How Snopes increased my already high esteem

Snopes is one of my go-to resources for fact checking. They do a good job, and even more important, they document the bases on which they form their conclusions.

I've used them for years to check things that need checking. Because of my own personal biases these may be "ridiculously false" things that I get from conservative friends, or  "too good to be true" ones from liberals. 

Yes, my perceptions are biased, but I try to be an equal opportunity fact checker.

The other day a post I saw on G+ led me to this Snopes article:

Claim:   The restaurant chain formerly known as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" changed its name to KFC to eliminate the word "fried" from its title. 

The article claims that the name change was to get a healthier, more modern image, without the word "fried." But the real reason was:

In 1990, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, mired in debt, took the unusual step of trademarking their name. Henceforth, anyone using the word "Kentucky" for business reasons — inside or outside of the state — would have to obtain permission and pay licensing fees to the Commonwealth of Kentucky

Rather than submit to extortion, TCFKAKFC changed its name.

They even posted an update:

Update:   In November 2006, KFC and the State of Kentucky finally reached an undisclosed settlement over the former's use of the trademarked word "Kentucky," and the restaurant chain announced it would be resuming its former name of "Kentucky Fried Chicken."

Good work by Snopes. 

But let's not take their word. Go to the KFC web site. Right at the top it says "Kentucky Fried Chicken." To true. Yay.

But way down at the bottom of the original Snopes post there's this unusual thing:

Additional information: 

More information about this page

Last updated:   17 May 2008 

And if you click on the icon on their page, or the red text on this one, or here, you're led to another page, and THAT'S THE PAGE that revised my opinion of Snopes further upward.

(BTW the other references on the page are to articles that say, that the name and logo was changed for a more healthy image).

The illusion of liberal failure (Part I)

Pittsburgh "air" 1941

You don't have to be a genius to find an example of a law, regulation, or practice, put in place by liberals that's resulted in a ridiculous outcome, or corrupt behavior, or unintended consequences. This is fortunate, because the people who complain and rant, who blog and comment, tweet and retweet, and share these failures endlessly with their Facebook friends are hardly geniuses.

So, yes, there are failures. Some are real ones. This is not about failures, and I promise to come to real failures later.

Right now I want to talk about illusions.

About the idea that that all or even most liberal programs are failures. That is an illusion. And I'm going to back that claim by picking an example of a failed program, and pulling it apart. I took the first one that came to mind: clean air and water. Google for "EPA failures" and you'll get enough reading for a lifetime (13M hits, and counting.)

Can we acknowledge that market forces will not give us clean air and water? (Except maybe Perrier. Or maybe not.) Yes, the market punishes some polluters: a local company, with local customers, that spews toxins into the local environment might not do well. And the market might provide some motivation in niches catering to relentlessly green customers.

But in the global market, when customers are far from the scene of the crime, the market rewards the company that delivers best product at the lowest cost. Period. Their distant customers don't pay attention to environmental policy, just cost and quality. And environmental protection is a cost that does not affect quality.

The market is why American companies poisoned American air and soil and why the Chinese companies that now serve those market needs kill and will continue to kill their own citizens. They will do it until their own government steps in, and the pollution moves elsewhere. Say, somewhere with less job-killing government regulation. With freer markets.

Fact. Pollution was a huge, huge problem. Check your history books. It took liberal agitation to find a way to attack it. It was attacked by expanding government. It gave us us the Environmental Protection Agency, now a bureaucracy with 15,000 employees, plus state and local equivalents.

According to Forbes, in an article long on opinion and short on citations, the EPA is "the worst of many rogue federal agencies."

In the Age of Obama, there are many viable candidates for the official title of Washington’s “Private Sector Enemy Number One.” You could make a strong case for the National Labor Relations Board, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, and others, but my choice would be the Environmental Protection Agency.

OK, Forbes-guy, let's go with that.

There's evidence in his favor. We read news about reams of regulations. We hear about inconsistent, and sometimes ridiculous application of the regulations. We hear about businesses closed, and millions of jobs lost. And we see cities, like Los Angeles, with air that's still marginally breathable. We get 13M google hits.

Clearly Forbes-guy's perceptions are right. It's a private sector enemy.

I claim that those perceptions are based on illusion. And I'm going to back it up with both reasoning and data.

Let me start by acknowledging inconvenient facts. The EPA has and continues to make questionable decisions. And the EPA does things that are absolutely horrible. Yes, things could be done better. But things that get done can always be done better.

But can we agree that the market is not going to give you clean air and water? Again and again, when the air and water get too dirty, when people finally have had enough, government steps in.

And always, it seems, it's liberals leading the way, and conservative fighting a rear-guard action to stop it, and then sniping from the sidelines after the fact.

I wish conservatives would lead!

There are lots and lots of smart conservatives. These are real problems that need everyone's brains. Let's just acknowledge the market failure, realize that intervention is needed, and work to make the intervention better.

I chose clean air and water because -- well, it's the first one I thought of. And happily Forbes-guy thinks that the solution is horrible. So it must be a good example of liberal failure.

To check my facts I didn't look at ten different places to cherry pick facts that fit my narrative. I picked Pittsburgh, PA because it was the first place I'd thought of. I didn't look at this list of most polluted places in the US until just now, to pick my poster-child. I just picked Pittsburgh.

When I did my deeper dive, which I will share with you in a follow-up, I was not terribly surprised to find:

• No progress until the long-term Republican administration in the city was replaced by Democrats.
• Legislation fought, all the way, by Republicans.
• Initial approach modeled after St. Louis, another polluted city that had cleaned up their act. (Anyone want to guess what party had just lost power in St. Louis and which had just gained when they started to clean things up? Hint: R and D).
• Continuous efforts by Republicans, even to recently, to stop further remediation.

So why is the illusion of failure so pervasive. I think there are three reasons:

• Mechanics
• Media
• Mitigation

On the mechanics side, consider solution scale: the bigger a program, the more chances that there are for errors, failures, stupidity. Even if small as a percentage, the actual number of screw-ups grows with scale. So no trouble finding trouble.

On the mechanics side, consider problem scale:  the bigger the problem, the more likely that some time later, some part of the problem will not yet have been solved. Even if most places get mostly cleaned up, there will be some that have not. There are still most polluted places. Of course.

On the mechanics side, consider visibility: when a regulatory program works as a deterrent it's silent. When people decide not to pollute, you hear nothing. When it works through inspection -- people pollute, get caught and fined, and pay -- you hear little.

So when do you hear things? When the case isn't clear cut, and the polluter takes it to court. And when the enforcement is stupid, or clumsy. Then you really hear about it. And given solution scale, and problem scale, there will be plenty of visible cases.

Which brings us to media.

Left and right, most media are not in the business of delivering facts to people who want to make intelligent decisions. They are in the business of delivering stories and narratives to people who -- well, let me not infer motivation. Let me just say: for people who will pay attention. Facts, when used at all by these media, are just set dressing for the stories they tell.

And the best stories and the best narratives are the ones that stir the emotions. Left and right, media are in the business of creating stories and narratives that stir the emotions and get attention from people who -- no, I'm not going there.

I'll plead guilty to doing something like that here. I'm countering a narrative -- that liberals favor big government, and produce governmental programs that kill businesses, destroy jobs, and that fail -- with another narrative -- that conservatives stand in the way of solving problems that we, the people, want solved.

So far (and you will have to trust me on this) I have not cherry picked the data. And as I've dug into this I have, indeed, found some real examples of failure or questionable practice. Which I will share in future posts.

There certainly are many conservatives who DO want clean air and water, and who are willing to tolerate government to get it. And some might even have free-market solutions that have no government involvement. But I believe that they are factually a minority. There are some Republicans who have helped, but they are a vanishing breed.

Go any idea who established the EPA? Richard Nixon, who this Fox News article calls "The last great liberal."

Finally, mitigation.

Cleaning up air and water will increase costs. This is an unintended -- but predictable -- consequence of trying to solve the problem.

(By the way "unintended consequence" is a common conservative meme. It is used when criticizing liberal programs. It's a way of using big, intelligent-sounding words to call someone stupid. Really? Are you unaware that everything has unintended consequences, including the status quo? That some unintended consequences are beneficial? That the only way to avoid all unintended consequences is omniscience?)

Absent any other change, when you increase costs, companies will become uncompetetive and people will lose jobs. Given we all want clean air and water; given that these are the unintended but predictable consequences of getting us what we want; and given that these burdens fall on others -- business owners and factory workers -- what do we do to mitigate the unintended consequences?

Short form answers: Liberals: Do something!. Conservatives: Nope.

Liberals: in addition to a program to solve the original problem, also propose a program to mitigate the consequences.

Conservatives oppose both the original solution, and any mitigation of the consequences. And, oh, yes: accuse liberals of unintended consequences.

On clean water and air:

Liberals: Penalize countries that are willing to poison their own citizens so that our cleaned-up businesses can compete and our workers can keep their jobs.

Conservatives: Nope. Free trade and the free markets  Move businesses and jobs offshore. Blame liberals. Fight the EPA.

Liberals: financial support and training for people who lose their jobs; help for new businesses, especially in blighted areas.

Conservatives: Nope. This is America. People can get jobs if they want them. Cut unemployment. Cut welfare. Cut education. Fight the EPA. Blame liberals.

I'm going to stop here.

I've got another couple thousand words queued up for future posts.

Summary:
Liberals don't want big government. That's an illusion. They want problems solved.

Liberal solutions may not be ideal, but they aren't failures. That's an illusion. Failures scale and so do successes; but successes are silent, and failures -- thanks to the media, are very, very, very loud.

Liberals are not ignorant of unintended consequences. That's an illusion. When they see harmful consequences they want them addressed. Conservatives block remediation, then blame liberals.

Reddit ELI5, NeutralPolitics, and ShowerThoughts

Someone made a comment at Beyond Labels this morning about a brilliant thought he'd had in the shower. That reminded me of reddit and the ShowerThoughts subreddit. For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, I'll explain.

First: Reddit is an entertainment and social news networking site. I think of it as kind of the anti-Facebook.

On Facebook you identify yourself by your real name. You get a "news feed" with posts from people you know -- "friends" -- and people you don't know but who you "follow." The stories range from personal tidbits, to links to interesting articles, to long written pieces. You can decide who gets to see each post -- from just family, to the world. People who can see a posts can comment and discuss. Some of the content and discussion is interesting. Most is pretty bland.

Reddit is different. People who use Reddit are called redditors. Redditors don't use their real names. Instead they pick handles  -- like  HandyAndy136, or curmudgeon_lyfe -- and use them. Reddit is divided into subject areas, called "subreddits." Subreddits are open to everyone -- but most are moderated so that discussion doesn't get out of hand. Any redditor can start a topic thread in a subreddit by posting a question, or comment, or a link to online content. Other redditors comment and comment on the comments. They can upvote or downvote the original thread, or individual comments. Reddit will show you the topics and comment threads that have the most votes. Everything is public for everyone to read.

Facebook is useful. Reddit is awesome. Facebook tends to be about who you know. Reddit is about what you know, how smart you are, and -- through the upvoting and downvoting system, how cool everyone else on reddit thinks you are.

I think the average reddit IQ is 10-40 points higher than the average FB IQ.

Here's the first reddit thread  I ever came across. It was just after the Supreme Court's gay marriage decision, and someone posted a link to it that ended up in in my G+ feed. My favorite comment:

Confederate flag removal, Obamacare subsidies upheld. Now gay marriage is legal everywhere. Somebody better call and put the entire south on suicide watch.

My very favorite subreddit, the one that prompted this post, is Showerthoughts, "A subreddit for you to share all those thoughts, ideas, or philosophical questions that race through your head when in the shower." Examples are toward the end of this post.

Another favorite subreddit is Neutral Politics. It's a kind of 24/7 online Beyond Labels with people who are sometimes smarter and funnier than the smartest and funniest of us.

Another one I like is ELI5 which means "Explain Like I'm Five Years Old." Here's an ELI5 for the question "Why is Trump Doing So Well in the Polls" It's got some interesting insights and some very snarky, and sometimes vulgar humor. Which, of course, I like.

Here are the top topics on Neutral Politics right now, with links to the discussion.

Is there somewhere I can get an interactive map that shows the amount of ISIS controlled territory over the course of the war? 

What is the purpose of party surveys with leading questions? 

Are every day Muslims actually incompatible with Western culture? 

Which Third Party would come out on top? 

Interesting Findings on Caucuses vs. Primary Voter Turnout - What Impact Does This Have on Nominations?self.NeutralPolitics

 

Do you think the US should cut the defense budget?

 How democratic is Pakistan? And how much will its infrastructure grow in a decade?

 

Is it impossible for Republicans to win in 2016... or ever again? 

And here are some of today's funnier and less tasteless ShowerThoughts. Sometimes the discussion is even funnier than the topic.

My dog knows more English than I know Dog.

Fishing would be a lot less popular if fish had vocal cords.

 I bet the medieval stretching torture device felt really good for the first few seconds.

I would rather spend 10 extra minutes driving on an empty road than be in traffic.

I will never forget my parents phone number from my childhood, yet I will never remember a single number given to me now.

Most people throw away the ends of a loaf of bread and then buy hamburger buns which are glorified ends of a loaf of bread.

I love how television has redefined the word 'marathon' to the exact opposite of physical exercise 

 

The first person ever to have heard a parrot speak must have freaked out.

If you accidentally die in the process of faking your own death, did you fail or were you overqualified?

I am more willing to go to the 12th page of pornhub than I am to the 2nd page of google.

When did you catch fire?

My friend Mike Blair sent me an email commenting on a recent post, and asked me:

Do you recall the moment you caught fire?

To understand his question (which I love) and my answer, I need to share some more of what Mike wrote. (I've take some liberty in editing his words.)

I have long believed that each of us is born a sleeper cell of one.

For quite a few years, we are unaware of our mission; some people--perhaps many--never discover it.

We are born with a strong desire to keep moving--and examining and pondering whatever we encounter; some folks stifle this desire because of an environment hostile to growth--or mere laziness.

The people who are able to follow that deep imperative to keep moving and pondering, expose themselves to a large variety of experience and possibility and have a good chance of integrating a critical mass of information that will, quite suddenly, allow them to catch fire.

To catch fire means:

...to realize they have a specific purpose, that each, in his or her own way, must innovate, to push off from what they had accepted as reality, and, simultaneously, realize that where they had been was not The Big Show itself, but a necessary prelude to it.

 He closes with the question:

Do you recall the moment you caught fire?

I don't remember "the moment" because I've caught fire repeatedly, to discover, later, that the fire had sputtered and died. Unnoticed. Because I do a great job of simulating a human being. No one notices, and I'm not there to notice.

Most recent is the experience that I wrote about and Mike responded to. Before that, I remember a series of waking moments -- because I am practicing. And at the start of the series is the moment of "waking up" on the Quantum of the Seas, on our way to our daughter's wedding in Italy, just after I'd read Sam Harris' "Waking up."

Recently, the flames have been burning more steadily, and some of my writing is evidence of that. The flames still go out, but for shorter periods.

I love Mike's two phrases. I will add "catching fire" to "waking up." And I will think more about what it means to be "a sleeper cell of one."

Money is not wealth

Money is not the same as wealth.

What is wealth? Farms and food and factories and what they produce are forms of wealth. And so are people and knowledge. There are lots of other kinds of wealth, but this is not the place to do more than give examples.

All these forms of wealth are valuable, but money is valuable only because you can exchange control of money for control of wealth: you can use it to buy control of farms, factories, and what they produce. You can use it to buy control of people, for a time. In other words you can buy control of wealth -- of things that actually have value -- with money; but money itself is not wealth.

Let's get slightly more formal. Money (Wikipedia) is defined as anything that functions as "a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, sometimes, a standard of deferred payment."

I'm going to accept the "medium of exchange" and "unit of account," parts of the definition, and against the "store of value" definition. Money does not store any value. It does store something, and we'll come to that later, but not value.

A small thought experiment to clarify. Supposing there's a trillion dollars worth of real stuff, like farms, factories, food, knowledge and people in some imaginary world and a trillion dollars worth of money.

I claim that the real stuff has value, and the money does not.

Suppose I magically double the real stuff, and I disappear all the money. (I can do that, because it's a though experiment.) We now have twice as much productive capacity, and I would claim twice as much value.

Suppose I double the amount of money in the world, and disappear all the real stuff. Then, in technical economic terms, you are screwed. You can't eat money. You can't wear it. You can't get it to run your farms and factories. You are screwed.

If money was a store of value, then doubling either the money or real stuff would be an even exchange. But doubling the real stuff and getting rid of money roughly doubles value. And doubling the money while getting rid of the real stuff takes us to zero.

Money is not entirely without value. It is useful as a medium of exchange and a unit of account. Money is certainly useful for solving the problems of resource allocation and of coordination. But I can easily, if not optimally solve those problems. Just give everyone little pieces of paper, or balances in an accounting system, and let them exchange them for labor and for existing real stuff.

Instant money. I didn't have to go find some value to store in it. Because intrinsically, money has no value.

But it is useful.

QED, I think.

So if money isn't wealth, then what is?

And if I can create useful (but again, not optimal money) with a snap of my fingers, what does that mean.

Those are both harder problems and I'm not going to address them in this post.

I'm just going to say: whatever wealth is, and whatever money is, they're not the same thing.

The illusion of reality

Spoiler alert: wow! wow!

Sam Harris has this great metaphor for the experience of waking up, which I've written about here:

Imagine you're in a theater, watching a movie. You are immersed in the story. Your attention is captured. You are emotionally engaged. Then suddenly you realize that you're sitting in a theater, surrounded by other people, watching light projected on a screen. A moment ago you were entranced -- in a trance. Now, for a moment you are in a different state. You're still aware of the story that's still playing out on the screen--but you are also aware that you are outside that story. You are not in the story, but watching it. That particular spell is broken. That's "awake." He says: "Most of us spend every waking moment lost in the movie of our lives."

I've had that experience many times since reading about it. It's great when it happens. And when it happens, if I remember, I do the another thing that I learned reading his book:

He says: the way you tell an illusion from something real is to examine it. You look at it more closely, more deliberately. If you examine something and it changes to something completely different--or disappears entirely, that's a sign that what you first saw was an illusion. 

So now as soon I "wake up" and feel that "I," my "self," am no longer in my usual trance, I look to try to examine "that which is now awake." When I do this, when I turn my attention toward whatever I just identified as "my self" when I "look" in a direction I would describe as "inward" I IMMEDIATELY feel my attention shoot "outward" toward the rest of the world. I have an immediate sense of WOW!!! And I'm even more awake

 I check to see if I am an illusion. Seems like I am.

But today's waking up experience was different. I don't know if I can convey it to you. I don't know if I'll be able to recreate it for myself. But I'm going to try.

Two exercises:
Exercise 1
Imagine you're in a theater, watching a movie. Really do this. Stop reading for a moment, and imagine it. 

Continue. And imagine each step.

You are immersed in the story. Your attention is captured. You are emotionally engaged. You've had that experience before.

Now imagine that you suddenly you realize that you can control the movie!

With your mind!

You know the movie is an illusion projected on a screen. And at the same time, you realize that you can sit there and control the illusion. With your mind.

Well, not the whole movie, but you can control one of the characters. Not perfect, but still pretty cool.

How do you do it? You have no idea. There's no connection between you, sitting in the theater, and projector. But still, you can do it.


Exercise 2
Imagine having this experience:

You're reading this post. You're immersed in what you are doing. Your attention is captured. Your am emotionally engaged.

And suddenly you realize that it's an illusion. (Not what you imagining, but the underlying experience.) You realize that what you are perceiving comes from photons striking objects, proceeding into your eyes, hitting your retinal cells, firing neurons which fire other neurons, racketing around in your brain. And somehow you (another illusion, remember) are aware of this. 

You realize that you are perceiving an illusion. Whatever reality is, you are not perceiving it. You are not waking up and realizing that what you thought was reality is really light, projected on a wall. Instead, you are waking up and realizing that what you thought was reality was really neurons firing in a brain.

You realize it's an illusion. And then, suddenly you realize that I can control part of the illusion. With my mind!

I can change what's going on. 

I can do it with my mind.

And then I  realize, my mind is another illusion. There is no "thing" called a mind. It's just another bunch of neurons firing.

And then, I realize, that there's one more illusion.

Me.

Imagine!

My political evolution: Part 2

In Part 1 I talked about the life experiences that caused me to lean Liberal. I talked about how, as I was growing up, conservatives were always, always on the wrong side of issues I cared about, and liberals were on the right side.

In this part I'll talk about how I learned about libertarianism and became disaffected with mainstream politics and both parties. That led to my voting Libertarian when I started to vote -- which was well after I was able to. I'll come to all that in Part 3. And then, in later posts, why I stopped, and started voting knee-jerk Democrat. And still later, how and why I've moved away from that.

I started college in 1960. The civil rights movement was gaining momentum. Liberals seemed like they were for "all the right thing" and the conservatives seemed reliably against them. That's what I talked about in Part 1.

There were some people who pointed to the Soviet Union, where wasteful competition was eliminated in favor of the more rational, efficient process of the centralized five-year-plan. The Soviet Union, ruined by the war, was growing faster than the United States. Or was, according to the narrative. The Soviet Union was unironically called "The Workers Paradise" by some.
wh
Some Americans spied for the Soviets because they believed that the Soviets were the good guys, and we were not. Evidence of injustice in our country was all around. Evidence of Soviet injustice? We had copies of Pravda to read, and Pravda said things were great. And Pravda was "Truth" in Russian, so ...

I was not much taken with tales the wonderfulness of the Soviet Union, but I was influenced by criticism of the United States and probably a lot of that came from "fellow travelers" and what Lenin called "useful idiots."

When I got to school one of my classmates, and fraternity house roommates for a while, was David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian party. Dave was a great writer attached to an annoying personality. He's known for the Nolan Chart, a way of framing the Libertarian view relative to the more familiar conservative and liberal views. American liberals favored more personal freedom, but at some cost of economic freedom; conservatives favored more economic freedom, but were willing to limit personal freedom.  The World's Smallest Political Quiz, which Dave also came up with, is a ten question quiz that positions you in that political space. You can take it here. My results are below.

Dave introduced me (and the rest of in the fraternity) to the writings of Ayn Rand. I read the "Fountainhead" and liked it. But when I started the 1200 page "Atlas Shrugged," I could not put it down. I skipped classes and sleep and personal hygiene, and read the whole thing in one marathon session -- something around 48 hours.

People object to Rand because her characters are caricatures and her plots lack nuance. And she's got long, long passages where her characters make long speeches elaborating their (her) philosophy, which -- if you like the philosophy are way better than reading a dry text, and if you disliked the philosophy must seem a kind of torture. Everything is black and white. Her heroes even have strong, confidence-inspiring names: Howard Roark, Domnique Francon, Hank Rearden, Dagny Taggart, Ragnar Danneskjold, and, of course, John Galt. The villains had names that made you want to spit them out: Ellworth Toohey, Wesley Mouch, Oren Boyle. Yuck!

Of course I identified with the heroes. They were intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working people -- just like me. And her villains? They were not folks who had good intentions but caused things to go wrong because of unintended consequences. They knew exactly what they were doing. And why. Her books changed my perception of the world around me. I saw a lot of liberal programs, and heard a lot of liberal rhetoric through the eyes of Rand and her characters. And I liked them not so much.

Rand's "liberal" characters wanted to take things away from gifted, hardworking people like me, so that untalented sluggards could have their "fair share." They knew that they were parasites, and they didn't much care. Why? Because they wanted power. Seeming to care about people was a strategy for gaining power.

I'd always had a mixed opinion of government. My Dad and Mom had a small business. To keep it running they had to pay off the cops (otherwise they'd be given tickets); pay off a host of workplace and building inspectors (otherwise they'd be cited, fined, and maybe shut down); and they also had to pay off union leaders and have their workers pay dues to the union (otherwise there would be pickets in front of their place). The unions weren't part of the government, but much of their power came from government regulations that protected their rackets.

My Mom also told us stories of  how she (and others) had manipulated the judicial system to get a desired outcome. A friend of ours who had a ridiculous judgement against her because the other party knew the judge. The time my Mom got a favorable verdict by appearing in court in a red dress and stiletto heels because her lawyer told her that the judge was a womanizer, and would be influenced.

The institutions that were designed to do good were corrupt. They were Rand's "moochers," and "parasites." And don't let's start on incompetent teachers with tenure, shall we?

Atlas Shrugged had a big impact on me, and I read it every couple of years after that, bemoaning my growing sense that we were living out Ayn Rand's dystopian dream of what happens when the "collectivists" take over, and there's no John Galt to save the day. I still have a hard-bound copy of "Atlas Shrugged" in my bookshelf, but it's been years since I've read it. It got too depressing and I stopped.

Meanwhile, back in the late 1960's I got my first job: as a programmer for Airborne Instruments Laboratory, a long deceased company that doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Wot! The Cold War was on, and we built devices that flew over the Soviet Union in satellites listening to Russian radars. Then we downloaded the data and processed it in order to locate all the radars and their types. This was turned into a "Radar Order of Battle." The ROB told you, if you were flying a bomber into the heart of the enemy, what route to follow to minimize contact with the enemy's most lethal weapons, and what frequencies to jam, and when, as you flew on your mission.

Meanwhile, Vietnam was ramping up. I started reading.The war-mongering Republicans and the war-mongering Democrats agreed: Kill for freedom! Stop Communism! Meanwhile the real left had a different story. Ho Chi Minh admired the American Revolution. He was admired in his own country for getting rid of French colonialism. (Anyone against the French couldn't be all bad.) The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence begins by quoting our own. Ho wrote several letters to President Truman and others, looking for help from America, bastion of freedom, ridding the country of the French.

But he was a commie. So no. Some said that his beliefs were weakly held, and that because Vietnam had kind of hated China for several hundred years, he might become an ally of sorts, and stand against China. But NO! He is a COMMIE! NO! NO!

My politics were pragmatic. I thought was was the answer when you faced a guy like Hitler. But I thought this war was stupid. And it was being fought stupidly. So during the week I worked for the military industrial complex, and on the weekends I'd go into New York and march against the war.

I remember seeing protests that I had attended reported in the newspapers and on TV. In real life I'd see maybe a thousand or five people -- some "long haired hippies", but mostly students, working folks, and people from more affluent backgrounds, carrying signs, singing ("We shall overcome" was popular) and chanting ("Hell no! We won't go!" "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today."). Across the street maybe a hundred angry, flag-waving, screaming counter-protesters. The news reports and TV segments distorted the reality that I'd experienced. They'd find a cluster of angry protesters, spewing anti-American rage and show them. Then find a couple of people from the counter-protest group who seemed respectable, and show them. And they'd give the impression that the crowds were roughly equal in size.

That's when I stopped believing anything I read in the news or saw on TV. I was there. I knew what had happened. And the media -- from very conservative New York Daily News to the faux-liberal New York Times -- distorted reality.

I ended up supporting our project on site at the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Offut Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska because I was single, and didn't mind staying there. What's not to like. I had my own brand-new rental Ford Mustang. I had a room in a nice hotel. And I got paid more in per-diem expenses than I spent. So even a profit there.

And there I learned from guys who had just returned from Vietnam what it was really like. And it wasn't the way that you read about it in the news. Among other things, I learned about fragging -- the practice of killing a fellow soldier, usually a non-comm of junior officer -- usually with a fragmentation grenade.

I ended up thoroughly disaffected.

I got involved in Scientology around that time for a number of reasons. One of them was this: Scientology said that everyone was insane. That fit my observations. News people were insane. Politicians were insane. The military people I worked with at SAC were insane. I stopped following politics, didn't vote, eventually quit my job and became a full-time staff Scientology student and staff member. Mostly I worked on making myself more sane.

I had mixed results.

When my money ran out, I had a choice: either fully commit and join the Church, or go back to the world, and be a part time students By that time Bobbi and I were living together in England. We decided to go back home, get jobs and continue studying part-time.

I think that up to that point I had never voted, but (probably due to Bobbi's influence), I started to vote. I don't remember who the major party candidates were the first time I voted, but whoever they were I didn't like them and voted Libertarian. I don't remember what I did when there wasn't a Libertarian. Maybe no one. Possibly Democrat.