To Valhalla!

I neglected to mention the passing of Don Shula yesterday. He was the consummate coach. A class act. A guy who literally won it all (though Howard Cossell famously chided him for going 2-5 in super bowls...). A guy who did it an era when football didn't enjoy the popularity it does now. A guy who did it with almost no game film and very few coaches.

As he said along the way, you adapt your style to fit the players, not the other way around. And that worked out well for him.

I met him once or twice along the way, and he was nice enough. Maybe not the nicest, most genuine person, but I enjoyed it anyway.

There are great stories from his playing days and his coaching days. Everyone he played with or who played for him has a story.

But the one that I heard which I love was just how anonymous he was. He had just gone 17-0 and he and his wife went on a vacation to a small town. They went into a movie theater and as they sat down, they got an ovation from the small crowd.

Don asks someone if they knew who he was and the person responded "I have no idea. They just told us if there weren't 10 people in the theater, they weren't showing the movie. And then you and your wife came in"

May the football gods welcome you warmly. Surely they know who you are.

One of the World’s Best Restaurants Might Not Reopen Its Doors - Bloomberg

This is the kind of thing we need to hear more about. This man essentially lost his business due to the pandemic - he works with high end ingredients, catered to a sophisticated palate, and hired a fair number of people on work visas - so it's likely he won't reopen.

And while that's sad, he decided to start a food co-op to make meals to help others. Turning his own situation into something positive in a greater good kind of way.

What I like is that there's some good in the world from people who have the opportunity and are doing it selflessly.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/one-of-the-world-s-best-restaurants-might-not-reopen-its-doors

In case you wondered. They are, in fact, paid shills.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-americans-protest-stay-at-home

'It all feels a little off': Caution as post-virus China reopens

Oh look. People were saying "we're not China." And yet we are exactly like China. So. Ummm. Yeah.


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/feels-caution-post-virus-china-reopens-200420024141095.html

What galls me

It amazes me how "team trump" bungled (nearly) everything about Covid-19. To be fair, I'm not saying that any other politician would have gotten everything right, but what I am saying is that preparation and response are the critical factors in dealing with crises. And that's where the problem is.

I work for a large company. Sometime early last year, they started planning for some kind of "economic downturn." And most large companies did the same. You can't foresee a pandemic, but you do know the market has been riding high for a while, and there was a likelihood of a recession happening. Thats the nature of our economy. So you do some planning.

If you are the CEO of a company and you didn't do that, and this happened, then went on to blame everyone and anyone and say it's not your fault, you would likely receive a no confidence vote from the board and your shareholders - and be looking for work.

Trump sees himself as this perfect executive, and yet he did nothing to plan for a downturn. In fact he was counting on the market staying high. Because that's the only economic indicator he uses and since unemployment was low, why look at anything else?

See where I'm going with this? Average CEOs saw something and acted, while he ignored it.

Okay that's fine, whatever, he missed that. But there was this thing lurking in China that was causing panic, and people were dying. It spread out of China, and started wreaking havoc other places around the world.

Mr trump was briefed on it at least several times that we know of, starting in January, and maybe before. It was a potential threat to us. And he ignored the warnings, called it a hoax, and assumed that we were better than any silly virus (because Murica!) and it wouldn't come here.

And then proceeded to do things that made no sense. Conspiracy theories, passing blame to Obama, still ignoring the bigger problem, preventing the CDC from doing its job, and not coordinating anything. And then saying "I don't take responsibility"....

(Aside: he sent the navy hospital ship to NY to help, but he made getting patients on it fairly complicated, and anyway moving patients who had reached a point where this might be helpful would have been hard. So again he didn't handle it quite right).

Here's the thing. After that first briefing, he should have taken a breath and assembled a team to start preparations. Not his friends, cronies, partners in crime, and family - but rather scientists, doctors, pandemic experts, business people, and maybe a few politicians with a broader understanding of our nation.

This team should have been tasked with some of the planning. If it does come here, what should we do to prevent the spread? What can we do to ensure that we plan for this economic downturn? How do we plan for a possible hole in our economy? How can keep most people at work?

And from there, promote the idea of American exceptionalism that we seem to hold so dear. We have great minds and amazing technology. Can we find a means to slow the spread? Can we track or trace contacts? Can we focus our efforts on *us* leading the world in finding solutions? Innovate. Get people focused on being the best. Instead of them freaking out and buying toilet paper, stimulate us to get creative. Maybe we find nothing. But at least we're focused.

And then we should have also led on another front: early on, we had an opportunity to slow the spread and try and get ahead of this. Why not simply setup a screening checkpoint at airports before you get to TSA? Whether you simply check temperature or get something else more sophisticated, you stop some people from flying and maybe spreading this.

After 9/11, we deployed the national guard and police to airports, so while this may seem far fetched, it's certainly do-able.

And we saw what happened off the coast of Japan on a cruise ship. Mike pence, our gov dimwitty, and both of our idiot senators stood in port Everglades and talked about coming up with a plan "in a few days" to protect the cruise industry (to be clear they did not indicate that they wanted to protect passengers in their stupid statements, just the industry). It's been 8 weeks ... and we're still waiting.

Coordinate efforts like you would at airports. Test people before they get on and after they get off. Coordinate with a hospital or even a hotel to provide a place for passengers to go if they do have symptoms.

And now you have a starting point to understanding what's happening and slowing the spread as you come up with solutions.

And as it progresses (no doubt it still would have spread, just maybe slower and with a little more understanding of it), he could have, or rightly should have, directed efforts to actually try and help. Coordinate aid to states, and ensure they have equipment. Direct companies to work on things that need attention. Maybe even come up with a public works plan to engage people, and help them get back to being productive.

I mean this is what a leader would do. Lead by example. Surround yourself with the best and brightest. Find a way to make us the best.

Don't argue with the press. Heck, don't deride them when they ask how you would calm a nation.

Trump is responsible. Full stop.

So if you're still supporting trump, then truly you don't get it. He failed in leadership, and should get a vote of no confidence from his board (the senate) and from the shareholder (us) and should be looking for work.

Trudeau announces ban on 1,500 types of 'assault-style' firearms — effective immediately

And this is how adults act. People were killed senselessly and the government moves to do something about it.

Unlike the children we have running with scissors in this country.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-gun-control-measures-ban-1.5552131

Nikola Tesla

One of the more interesting and misunderstood stories is that of Nikola Tesla, the "Mad Scientist" who almost certainly was the single most creative mind in many generations.  He emigrated to this country with an ideal, and the desire to work for the American inventor Thomas Edison.

But Edison wasn't particularly interested in Tesla, in fact you could say that Edison was more interested in using his young protege.  He saw the intelligence and the imagination Tesla had, and he wanted to capitalize on it.

Edison tried to steal Tesla's ideas, and discredit the man.  It was kind of crazy if you think about it.  And for a period of time, Tesla was winning on every front. He patented his own ideas, and fought hard for the use of Alternating Current (AC) for use in homes.  Edison went so far as to kill elephants on the streets of NY just to try and prove his Direct Current (DC) was better.  Tesla went on to work with Westinghouse to produce AC and things were looking up.

Tesla invented motors, power creation and distribution,  radio, laid the framework for wireless transmissions, and a whole lot more.  Marconi literally stole his idea for radio, and is remembered for it; Tesla won a posthumous victory when the patent was awarded to him in the 21st century.

But the thing about Tesla was that he was working for a greater good.  This wasn't about him.  It wasn't about profit.  He had more intriguing ideas, and he had the likes of Westinghouse backing him financially.  But at some point it became clear to his financiers that they weren't going to profit from Tesla, and so they pulled the plug.

And that left Tesla without funds to continue his work, and living in a hotel in the later years of his life, on credit.

But it gets deeper and darker, as Westinghouse, Edison, and others went back on the trail of discrediting and completely undermining Tesla.  They called him crazy, leaked things about his work (that almost certainly were untrue) like him creating a “death ray.”  And that brought the attention of the FBI as WWII was getting under way.  J Edgar Hoover himself investigated Tesla as a possible nefarious character.

And so Tesla ultimately died penniless, alone, and his only "friends" were pigeons in the park.  The FBI came in and seized his documents and inventions - some of which disappeared (according to legend).  And in a weird turn of fate, the items he held as possession were inventoried by a John Trump,  the Cheeto's uncle.

And he was almost erased from history.  When I was growing up, he was mentioned from time to time, but his contributions were mostly overlooked.

Its not until maybe the early 2000s that his name started to come back to prominence.

And there was one other weird thing that happened.  Edison had created a company that managed all motion picture creation and distribution.  He was so mad/vexed at Tesla that he took any audio and video recordings made of Tesla and saw to it that they never saw the light of day, and probably destroyed them. So other than a few assorted still pictures, we have to film or audio of Tesla.

Tesla had ideas to deliver power, without using a power plant, for free to the world.  He wanted to be able to communicate over long distances, essentially for free.  He wanted electric power to overtake coal and oil.  And of course, that made a lot of enemies.

Its just so weird that a man who might have been the most intelligent / most forward thinking man so easily was erased from history.