Saw this photo on Facebook.
Thought this was just too excellent.
Yes, a new hybrid car.
– The chassis goes one way.
– The passenger compartment goes the other way.
Was the engineer on hallucinogenics?
Or perhaps, this is some super secret new technology for easy parallel parking.
Think about it, if the car is driverless than what difference does it make anyway? 😉
(Source Photo: Facebook)
Like the all knowing eye…
Strategy is our way of trying to forge a coherent path ahead.
Of course, as humans, we are imperfect and don’t know what we don’t know.
But whether we call it strategy, strategery, or stratego, the goal is to have a method to our madness.
We can’t just rely on luck, gut, intuition, or subjective whim to get us wherever.
Having no strategy is brainless following or aimless wandering.
Strategy means your thinking ahead what you want to achieve and then at least trying your best to accomplish something.
Ample course corrections allowed and encouraged, as needed. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Over and over again, I hear people say that as a country we are on the wrong path.
According to recent polls, around 70% think we’re moving in the wrong direction!
Very pessimistic bunch or something more going on?
Despite all the technology advances–from smartphones to video-on-demand, drones to 3-D printing–people are still feeling like things are a mess.
And the upcoming election seems to have given everyone with half a brain, reason to pause.
The world seems like a very dangerous place these days with a resurgent Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and ISIS with your guess as to where terrorism of the day will be hitting.
Moreover, weapons of mass destruction are proliferating from nukes to chemical and biological weapons…can anyone say $350 billion in the next 10 years to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal?
Deadly diseases from Ebola in Africa to Zika in South America are striking without warning and causing horrible sudden death and frightening birth defects in infant babies.
The economy and politics of the world are grossly unstable with many banks now offering negative interest rates and Brexit tearing at the very core of the EU.
Hundreds of thousands are dying in the Arab Spring and Middle East wars and millions of refugees are streaming to Europe and as far away as America.
Ballooning national debts are leading to the looming bankruptcies of not only Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Puerto Rico, but also the 3 pillars of American entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Unemployment shows at a deceptive 4.7%, but yet anyone looking for a job knows this is far from reality, and robots, artificial intelligence, and automation loom large over any future prospects.
Racism and hate are all too alive and well as tempers seem to be boiling over in city after city, with or without police shootings precipitating things.
Already as a kid, I always used to ask my dad rhetorically, “What’s gonna be?”
As an adult, I understand that this was a question born of the deterioration of the moral and leadership fiber of our society and a future that was far from certain in the inner city or beyond, along with the anxiety born of wanting to have some reassurance that things somehow would end up being okay.
But things aren’t okay in our f*cked up world!
Especially with political jockeying to gerrymandering, from sit-ins to sequestration, from pork-barrel projects to outright fraud, waste, and abuse…the system is getting so broken.
Now when I think in my head, what’s gonna be, my mom and dad are not here anymore to reassure me that everything will be alright, and frankly in this day and age, those reassurances would not even be able to ring true.
We need change and hope, but perhaps we must look Heavenward for it to come, because down here, things are looking more like a creeping hell, than a heaven that awaits.
But good people can help to change things…one good thought, word, and deed at a time. You and I can be influences for good, for a brighter tomorrow, for peace, for freedom and equality, and for prosperity for everyone that doesn’t buy into the status quo and the spin and lies that sustain it any longer.
This is our magic wand to wave and wave and make good times based on values and faith return again. 😉
(Source Video: Andy Blumenthal)
This was a funny sign to an Ethiopian cafe in downtown Washington, D.C.
“When Nothing Goes Right, Go Left.”
(and next to it is another sign that says, “Money isn’t everything, but it keeps the kids in touch.”)
So what type of person are you?
When the going gets tough and nothing is going right, where do you go–to the coffee shop, door on the left–or more seriously do you:
– Close your eyes and keep marching forward like a good soldier?
– Get scared off, turn around, and run the other way?
– Take a break or slow down, stopping long enough to figure out what’s wrong, and come up with solutions?
Maybe you do a little of all three–sort of the Curly Shuffle.
But aside from faith in G-d (and coffee-drinking), perhaps two really critical traits for success in life are resilence in the face of adversity and your problem-solving skills.
That doesn’t mean that you never plow on or turn back–these are appropriate at times too–but that you know when to turn right, left, or make a straight dash to the goal line. 😉
(Source Photo: Danielle Blumenthal)
I thought I’d end the year with this photo that I took yesterday at the Hair Cuttery.
There is this mannequin’s head just laying on top of the washing machine.
Is that what happens to customers’ heads who don’t cooperate with their haircuts or perhaps if they don’t tip enough?
More seriously though…
Maybe this is a good picture to summarize 2015–heads are down and the hair is all messed up, but it won’t stop us from trying to wash the darn clothes going out there. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This is a funny sign from Germany for exiting…you can go this way or that.
I guess that’s a choice…even if they both take you to the same place.
It’s like my dad said to me the other day, “Give ’em a choice: take it or leave it!”
It’s true–we can choose–and if leave it, then we have another choice, “Walk away or run!” 😉
(Source Photo: here with attribution to Martin Fisch)
So coming downtown this week in D.C., I see this quite unhelpful posted sign.
If you can read upside down, while rushing down a busy street with a million and one things on your mind for the day, it says, “Sidewalk Closed. Use Other Side.”
Of course, the people flowing speedily down the streets in the morning, were still walking on this sidewalk, despite the construction and potential dangers.
But in a way this reminds me of a bigger question here–is this really a sign of the times?
Today, I read in the Wall Street Journal about continued problems with Healthcare.gov–no, not related to the crashing websites, exemptions and delays, parts being overturned (such as with the contraception mandate), low enrollment (particularly after accounting for over 5 million people that lost their coverage with the new law and in effect had to sign up), but now in terms of thousands of people who signed up not getting their benefits due to continued problems with the enrollment system.
This is not just an issue for this party or that, but rather matters of government that we as a unified nation must tackle togther to grow our capabilities and competitiveness econically, militarily, and socially.
Are the signs pointing us in the right direction and what streets should we be going down as a nation in order to succeed?
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Mashable is reporting that a team of university students from University of Texas at Austin were able to spoof the GPS receivers on an $80 million yacht with false signals and make it veer off course without anyone even noticing!
I remember a couple of years ago, I was heading to an offsite meeting for work.
It was planned for a location that I wasn’t extremely familiar with.
Of course, I turned on my GPS device in the car and set the destination.
It was a cold snowy day–the roads were iced–and it was already treacherous driving.
But I followed the GPS directions to a T.
I ended up in someone’s backyard–at a dead end–practically in the middle of a cornfield.
I’m thinking to myself Crap!–what type of crazy GPS is this?
Thank G-d, I had my smartphone in my pocket and I opened up the GPS app on it and set the destination again.
Sure enough, it takes me off and running to the meeting location–about 10 minutes away!
Some things I learnt:
1) OMG, we are so very dependent on our technology; with technology gone wrong, I was stuck in nowhere land USA; with it right–I got out of there and to the correct location and thank G-d.
2) GPS is a capability that is critical for everything from getting us to where we need to go to getting our missiles to hit on target. Take away or mess with our GPS and we end up missing the mark–potentially big time and with devastating consequences.
3) Always have a backup, plan B. One GPS can be wrong as in this case, while the other GPS was correct. Redundancy and contingency planning is a must have, period.
4) When you’re heading down the wrong road (or you’re off course in international waters), man up and admit it and make a course correction. You don’t win any brownie points for continuing to drive into the cornfields. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This is a beautiful lithograph from Currier and Ives that I came across of Washington D.C.
It is called Chesapeake Bay Area – The City of Washington.
It’s amazing how much less developed things were just a little more than a century ago.
You can clearly see the major landmarks and institutions like The Capitol, the Washington Monument, and The White House, but not much else in terms of government.
Notice that even the Supreme Court building isn’t there–it wasn’t completed until 1935.
We are a fast-growing and advancing society with a maturing government and capital city that today makes this historical photo look almost as if it’s from fairy tale.
It’s nice to look back and see how far we’ve come and introspect on where we are going. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This was the skyline in Washington D.C. this past week.
I have never seen anything quite like it.
You can clearly see the grey clouds forming overhead.
And the contrast with the clear sky off in the back.
The trees along the train tracks provide almost an end of days feel–just a few standing.
There is a guy on the train on the right with his head bowed back against the train doors–is he feeling sick, tired or just down with the weather.
This picture was taken one day before the second Presidential Debate, only weeks before the election, months before we come up on the “fiscal cliff,” and perhaps only a few seasons before as they say, Iran gets “the bomb.”
Where is this train taking us, what are we going to do to solve the sizable problems ahead, and will these dark cloud lift or settle in on us?
Hope and pray that G-d gives us the good fortune to succeed in these trying times and that the sun shines bright again for all of us soon.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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