Week 27 Roundup

Weekly Roundup Science Section

I'm not a big science junkie or anything, but this week's lead story has to be the announcement from CERN that they appear to have discovered the Higgs boson. I didn't know this before, but for the hard sciences, apparently you need to get to five sigma to report your results. In the social sciences we generally need about two. It's also amazing that TQM practices look for six sigma. Okay, I've probably gone too far afield at this point. If you are interested in what a Higgs boson is, this video does a very nice job explaining.

Weekly Roundup Patriotism Section

After writing this section and reading it I feel I need to make a disclaimer that I am an unapologetic patriotic liberal. I've been told to be less political in my blog because it might scare off clients. I'm okay with that. I get hired for my knowledge and the talent I have to bring that knowledge to bear to help them understand and manage human systems. I also get hired because they want to work with me. I've decided that I will be open with who I am and my views. I will not be hiding from my views. You can argue with me about them if you'd like -- I'm open to a good debate. But if you are going to get really upset by liberal viewpoints, you probably don't want to have anything to do with me.

I hope you all (my millions of adoring fans! -- let me dream) had a wonderful holiday celebrating America's independence. For my holiday I checked to see how many of these questions I could answer correctly. Thankfully, I would qualify to be a citizen.

Speaking of America's founding and our founding fathers, did you know that they instituted a health insurance mandate with a tax for those who didn't comply? This kind of takes the wind out of the sails of those who argue such a thing is unconstitutional, no? I mean, the guys who wrote the constitution clearly thought it was constitutional. But then so did the Heritage Foundation when they came up with the idea.

I really enjoyed this Frederick Douglass Independence Day speech as reenacted by Danny Glover. There is nothing more patriotic that taking a good look at the country you love, seeing the good and the bad in its history -- as well as its present, and then loving it more and striving to make it better. America has done some awful, terrible things. Things that are as bad as any country in the world. America continues to do some awful terrible things, though we are now better than most. Understand that and never forget it. Then remember that America has done some truly wonderful things. Heroic things. Things that make you proud to be an American. That is the country I love. It has flaws. Ignoring or denying those flaws won't make them go away. It just makes the country I love more likely to repeat those flaws. VCs like investing in serial entrepreneurs -- even if they have failed -- because they should, theoretically at least, learn from those mistakes. America should aim to do the same.

In the same spirit as the speech above, Chris Rock sent out a tweet reminding America that not everyone gained their independence in 1776. Those who like to deny the legacy and current existence of racism came out in force quickly thereafter with beauties like, "Slavery existed for 2000yrs before America. We eradicated it in 100yrs. We now have a black POTUS. ‪Go (expletive) Yourself." And, "Know who gave u urs [independence]? Republicans. ur welcome." Do these people not realize what they are saying? We have a black president so we should forget a history of slavery? Republicans GAVE BLACK PEOPLE their independence? That makes me so (expletive) angry. Do we not hold certain truths self-evident? DO YOU STILL THINK BLACK PEOPLE ARE FREE BECAUSE OF THE GRACE OF STRAIGHT WHITE MEN?

Sorry for screaming there for a second. Man, I let myself go there. I probably just got worked up over nothing. It's not like we have all white churches with KKK ties advocating that whites are the chosen people putting up fliers for cross-burnings anymore. Oh wait, we do? Fuck.