THE MAGIC BANK ACCOUNT

THE AUTHOR IS NOT KNOWN. IT WAS FOUND IN THE BILLFOLD OF COACH PAUL BEAR BRYANT, ALABAMA AFTER HE DIED IN 1982.

THE MAGIC BANK ACCOUNT

Imagine that you had won the following *PRIZE* in a contest:

Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400 in your private account for your use. However, this prize has Rules:

The set of Rules:

1. Everything that you didn’t spend during each day would be taken away from you.
2. You may not simply transfer money into some other account.
3. You may only spend It.
4. Each morning upon awakening, the bank opens your account with another $86,400 for that day.
5. The bank can end the game without warning; at any time, it can say, “Game Over!” It can close the account, and you will not receive a new one.

What would you personally do?

You would buy anything and everything you wanted right?  Not only for yourself, but for all the people you love and care for. Even for people you don’t know, because you couldn’t possibly spend it all on yourself – right?

You would try to spend every penny, and use it all, because you knew it would be replenished in the morning, right?

ACTUALLY, THIS GAME IS REAL!

Socked??? Yes!!!

Each of us is already a winner of this *PRIZE*. We just can’t seem to see it.

The PRIZE is “TIME”

1. Each morning we awaken to receive 86,400 seconds, as a gift of life.
2. And when we go to sleep at night, any remaining timeis not credited to us.
3. What we haven’t used up that day is forever lost.
4. Yesterday is forever gone.
5. Each morning the account is Refilled, but the bank can dissolve your account at any time WITHOUT WARNING…

SO, what will YOU do with your 86,400 seconds?

Those seconds are worth so much more than the same amount in dollars.  Think about it and remember to enjoy every second of your life, because time races by so much quicker than you think.

So take care of yourself, be happy, love deeply and enjoy life!

Here’s wishing you a wonderful and beautiful day.

Start spending….

“DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GROWING OLD SOME PEOPLE DON’T GET THE PRIVILEGE!”

CONCLUSIONS:   The words above are so true.  Time really flies by quickly.  One of my favorite lines comes from a poem by Rudyard Kipling and is as follows:  “If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,.  Filling that unforgiving minute is really difficult, or at least for me it sometimes is. I just completed a post involving Social Media and those twenty-five “personalities” noted by TIME Magazine as capturing the most exposure on global Social Media.  Sometimes we do waste too much time with trivia.

GLOBAL IMPACT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

For the past three years, TIME Magazine has made a list of the top twenty-five (25) individuals having the greatest global impact on Social Media.  Their metric is who has the ability to drive the news on a day-by-day basis?  We are talking “global” not local, state, federal or country but global.  This year’s list was a great surprise to me mainly because I have no idea as to who some of these people are nor what they do.  Let’s take a look.

• CHRISSY TEIGEN—OK, I do know who she is. Christine Diane Teigen was born on 30 November 1885.  She is an American model and made her debut in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, 2010 addition. She appeared on the cover in 2014.
• MATT DRUDGE—Matt Drudge produces a conservative web site highlighting news of the day. The postings result from individual contributors and news venues appearing on a daily basis.
• K. ROWLING–Joanne Rowling was born on 31st July 1965 at Yate General Hospital just outside Bristol, and grew up in Gloucestershire in England and in Chepstow, Gwent, in south-east Wales. Her father, Peter, was an aircraft engineer at the Rolls Royce factory in Bristol and her mother, Anne, was a science technician in the Chemistry department at Wyedean Comprehensive, where Jo herself went to school. The young Jo grew up surrounded by books. “I lived for books,’’ she has said. “I was your basic common-or-garden bookworm, complete with freckles and National Health spectacles.”
• CARTER WILKERSON–On Tuesday morning, Carter Wilkerson, a 16-year-old high school junior in Reno, Nev., became the owner of history’s most-retweeted tweet, knocking Ellen DeGeneres and her famous Oscars selfie off her perch. (For those unfamiliar, a retweet is the act of sharing someone else’s tweet so a new audience can see it.)  When he sent his fateful tweet on April 5, he thought it might be a fun joke for his friends. He had never gotten so many as 10 retweets on a single tweet before, he said, so topping that would-be kind of cool.  There’s no way Wendy’s would actually give him free chicken nuggets, he thought. (Some people just have too much time on their hands.  Get a job.)
• YAO CHEN–Yao Chen is a Chinese actress and philanthropist. In 2014, Time named Yao as one of the most influential people on their Time 100 list. As of 2014, she is listed as the 83rd most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.She was born 5 October 1979 in Shishi, Gujian, China.
• BRIAN REED—Brian Reed is the host of S-Town, a new podcast about John B McLemore and the town of Woodstock, Alabama. S-Town began life when Brian received an email with the subject: “John B McLemore lives in S***town, Alabama.” Inside was a plea for producers to investigate an alleged murder and its subsequent cover up. The podcast recounts how Brian travelled to Woodstock in the autumn of 2014 to meet with the email’s author, an eccentric horologist, and investigate his claims. Brian made “about 10 or 12 trips” to Alabama over the course of three years, and made many more phone calls from his home in New York to tell his story. What unfolds is a dark and gripping tale about a man who lived his life as an outsider in a town with a population of just over 1,000.
• BTS–BTS, also known asBangtan Boys, is a seven-member South Korean boy band formed by Big Hit Entertainment. Their name in Korean – Bangtan Sonyeondan and Japanese – Bōdan Shōnendan both translate to “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”. BTS debuted on June 13, 2013, with  the song “No More Dream” from their first album called 2 Cool 4 Skool, for which they won several “New Artist of the Year” awards including those at the 2013 Melon Music Awards and Golden Disc Awards, and the 2014 Seoul Music Awards. A year after their debut, they received major bonsang awards for their subsequent albums Dark & Wild and The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 1.  The band continued rising to widespread prominence with their The Most Beautiful Moment in Life trilogy, with The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2 and The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: Young Forever both debuting inside the Billboard 200.  (We will have a short test on this “boys band” at the end of this posting so pay attention.)
•      ALEXEI NAVALNY— Alexei Anatolievich Navalny is a Russian lawyer, political and financial activist, and politician. Since 2009, he has gained prominence in Russia, and in the Russian and international media, as a critic.  He is a big critic of the Russian president.  Really surprised this guy is still alive.

• DONALD TRUMP—OK, you must be living in a tree if you do not know this guy.
• MATT FURIE— Pepe the Frog is a popular Internet meme. The green anthropomorphic frog with a frog-like face and a humanoid body is originally from a comic series by Matt Furie called Boy’s Club. (How could I have missed this?)
• STEVEN PRUITT— Steven Pruitt, PhD. Professor of Oncology. Member (Molecular & Cellular Biology). Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Roswell Park Cancer Institute.
• BANA ALABED— Bana al-Abed is a Syrian girl from rebel-held Aleppo who, with assistance from her English-speaking mother, sends messages through Twitter documenting the siege of the city.
• GIGI GORGEOUS— Gigi Loren Lazzarato, better known as Gigi Gorgeous, is a Canadian model, actress, and internet personality. (OK whatever. Never heard of her)
• JONATHAN SUN— Jonathan Sun is an interdisciplinary researcher, designer, engineer, artist, comedian, author, and playwright. He is a PhD candidate at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies + Planning, and a 2016-2017 Berkman Klein Fellow at Harvard. He was previously a researcher at the MIT Senseable City Lab. His current research involves understanding how and why people gather as communities on social media, how these communities ascribe meaning to where they gather, and what a sense of Place means in ephemeral, online environments.
• KATY PERRY— Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson(born October 25, 1984), known professionally as Katy Perry, is an American singer and songwriter. After singing in church during her childhood, she pursued a career in gospel music as a teenager. Perry signed with Red Hill Records and released her debut studio album Katy Hudson under her birth name in 2001, which was commercially unsuccessful.
• KIM KARDASHIAN— Kimberly”Kim” Kardashian West (born Kimberly Noel Kardashian; October 21, 1980) is an American reality television personality, socialite, actress, businesswoman and model. Kardashian first gained media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton, but received wider notice after a 2003 sex tape with her former boyfriend Ray J was leaked in 2007. Later that year, she and her family began to appear in the E! reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Its success soon led to the creation of spin-offs including Kourtney and Kim Take New York and Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami. Kardashian’s personal life soon became subject to widespread media attention.
• BRANDEN MILLER— Joanne the Scammer, also known as Joanne Prada, is an internet character created and portrayed by comedianBranden Miller. The character gained notoriety for Miller’s Twitter account, which posts from the perspective of Joanne, and Miller’s Instagram account, which consists of various videos of the character of Joanne.
• RHANNA— Robyn Rihanna Fentyborn February 20, 1988, is a Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in Saint Michael and raised in Bridgetown, she first entered the music industry by recording demo tapes under the direction of record producer Evan Rogers in 2003. She ultimately signed a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings after auditioning for its then-president, hip hop producer and rapper Jay Z. In 2005, Rihanna rose to fame with the release of her debut studio album Music of the Sun and its follow-up A Girl like Me (2006), which charted on the top 10 of the US Billboard 200 and respectively produced the singles “Pon de Replay” and “SOS“.
• CHANCE THE RAPPER– Chancelor Johnathan Bennett, known professionally as Chance the Rapper, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist from the West Chatham neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.
• ARIEL MARTAIN— BabyAriel is a Popular musical.ly personality with over 19 million followers, she is also popular on Instagram, YouTube, and You Now. She later joined a collaborative YouTube channel called Our Journey along with Loren Beech, Brennen Taylor, Mario Selman, Weston Koury, Zach Clayton, and Nick Bean.
• CASSY HO— Cassey Ho is an American social media fitness entrepreneur with a YouTube channel and a website that sells fitness apparel. She is considered an Internet personality and a rising YouTube star nationally and internationally.
• HUDA KATTAN— Huda Kattan of@HudaBeauty, who has 18 million Instagram followers, heads a namesake makeup line and is introducing a Huda Beauty emoji collection called Hudamoji (not unlike Ms. Kardashian West’s Kimoji) this spring.
• MARK FISCHBACH— Mark Edward Fischbach, better known by his online pseudonym Markiplier, is an American YouTube personality. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California.
• DANIEL WEISBERG AND CARLY ZAKIN— Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin had worked in pretty much every news division at NBC before they decided to walk away and launch their own company. Enterthe Skimm: a daily email newsletter targeted at millennials to deliver the news in a quick way that fits into their busy schedules. One email sent at 6 AM every morning aims to give subscribers everything they need to know about the latest news in politics, sports, entertainment and more. The Huffington Post sat down with Weisberg and Zakin on Thursday to find out more about how these two friends, who met during a study abroad program in college, have now become the co-founders of one of the fastest growing e-newsletters.

CONCLUSIONS:  Aren’t you happy you have a day job?  I am greatly relieved that do not know most of these people consequently indicating I do not spend a great deal of time of Social Media.  We may be doomed!!!!!

COLLABORATIVE ROBOTICS

I want to start this discussion with defining collaboration.  According to Merriam-Webster:

• to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.An international team of scientists collaborated on the study.
• to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force suspected of collaborating with the enemy
• to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected.

We are going to adopt the first definition to work jointly with others.  Well, what if the “others” are robotic systems?

Collaborative robots, or cobots as they have come to be known, are robot robotic systems designed to operate collaboratively or in conjunction with humans.  The term “Collaborative Robot is a verb, not a noun. The collaboration is dependent on what the robot is doing, not the robot itself.”  With that in mind, collaborative robotic systems and applications generally combine some or all of the following characteristics:

• They are designed to be safe around people. This is accomplished by using sensors to prevent touching or by limiting the force if the system touches a human or a combination of both.
• They are often relatively light weight and can be moved from task to task as needed. This means they can be portable or mobile and can be mounted on movable tables.
• They do not require skill to program. Most cobots are simple enough that anyone who can use a smartphone or tablet can teach or program them. Most robotic systems of this type are programmed by using a “teach pendent”. The most-simple can allow up to ninety (90) programs to be installed.
• Just as a power saw is intended to help, not replace, the carpenter, the cobot is generally intended to assist, not replace, the production worker. (This is where the collaboration gets its name. It assists the human is accomplishing a task.)  The production worker generally works side-by-side with the robot.
• Collaborative robots are generally simpler than more traditional robots, which makes them cheaper to buy, operate and maintain.

There are two basic approaches to making cobots safe. One approach, taken by Universal, Rethink and others, is to make the robot inherently safe. If it makes contact with a human co-worker, it immediately stops so the worker feels no more than a gentle nudge. Rounded surfaces help make that nudge even more gentle. This approach limits the maximum load that the robot can handle as well as the speed. A robot moving a fifty (50) pound part at high speed will definitely hurt no matter how quickly it can stop upon making contact.

A sensor-based approach allows collaborative use in faster and heavier applications. Traditionally, physical barriers such as cages or light curtains have been used to stop the robot when a person enters the perimeter. Modern sensors can be more discriminating, sensing not only the presence of a person but their location as well. This allows the robot to slow down, work around the person or stop as the situation demands to maintain safety. When the person moves away, the robot can automatically resume normal operation.

No discussion of robot safety can ignore the end-of-arm tooling (EOAT).  If the robot and operator are handing parts back and forth, the tooling needs to be designed so that, if the person gets their fingers caught, they can’t be hurt.

The next digital photographs will give you some idea as to how humans and robotic systems can work together and the tasks they can perform.

The following statistics are furnished by “Digital Engineering” February 2017.

• By 2020, more than three (3) million workers on a global basis will be supervised by a “robo-boss”.
• Forty-five (45) percent of all work activities could be automated using already demonstrated technology and fifty-nine (59) percent of all manufacturing activities could be automated, given technical considerations.
• At the present time, fifty-nine (59) percent of US manufacturers are using some form of robotic technology.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI), will replace sixteen (16) percent of American jobs by 2025 and will create nine (9) percent of American jobs.
• By 2018, six (6) billion connected devices will be used to assist commerce and manufacturing.

CONCLUSIONS: OK, why am I posting this message?  Robotic systems and robots themselves WILL become more and more familiar to us as the years go by.  The usage is already in a tremendous number of factories and on manufacturing floors.  Right now, most of the robotic work cells used in manufacturing are NOT collaborative.  The systems are SCARA (The SCARA acronym stands for Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm or Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm.) type and perform a Pick-and-place function or a very specific task such as laying down a bead of adhesive on a plastic or metal part.  Employee training will be necessary if robotic systems are used and if those systems are collaborative in nature.  In other words—get ready for it.  Train for this to happen so that when it does you are prepared.

ENTITLED DEPENDENCE

I’m generally a little behind the curve relative to changes in social phenomena.  I suspect this is due to my age and the fact that I’m just not that savvy with Social Media such as Face Book, Instagram, Snap Chat, etc etc.  I do have a Face Book account and LinkedIn account but do not spend that much time on either.  Social Media can be a “black hole” time-wise so I try to avoid sitting behind my computer hour-after-hour telling people I don’t even know what’s “shaking”.  It’s just me.  (Please note: I’m not critical of those who choose to participate.  That’s their deal and who am I to tell anyone what to do?  I do acknowledge is great to communicate and I do so with a limited number of friends and family.)  With that being the case, I came upon a new “trend” in social activity called the “Peter Pan” Syndrome or “entitled dependence”.

In many countries, the phenomenon is so widespread that other new terms have developed to describe it: bamboccioni [literally, big babies] in Italy, [living at] “hotel mama” in Germany, boomerang children in Australia, parasaito shinguru [single parasite] in Japan. These young men and women don’t leave home and don’t get married, because they only want to buy brand names and enjoy themselves and to live, as an ideology, at their parents’ expense. It’s nothing less than a pandemic.  My generation always said, “I can’t wait till the kids leave home and the dog dies”.  Maybe that’s not always the case anymore.

Psychologist Professor Haim Omer describes the world-wide phenomenon of a dependence on parents that doesn’t stop.  For the past few years psychologists have been dealing with a new social phenomenon, they sometimes call “entitled dependence.” Instead of leaving home to embark on an independent life, young adults remain dependent on their parents, not only asking for but actually demanding benefits from them.  Please note: the term “young adults” is used to describe this trend in living.  We are talking about twenty to early thirties age wise.  If we look at the manifestations, we see the following:

• An unwillingness to get working or stay working when you’re not motivated. If you’re only willing to work hard when you feel like it, you won’t feel like it often enough. Working hard must be something you do; it’s not a decision to make. It’s foundational. The American work ethic is legendary.  We work hard in this country to the point that sometimes we are criticized for being “workaholics”.
• Dabbling:being unwilling to stay focused on becoming sufficiently expert at anything. Brilliant people can achieve excellence in many areas but most people can’t. (This also is a new term to me.  I’m sure it’s in the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language 😊.)
• Networking aversion. Not having taken the time to develop the deep connections with the right people that, alas, often are needed to land and succeed at a good job. You must admit, having a good, if not great, network of professional people and friends can be the key to landing a good if not great job.  That’s just the way it works.
• Betting on longshot dreams: becoming a self-supporting actor, artist, documentary filmmaker, sports marketer, environmental activist, fashion executive, etc. Yes, obviously, some people have achieved such goals but unless you are unusually talented and driven (ideally with great connections,) your chances are small. Yet some people cling to their longshot dream, sometimes as an excuse for not doing the work required to launch a more realistic career.  I came to the conclusion some time ago that I’m not Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. I’m a blue-collar engineer—a worker.
• Abusing alcohol or drugs. Enough said on this one.
• Blaming your failure on something your parents, spouse, or former employer did to you. Many people who were terribly abused–including, for example, many survivors of the Holocaust or of Japanese internment camps–did just fine. You’ve probably suffered a lot less. Unless you suffer from a severe physiologically caused mental illness, you too can probably triumph over your past. You can look at politicians, both Republicans, Democrats and Independents to see the “blame game” is in full flower.  (OK, I do not know why Hillary is not president.)
• Doing an insufficiently thorough job search.Here’s what a thorough job search looks like: identifying 50 people not advertising an on-target job but with the power to hire you for your target job or create one for you, and you not only pitch yourself to them but make the effort to build a relationship with them over months. You must also regularly contact your extended personal network to get leads and build the relationship, have a good LinkedIn profile, craft many top-of-the-heap job applications, including collateral material such as a white paper, a portfolio, and substantive follow-ups after job interviews, for example, a mini business plan describing what you’d do if hired.

Now, let’s face facts—things in life are sometimes uncontrollable.  We just do not know when issues arise that need to be handled by caring parents or grandparents.  Our family is now a case in point.  Our oldest son recently had a very serious medical condition.  We are taking care of our oldest grandson and will be taking care of our oldest son when he leaves therapy.  His care will continue the remainder of this year and into the 2018 year.  As parents and grandparents, we DID sign up for this.  This is what families do.  What I’m talking about here is a child’s unwillingness to engage society. Wanting to live a life of relative ease with no vision for the future with minimum stress and anxiety.  If you work for a living, no matter what the job, that life is not available to you on an on-going basis.  It ain’t going to happen.  Stress can certainly be a good thing in moderation.  It motivates us to succeed although too much can even be life-threatening.

As always, I welcome your comments.

3-D PRINTING—INDUSTRY GROWTH AND FUTURE

Information for this post is taken from the following companies:

• Wholers Associates
• Gartner
• Oerlikon
• SmartTech Publishing

3-D ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING:

I think before we get up and running let us define “additive manufacturing”.

Additive Manufacturing or AM is an appropriate name to describe the technologies that build 3D objects by adding layer-upon-layer of material, whether the material is plastic, metal, concrete human tissue. Believe it or not, additive manufacturing is now, on a limited basis, able to construct objects from human tissue to repair body parts that have been damaged and/or absent.

Common to AM technologies is the use of a computer, 3D modeling software (Computer Aided Design or CAD), machine equipment and layering material.  Once a CAD sketch is produced, the AM equipment reads in data from the CAD file and lays downs or adds successive layers of liquid, powder, sheet material or other, in a layer-upon-layer fashion to fabricate a 3D object.

The term AM encompasses many technologies including subsets like 3D Printing, Rapid Prototyping (RP), Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM), layered manufacturing and additive fabrication.

AM application is limitless. Early use of AM in the form of Rapid Prototyping focused on preproduction visualization models. More recently, AM is being used to fabricate end-use products in aircraft, dental restorations, medical implants, automobiles, and even fashion products.

RAPID PROTOTYPING & MANUFACTURING (RP&M) TECHNOLOGIES:

There are several viable options available today that take advantage of rapid prototyping technologies.   All of the methods shown below are considered to be rapid prototyping and manufacturing technologies.

• (SLA) Stereolithography
• (SLS) Selective Laser Sintering
• (FDM) Fused Deposition Modeling
• (3DP) Three-Dimensional Printing
• (Pjet) Poly-Jet
• Laminated Object Manufacturing

PRODUCT POSSIBILITIES:

Frankly, if it the configuration can be programmed, it can be printed.  The possibilities are absolutely endless.

Assortment of components: flange mount and external gear.

Bone fragment depicting a fractured bone.  This printed product will aid the efforts of a surgeon to make the necessary repair.

More and more, 3D printing is used to model teeth and jaw lines prior to extensive dental work.  It gives the dental surgeon a better look at a patients mouth prior to surgery.

You can see the intricate detail of the Eiffel Tower and the show sole in the JPEGs above.  3D printing can provide an enormous amount of detail to the end user.

THE MARKET:

3D printing is a disruptive technology that is definitely on the rise.  Let’s take a look at future possibilities and current practices.

GROWTH:

Wohlers Associates has been tracking the market for machines that produce metal parts for fourteen (14) years.  The Wohlers Report 2014 marks only the second time for the company to publish detailed information on metal based AM machine unit sales by year. The following chart shows that 348 of 3D machines were sold in 2013, compared to 198 in 2012—growth of an impressive 75.8%.

Additive manufacturing industry grew by 17.4% in worldwide revenues in 2016, reaching $6.063 billion.

MATERIALS USED:

Nearly one-half of the 3D printing/additive manufacturing service providers surveyed in 2016 offered metal printing.

GLOBAL MARKETS:

NUMBER OF VENDORS OFFERING EQUIPMENT:

The number of companies producing and selling additive manufacturing equipment

• 2014—49
• 2015—62
• 2016—97

USERS:

World-wide shipments of 3D printers were projected to reach 455,772 units in 2016. 6.7 million units are expected to be shipped by 2020

More than 278,000 desktop 3D printers (under $5,000) were sold worldwide last year, according to Wohlers Associates. The report has a chart to illustrate and it looks like the proverbial hockey stick that you hear venture capitalists talk about: Growth that moves rapidly from horizontal to vertical (from 2010 to 2015 for desktop).

According to Wohlers Report 2016, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry grew 25.9% (CAGR – Corporate Annual Growth Rate) to $5.165 billion in 2015. Frequently called 3D printing by those outside of manufacturing circles, the industry growth consists of all AM products and services worldwide. The CAGR for the previous three years was 33.8%. Over the past 27 years, the CAGR for the industry is an impressive 26.2%. Clearly, this is not a market segment that is declining as you might otherwise read.

THE MARKET:

• About 20 to 25% of the $26.5 billion market forecast for 2021 is expected to be the result of metal additive manufacturing.
• The market for polymers and plastics for 3D printing will reach $3.2 billion by 2022
• The primary market for metal additive manufacturing, including systems and power materials, will grow to over $6.6 billion by 2026.

CONCLUSIONS:

We see more and more products and components manufactured by 3D Printing processes.  Additive manufacturing just now enjoying acceptance from larger and more established companies whose products are in effect “mission critical”.  As material choices continue to grow, a greater number of applications will emerge.  For the foreseeable future, additive manufacturing is one of the technologies to be associated with.

OVER MY HEAD

Over My Head is an extremely rare look into the workings of an injured brain from a doctor’s perspective.  It is a true story of a young doctor’s battle to overcome a debilitating head injury and build a new life.  The book is an inspiring story of how a medical doctor comes to terms with the loss of her identity and the courageous steps (and hilarious missteps) she takes while learning to rebuild her life. The author, a 45-year-old emergency-room doctor and clinical professor of medicine, describes the aftermath of a brain injury eleven years ago which stripped her of her beloved profession. For years she was deprived of her intellectual companionship and the ability to handle the simplest undertakings like shopping for groceries or sorting the mail. Her progression from confusion, dysfunction, and alienation to a full, happy life is told with restraint, great style, and considerable humor.

I’m not going to spoil the story for you but eleven (11) years ago, Dr. Claudia L. Osborn was riding her bike with a roommate, Dr. Marcia E. Baker.  It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Detroit with just about perfect weather.  Due to a fairly narrow road, they were riding in tandem with Marcia in front and leading the way.  A car made a right turn onto the road they were riding and swung much too wide to avoid hitting the ladies.  Marcia saw the car first and managed to navigate to the shoulder of the road where she “dumped” her bike.  Claudia was not that lucky.  The car hit her head on. She traveled over the hood, over the cab, over the trunk and landed on her head.  She was taken to the emergency room but the damage had already been done.

The beginning of her post trauma period is consumed with behaviors we so often see in this population; denial, depression, and frustration.   I am sure the medical profession has patients coming in after such an injury with unrealistic plans to return to exactly the same life they had beforehand?  Their all- consuming drive is to go back to who they were, to the life they lived before the injury, when in reality all around can see that will not happen.  However, everyone around is afraid of what will happen if they ever give voice to these concerns.  So there emerges an unspoken conspiracy to not put voice to the facts that serve to block the full return to a former life, in fear that these comments might be as traumatic as the actual injury was.

One symptom above all seemed to override nearly everything in Dr. Osborn’s recovery and this was a profound short-term memory deficit.  What many consider a simple errand, buying two or three things at the store turns into nightmare after nightmare for her.  In those instances when she would get to the correct store, she might find the first thing she had set out to purchase, then end up not remembering the other two things she needed.

Claudia might actually remember to get all the things into her basket to realize at the checkout counter she had not brought her money, or not being able to find her car after getting all of those things done correctly and having to wait until the parking lot cleared out to find her car.

Although from Michigan, Claudia ended up enrolling in a treatment program at the Head Trauma Program of New York University’s Rusk Institute, which included physiatry and allied rehabilitative specialists.     This book clearly demonstrates the roles that others play in working her acceptance of the new person who emerged after the head injury as well as helping to deal with her severe depression.

Those important in Claudia’s life serve as tremendous examples about what to do and not to do in supporting and helping an affected person.  Her mother is very supportive from the beginning but demonstrates many of the expectations that it will be ok in time and life will return to the way it was before.  Claudia also has an amazingly understanding life partner who seemed to know just the right times to back away and give Claudia the time and distance to discover who she was.  Accepting these evolving expectations from their relationship allowed them to come through the event and long recovery still together.  So often this is not the story.   As soon as it becomes evident that the injured party will not return to whom they were before the injury, the physically undamaged person leaves the relationship.    This story is a powerful message to those life partners and family of head injured patients everywhere about life after such an injury.

I can definitely recommend this book to anyone who has personally had a head injury or to anyone who has had a family member with a serious head injury.  For that individual, a “new normal” must be sought and accepted.

THINKING FAST AND SLOW

Thinking Fast and Slow is a remarkably well-written book by Dr. Daniel Kahneman. Then again why would it not be?  Dr. Kahneman is a Nobel Laureate in Economics. Dr. Kahneman takes the reader on a tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think.   System One (1) is fast, intuitive, and emotional.  System Two (2) is considerably slower, more deliberative, and more logical.   He engages the reader in a very lively conversation about how we think and reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we tap into the benefits of slow thinking.  One great thing about the book is how he offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both the corporate world and our personal lives.  He provides different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.  He uses multiple examples in each chapter that demonstrate principles of System One and System Two.  This greatly improves the readability of the book and makes understanding much more possible.

Human irrationality is Kahneman’s great theme. There are essentially three phases to his career.  First, he and he coworker Amos Tversky devised a series of ingenious experiments revealing twenty plus “cognitive biases” — unconscious errors of reasoning that distort our judgment of the world. Typical of these is the “anchoring effect”: our tendency to be influenced by irrelevant numbers that we happen to be exposed to.  (In one experiment, for instance, experienced German judges were inclined to give a shoplifter a longer sentence if they just rolled a pair of dice loaded to give a high number.) In the second phase, Kahneman and Tversky showed that people making decisions under uncertain conditions do not behave in the way that economic models have traditionally assumed; they do not “maximize utility.” Both researchers then developed an alternative account of decision making, one more faithful to human psychology, which they called “prospect theory.” (It was for this achievement that Kahneman was awarded the Nobel.) In the third phase of his career, mainly after the death of Tversky, Kahneman delved into “hedonic psychology”: the science of happiness, its nature and its causes. His findings in this area have proven disquieting.   One finding because one of the key experiments involved a deliberately prolonged colonoscopy.  (Very interesting chapter.)

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” spans all three of these phases. It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises and self-help value. It is consistently entertaining and frequently touching, especially when Kahneman is recounting his collaboration with Tversky. (“The pleasure we found in working together made us exceptionally patient; it is much easier to strive for perfection when you are never bored.”).  So, impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky’s work “will be remembered hundreds of years from now,” and that it is “a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.” They are, Brooks said, “like the Lewis and Clark of the mind.”

One of the marvelous things about the book is how he captures multiple references.  Page after page of references are used in formulating the text.  To his credit—he has definitely done his homework and years of research into the subject matter propels this text as one of the most foremost in the field of decision making.

This book was the winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.  It also was selected by the New York Times Review as one of the ten (10) best books of 2011.

DANIEL KAHNEMAN:

Daniel Kahneman is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his pioneering work integrating insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. Much of this work was carried out collaboratively with Amos Tversky.

In addition to the Nobel prize, Kahneman has been the recipient of many other awards, among them the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (1982) and the Grawemeyer Prize (2002), both jointly with Amos Tversky, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (1995), the Hilgard Award for Career Contributions to General Psychology (1995), and the Lifetime Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association (2007).

Professor Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv but spent his childhood years in Paris, France, before returning to Palestine in 1946. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology (with a minor in mathematics) from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in 1954 he was drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces, serving principally in its psychology branch.  In 1958, he came to the United States and earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961.

During the past several years, the primary focus of Professor Kahneman’s research has been the study of various aspects of experienced utility (that is, the utility of outcomes as people actually live them).

CONCLUSIONS: 

This is one book I can definitely recommend to you but one caution—it is a lengthy book and at times tedious.  His examples are very detailed but contain subject matter that we all can relate to.  The decision-making process for matters confronting everyone on an everyday are brought to life with pros and cons being the focus.  You can certainly tell he relies upon probability theory in explaining the choices chosen by individuals and how those choices may be proper or improper.  THIS IS ONE TO READ.

COGNITIVE ABILITY

In 2013 my mother died of Alzheimer’s disease.  She was ninety-two (92) years old.  My father suffered significant dementia and passed away in 2014.  He was ninety-three (93) and one day.  We provided a birthday cake for him but unfortunately, he was unable to eat because he did not understand the significance and had no appetite remaining at all. Dementia is an acquired condition characterized by a decline in at least two cognitive domains (e.g., loss of memory, attention, language, or visuospatial or executive functioning) that is severe enough to affect social or occupational functioning. The passing of both parents demanded a search for methodologies to prolong cognitive ability. What, if anything, can we do to remain “brain healthy” well into our eighties and nineties?  Neurologists tell us we all will experience diminished mental abilities as we age but can we lengthen our brain’s ability to reason and perform?  The answer is a resounding YES.  Let’s take a look at activities the medical profession recommends to do just that.

• READ—What is the difference between someone who does not know how to read and someone who does know but never cracks a book? ANSWER: Absolutely nothing.   If the end result is knowledge and/or pleasure gained, they both are equal.  Reading books and other materials with vivid imagery is not only fun, it also allows us to create worlds in our own minds. Researchers have found that visual imagery is simply automatic. Participants were able to identify photos of objects faster if they’d just read a sentence that described the object visually, suggesting that when we read a sentence, we automatically bring up pictures of objects in our minds. Any kind of reading provides stimulation for your brain, but different types of reading give different experiences with varying benefits. Stanford University researchers have found that close literary reading in particular gives your brain a workout in multiple complex cognitive functions, while pleasure reading increases blood flow to different areas of the brain. They concluded that reading a novel closely for literary study and thinking about its value is an effective brain exercise, more effective than simple pleasure reading alone.
• MAKE MORE MISTAKES—Now, we are talking about engaging life or JUST DO IT. Every endeavor must be accompanied by calculating the risks vs. reward always keeping safety and general well-being in mind.  It took me a long time to get the courage to write and publish but the rewards have been outstanding on a personal level.
• LEARN FROM OTHER’S MISTAKES—Less painful than “learning the hard way” but just as beneficial. Reading about the efforts of successful people and the mistakes they made along the way can go a long way to our avoiding the same pitfalls.
• LEARN TO CONTROL YOUR BREATHING—This one really surprises me. Medical textbooks suggest that the normalrespiratory rate for adults is only 12 breaths per minute at rest. Older textbooks often provide even smaller values (e.g., 8-10 breaths per minute). Most modern adults breathe much faster (about 15-20 breaths per minute) than their normal breathing frequency. The respiratory rates in the sick persons are usually higher, generally about 20 breaths/min or more. This site quotes numerous studies that testify that respiratory rates in terminally sick people with cancer, HIV-AIDS, cystic fibrosis and other conditions is usually over 30 breaths/min.  Learning to control respiratory rate is one factor in providing a healthy brain.
• EXERCISE-– This seems to be a no-brainer (pardon the pun) but thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people NEVER exercise. For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends these exercise guidelines: Aerobic activity. Get at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week, or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity.  That is the minimum.
• VISUALIZE YOUR OUTCOME—You have heard this before from world-class athletes. Picture yourself accomplishing the goal or goals you have established.  Make winning a foregone conclusion.
• FOCUS ON THE LITTLE THINGS—For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. You have often heard ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’.  People who accomplish pay attention to detail.
• WRITE—Nothing can clear the mind like writing down your thoughts. You have to organize, plan, visualize and execute when writing.
• LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE—This is a tough one for most adults but, learning a new language stimulates areas of your brain. Scientists have long held the theory that the left and right hemisphere of your brain control different functions when it comes to learning. The left hemisphere is thought to control language, math and logic, while the right hemisphere is responsible for spatial abilities, visual imagery, music and your ability to recognize faces. The left hemisphere of your brain also controls the movement on the right side of your body. The left hemisphere of the brain contains parts of the parietal lobe, temporal lobe and the occipital lobe, which make up your language control center. In these lobes, two regions known as the Wernicke area and the Broca area allow you to understand and recognize, read and speak language patterns — including the ability to learn foreign languages.
• SLEEP-– The evidence is clear that better brain and physical health in older people is related to getting an average of seven to eight hours of sleep every 24 hours,” said Sarah Lock, the council’s executive director and AARP senior vice president. The evidence on whether naps are beneficial to brain health in older adults is still unclear. If you must, limit napping to 30 minutes in the early afternoon. Longer naps late in the day can disrupt nighttime sleep. Get up at the same time every day, seven days a week. (You will not like this one.) Keep the bedroom for sleeping, not watching TV or reading or playing games on your smartphone or tablet.
• DIET—A “brain-healthy” diet can go a long way to promoting cognitive ability. Keeping weight off and maintaining an acceptable body mass index (BMI) can certainly promote improved mental ability.
• LEARN TO PROGRAM-– This is another tough one. Programming is difficult, tedious, time-consuming and can be extremely frustrating.  You must have the patience of Job to be a successful programmer, but it is mind-stimulating and can benefit cognitive ability.
• TRAVEL—As much as you can, travel. Travel is a marvelous learning experience and certainly broadens an individual’s outlook.  New experiences, new and interesting people, new languages, all contribute to mental stimulation and improve cognitive ability.
• LESSEN MIND-NUMING TELEVISION—Enough said here. Read a good book.
• APPLY THE KNOWLEDGE YOU HAVE—Trust me on this one, you are a lot smarter than you think you are. Apply what you know to any one given situation. You will be surprised at the outcome and how your success will fuel additional successes.
• REDUCE EXPOSURE TO SOCIAL MEDIA—Social medial can become a time-robbing exercise that removes you from real life. Instead of reading about the experiences of others, bring about experiences in your own life.

CONCLUSIONS:  As always, I welcome your comments.

WHO IS MITCH RAPP

I have had the great opportunity to travel to several countries over my not-too-short-lifetime.  Most of that travel has been for business purposes but even though you are engaged for long periods of time you do pick up various indications relative to culture, even pop culture.  In my opinion, we here in the United States and the western world have by far the very best heroes.   Literature and certainly the entertainment professions are replete with men and women selected to “save us all”.  I’m not too sure if this is good or bad.  Maybe we are looking for that “white knight” to ride in and solve all of our problems then ride off leaving us happy and forever content.  I personally feel that white knight may be found by looking in a mirror.

At any rate, the list below is just a partial list of “heroes” we look for to write all wrongs, deliver us from alien invaders, purge our country from evil—you get the picture.

• James Bond
• Jason Bourne
• John Wick
• Neo and Morpheus
• Katniss Everdeen
• Sherlock Holmes
• Philip Marlowe
• Ripley
• Wonder Woman
• Captain America
• Iron Man
• Han Solo
• Luke Skywalker
• Rocky Balboa
• Harry Potter
• The Terminator
• Jimmy Lee Swagger
• Jack Reacher
• Mitch Rapp

I would like to concentrate on the last one—Mitch Rapp.  Mr. Vince Flynn created Mitch Rapp and penned the following action-packed novels with him as the main character.

• American Assassin (Mitch Rapp #1) (2010) ​ ISBN 9781416595182
• Kill Shot (Mitch Rapp #2) (2012) ​ ISBN 9781416595205
• Transfer of Power (Mitch Rapp #3) (1999) ​ ISBN 0671023195
• The Third Option (Mitch Rapp #4) (2000) ​ ISBN 0671047310
• Separation of Power (Mitch Rapp #5) (2001) ISBN 0671047337
• Executive Power (Mitch Rapp #6) (2002) ​ ISBN 0743453956
• Memorial Day (Mitch Rapp #7) (2004) ​ ISBN 0743453972
• Consent to Kill (Mitch Rapp #8) (2005) ​ ISBN 0743270363
• Act of Treason (Mitch Rapp #9) (2006) ​ ISBN 0743270371
• Protect and Defend (Mitch Rapp #10) (2007) ​ ISBN 9780743270410
• Extreme Measures (Mitch Rapp #11) (2008) ​ ISBN 9781416599395
• Pursuit of Honor (Mitch Rapp #12) (2009) ​ ISBN 978141659516
• The Last Man (Mitch Rapp #13) (2012) ​ ISBN 9781416595212
• The Survivor (Mitch Rapp #14) (2015) ​ ISBN 9781476783451
• Order To Kill (Mitch Rapp #15) (2016) ​ ISBN 9781476783482
• Enemy Of The State (Mitch Rapp #16) (2017) ​ ISBN 9781476783512
• Term Limits (not part of Mitch Rapp series) (1997) ​ ISBN 0671023179

I have read most of Mr. Flynn’s novels involving Rapp and I can tell you he is a most interesting man.

Mitch Rapp attended Syracuse University, where he majored in international business and minored in French. He attended Syracuse on a lacrosse scholarship and became an All-American due to his amazing speed and aggressive style of play. Rapp was also offered a scholarship by the University of North Carolina, but turned that down because his high school sweetheart Maureen was attending Syracuse.  Rapp had known Maureen since he was sixteen years old.  She was tragically killed in the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  One of thirty-five (35) Syracuse students died that day while returning from a semester overseas.

Nearly a year after Maureen’s death, Rapp was recruited into the CIA by Irene Kennedy. He began training the week after graduating from Syracuse. Only twenty-three years old at the time, Rapp did not go through the standard CIA training program at “The Farm,” outside Williamsburg, Virginia. Instead, for a year straight he was shuttled from one location to the next, sometimes spending a week, sometimes a month. The bulk of the training was handled by Stan Hurley, a former CIA operative, who taught him “how to shoot, stab, blow things up, and even kill with his bare hands.” In other words, he was schooled in firearms and marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and explosives. Endurance was stressed. There were long swims and even longer runs. Between all the heavy lifting, they worked on his foreign language skills. Since he had minored in French at Syracuse, within a month at the CIA he was fluent in the language. He was then taught Arabic and Persian and could passably speak Urdu and Pashto. He also spoke German and Italian. He is ambidextrous, but naturally left-handed.

Rapp then became an operative of the Orion Team, a highly secretive organization supported by the CIA but definitely outside the Agency. It is funded by money diverted from congressionally funded programs. The job of the Orion Team in a nutshell is to take the war to the terrorists. It was formed in response to the Lockerbie disaster by the then CIA director of operations Thomas Stansfield. The unit operates in secret, independent, national security apparatus and circumvents the leviathan of politics that bypasses impediments like the executive order banning assassinations. The team is headed by Rapp’s recruiter, Irene Kennedy, whose official role is as director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center.

Rapp has been the Orion Team’s star operative almost from the day he started and has been honed into the most effective counterterrorism operative in America’s arsenal. He’s spent significant amounts of time in Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia collecting intelligence and when the situation called for it, dealing with threats in a more final manner.

Officially, Rapp has nothing to do with the U.S. government; rather, he is referred to in the business as a private contractor. Rapp lives a life completely separate from the Agency. His cover is that of a successful entrepreneur. With the help of the CIA, he runs a small computer consulting business on the side that just happens to do a fair amount of international business, which gives him the cover to travel frequently. To keep things legitimate, Rapp often does indeed conduct business while abroad.

One of Rapp’s aliases is Mitch Kruse. In the special ops community, he is often known only by his call sign, “Iron Man” after the annual Ironman Triathlon in which he has participated on several occasions and has twice won. His only remaining family is his brother, Steven Rapp, a millionaire financial genius. Mitch and Steven grew up in McLean, Virginia.

Throughout the books, Rapp works with several special operations units including Navy SEALs and DEVGRU, Delta Force, Air Force Special Operations Command, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne). He also has close ties with “SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation”, a private military company specializing in underwater salvage such as getting rid of debris for ports and shipyards and training law enforcement divers, but whose employees also work from time to time as freelance operatives for the CIA. The company is owned and operated by Scott Coleman, former commanding officer of SEAL Team Six and friend of Rapp.

Flynn has crafted a remarkably complex character and has the ability to put that character in situations you would expect a “normal individual” to die from.  He has the uncanny ability to weave a story line that has one surprise after another.  This is truly a remarkable feat.  I love his books for this reason and one more—he is a master craftsman with words.  Truly gifted.

One caution—read “The American Assassin” first.  This book gives you the background or Rapp beginning with his days at Syracuse.  It takes you through all of the training used to produce a lethal weapon.  I strongly recommend the Mitch Rapp series for your summer reading.

WORDS CAN HURT

I think we all know that words can hurt—maybe really hurt. How many of you remember this old song?

“You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn’t hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
And crush it till the petals fall

You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can’t recall, so
If I broke your heart last night
It’s because I love you most of all”

We are all familiar with misplaced words used by sharp-tonged comedians, brain-dead TV anchors, clueless politicians, abrasive supervisors, etc.  They can inflict wrath with words that make us look forward to the next vacation.

Let’s take a very quick look at several words, new words, my family and I have learned throughout the month of May.

MENINGIOMA:

A meningioma is a tumor that arises from the meninges — the membranes that surround your brain and spinal cord. Although not technically a brain tumor, it is included in this category because it may compress or squeeze the adjacent brain, nerves and vessels. Meningioma is the most common type of tumor that forms in the head.  Most meningiomas grow very slowly, often over many years without causing symptoms. But in some instances, their effects on adjacent brain tissue, nerves or vessels may cause serious disability.

MENINGITIS:

Meningitis is an inflammation of the membranes (meninges) surrounding your brain and spinal cord. The swelling from meningitis typically triggers symptoms such as headache, fever and a stiff neck.  Most cases of meningitis in the U.S. are caused by a viral infection, but bacterial and fungal infections are other causes. Some cases of meningitis improve without treatment in a few weeks. Others can be life-threatening and require emergent antibiotic treatment.

GRAM NEGATIVE ROD MENINGITIS:

“Gram-negative” refers to gram staining, a routine laboratory test used to determine the presence of microorganisms like bacteria or fungi in your blood or tissue. During the test, the gram stain will turn pink if gram-negative bacteria are present. These types of bacteria can also cause infections and pneumonia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gram-negative bacteria are resistant to multiple antibiotic drugs commonly used to treat infection. In addition, they have the capability to become resistant to new drugs. As a result, gram-negative meningitis is harder to treat than other forms of meningitis. An estimated forty (40) to eighty (80) percent of gram-negative meningitis cases end in death. Moreover, complications are generally higher in survivors of gram-negative meningitis. It’s more common in infants than adults.

On April 24, 2017, our oldest son suddenly collapsed on his way to a late lunch.  As a result of this fall, we discovered he had a tumor at the base of his brain stem.  This had been growing for at least ten (10) years.  Surgery was performed on May 4, 2017 at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was successful and he will live but we have a long road to recovery.  He has lost hearing in his left ear which will not come back.  Some paralysis in the left side of his face and double vision which we are told will correct itself over time.  It is absolutely gratifying how friends have rallied around our son and our family.  We will get back to normal but it just might be a “new normal.”

WORDS CAN REALLY HURT!!!!!!!!