 to remove him from office for proving to be incompetent and downright dangerous.

S4 E20 — Resiliently Living Through Domestic and Global Chaos

If that wasn’t enough there’s always the January 6th Insurrection. And, even as members of both sides of the aisle feared for their lives, condemned Trump’s role in fanning the flames of attack, in just a few days they began to backpedal.  Why?

And, who’s to blame?  How will we find out? And, what can be done to prevent the next one?

S4 E21 — Not Since the War of 1812

Won’t it take bipartisan efforts?  Well, I guess not as the January 6th Commission is formed to unravel who, what, when, how, why and event suspicions about members of Congress and their role.

S4 E22 — Now, Who Could Argue With That? 

Just as there might have been a Deutsche Bank money laundering and fishy loans, shouldn’t we take a step back to follow the money?  And doing so begins with the Mercers and how Conway and Bannon join forces later in the Trump 2016 Campaign and his administration

S4 E23 — When In Doubt, Follow the Money

Why is Bannon’s role significant?  That’s what Miley suddenly realizes as he recognizes the domestic terrorist plots.

S4 E24 — Another Spooky Role to Play on the Outside

We now know Bannon advised Trump to focus on January 6th, but why and how?

S4 E25 — Accountability?

Did one of the concentric circles the January 6th Commission define his role in a vast conspiracy?  Who else co-conspired?  

There’s Boris Epshteyn

S4 E26 — What Happens If No One Asks a Question?

And John Eastman waving the Pence Card

S4 E27 — Who Cares If It’s The Right Thing To Do Anymore?

What about Peter Navarro teaming up with Bannon executing the “Green Bay Sweep”

S4 E28 — Why Do Those Who Know the Least Talk the Longest?

One loyal Trump soldier on the front lines is Mo Brooks.

S4 E29 — How Much Mo Did He Pay for the Brooklyn Bridge?

Let’s revisit Peter Navarro here.

S4 E30 — Green Bay’s Conspiracy-Theories-R-Us from The OC

And, the last two episodes devoted to Rudy Giuliani’s continuing role tied to Ukraine, and the fake evidence of a stolen election.

S4 E31 — Butt Dialing Your Way to a $Billion, What Could Go Wrong?

S4 E32 — A Rudy By Any Other Name Still Smells …

Evidence

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

First your imagination will take you places and then the rest of you will catch up. You’ll bring inspiration to your group as you constantly seek creative fuel and fill your senses with beautiful, masterful work. Summer brings precious moments and your favorite people. A study will lead to a better financial situation.

Why chose this Holiday Birthday?  Because my Holiday Tau didn’t measure up?  Yes, and…  And, I know tomorrow Emma the Baroness and I hit the road again in my Honda CRV with only 5000 pandemic miles on it to take us to three main places, all in Arizona — first Prescott, then Jerome and finally Sedona.  If you’re one of my 12817 organically grown followers you know Prescott and Sedona have fueled my imagination.

“3”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “You like keenly observant people who ask the questions that prove their attention and interest. These people make you think. They cause you to see yourself differently.” Virgo

You bet I do, and I hope to run into some more, but with all that has to be accomplished before we leave I’m feeling a little frayed and frustrated and therefore not as much into packing as I should.  Why is that?  That feeling almost always shows up like a yawn the day before we take off.

“4”  Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “The way to see the big picture is to go to the top of the mountain. You can do this in your mind, or you can do it physically by heading to the highest point in your immediate geography. Either way will give you clarity.” Sagittarius

Is it cheating to postpone this one day until we arrive in higher elevated, Prescott and 3 days later in Sedona?

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “There’s a change in you. However subtle the change may be, it will land you in a completely different place than you would be if you had remained the same.” Pisces

Well, let’s really, really hope so.  Will it be because of our vacation? Or because of something completely different?

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12733 this week to 12817 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 216 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

Posted on

S3 E41 — What’s Up with Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay?

I’ve lost my way.  It’s nothing to become alarmed about.  It happens everyday around this time.  Unlike an early onset of dementia I usually can find my bearings around 5:45 am with my Apple News ritual.

“5”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” Libra

Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 41 in Season 3 of  “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 7th day of May in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E40 — How Stealing Your Sign Led Me to a Nobel Prize; S3 E39 — Ready for Your Big Leap Forward?; S3 E38 — Sliding on a Super Slippery Slope to 2nd or 3rd Cousins

Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year

S2 E41 — A Pandemic End to Real Estate and Consulting?; S2 E40 — The Profound Impact of the Pandemic on Nouns; S2 E39 — The Best Tau for the Pandemic Year, Don’t You Agree?; S2 E38 — What Should You Do If You Stumble Across Loaded Information?

Related from Season One, The Normal Year

S1 E41 — The Dream Was Over, Long Live the Dream; S1 E40 — Nothing to See Here, Keep Moving On; S1 E39 — What’s Up with Facebook?; S1 E38 — Day 38 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

I’ve been feeling the pull of returning later in the day to Apple News for a destination-specific summary of headlines that sometimes go back a couple of years. 

Especially for those that have very little news like Telluride or Humboldt County or Bodega Bay. 

For instance “Stay at Keystone Resort in Colorado for only $109 per night” in “Travel and Leisure” 3 yrs ago. Every time I open “Keystone Resort” this is the lead story at the top of other scrollable photos and headlines and almost always prompts me to return later. 

But, it’s a ritual, which I wrote about as a section in my natural experiment report’s “Conclusion.”

When I finish those eight iPhone screenfuls I’m still effortlessly following my bliss remaining in Daniel Kahneman’s, System 1 as described “Thinking Fast and Slow”.  Click on a place like Keystone, quickly scan photos, headlines and dates until I recognize the last one I captured and move on in under 5 seconds, tops.

There’s more.

From the same source, Travel and Leisure, “Save 40% on Stays at the Santa Ynez Inn in Santa Barbara” — 3 years ago.  

But my favorite from NBC News is, “Bear freed from SUV in Tahoe, California, as family looks on” — 1 year ago.  The video screen shot shows the bear like he’s a member of the family looking in through the rear window as if he forgot to grab his backpack.

And, there’s the second story, but from 2 years ago written by the SFGate that churns my stomach before breakfast,  “4th of July revelers pile Tahoe beaches with thousands of pounds of trash.” 

My report write up currently in the Conclusions chapter is where I feel adrift.  So last night I began to re-read it and edit it from the beginning forward until 8:35 pm.  I left off in the section, “Two Fortune Cookies and Dove Dark Chocolate.”

My renewed interest actually started with two fortune cookies from our local Panda Express at the end of mall across the street from the high school, shared with Emma the Baroness, the Scorpio love of my life, and after dinner by the chance discovery that our favorite dark chocolate wrappers hid B-side quotes of encouragement.

I wanted inspiration and motivation and found a little hiding under the red wrappers:

“Life happens between an inhale and an exhale!” Brianna Z., Nevada

“Be the sculptor of your dreams.” – Joanne C., California

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.” – Jetta L. Massachusetts

“Don’t stop until you’re proud.” Lauren N., Colorado

But, my next ritual on mornings like this, Friday, in addition to selecting the Holiday Tau for the day which confirms my biases, is reading the comics, or as my day called them, the funny pages.

From today’s “Pearls Before Swine” by Stephan Pastis — who should request a time out from the sidelines for a ruling about his first name — is he or isn’t he a Steve? 

In the first panel with yellow background Rat and Pig stand barely shoulder height behind a brown table with two plates on it. 

Pig says, “Hey look we got fortune cookies.”  

Rat says, “Mine says next year brings you great success.” 

Pig says, “How nice.” 

But, Rat can’t help himself and complains, “Yeah, but they’re all too general and bland like that.  I’d prefer some specificity.”

Read yours.”You will get run over by a 1989 Accord. 

To which Pig says, “Specificity is overrated.”

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

And, so are birthdays.  If Kahneman verifies that bliss equates to “System 1” I’d specifically consider changing my birthday to today’s.  But, too much effort and paperwork would be involved — clearly “System 2” stuff which goes against the sentiment, right?  

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

In a way, following your bliss is the most responsible thing you can do. For one thing, it pays. Lucky financial moves will be the result of a stellar perspective, which comes from delving deeply into your delights. You’ll work with your emotions to create circumstances that ultimately benefit many, a skill that rubs off on others.

Our Patron Saint’s Carbon Beach house made the real estate news yesterday in Malibu, California.  Of course, the celebrity pedigree headline wasn’t really needed in this super heated, pre-bubble-licious market.  But his Holiday Tau reminds me of my approach for sizing up one of my coaching clients to zero in on how I could best help.

“5”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “When you’re talking to someone you’re trying to understand where they are coming from. You can picture their life outside the interaction with greater accuracy because of the excellent questions you ask.” Aries

Wait, what?  Was I reading your mind?  Or at least pre-reading your Holiday Tau last night after 8 pm?  Or am I reverse engineering your TauBit of Wisdom?  Who cares, I make the rules and I’m stealing it.

“5”  Steve Kerr, 54: “Projects have a beginning, middle and an end, though that is not the best order of approach. Begin with the end in mind. If you don’t have an end in mind yet, assist someone who does and you’ll learn a lot.” Libra

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll 

    • @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8088 organically grown followers

Foresight

 Quality-of-Life  

Long-Form

    • “Future Shock” by Alvin Toffler, a classic I feel which still holds up. As the pace of change quickens we experience self-doubt, anxiety and fear.  We become tense and tire easily, until we are overwhelmed, face-to-face with a crisis situation. Without a clear grasp of relevant reality or beginning with clearly defined values and priorities, we feel a deepening sense of confusion and uncertainty. Our intellectual bewilderment leads to disorientation at the level of personal values. Decision stress results from acceleration, novelty and diversity conflicts. Acceleration pressures us to make quick decisions. Novelty increases the difficulty and length of time while diversity intensifies the anxiety with an increase in the number of options and the amount of information needed to process.  The result is a slower reaction time.
    • Daniel Kahneman’s, “Thinking Fast and Slow”describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts: “System 1” which is meant as a fictional shorthand — not as a brain system or structure: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious. “System 2”: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious. I’m learning a lot about my energy levels first described from within an introversion frame now, from within differences between System 1 and the harder working, energy depletion System 2.  Self-control, for instance is hard and takes a lot of energy to accomplish.  When I write the concentration requires effort until I can find the “flow.” Implications for True Belief — it’s easy to stay in System 1 vs. critical thinking — System 2.  Set some marketing and working on the business goals — System 2 and then ignore them by following the lateral thinking and associative thinking  which Leo da V invites me to do — System 1.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips

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S4 E32 — A Rudy By Any Other Name Still Smells …

Now anyone who recalls “Rudy” keeps an against-all-odds memory, but not in a good way.  Giuliani was once “America’s Mayor” who awkwardly appeared in a tribute on “Saturday Night Live” when 9/11 was fresh in all our lives in the wake of the Twin Towers attack.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “There’s freedom in a pen. You can go anywhere in writing, so don’t hold back. At the very least, express what’s been bothering, exciting or draining you. Getting it out and onto the paper will make you lighter.” Cancer

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s 32nd Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 24th day of April in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E31 — Butt Dialing Your Way to a $Billion, What Could Go Wrong?; S4 E30 — Green Bay’s Conspiracy-Theories-R-Us from The OC; S4 E29 — How Much Mo Did He Pay for the Brooklyn Bridge?

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E32 — But, Why Should You Care?; S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things; S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!; S3 E29 — Why 83.3% of the Time I Swiped Your Tau 

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E32 — Trapped and Bored? Or Unleashing a Reinvention Wave?; S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?; S2 E29 — Three Months That Changed the World 

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E32 — Day 32 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E29 — Day 29 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

Remember when everyone who heard “Rudy” quickly recalled the positive, heartwarming story about a Catholic kid who worked like a dog and with shear determination turned a walk on opportunity at Notre Dame University into a football movie.  It was such an uplifting against-all-odds story.

A Rudy By Any Other Name Smells …

Now, anyone who recalls “Rudy” keeps an against-all-odds memory, but not in a good way.  Giuliani was once “America’s Mayor” who awkwardly appeared in a tribute on “Saturday Night Live” when 9/11 was fresh in all our lives in the wake of the Twin Towers attack.

Now, not so much.  You may have already forgotten about that Rudy, right? 

Right after the violent transfer of power in 2021 his against-all-odds promotion of lies and miss information triggered condemnations.

Manhattan College president Brennan O’Donnell stated in a January 7 open letter to the college community, 

“One of the loudest voices fueling the anger, hatred, and violence that spilled out yesterday is a graduate of our College, Rudolph Giuliani. His conduct as a leader of the campaign to de-legitimize the election and disenfranchise millions of voters – has been and continues to be a repudiation of the deepest values of his alma mater.”— Wikipedia

On January 11, the New York State Bar Association announced their investigation into whether Giuliani should be removed from its membership rolls.

They cited both Giuliani’s comments to the Trump supporter rally at the Ellipse on January 6, and that it …

“has received hundreds of complaints in recent months about Mr. Giuliani and his baseless efforts on behalf of President Trump to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 presidential election and, after the votes were cast, to overturn its legitimate results”. — Wikipedia 

Then The Suits Arrived

And then according to Wikipedia’s cited sources, the suits arrived — not the ones artists and songwriters complain about, but …

    • New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman and lawyers’ group Lawyers Defending American Democracy, also filed a complaints against Giuliani with the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department of the New York Supreme Court, which has the authority to discipline and disbar licensed New York lawyers.
    • Also on January 11, 2021, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said that he is looking at whether to charge Giuliani, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Representative Mo Brooks, with inciting the violent attack.
    • On January 29, Giuliani falsely claimed that The Lincoln Project played a role in the organization of the Capitol riot. In response, Steve Schmidt announced that the group would be taking legal action against Giuliani for defamation.
    • On March 5, 2021, Representative Eric Swalwell filed a civil lawsuit against Giuliani and three others (Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Representative Mo Brooks), seeking damages for their alleged role in inciting the Capitol riot.

On November 8, 2021, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack issued subpoenas to Eastman and five other Trump allies present at the meeting — who Rolling Stone described as “Trump’s ‘Elite Strike Force’ of Election Fraud Lawyers” 

Including Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Boris Epshteyn all received subpoenas from the panel, which also reportedly got ahold of Eric Trump and Kimberley Guilfoyle’s phone records.

So What Were They After?

On November 30, 2021, The Guardian further reported that Trump personally called his lieutenants at the hotel on the night of January 5 to discuss how to delay certification of the election results.

On December 27, 2021, the House select committee announced its intention to investigate that phone call.

A link from the article on Oath Keepers’ crowdfunding failure reveals Sidney Powell’s defending him (Stewart Rhodes).  

Giuliani was subpoenaed in January 2022 to testify before the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

Stay tuned as the story plays out.  

And try Wikipedia for the time line, the characters as the narrative unfolds, but all in one place. 

Evidence

Today’s Holiday Theme: 

… Represents a stubborn refusal to accept the lessons of the future. It’s the cosmic equivalent to “Get off my lawn,” representing generational arguments and threats to territory that are more symbolic than anything else. The future comes whether or not we resist it.

Or, grab a cool one, go to the beach (not in that order) and continue reading …

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “Daydreaming about the future helps you start to realize what needs to happen for the mental picture to become reality. There are some sacrifices to be made, and you’re ready to make them.” Scorpio

Daydreaming requires a time and space for it to play out instead of a deadline anxiety-filled headspace.  Shocks and surprises don’t help.  Assuming those in charge won’t escape their accountability doesn’t help either.  

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

Seemingly disparate ideas will add up to a realization about who you are and what you want to do next. You’ll think strategically, form brilliant plans and advance key relationships. Your work gets more interesting and changes on your team allow you to stretch to fill new roles. The money will be sweet, too.

I want this one to be about me.  Except for a couple of small details.  I’d have to steal your birthday (again) since this is not mine.  And I don’t have a team formed around me.  

“5”  Steve Howey, 42: “There’s freedom in a pen. You can go anywhere in writing, so don’t hold back. At the very least, express what’s been bothering, exciting or draining you. Getting it out and onto the paper will make you lighter.” Cancer

Seriously I didn’t put Holiday up to this for today and for the previous episodes, but it very nearly describes my intentions and motivations, except for the pen part and the paper part.

“3”  Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61; Stephen King, 72: “Are you ready to seize the moment? When you enter the scene, everyone will wonder who you are and what you do — an opportunity to fill them in with what you think they should know about you.” Virgo

If the opportunity arises today, I’ll give it my best shot.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12559 this week to 12654 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 216 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

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S4 E31 — Butt Dialing Your Way to a $Billion, What Could Go Wrong?

Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “You are wise and people who need your wisdom are attracted to you. Your policy to help only when asked or when clearly needed will hold you in good stead.” Leo

Hi and welcome to Saturday’s 31st Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 23rd day of April in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

 S4 E30 — Green Bay’s Conspiracy-Theories-R-Us from The OC; S4 E29 — How Much Mo Did He Pay for the Brooklyn Bridge?; S4 E28 — Why Do Those Who Know the Least Talk the Longest?

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things; S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!; S3 E29 — Why 83.3% of the Time I Swiped Your Tau; S3 E28 — Why I Stole Your Daily Horoscope for a Year 

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?; S2 E29 — Three Months That Changed the World; S2 E28 — Hosting Norwegian Zooms While Trump Eliminated the Virus in April; 

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E29 — Day 29 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E28 — Day 28 of My 1-Year Experiment;

Context

On January 6, 2021, Rudy Giuliani spoke at a “Save America March” rally on the Ellipse that was attended by Trump supporters protesting the election results. 

Wikipedia’s cited news sources and streaming video remind us that he repeated conspiracy theories that voting machines used in the election were “crooked” and called for “trial by combat”.

Trump supporters subsequently stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including a police officer, and temporarily disrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.

Behind the scenes before and during the insurrection Giuliani called Republican lawmakers to “urge them to delay the electoral vote count in order to ultimately throw the election to Trump.” 

A Tommy Tuberville butt dial?

Giuliani attempted to contact Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Trump ally, around 7:00 p.m. on January 6, after the Capitol storming, to ask him to “try to just slow it down” by objecting to multiple states and “raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow – ideally until the end of tomorrow”. — Wikipedia

However, Giuliani mistakenly left the message on the voicemail of another senator, who leaked the recording to The Dispatch. 

Giuliani faced criticism for his appearance at the rally and the Capitol riot that followed it.

Even Rick Perlstein, a noted historian of the American conservative political movement. had had it with Rudy.

According to Wikipedia cited sources, he termed Giuliani’s attempts to slow certification in the wake of the riot as treasonous. 

Sedition.  Open and shut. He talked about the time that was being opened up. He was welcoming, and using, the violence. This needs to be investigated,” Perlstein tweeted on January 11, 2021.

Not to be outdone,  Former Congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called for the arrest of Giuliani, President Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. 

If Rudy has not yet been held accountable for his actions, maybe a few billion dollars might do the trick, right?.

Remember how he and Sidney Powell claimed that election voting machines had been rigged?  They falsely claimed two rival companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were at fault for Trump’s loss. 

The list of his their claims, according to Wikipedia cited sources. included: 

    • Smartmatic owned Dominion; that 
    • Dominion voting machines used Smartmatic software; that 
    • Dominion voting machines sent vote data to Smartmatic at foreign locations; that
    • Dominion was founded by the former socialist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez; and that 
    • Dominion is a “radical-left” company with connections to antifa.

Both companies sued Giuliani and Fox News. 

Dominion filed a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani on January 25, 2021, seeking $1.3 billion in damages, and separately sued Fox News for $1.6 billion. 

A few weeks later on February 4, 2021 

Smartmatic also filed a lawsuit that accused Giuliani, Fox News, some hosts at Fox News, and Sidney Powell of engaging in a “disinformation campaign” against the company, and asked for $2.7 billion in damages. 

Oh no, a slap on the wrist …

On September 10, 2021, Fox News told Giuliani that neither he nor his son Andrew would be allowed on their network for nearly three months. — Wikipedia

If Rudy hoped for cover from New York State Supreme Court, he was sadly mistaken.  

The judge ruled in March 2022 that the Smartmatic suit against Fox News and others could proceed, though he dismissed some allegations against Giuliani.

Evidence

Today’s Holiday Theme: 

We’re anxious for the future to start. If we were to build it from scratch, it would take so long that by the time the thing was finished it would already seem outdated. (Which) suggests we consider ready-made, plug-and-play, turnkey-type options.

I can’t lie, I’m ready for accountability to start.  It seems like the Justice Department and the January 6th Select Committee are starting from scratch.

“4”  Steve Zahn, 51: “It might help to think of the people you deal with today as creatures with features very different from your own. Smooth interactions happen when you cater to their specific abilities and temperaments.” Scorpio

Ha ha, creatures with features different from my own.  I love the phrase.  I may have to deploy it in the not too distant future when we visit our friends in Prescott, Arizona.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

“4”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “Though your intention is pure, your motivation has been unreliable. No worries. You’ll soon pick up momentum and you won’t need motivation anyway. It will be enough to simply eliminate resistance.” Aries

Until justice is served, I find myself compelled to follow the evidence and facts as they continue in episodes one long weekend at a time.  At least the story is longer that four episodes at a time.

“3”  Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “It is said that the one who is lucky is feeling; the one who is unlucky is thinking. This principle will apply as you feel your way through the day, collecting delights.” Taurus 

Damn I’m thinking too much today to feel lucky.

“5”  Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “You are wise and people who need your wisdom are attracted to you. Your policy to help only when asked or when clearly needed will hold you in good stead.” Leo

I’m a wise-guy for sure.  But no-one wants takes advice before it is requested.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12559 this week to 12654 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 216 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION

The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trip

Posted on

S4 E28 — Why Do Those Who Know the Least Talk the Longest?

According to the plan, public pressure created by the delay would lead state legislatures in six key battleground states with Republican-dominated legislatures – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada – to de-certify election results, with the intended outcome that Trump would have more certified electoral college votes than the election’s actual winner, Joe Biden.

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “Why do those who know the least tend to talk the longest? Your observations may be brief by comparison, but they go right to the heart of the matter, so don’t hesitate to lead the way.” Sagittarius

Hi and welcome to Sunday’s 28th Episode in Season 4 of  “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 17th day of April in the spring of 2022.

We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year. 

“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”

Table of Contents

Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.

Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year

S4 E27 — Who Cares If It’s The Right Thing To Do Anymore?; S4 E26 — What Happens If No One Asks a Question?; S4 E25 — Accountability? 

Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year

S3 E28 — Why I Stole Your Daily Horoscope for a Year; S3 E27 — What the World Needs Now Before It’s Too Late; S3 E26 — Following Alice Down the Rabbit Hole; S3 E25 — Art Lives Upon Discussion, Upon Experiment, Upon Curiosity …

Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year

S2 E28 — Hosting Norwegian Zooms While Trump Eliminated the Virus in April; S2 E27 — Why I Have to Keep Leo da V on a Leash and So Should You; S2 E26 — Rethinking the N-Word; S2 E25— Are You an Innie or Outie Thinker? 

Related from Season One, the Normal Year

S1 E28 — Day 28 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E27 — Day 27 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E26 — Day 26  of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E25 — Day 25 of My 1-Year Experiment

Context

After Joe Biden won, Former President Donald Trump refused to concede and Peter Navarro jumped into action working on plans to overturn the legal results of the 2020 election.

    • He and Steve Bannon coordinated the details naming the scheme, “The Green Bay Sweep” involving more than 100 Republican state legislators. 
    • Navarro published the plot in a November 2021 book and then hit a talking head tour speaking about it in multiple media interviews. 

Invoking Lombardi’s Packers

It took its name from the Packers sweep, where the Green Bay Packers of the 1950s and ’60s, led by Vince Lombardi, would flood a zone with blockers, allowing the football to be advanced dependably behind them. 

According to sources cited in Wikipedia:

    • In the political iteration, devised by Steve Bannon, the Electoral College vote count would be blocked by repeated challenges to various state’s vote counts by Republican members of the House and Senate favorable to Donald Trump. 
    • Each challenge could take up to two hours of debate by each chamber, individually, leading to as much of 24 hours of televised hearings.
    • According to the plan, public pressure created by the delay would lead state legislatures in six key battleground states with Republican-dominated legislatures – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada – to de-certify election results.

100 Congressman on the Wall, if 1 of Them Happens to Fall …

The intended outcome was Trump would have more certified electoral college votes than the election’s actual winner, Joe Biden.

Navarro claimed that then-president Trump was “on board with the strategy”and that up to 100 congressmen were committed to executing the plan. 

Goal Line Play Comes Up Short

However the plan was dependent on Vice President Mike Pence’s participation. It was difficult to pressure Pence, said Navarro, according to Wikipedia: 

“Because all communication passed through his chief of staff, Marc Short, who had been president of the Koch Brothers funded Freedom Partners. It was like the Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. As an Iron Koch Curtain fell over the vice president, the only way you could speak to VPOTUS was to go through Short.” — Peter Navarro

Pence himself rejected the strategy, but Republican legislators initially followed the plan, with Arizona representative Paul Gosar objecting to his state’s vote counts. 

And, as it turns out things turned darker.

In December after the election, right-wing political activist and organizer Ali Alexander said that he, Gosar, Biggs, and Representative Mo Brooks were “planning something big”: a “mob” to pressure Congress into rejecting the election results. — Wikipedia

In a since-deleted video, Alexander said: “We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

To be fair, Gosar’s office did not respond to media inquiries about this allegation. But News outlets noted that Gosar’s social media accounts had expressed support for Alexander in the past, according to sources cited in Wikipedia.

In the joint session of Congress to formally count the votes of the Electoral College on January 6, 2021, Gosar and Senator Ted Cruz led a challenge to Arizona’s electoral results. — Wikipedia

And, then the Weirdness Descended

Hours after the January 6 storming of the Capitol, during which one police officer and four marchers eventually died, Gosar was the first member of Congress to advance the conspiracy theory that antifa was to blame for the violence, echoed by Brooks and Representative Matt Gaetz.

When Congress reconvened that night, the challenge to the Arizona vote had been rejected 6-93 in the Senate and 121-303 in the House. Gosar, Biggs and Debbie Lesko of Arizona voted to reject Arizona’s vote results, according to Wikipedia cited sources.

As a result of Gosar’s alleged involvement in the storming of the Capitol, three of his siblings called for his expulsion from Congress. 

“When you talk about what happened the other day, you’re talking about treason. You’re talking about overthrowing the government. That’s what this is. If that doesn’t rise to the level of expulsion, what does?” said Tim Gosar. 

Pardon Me, PLEASE

On January 19, the last day of the Trump administration, it was reported that Gosar and Biggs sought pardons from Trump. 

    • No pardons were granted to them or anyone else involved in the storming of the Capitol or the preceding “Save America” rally.
    • In June 2021, Gosar was one of 21 House Republicans to vote against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
    • After proceedings were interrupted by the January 6 Capitol attack, Pence cited the violence as a rationale for blocking further challenges.

Evidence

“3”  Steve Zahn, 51: “‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,’ they say. ‘The little things add up,’ they say. So which is it? Forget about the scale of things for now and focus on their gravitational pull. If it’s important, you’ll be attracted to it.” Scorpio

I was hoping for more.  This whole Green Bay Sweep stuff and nutty elected officials supporting extremism even his siblings can’t stomach is as confusing as this Holiday Tau.

Random ones that make me want change my sign.

Today’s Holiday Birthday: 

Your talent for listening with your whole being makes wonderful music out of your year. People, nature and ideas intertwine, clash and harmonize to help you move toward an unexpected destiny much to your liking. Your openness engenders practical and magical connections for whatever you and your loved ones need.

“4”  Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You don’t expect people to think and behave like you do. This makes you easy to be around. Others can tell that you’re not imposing rules or judgments on them. People feel accepted for who they are.” Aries

True, even that one crazy uncle every family claims.  Which is why it was so tempting to tell my story about Peter Navarro’s request for which I volunteered just before I left The Paul Merage School of Business for our anniversary vacation to Italy.  Navarro taught classes there and we’d pass in the hallways.  Turned out the resume was for his wife.  She lived and worked as an architect in Laguna Beach.  The last I saw Navarro was on a break during his class when I introduced myself, said I had edited his wife’s resume for which he thanked me.  I just found out today, that they divorced around the same time Emma the Baroness and I took off for Charles de Gulle Airport on British Airways. 

“5”  Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “Why do those who know the least tend to talk the longest? Your observations may be brief by comparison, but they go right to the heart of the matter, so don’t hesitate to lead the way.” Sagittarius

That was always my critique of our former, twice impeached president.  When he got wound up and improvised from the teleprompters he just started stringing together phrases like I used to when I had no idea what the answer to a question was, but I had to answer it in a 5-page essay.  For which I’d receive a D+ or a C-.  I’m not like that.  I facilitate conversations after it gets going and I can find something humorous to say. 

“5”  Steve Jobs, (1955 – 2011): “You’re socially aware and it works to your advantage. Conversational breeziness features fitting topics. You have a terrific sense of who is open to you, when to advance and how best to retreat.” Pisces

Throughout my several careers I found myself working with a wide variety of people from the bottom of society and workplaces up through supervision and management levels to the C-suite.  And, by the nature of introducing change into companies, you had to size people up who had resources and were on the positive side of change and the others that weren’t.  And then you had to address each group differently.

What’s Going On …

Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll

    • @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12559 this week to 12654 organically grown followers.
    • Orange County Beach Towns 216 viewers stopped by the week before.

Foresight

Quality-of-Life

Long-Form

    • “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.” 
    • David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small  and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
    • “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President. 
    • “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.  
    • “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden. 
    • “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising,” by Joshua Green tracks the money behind the scenes leading up to the 2016 presidential election and the growing influence of Steve Bannon’s network of extreme nationalists.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate

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