Blog Archives

Gun Control (One Minute to Read)

1/20/2013

The issue of gun control is overwhelming and there is in my opinion, no easy or good solutions. President Obama certainly has good intentions but here are a few reasons why his Executive Orders won't work:

1) Almost all gun related murders in the U.S. are committed via handguns not assault rifles. Most of these murders are also committed by people the victims knew and were generally related to domestic violence and drug related violence. President Obama can't do anything to address handguns due to the 2nd Amendment.
2) Even if assault rifles are banned (which I don't mind as long as it's okay with the 2nd Amendment), people can always get their hands on an assault rifle through the black market. People who have ill intentions with guns don't own registered weapons it would be foolish. So some sick individual who wants to commit mass murder could get his hands on about any weapon he'd like especially since he can use all the money he had as he wouldn't have any short or long-term financial needs. So a ban on assault rifles really won't do what everyone is hoping it would do. I'm not saying there aren't reasons to try and do it I just think that based on what we'd be trying to accomplish, it wouldn't work.

What upsets me most about all of this is how the Obama Administration went all out on this issue with the above points in mind. He did it for emotional reasons and probably political reasons as well because he is a politician after all. It is well known that a good economy reduces crime. Less than 100 people a year are killed by advanced weapons yet if he and his team would have been all hands on deck on the issues of debt reduction and over-spending he would have been addressing the needs of hundreds of millioins of people. Having managed people practically all my career and having been a business owner, I can tell you that prioritizing sometimes is a difficult task because everything seems critical but as a leader you know to focus on the controllables. You also have to prioritize clearly to your team what two or three issues are most critical so they don't go whichever way the wind blows everyday. It's tough for a leader because he or she has a tendency to want to fix everything but it's not realistic and if you spread your team to thin nothing will get done properly; basically a mile wide and an inch deep. I don't think President Obama showed good leadership on this one but I believe his heart was in the right place.

The Ugly Truth about Paul Revere (Three Minutes to Read)

1/20/2013

Although famous in history as the man from Boston who rode to warn the patriots the British were coming, it’s actually more folklore than anything else. The media was looking for good stories to pump up the troops and to get more volunteers so sometimes they didn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

First of all, Revere wasn’t the only man to ride that night as it was more of a pony express type of run in order to keep the horses and riders fresh to make better time. Paul was from Boston and Boston had a good newspaper to get word out about the great ride and of course he sounded great to give Revere the credit. The military liked it because Boston had a lot of potential recruits so a story like Revere’s would make for good marketing. Revere was apparently a very arrogant man so he enjoyed the notoriety. But here is where a serious problem began. Famous people were often given positions in the military they didn’t deserve because the thinking was it would be easier to get soldiers to follow someone well known; there’s an inherent sense of security in it. So Paul Revere was made a Lieutenant Colonel and was given command of an artillery division (mostly cannons for use on ship and on land). Basically if the ship didn't need certain cannons for a fight then Revere could remove them and use for an on-land assault then take them back to the ship; a lot of logistics involved.

The British established a small fort at Majabigwaduce which helped them maintain control of Maine (Massachusetts had this territory at the time).The Americans had lost this land to the Brits and decided to take it back. The Massachusetts Militia was going to lead the charge so this meant Revere was going to get his first military action.

The plan was to go in with 19 warships knowing the Brits had only 10. They knew this because there were some loyal civilians there that helped keep an eye on what the British were doing. Keep in mind, they couldn’t grab a phone and call so they had a network of people up and down the coasts to get word out. They also had a good count of around 700 British soldiers so the Militia sent 1,000. The plan of attack was to drop off the soldiers before they reached the harbor where the British ships were anchored and where the fort was on top of the hill. The fort was actually far from finished which is another reason why the Americans thought it would be an easy victory. The ships would then come around the corner and attack the British ships and the fort with their cannons while the soldiers attacked the fort.

A lot of errors took place none more so than by the Commodore of the Navy but Revere was a terrible follower and leader and that was one of the main reasons they lost the battle. When the Army and Navy would tell him he needed to move cannons in various positions he didn’t worry about following orders and did what he thought. When they asked him for 12 pound cannonballs he’d sometimes use four pound. While his men slept on the ground in the cold, he’d have someone row him back to the ship to sleep in nice quarters. When they had to be up by sunrise to start firing their weapons he’d show up after he had a good breakfast. As you can imagine his men didn’t like him. He also didn’t know what he was doing. His men were firing all over the place barely hitting anything and Revere wasn’t in the bunkers helping them revise their aim. A couple of times his men were asked to participate in a march on the enemy and all the other military leaders were up front with their troops while Revere led from behind.

What was supposed to take the Americans a few days ended up going on for weeks. This gave the British an opportunity to sneak up on our fleet with big warships. When the Americans saw them coming they loaded up the ships with the military and took off up the channel. Revere was told to position his guns on the banks overlooking the channel so they could shoot down on the British ships; they didn’t want the British to catch up to them and either destroy or capture their
ship. Normally the Americans would avoid having their ships captured and would instead burn them down so the Brits couldn’t use them in the war. Revere refused to help and boarded a barge with some of his men and left. Later in the day they were being chased by the Brits back up the river and came upon the fleet again. One of the commanders told him to use his vessel to help move men off of the ships they were going to scuttle (burn) before the British got to them. Revere used to help and took off with what looked like a large load of supplies.

There were other problems as well that led to our defeat which I won’t get into but the bottom line is Revere failed his duty in many ways including always voting to retreat during their daily officers meetings. When he got back to Boston he was court martialed in private and they just gave him a reprimand so his reputation was still pretty much intact. He even became a very wealthy businessman after the war. You might be wondering why the court martial was kept low key and the answer is the same one that has been around for thousands of years. The media and the military made Paul Revere a hero for his famous ride because they were looking for heroes. The military sent a man who wasn’t qualified to do the job but they thought his reputation would make people want to follow him. They didn’t have a clue whether he was a good soldier or good leader. So if Revere failed they failed and they weren’t going to let that happen.

Revere deserved to be publicly humiliated and in my opinion thrown in prison for desertion. He was partly to blame for over 400 Army, Marine, and Navy personnel losing their lives; but politics saved him. Revere’s fame died dramatically over the years until Henry Longfellow wrote his famous poem in 1861: “Listen my children for you shall hear the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Next thing you know he’s famous again even getting a beautiful statue made of him prominently displayed in Boston. Amazing, isn’t it?

A shocking tale but a good dose of the real world. Our history books are filled with a lot of good stories that probably aren’t historically accurate. As someone once said: “History is written by the victors.” The real story about Paul Revere wouldn’t sound as good as the one we read in school. We already had Benedict Arnold so I guess we didn’t need any more bad stories of Americans during the Revolutionary War.

The Mystery of King Tut (Tutankhamen) Three Minutes to Read

1/6/2013

Probably just about everyone if asked to name a Pharaoh, would come up with the same name and that’s King Tut. He was nine years old when he took the throne and died just ten years later. By all accounts he was a great leader and was able to calm the citizens down from being so angry at the previous Pharaoh, who had gotten rid of all their gods but Rah the sun god. There have been two major mysteries about King Tut that were unsolved until recently: 1) Was there a mummy’s curse? 2) How did he die?

King Tut was 5’ 6” tall and he died in 1323 B.C. so when his sealed tomb was discovered in 1922 he had been dead for 3,245 years. When the tomb was opened it had unbelievable riches. There were statues of all kinds of different animals including dogs and horses and there was even a real chariot inside. It was typical to put things in a tomb the person enjoyed in life so he’d have them in the afterlife. Many of the things discovered were laced with gold. There were two miniature coffins that looked like King Tut’s and they found stillborn babies inside them; they assumed were he and his wife’s.

Let me start with the mummy’s curse which has been used in many great movies. What scientists figured out is that after thousands of years there was life in the tomb. This life was toxic mold. It wouldn’t have been too much of a factor but the archeologist who went in the tomb first was already ill and it is suspected the toxins killed him. The other five people or so who died, died of natural causes; so it was just a great story for newspapers to sell. The thing I find most amazing about this whole thing is that mold survived for thousands of years. My guess is that if there were cockroaches in there, they would’ve survived as well.

How he died is the amazing story. When x-rays became available they processed King Tut and found various issues. He had broken bones but they didn’t know if it occurred after his death. Unfortunately he got a little mangled when his body was moved to see what riches were in his coffin. What peaked their interests when looking at the x-rays is it appeared he had a skull fracture and it looked like he had a fairly small but perfectly round hole in the back of his head. At this point they came up with the theory that he was murdered either in battle or inside the palace (kind of like Julius Cesar) by being struck in the head. The news media went wild with this theory and the mummy storyline once again played out in Hollywood movies.

Then as we all know, the CT Scan became available. The Egyptian authorities gave the research team exactly three hours to remove King Tut’s body from the tomb and run scans. They barely did it in time because the donated and brand new Seiman’s CT Scan unit shut down. At first they thought there might really be a mummy’s curse but then they figured out the air conditioning to the unit had broken. So they hoped and prayed the $10 fan they placed next to the unit would allow them to finish the job. Fortunately it worked.

Then the real work began as they brought in specialists from around the world to study the scans and it was amazing what they found after thousands of years. First of all, he didn’t have a fractured skull it was a fissure that is normally on someone’s skull at his age, eventually it would’ve grown together. The hole they found was due to a technique embalmers used back then to remove the brain. Apparently they did this and also went through the sinus cavity. So the original theory was debunked, he suffered no head trauma so he wasn’t murdered that way; at least it made for a good story.

But here’s what they did find: he suffered an extremely clean break in his kneecap; it looked like it was cut almost straight through. They began wondering if the embalmers did it for some reason or the archeologist who first moved his body, but then they noticed that embalming fluid had gone to different places in the break and there was a little bit of healing showing on the bones which meant it occurred before he died. So the question was what could have caused a completely clean break back then with the tools and weapons that were available. If he fell he would’ve have shattered his kneecap not cut it through.

It ended up being the paintings on the walls that helped them finally figure out the mystery of his death. Apparently King Tut although young wasn’t the type of person who liked to sit on the sidelines during a war. He was good with a bow and arrow and he loved to hunt. The paintings showed him in two battles and one was with the Hittites and this painting showed him right in the middle of the battle. The other one had him a little ways away from the action shooting arrows at the enemy. It just so happens the Hittites were a major enemy and unfortunately had figured out how to use steel in weapons; their favorite was the axe. In considering the design of these axes it was a perfect fit to King Tut’s injury because his knee, arteries, and tendons, had been cut straight through. So the research team had their answer. They pretty much ruled out blood loss after the injury as a cause of death because according to the bone growth it appeared he probably lived about a week after the attack. The inflammation they saw helped them figure out that he died of an infection (Gangrene).

King Tut’s story is absolutely amazing and I’ve only provided a fraction of a percent of it. If you have the chance, please read about him because you’ll be glad you did.

The Magic of Pi (Less than Two Minutes to Read)

1/3/2013

Don’t worry this has little to do with math which you’ll see in just a moment. If you remember Pi from your math class, it was a little bit confusing. Basically it’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter but let’s not get caught up in this because it’s the numerical equation of Pi where the great story is found.

Pi = 3.14159 actually extends to over ten trillion decimals/digits (infinity). In ancient times mathematicians couldn't figure out the ratio to a circumference because their world was square so to speak. They could answer questions that were easily measured like squares but circles with their rounded edges were too tricky. They created a famous math problem called the "Challenge of Circling" the square where mathematicians used a compass and a straight edge (now called a protractor) to try and figure out the problem. Pi was eventually figured out in the 18th century as the best number they could use in a formula to calculate circular space. It wasn’t a perfect number as seen in the decimal points but it was the best that could be used at the time and it certainly has stood the test of time.

Here’s where it gets really interesting even if you’re not into math. Because of the initial sequence of decimals in Pi and considering how it strings out to over ten trillion digits, it contains every number sequence we’ve ever encountered in our lives (i.e. school locker codes, all street numbers, passwords, any phone number you’ve ever seen, etc.). There’s not a single clustered sequence of numbers that doesn’t show up in this string, now finding it can be tricky but through software code it can be easily sniffed out even though we’re talking about trillions of numbers. And if you assigned each letter of the alphabet to a number there’s no word ever written that couldn’t be found in the sequence. Isn’t it amazing?

Keep in mind this amazing story is based on the initial sequence of the decimals of Pi so other numbers with decimal points wouldn’t give the random numbers necessary to cover all numerical sequences and all words ever written. For example if you take 5 and divide it by 3 you end up with 1.666667 which is an infinity number but there’s no way you’d get random sequences of numbers that would give you all the phone numbers, addresses, locker combinations, etc. in existence. The magic of Pi. Pretty cool isn’t it?

Success (Three Minutes to Read)

1/1/2013

There are a lot of misconceptions about what success actually means. First of all, it’s a relative word because it’s defined by people not definitively by Webster’s. Someone who’s successful is said to have money, influence, and/or power. Keep in mind the word happiness is nowhere to be found in any true definition of success. I grew up in a poor farming community in Oklahoma so it didn’t take much for me to think someone was successful so I defined it not Webster’s.

With the above in mind, most people strive for success thinking it will bring about happiness only to have their dreams crushed once they achieve it. Think about how many entertainers came from such modest backgrounds and achieved stardom only to find it wasn’t enough. There are more psychiatrists, plastic surgeons, and rehab centers, per capita in Los Angeles than any other place in the U.S. This should send everyone a very strong message but it doesn’t. In a lot of ways success is like the fabled Sirens, who lure sea captains to their deaths through their beauty and enchanting songs. These sea captains often knew they were trouble but they couldn’t help
themselves. This is how the lure of success is.

So if you can’t help yourself, I’ve listed below those things that help people become successful:

1. Becoming successful is much easier if you’re passionate about what you’re doing. A lot of people jump into things they were told could make them rich and this often leads to failure. Being passionate about something makes you more determined to stick to it even during the inevitable hard times.

2. Have a strong work ethic. Throughout my career, I’ve beaten people who were more talented than me and I did it through working harder than them. I hate to even write this, but I've found it easy to outperform other people because in my opinion only 5% of the people working in a particular department have an ownership type of mentaility, the rest are mostly focused on just getting through the day. I was always the first person in and the last to leave in the departments I worked in and my bosses always recognized this. They took this as being loyal to the company so when a promotion came along, I typically got it.

3. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses and play to your strengths. It’s kind of like the difference in knowing where the sweet spot is on a baseball bat. You can swing just as hard and one part of the bat will send the ball flying deep into the outfield while not hitting the sweet spot can help the other team turn a double-play. There has been countless research done on this topic and the take-away is that someone’s weaknesses are generally personality related which means good luck making much difference in trying to fix them. So they see it as wasted time and that the best investment in time is to build upon our strengths. Focus on them and make them even stronger and you’ll have a real advantage over other people.

4. Surround yourself with people who have positive attitudes. It takes positive energy to help accomplish some of the areas I listed above. We all know that we intrinsically obtain energy from other people whether positive or negative. We literally feed off of what those around us have. I realize that in some cases it’s difficult to avoid negative people because they’re already a family member or friend but if this is the case, start limiting your time with them to the best of your ability. I’ve had to slowly let some people slip away from my life because I couldn’t afford to have them around. It’s not easy to do but I knew the outcome of my life didn’t just affect me it had the potential to positively affect a lot of people in my life. We only have one shot at life, so you need to be aware of things that will help you and what will hurt you and be willing to make tough choices regarding both.

5. Find a good coach. Having someone you can meet with on an ongoing basis, who’s already successful is a great way to help you think outside of the box. It’s too easy to get tunnel vision so you can miss some great ideas. I used to meet with other business owners every Tuesday morning at my office from 7:00 to 8:30. We’d read business books and then discuss each chapter. We’d watch presentations on our big screen and then discuss what we learned. Then we’d share any concerns we had in our businesses and pick each other’s brains. I’m retired now but I loved those meetings. Having someone you can turn to both personally and professionally takes an enormous amount of stress off of you and makes you so much more effective. Why not tap into someone else’s insight who made the journey before you?

These are just a few tips on achieving success in your life. Once again I need to elaborate that if your desire in life is to be happy, the pursuit of success doesn’t automatically bring it in tow. Money doesn’t buy happiness. Money buys a house but not necessarily a home. Money can buy you relationships, but not love.

Not some things, but everything loses its luster. All you have to do is look around and you’ll see things everywhere that you were so excited about getting at one time and now you hardly notice they’re there. Even the excitement of buying a car or a new home, eventually loses its luster. This is one of the reasons success doesn’t lead to happiness. When you have a lot money, everything you buy is a temporary happiness fix…it is never sustained. It's kind of like people on drugs, they are never satisfied so they often think more drugs or better drugs will do the trick but it never does.

Money buys you a pseudo world and you never know what the real world is until your influence and/ or money is gone. Your world becomes much quieter when you no longer have these things because your phone will stop ringing. You end up finding out who your real friends are and if you end up with a handful you're blessed.

Before I retired as a business owner, I had so many friends it was unbelievable. I could’ve eaten out almost every night of the week if I wanted because people wanted to be around me. Then when I left the company I was dropped like a hot potato. At first it bothered me because people who I thought were friends moved on, but then I realized it has always been this way. It wasn’t me but just how the system works. Money makes you more attractive. Money makes you funnier. Money makes you the smartest person in the room. Money makes you a social phenom. Money makes you believe in a world that doesn’t really exist. Knowing and believing this upfront will give you a much softer landing.

Gun Control (One Minute to Read)

The Ugly Truth about Paul Revere (Three Minutes to Read)

The Mystery of King Tut (Tutankhamen) Three Minutes to Read

The Magic of Pi (Less than Two Minutes to Read)

Success (Three Minutes to Read)

Author: John Mann

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