Here’s a hint for having a happy 2026–or, at least one happier than it would otherwise be.
Your happiness actually depends more on how much you love than on how much you are loved. That turns out to be a wonderful thing because you have much more control over how much you love than you do over how much you are loved by others. You need not limit your love to your immediate family. You can love all the fish in the sea; every bird in a tree; every living thing on earth–all of which are in our extended family.
I thought it might be useful for reviewing 2025 for readers to have an index in one place. For instance, something happens or you read something on-line and you think, “Oh, I read something relevant to this on the Peter S. Ironwood blog. Now, what was it called?” Well, this should help.
January 1, 2025 began with a blog post about one of our Golden Doodles named Sadie. I take her for a walk every morning and sometimes write about it. Here are some posts about Sadie.
During 2025, I found myself writing a number of poems. Many, but not all, were in response to the destruction of America that’s being directed by Putin.
Aside from poetry, I also wrote a number of satirical pieces.
FaceGook explores how the value of social media is mainly created by the participants. Of course, the participants don’t get paid. The companies that own the media do.
Tomorrow’s Dinner is a satire on how the media normalize what is not at all normal.
Turing’s Nightmares is a book of 23 Sci-Fi short stories that examine the future and the ethics of Artificial Intelligence. It’s available on Amazon, but you can also read the chapters in October, 2025 blog posts and commentary on the chapters in November blog posts.
November 28th, I began recounting a series of experiences illustrating the importance of problem formulation.
Brain G. Gollek found the maze of humming silver wires unnerving. The hum reminded him of swarming mosquitoes and nails on a chalkboard. The maze smelled of clogged toilets and Nazi propaganda. He gritted his teeth and muttered, “There has to be a way out, dammit.” He twisted his no longer athletic body this way and that, but no matter what way he tried, he became more ensnared. He recalled flashes from giant spider horror movies. How did the dwarves escape? Wasn’t it Gollum with a magic ring? But Brain didn’t have a magic ring. If his sister Gonerillia were here, she could save him. But she was off in Hawaii, so she said, with her hubbie. How the hell did I end up here? wondered Brain.
Brain may have forgotten, but the viewers had been filled in on the backstory. If Brain could have seen the ratings, he may have at least enjoyed knowing that he was enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. While the ratings were quite “favorable”, the twitter feeds mostly mocked Brain’s almost total lack of flexibility, mental as well as physical. As in life prior to “The Show,” his only strategies seemed to be trying the same thing over and over and then blaming others for his failures.
“Mom, why doesn’t he just try something different?” Ida was having a tough time understanding Brain’s apparent lack of flexibility. She looked up from her perch in front of the giant screen vid-screen and looked quizzically at her mom.
Mom’s grim face flashed a hint of a smile. “Remember, Ida, Brain was ‘educated’ if you can call it that, before the singularity. He mostly memorized the answers that his teachers wanted him to give. And half the time, he skipped school to smoke cigarettes and …well…do illegal activities with his girlfriend, Lin.”
“Okay, Mom, but he has had years and years since then to grow up and learn some new strategies.”
“Yes. Well. It’s complicated, Ida. Before the singularity, there were people who preyed on the fear and inadequacy of people like Brain by telling them all their troubles were due to minorities, immigrants, gays, and —- basically anyone unlike them. So, people like Brain felt entitled not to have to learn anything new even though opportunities abounded.”
Ida laughed. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it. He’s trying the same path one more time.”
Indeed, Brain’s behavioral repertoire seemed laughingly limited. His increasingly loud swear words reflected his increasing anger, but otherwise, not much seemed different. The ratings began to plummet as the audience began to grow bored with his display of functional fixedness. The themes of the twitter streams began to turn away from Brain’s lack of metacognition to more general reflections about the current instantiation of the criminal justice system.
#SingularityRules. No more racial prejudice and huge discrepancy gone in sentencing.
#SingularitySucks. No more human judges able to use human judgment.
#SingularityRules. No more human judges able to use human judgment.
#SingularitySucks. No more mercy.
#SingularityRules. More mercy in one last chance to change than lengthy prison terms. Cheaper too.
The audience dwindled still further as it became increasingly clear that Brain would never figure this out. Those few who still watched consisted mostly of people who themselves came from highly divided families and the conversation topics swung to the backstory.
#ElderFraud. #RottenKid. How could Brain have gotten pleasure from driving a wedge of lies between father and daughter?
#ElderFraud. #Dementia. Need earlier intervention to prevent repeats.
#ElderFraud. #Dog&Bone. Brain cannot count. Trivial gains from lies. He did not know he was being watched?
Ida continued to stare, fascinated. A yawn escaped her mother’s mouth, but she kept watching with her daughter. The lessons seemed important to Ida.
“Mom, how much longer does he have?”
“That’s hard to say, darling. Even The Sing cannot predict the ratings drop perfectly. But, as you know, once it falls below, 5%, his time will be up.”
“That seems so much more merciful than making him go to prison for years.”
“But I still don’t get it, Mom. Didn’t he know that The Sing would be listening to his lies and analyzing the impact on his dad’s behavior and all? How did this Brain character think he could get away with it?”
“I don’t know, Ida. These kinds of crimes are pretty rare now, but they still happen.”
“And, why did Lear G. Gollek fall for his nonsense anyway? That’s the other mystery.”
“Well, he refused the stem cell regeneration therapy so, you know, he was pretty damaged when all this went down.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, Ida?”
“Can we change the channel to something more interesting now?”
“Sure, sweetie.”
As they changed the channel, the ratings dropped to 4.999% and Brain’s life snuffed out minus the merest shred of insight.
Soon after I began the Artificial Intelligence Lab at a major telecom company, we heard about an opportunity for an Expert System. The company wanted to improve the estimation of complex, large scale, inside wiring jobs. We sought someone who qualified as an expert. Not only could we not locate an expert; we discovered that the company (and the individual estimators) had no idea how good or bad they were. Estimators would go in, take a look at what would be involved in an inside wiring job, make their estimate, and then proceed to the next estimation job. Later, when the job completed, no mechanism existed to relate the estimate back the actual cost of the job. At the time, I found this astounding. I’m a little more jaded now, but I am still amazed at how many businesses, large and small, have what are essentially no-learning, zero feedback, open loops.
As another example, some years earlier, my wife and I arrived late and exhausted at a fairly nice hotel. Try as we might, we could not get the air-conditioning to do anything but make the room hotter. When we checked out, the cashier asks us how our stay was. We explained that we could not get the air conditioning to work. The cashier’s reaction? “Oh, yes. Everyone has that trouble. The box marked “air conditioning” doesn’t work at all. You have to turn the heater on and then set it to a cold temperature.” “Everyone has that trouble”? Then, why hasn’t this been fixed? Clearly, the cashier has no mechanism or no motivation to report the trouble “upstream” or no-one upstream really cares. Moreover, this exchange reveals that when the cashier asks the obligatory question, “How was your stay?” what he or she really means is this: “We don’t really care what you have to say and we won’t do anything about it, but we want you to think that we actually care. That’s a lot cheaper and doesn’t require management to think.” Open Loop.
Lately, I have been posting a lot in a LinkedIn forum called “project management” because I find the topic fascinating and because I have a lot of experience with various projects in many different venues. According to some measure, I was marked as a “top contributor” to this forum. When I logged on the last time, a message surprised me that my contributions to discussions would no longer appear automatically because something I posted had been flagged as “spam” or a “promotion.” However, there is no feedback as to which post this was or why it was flagged or by whom or by what. So, I have no idea whether some post was flagged by an ineffectual natural language processing program or by someone with a grudge because they didn’t agree with something I said, or by one of the “moderators” of the forum.
LinkedIn itself is singularly unhelpful in this regard. If you try to find out more, they simply (but with far more text) list all the possibilities I have outlined above. Although this particular forum is very popular, it seems to me that it is “moderated” by a group of people who actually are using the forum, at least in many cases, as rather thinly veiled promotions for their own set of seminars, ebooks, etc. So, one guess is that the moderators are reacting to my having simply posted too many legitimate postings that do not point people back to their own wares. Of course, there are many other possibilities. The point here is that I do not have, nor can I easily assess what the real situation is. I have discovered however, that many others are facing this same issue. Open loop rears its head again.
The final example comes from trying to re-order checks today. In my checkbook, I came to that point where there is a little insert warning me that I am about to run out and that I can re-order checks by phone. I called the 800 number and sure enough, a real audio menu system answered. It asked me to enter my routing number and my account number. Fine. Then, it invited me to press “1” if I wanted to re-order checks. I did. Then, it began to play some other message. But soon after the message began, it said, “I’m sorry; I cannot honor that request.” And hung up. Isn’t it bad enough when an actual human being hangs up on you for no reason. This mechanical critter had just wasted five minutes of my time and then hung up. Note that no reason was given; no clue was provided to me as to what went wrong. I called back and the same dialogue ensued. This time, however, it did not hang up after I pressed “1” to reorder checks. Instead, it started to verify my address. It said, “We sent your last checks to an address whose zip code is “97…I’m sorry I’m having trouble. I will transfer you to an agent. Note that you may have to provide your routing number and account number again.” And…then it hung up.
Now, anyone can design a bad system. And, even a well designed system can sometimes mis-behave for all sorts of reasons. Notice however, that designers have provided no feedback mechanism. It could be that 1% of the potential users are having this problem. Or, it could be that 99% or even 100% of the users are having these kinds of issues. But the company lacks a way to find out. Of course, I could call my Credit Union and let them know. However, anyone that I get hold of at the Credit Union, I can guarantee, will have no possible way to fix this. Moreover, I am almost positive that they won’t even have a mechanism to report it. The check printing and ordering are functioned that are outsourced to an entirely different company. Someone in corporate, many years ago, decided to outsource the check printing, ordering, and delivery function. So people in the Credit Union itself are unlikely to even have a friend, uncle or sister-in-law who works in that “department” (as may have been the case 20 years ago). So, not only does the overall system lack a formal feedback mechanism; it also lacks an informal feedback mechanism. Tellingly, the company that provides the automated “cannot order your checks system” provides no menu option for feedback about issues either. So, here we have a financial institution with a critical function malfunctioning and no real process to discover and fix it. Open loop.
Some folks these days wax eloquent about the up-coming “singularity.” This refers to the point in human history where an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system will be significantly smarter than a human being. In particular, such a system will be much smarter than human beings when it comes to designing ever-smarter systems. So, the story goes, before long, the AI will design an even better AI system for designing better AI systems, etc. I will soon have much to say about this, but for now, let me just say, that before we proceed to blow too many trumpets about “artificial intelligence systems,” can we please first at least design a few more systems that fail to exhibit “artificial stupidity”? Ban the Open Loop!
Notice that sometimes, there may be very long loops that are much like open loops due to the nature of the situation. We send out radio signals in the hopes that alien intelligences may send us an answer. But the likely time frame is so long that it seems open loop. That situation contrasts with those above in the following way. There is no reason that feedback cannot be obtained, and rather quickly, in the case of estimating inside wiring, fixing the air conditioning signs, providing feedback on why there is “moderation” or in the faulty voice response system. Sports must provide a wonderful venue that is devoid of open loops. In sports, you see or feel the results of what you do almost immediately. But you underestimate the cleverness with which human beings are able to avoid what could be learned by feedback. Next time, we will explore that in more detail.
As I reconsider the essay above from the perspective of 2025, I see a federal government that has fully embraced “Open Loop” as a modus operandi — in some cases, they simply ignore the impact of their actions. In other cases, they do claim a positive impact but it is simply lies. For instance, it is claimed that tariffs are “working” in that foreign countries are paying money to America. That’s just an out and out lie. So, the entire government is operating with no real feedback. We are told that ICE will target violent gang members and dangerous criminals. The reality of their actions is completely disconnected from that.
The Trumputin Misadministration works with no loop at all that correctly relates stated goals, actions taken supposedly to achieve those goals, and the actual effects of those actions. That can only happen when the government accepts and celebrates corruption. But the destruction will not be limited to government actions and effects. It will tend to spread to private enterprise as well. Just to take one example, if unchecked by courageous and ethical individuals, sports events will become corrupted.
There’s money to be made by “fixing” events and there will be pressure on athletes, managers, referees, to “fix” things so that the very wealthy can steal more money. Outcomes will no longer primarily be determined by training, skill, and heart. Of course, as fans learn over time that everything is fixed, the audience will diminish, but not to zero. Some folks will still find it interesting even if the outcome is fixed like the brutal conflicts in the movie Idiocracy, the lions eating Christians in the Roman circuses, or the so-called “sport” of killing innocent animals with high power guns. It’s not a sport when the outcome is slanted. Not only is it less interesting to normal folks but it doesn’t push people to test their own limits. There’s nothing “heroic” about it. Nothing is learned. Nothing is really ventured. And nothing is really gained.
So Cassius says to Brutus in Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar. Cassius was trying to convince Brutus to join the plot to assassinate Caesar. As I recall, things did not turn out well for Julius Caesar. Or for Brutus. Or for Cassius. Or, ultimately, for Mark Anthony either, but that’s another story.
The point is that an interesting tension arises when we imagine that we ourselves are the masters of our fate. We like to imagine that it is our ability, or attitude, or grit that determines how much money or happiness or health we have. On the other hand, we also realize that many things are pretty much beyond our conscious control and due largely to our heredity, our environment, our upbringing, etc. Both views are partly true and both have their place.
If you are a user of a product and you want to get something accomplished, blaming the stupid product will not help you accomplish your goals. On the other hand, if you are a product developer, it will not help you to blame your user. You need to design thoughtfully.
I was reminded of this debate by trying to scan a document. In general, I am amazed how excellent scanners and printers are today, not to mention cheap! I was born in an era of expensive, heavy, noisy, dot matrix printers or teletypes. You’ve come a long way, baby! But the software that actually lets us use these marvelous machines? Here, there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Today, I repeatedly tried to scan a one page document to no avail. I think I finally diagnosed what the problem was. The scan screen came up with a default that said “custom size” and the defaulted “custom dimensions” were 0 by 0. Because, obviously, the development team had done a thorough study of users and found, I suppose somewhat surprisingly, that the most common size of image people wanted to scan was 0 by 0. I suppose such images have the advantage that you can store many more of them on your hard drive than images that are 8.5 by 11 inches or 3 inches by 5 inches, say.
This absurd default is not an isolated example. Often there seem to be “defaults” are rather odd, to say the least. My google map application, for no discernible reason, decided that a good default location for me is the geographical center of the continental United States. It was not “born” with this default but somewhere along the line “developed” it. Why? I have never travelled (knowingly) to the geographical center of the United States. I have never wanted to “find” the geographical center of the United States. Yet, for some mysterious reason, whenever I do try to find a route to say, the dentist who is ten miles away, the map app tries to send me from Southern California to the geographic center of the US and then back again. I can eventually get around this, but next time I open up the app, there we are again.
Of course, I am tempted every time to just to see the place (near the corners of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri. And, “with no traffic”, it only takes a little over 22 hours to get there. The phrase, “with no traffic” in Southern California is equivalent to “when pigs fly.” So, tempting as it is to drive 22 hours to the geographical center of the US and then 22 hours back (provided the sky if filled with flying pigs) in order to go to the dentist who is a few minutes away, I haven’t yet actually taken that particular trip.
I am tempted to rant about the absolute ludicrosity of “sponsored links” (which cheeringly informs me that I could take a side trip to a gynecologist on the way to the dentist) but I’ll try to stay on topic. Where do these defaults come from? Is this just a nerd’s nerd free choice as a perk of the job? Do they seriously conceptualize size in terms of a two dimensional grid with an origin at zero zero and therefore this is a “logical” default for paper size? Are they trying to do the user a favor by saving space?
I am hoping there is a product manager out there who can answer these questions. I am hoping things will turn out better than they did for Caesar and Brutus and Cassius.
Now, a more serious impact of “defaults” have insinuated their way into my daily life. That would be bad enough, but this insinuation has also found its way into the lives of my relatives, my friends, my neighbors, my countrymen, and even my fellow humans throughout the world.
For about 250 years, America had a default that different political parties would play by the same set of rules. Of course, parties sometimes pushed at these rules or interpreted them somewhat differently. They argued and debated about which criteria were most important for various offices. But the default for both parties was that we lived in a democracy; that the citizens choose their leaders; that the truth matters; that we keep our agreements; that our leaders don’t simply use their position of power to line their own pockets and settle their private grudges.
Those defaults are now out the window. All of them. The result will soon be inefficient and ineffective government but it won’t stop there. When government officials are open to bribery, then private businesses will tend to be led by people with lower standards of ethics. They, in turn, will tend to hire people with lower standards of ethics. They, in turn, will treat their customers more cavalierly, more contemptuously. Customers, in turn, will care less about being civil to the people whom they interact with. And so it goes.
But let’s not forget that most people, most of the time cooperate. It’s much more pleasant for normal people to cooperate and the results are also much more pleasant.
Is there road rage? Does that exist? Yes, but statistically, the vast majority of people cooperate when they drive.
And, when they do anything else. We depend on many people from many places cooperating in order to eat. First, the efficiency and effectiveness of our food growing, harvesting, transporting and preparing depends on the cooperation of millions of people in the past who found out what was edible, how to grow it, which crops worked best in various conditions, how to irrigate, how to fertilize, how to harvest and so on. The food we have available today depends on the collaborative efforts of many previous generations. These dependencies are not just on food per se, but also depend on scientific advances, transportation advances, financial advances, and so on.
Much of our food also depends on people from many parts of the world cooperating today. The prevalence of cooperation is not just true of driving and food production but also on the construction of buildings and cities; it’s true of our clothing, our medical care, our learning.
Despite the fact that cooperation is much more prevalent than criminality, evil, and violence, there are at least three reasons that the evil of human behavior seems much more prevalent than it really is. These are: 1. Effect Size, 2. Cognitive Bias, and 3. Media Bias.
Effect Size:
First of all, it takes many people working smart and hard over a long period of time to provide value through cooperation. By contrast, it only takes a few people working stupidly over a short period of time to destroy something. The effort to make a pane of glass is immense. To make it efficiently takes a large number of people with different skills. To destroy a pane of glass requires only one second of bad action by one unskilled bratty child.
AI-generated image
Think about how much work goes into planting, growing, and harvesting an acre of corn versus what it takes to burn it down. Think about how much time and effort it takes to raise a child for the first ten years of their life versus destroying that life with an assault weapon. Think about what was required to build a functioning democracy over the course of hundreds of years by cooperation versus how easy it is for a very small group of greedy stupid people to destroy it. The examples are endless. Writing a novel versus burning a book; training to become a world class figure skating versus putting an ice pick in someone’s knee; becoming a skilled artist and painting the Mona Lisa versus splashing it with black paint.
It’s the same with a functioning human body. To be healthy requires the coordination of trillions of cells. The kind of cooperation found in the human body (or an eagle or wolf or whale) took billions of years of evolution. To destroy the health of the body only takes a few stupidly greedy cancer cells. So, although evil destruction is far less prevalent than constructive cooperation, evil destruction can undo the effort of many over the course of a long time.
Second, because destruction can so quickly undo so much good work, our nervous system is very reactive to evil and violence. We perceive it more easily and we remember it more easily. In a crowded city, you might pass by hundreds of people every day. Most of them, most of the time, you don’t notice. But if one of them robs you at gunpoint, you will notice and remember.
Media Bias:
The first two reasons we perceive evil to be more common than it really have existed for millions of years. Now, however, in our modern society, we have people whose job is to report on the news.
When is the last time you saw a headline like: “Two hundred thousand people drove into San Diego from Mexico yesterday with zero fatalities!” Or, “Three million people ate dinner in San Diego county last night! Zero died of food poisoning!”
It is sometimes said that “No news is good news.” It’s also generally the case that good news is no news. There are some exceptions. When World War Two ended, there were headlines. What we don’t see is this headline: “Canada, for the 57,670th consecutive day did not attack the United States of America.” Understanding this, a complete sociopath with an audience might try to increase their own fame by declaring: “America should annex Canada!” An actual war will definitely result in a headline. But threatening war, especially with a friendly country might also result in a headline.
The tendency to report bad news over good news has always been a “feature” of the media. But now that much of our news is basically click-bait for advertisements, the tendency is worse than ever. When I was on the school newspaper, we were taught to put the most important information in the headline; add the most important details in the first paragraph and add more detail in the rest of the article. Now, most headlines are fairly meaningless and important information is hidden behind a paywall or an advertisement.
“Is Earth About to Plunge into the Sun?!”
AI-generated image to prompt: “The earth plunges into the sun.”
Ka-ching!
(No, but we could sure use some extra cash, so click here to find out.)
“Does T-Rump have Proof that Obama was Born in Kenya!?”
An AI-generated image
Ka-ching!
(No, actually, but if you want to find out, click here and pay us money.)
“Could Space Invaders have Brought Life to Earth?!”
AI-generated image to prompt: “A fleet of UFOs hovers over the earth”
Ka-ching!
(Well, sure, anything’s possible. And, while we have no evidence of that, thanks for making one of the greediest people on earth a little richer!)
Dishonesty, greed, and mistrust work in a vicious circle. As you discover that more people are lying; that more people are evil, you yourself become more cynical and more tempted to lie, cheat, and steal. If you succumb to that temptation, it makes others more likely to lie, cheat, and steal.
Here’s the important thing to remember about a positive feedback loop though. It works in both directions. To the extent you can behave in a trustworthy fashion and be kind to others, it increases the chances that others will be inspired also to behave well. Cooperating is the natural and normal course for humanity. You will be happier doing that and you’ll help build a better world.
Donnie Dump arrived first. He sniffed. He sighed. The place stunk. He took a deep breath and ambled over to the plain wooden door with the brass numbers ‘4’ and ‘2’ glued on at a slight angle. The door looked to be plywood.
He dug around in the front right pocket of his too-tight Lee’s and found the crumpled piece of paper. He uncrumpled it. He nodded and mumbled: “Yep. This is the place.” He re-crumpled the paper and jammed it back into his pocked. Then, he turned the cheap brass knob and pushed. The door opened into a room without light. “Crap. I’m the first one here.”
Donnie fumbled around the door jamb for a light switch and flipped one. He said, “Let there be light.” And, there was light. A row of florescent lights flickered on to reveal a small arc of cheap chairs. In a corner of the smallish room, a vending machine offered a variety of salty and sugary snacks.
Donnie hated being late. But he hated being early even more. Yet, here he was. Early. The first one here. He thought, How the hell was I supposed to know traffic would be so light. The truth was traffic was always “unusually” light now, but he hadn’t yet connected the dots; he hadn’t noticed nor had he realized how that fact related to his own ‘second career’ as he often called it.
AI generated image.
Just then, he heard a noise and spun quickly to see another obese, masked marvel of manhood who raised a hand to him and said, “Hey. AA?”
Donnie nodded and began to regret having agreed to come. His wife Maggie had been insistent. Maggie the Naggie, he thought. She should just mind her own damned business. “I don’t need fixing!” He had told her.
She had countered, “I’m not saying you need fixing. But you’re just—understandably stressed. It’s not an easy job.”
Donnie now glanced at his watch. He could see several other guys out in the hallway. He was glad to see half of them were at least as old as he was. It was hard work chasing down folks trying to run away from you. He thought: True, the numbers and the weaponry made it safe enough but so is a carnival ride and they’re plenty scary too. But it’s whacking ‘em on the head I really get off on. Head wounds bleed a lot. The thought that they might be stupid the rest of their life from that one blow, or have a part of their body paralyzed or weakened. That was power. I like the taste. And, when the opportunity comes up, I’ll take whatever the hell I want. What’s everyone staring at me like that for?
Everyone had been seated for awhile and had been taking turns jabbering on about something or other. The so-called “Facilitator” had just said something to him. But what? That’s the question. Everyone’s staring at me.
Donnie stammered: “Sorry, what was the question?”
The facilitator faked a smile and said in a pleasant voice that Donnie just knew had to be rehearsed: “Have you experienced any unusual symptoms since joining NICE?”
Donnie shook his head and thought: Symptoms sound like I’m some kind of psycho or something. Aloud, he said, “No, nothing. No unusual symptoms. Like what?”
The F-man shrugged and said, “Like drinking more alcohol than you used to or using more pot or bad dreams. Anything.”
Donnie shook his head. Maybe I shook it too hard. This is weird. No wonder Maggie wanted me to come. This is chick stuff. Feelings and that crap. I wish I knew what the other guys said. Doesn’t matter. They can’t prove what I think or what I did. We’re all masked. I can hold my liquor just fine. Who cares? It’s good to celebrate our victories. Kids. Some of them look like kids but so what? They’re criminals at heart. And not America citizens. Not because some liberals wrote it into a Constitution. Not with skin that dark. Everyone’s staring at me again. I want my assault rifle. Why is everyone staring at me?
Donnie said, “Look, I feel fine. I like beer. So what? I do my job. I’m only here because my wife insisted. Well, that won’t matter much longer. Everybody knows it works better when women are property and we stop pretending their people with their own ideas. Go on to the next guy.”
The meeting only lasted an hour but to Donnie, it seemed like a lifetime of boredom.
It was late when Donnie got back home from the meeting and the post-meeting meeting at the “NICE GUY TAVERN.” Maggie had fallen asleep in her bathrobe staring at the boob tube. The twins must be asleep, he thought.
I don’t drink too much. I just want to feel good.
Donnie didn’t see anything wrong with that. But he did see something wrong with his damned wife being asleep when he got home. He didn’t exactly shout, but he did want to be heard over the sound of the frigging TV and he did want to wake her up and he had been drinking so his “Hey!” Sounded a lot more like: “HEY! Wake the hell up, Bitch!”
Maggie sat up and said, “Hey, Donnie. How was the meeting? I didn’t realize it would run so long. Was it fun?”
Donnie was already pouring himself a few fingers of Jack D. He bolted it down in one gulp before turning back toward Maggie and snarling in a soprano of swishy sarcasm, “Was it fun? Was it fun? Did you boys have fun talking about your frigging feelings?” He switched to his own voice and added, “No, it wasn’t fun! It was boringand useless just like you knew it would be. Do me a favor. Next time you get a brilliant idea, just keep it to yourself. I don’t drink too much. End of story.”
Maggie didn’t really agree, but she bit her lip to keep from…saying anything she’d regret.
Meanwhile, Donnie was pouring himself yet another Jack D but only got two fingers’ worth. He yelled, “What the hell? Drink your own damned drinks! Don’t drink my good whiskey! Ain’t lady-like anyway! Don’t you have some sprizzer chicker drinker? Leave mine alone! Now, I’m out of Jack!”
At the moment Donnie said that, he was not, in fact, out of Jack. There was another fifth, unopened, staring right at him from the edge of the countertop. The fifth stood just a little too close to the edge. It should have known better but it didn’t know better because, first, it was filled with booze and secondly, it was only a bottle and didn’t really know much of anything.
In any case, when Donnie staggered and stumbled into the counter top, his elbow toppled the bottle onto the hard tile of the kitchen. Maggie and Donnie didn’t own any pets and the twins were asleep, so when the bottle shattered into smithereens, Donnie could see no-one to blame but Maggie. His subsequent screaming did manage to wake the twins who toddled out to the kitchen in a daze to see what all the commotion was about.
Maggie saw them toddling forward in their PJs and yelled at them to go back to bed, but not before each of them managed to step on several broken shards. Maggie was horrified to see the blood of her darling toddlers mixing with the stinging whiskey. The toddlers were none too happy either. Their pain and confusion were exacerbated by the increased tension they had felt at home ever since Donnie joined NICE.
Tears streamed down Maggie’s cheeks. She shook her head and stared at her husband—a man whom she had once loved. She could see that he was smiling and that the smile was genuine. It was the happiest she’d seen him since he had started working at NICE. She gripped the her elbows with her hands, knowing she should get her kids and fix them, but suddenly, she didn’t know how. She just cried silently wondering what had happened to the nice man who used to live inside Donnie’s skin.
Apparently, everyone else knew I was supposed to go head first.
The instructions, however, were far from clear.
And, although I didn’t know much, four billion years of evolution had taught me to take a few things rather seriously—such as: “Gravity is real!” And: “Don’t dive hard onto something head first.” So, the vague instruction to come out head first made no sense.
I considered whether feet first seemed a sensible option. I decided “yes” but only for someone with a well-developed set of quads and a months of practice in balancing. Otherwise, a being such as myself would simply topple over and smash their head anyway.
Thinking about it as best I could, coming out butt first seemed by far the most sensible way to enter this world.
The only problem was that I didn’t fit that way. So—I was at odds with authority figures such as my mother and her doctors before I was even born.
After 72 hours of labor, I finally let them win that argument and came out head first.
All of us could have been saved a lot of time and effort had the instructions been clearer to start with.
Is that why I ended up with a career in “Human-Computer Interaction” AKA “Human Factors” AKA “User Experience”?
Probably not.
More likely, it has something to do with the agony of the feet.
I inherited “flat feet” and that has been something of a life-long inconvenience. For example, beneath my ankle is another bone that sticks out much more than it does for other people. That bone often rubs against the side of my shoes and boots and that causes a source of both bruises and blisters. The lack of a working arch also contributes to my never being able to jump very well. In high school, when I was very fit, I was capable of jumping up high enough to touch the bottom of a basketball net. On my best days.
I never got close to being able to jump and touch the rim, let alone being able to dunk the ball.
Nonetheless, I spent many years of enjoyment while on my feet—playing basketball, tennis, golf, table tennis, football, baseball, softball, racquetball, running, and walking. Running speed was never a strong point but I do have good eye-hand coordination and know how to concentrate and adjust my play to the opponent(s). As I sometimes like to say, I’be been violating expectations since 1945. I’ve enjoyed every sport I’ve ever tried. I’ve also seen many people with much more natural talent than I have enjoy sports less. That’s one reason I wrote “The Winning Weekend Warrior” which discusses the “mental game”; that is, “Sports Psychology.”
I’ve also discovered some things about mitigating the negative impact of the feet I was born with.
For one thing, I never buy shoes without trying them on.
Another surprise is that all hard surfaces are not equally damaging. A basketball floor, a dirt track, an asphalt road, concrete, and steel all seem pretty damned hard. But it turns out that running on concrete sidewalks is much harder on my arches (and shins) than running on asphalt. It also turns out that standing still for a half hour is harder on my arches than is walking for an hour.
I’ve learned a number of obvious things like: losing weight helps a lot! Strengthening the legs helps. Having good supportive shoes helps. Wearing cushy sox helps. Avoid (when possible) walking on stone, concrete, or metal.
I’ve tried a number of supplements too. For me, the ones that seem to help slightly are: turmeric, ginger, and sour cherries. I find that B12 seems to worsen joint pain. Elevation seems to help and so does ice. Of course, the trade-off is that ice and elevation are typically things that limit mobility.
I also use acetaminophen. I also use arnica gel which seems to help.
If there’s a real “solution” though, I haven’t found it. I was born with a bad design.
Everyone is.
Life is not, never was, and never will be about a “perfect design.” The environment keeps changing and organisms who adapt to the environment are always changing. That happens at the cellular level, the learning/behavioral level, and on a longer time scale, at the evolutionary level.
Not only that: change begets change. If, in response to one change in the environment, you make one adjustment, you might cause another problem. It’s the same with the design of physical artifacts, software systems, user interfaces, social systems, games, strategies, tactics, poetry, stories…
One can use knowledge to shrink a design space. Of course, there is always the chance that by shrinking the space, you are deleting the part of the space that has the very best designs. It took evolution billions of years to create multicellular organisms. Our own human bodies have a large variety of different types of cells. Within many of those types there are sub-types and sub-sub types.
Even within a sub-sub type, no two cells are precisely identical. They have different histories and they have different environments.
The feet that are “bad” are only “bad” in a certain set of circumstances. I’m sure that there’s some circumstance in which it’s better to have flat feet and pronated ankles. For example, it’s probably only a matter of time before there’s a top-rated “reality TV” show dedicated to the implications of odd body parts. That would be a show I would get to try out for because of my feet.
Recently, I got hearing aids. That’s a whole different story for another time, but they fit quite snugly and comfortably behind my ears. But we’ve all seen people who look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine. What do they do about hearing aids? Do they need a different type? Do they tape them behind their ears? What would be the best genre for the show about unusual feet or ears? Doctor Odds? Opera? Shure-Vivor? America’s Got Metatarsals?
Needless to say, we would have to make it extremely competitive and a little bit cruel. Maybe people with broken feet could run a race and the winner would live for another week and face a greater challenge the following week. The whole thing would be set in someplace chosen to be especially challenging for those with sore feet; e.g., uneven cobblestones, slippery concrete, on fallen tree trunks. Gorse, of course. Background music would be composed to add to the drama. Or, if the budget doesn’t permit human composers, we could ask an AI system to copy some Puccini or Bizet and change it just enough not be sued for copyright infringement.
The formula importunes for interviews. They need to be short, shallow, but filled with rage or tears. “So John, when did you first learn that your feet were…what is the PC term here?…Different? Weird? Horrific?” Before each competition, the contestants would be introduced with fireworks and flashing lights along with extremely loud and echoing words of exaggeration. We should get the same kind of introduction once reserved only for “Professional Wrestling” but now common in introducing contestants in Golf and Tennis. Why not insanely dramatic foot-offs in “America’s Got Metatarsals!”
It might be a bit expensive, but we can always cut costs to the bone. And then, just keep cutting!Who even needs real contestants? They can all be CGI. That, in turn, means there’s no need to limit contestants to the kinds of variations that actually occur. Flat feet? Okay. We’ve all heard about that. But how about flatiron feet? Elephant feet? Eagle feet! Grizzly bear paws! Duck-billed platypus feet! Amoebic pseudopods! Insect legs with pollen sacs!
Why stop there? Mice with elephant ears! Elephants with mouse ears! Whales stalking their prey on the Savannah, cleverly camouflaged in the tall yellow grass!Tigers leaping on Great White Sharks! It’s no more out of place than putting a thoughtless human being in a safari hunt And, the best part of CGI players is that we can interview them regardless of species and regardless of their native language. At long last, we can entertain ourselves to death while the actual ecosystem around us is being destroyed by the greediest members of the greediest species who ever existed.
What happens when greed exceeds needs and vital functions of society are left to the unfit, untrained, uncaring, uncouth, criminals? They’ll be about as effective as the Whales of the Serengeti and the Elephant-Eared Mice of Siberia.
petersironwood 