In 2022, I am committed to making forward progress in Bachata! Being challenged is no excuse for not trying. This blog post tracks my journey.

Jan 7, 2022: I have been practicing this week. I’m bouncy (not good) with stiff hips (not good) and cloggy feet (not good). To avoid bouncing (which I use to help me keep track of counting), I wanted to learn hip movements. But hip movements are hard… in-person training was confusing, some videos confused me. And I have to watch women on Youtube to learn...

…until now! I found Marius and Elena on Youtube! I love this channel, the explanations are so clear! And Marius will explain things for guys, and even show what mistakes look like (hey, that’s me!) vs the right thing. So helpful!

Today’s favorite video is: 5 things to improve fast in 2019 (for Beginners), which is a walk-through on how to coordinate feet, knees, hips, chest, and hands to look smooth! Fundamental stuff.

I also see they have combo videos, to help train up on some common combos to “freestyle” on the social dance floor! A ways to go, but at least I know I have some help getting there :)

Jan 1, 2022: I attended “The Bridge” event in Oakland. Shurui and I arrived at 8pm so we could participate in the class learning. Kathy was amazing, starting from the very basics so I could follow along. I could follow at the beginning, but got lost as the singles choreography got more and more complex. I got discouraged, and wanted to quit. BUT, Kathy helped more, and I knew I shouldn’t give in to feeling ashamed or discouraged, and just to do my best.

Even more challenging was to continue through the couples choreography. I learned about half of it, and completely missed the second part. Social dance, you rotate partners, with leads (men) rotating to new followers (women). Bad enough I had to stumble, even worse (in my thinking) to mess up a follower’s experience. And there were too many leads, so the opportunity to just bail and bow out sat next to my uncomfortable feeling, at every step.

But I kept going! I know to improve, I have to push through these uncomfortable feelings. And I know that quitting slows down progress. So, I tried to be as gracious as I could be, tried to ask my followers for guidance on the steps, and did my best to fake it! By the end of the dance lessons, I felt both happy and emotionally exhausted.

Keep trying, keep trying!

Current online lists of national parks are so. very. bad. So I thought it’s useful to share my own. I care about:

• Depth — is the park a one-hit wonder, or can you explore and enjoy?
• Activities — is this drive-up-and-done, or are there cool activities?
• Beauty — how cool is the place? Ok if it’s specific to time of day or year!

Top Parks — Gotta Gooo

1. Arches National Park — natural sculpture garden. So many places to explore, from drive-up to day-long hikes… but you don’t need to do a 5-day backpack tour to do any of it. Time of day, time of year, you can enjoy things all over again. I can visit this park over and over and never get bored. The best park, by far.

2. Yosemite National Park — Grandiose beauty. Incredible walls, waterfalls, and forested nature. Amazing hikes of all kinds and sizes. Scale is incredible, but also makes exploring the park challenging — as does the park’s popularity.

3. Yellowstone National Park — incredible features and science. Amazing to view all the different features of the caldera, not to mention the waterfalls, forests, and everything else. It’s so huge, it feels like multiple parks all in one. Impossible to do thoroughly in one trip, and fairly remote, so harder to access.

4. Zion National Park — I totally missed on Zion the first time I visited. I went to Grand Canyon first, and Zion is not nearly as obvious. But the hikes are diverse and incredible — Angel’s Landing and Observation Point hikes both blew my mind. So much intricacy and things to do here, from hiking to spelunking to wading in the Virgin River.

5. Grand Teton National Park — Incredible, wild beauty. Smaller in scale to Rocky Mountain, but feels more wild for the day-hiker. Hiking into the snowy peaks from crystalline Jenny Lake is just .. breath-taking.

6. Grand Canyon National Park — I can’t quit Grand Canyon NP. I haven’t fully explored — Horseshoe Bend and the Havasu area still to come — but the main area is too obvious, too hot, too unenjoyable to hike. But it’s just so damn beautiful, so amazing, so perfect for sunrise and sunset and changing seasons…

Places to recreate

7. Rocky Mountain National Park — An enormous park. No “obvious” features (other than height), but just endless opportunities to explore, enjoy, and simply … recreate.

8. Olympic National Park — Smaller in scale to Rocky Mountain NP, but offering similar opportunities for true recreation. Dive deeply into the dark temperate rain forest (don’t get slimed by the banana slugs!), or climb one of the many peaks to get an incredible overview of the Pacific Northwest. A bit too wet to enjoy as an overnight camping experience, but nearby lodges made the trip comfortable and fun!

9. Mt Ranier National Park — Like a younger cousin to Yosemite Valley, Mt. Ranier consists of one incredible peak and a whole lotta beauty surrounding it. Wildflowers and size push this up a notch.

10. White Sands National Park — A true white canvas for creating art and fun. From dunes diving to natural paintings from sunrise and sunset, the wind-swept dunes are truly a marvel. It’s worth the distance to visit, but remember — you’ll need to bring your “A” game to avoid this being a one-hit wonder, spend-five-minutes-then-bail park.

11. Crater Lake National Park — This park shouldn’t be ranked so highly; you have to be here at the right time and the right angle. But the sunrise view of Crater Lake is so spectacular, it can single-handedly vault this remote park into my top 10.

12. Great Smoky Mountains National Park — Think of this as the Rocky Mountains of the East; nothing is a “must visit”, but everything is enjoyable and highly available for everybody to have fun.

13. Bryce Canyon National Park — I’ve visited Bryce Canyon three times. The first was in February 2004, and it blew me away with it’s beauty; the first time I’d ever seen “hoodoos”. Subsequent journeys validated that one visit was enough; extra hiking or exploring didn’t stand out for me. One of the best “one-hit wonders” out there.

14. Death Valley National Park — Intellectually, this park is fascinating. Things happen here that happen nowhere else, including rocks that move on their own, extreme temperatures, and rocks that look more like art than stone. Yet… it’s not all that fun here. It’s hot, dry, and barren. Hard to rank this any higher than #13.

15. Everglades National Park — Specifically my experience in kayaking out to a private island in the Florida Keys as part of my adventure in this incredibly diverse park.

16. Mt St. Helens National Monument — I have a soft spot in my heart for Mt. St. Helens, as I’ve explored most regions; from the backside hike to Hummocks Trail and Sediment Dam, I’ve enjoyed this national monument up and down. Miss you Kid Valley Campground!

Places to have a good time, if you’re nearby

17. Sequoia & King’s Canyon National Park — A solid national park. Interesting, enjoyable… right in the center of experience.

18. Badlands National Park — You probably won’t be nearby, but the colorful striations make for interesting photos, and there’s a fair bit to explore.

19. Devil’s Tower National Monument — Another that’s fairly remote, butit’s one of my favorite examples of basalt columns (though much of Iceland and Latourell Falls in Oregon are also favorites).

20. Mt Rushmore National Monument — I never thought deeply about Mt. Rushmore, so I had no expectations. When I visited, I found it breathtaking, and the story was very cool.

21. Petrified Forest National Park — Having been a dinosaur nerd in my pre-teens, I wanted all my life to observe petrified wood. This park gave me that and then some. I loved it, totally geeked out.

22. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park — I didn’t explore, but enjoyed the overlook of the marbled rock during moonset and sunrise was pretty darn great.

23. Carlsbad Caverns National Park — I haven’t been to few caves, but this park made everything super easy. Loved the formations, loved the bat stories. But you can only get so far when photography is just this hard :)

24. Craters of the Moon National Monument — Unlike most of the parks in this tier, I really enjoyed exploring this park. The ground was sharp and varied, so many intricate formations everywhere. But very dry, bright, so bring lots of water!

25. Lassen Volcanic National Park — My first time through, I missed most of the really “cool” things — as the peak is probably my least favorite part of the park. Lots of places to explore in this park, outside of the peak, that grab my interest more.

26. Saguaro National Park — North and south, definitely worth a drive through on some of the dirt roads and a sunrise hike to enjoy light on the amazing landscape and cacti. Even better if you get morning dew or blossoms.

27. Guadalupe Mountains National Park — My first park where I could observe endless fossils while hiking. The hiking wasn’t amazing, and it was overcast, but I loved it for the feeling of discovery that having fossils at my fingertips gave me.

Places that I can confirm, should be national parks

I enjoyed my time there, they’re better than most state parks, they should be National Parks. But .. they’re not the best.

28. North Cascades National Park — Beautiful area. Maybe I didn’t know the right places to go. Did some strenuous hikes, didn’t feel particularly rewarded for them.

29. Redwoods National Park — Redwoods are amazing. But it just lacked .. story. I prefer Sequoia National Park, and the convenience of other Redwood State Parks in California (e.g. Big Basin SP, Richardson Grove SP)

30. Canyonlands National Park — A great overlook and lots of cool open space. But open space that is exposed, hot, and dry is not what I personally enjoy.

**NEW** 31. Hawaii Volcanos National Park — Super interesting park to read about, and even got to visit with an active volcanic eruption. But … dang, it’s hot there, and not that much fun to walk around. And roped off from the active flow to be really far away. I think I prefer the movie version…

32. Joshua Tree National Park — Sweet, picturesque trees that will be more unique to east coasters than most coastal Californians. With smooth rocks and rock climbing, definitely a National Park. A bit sparse for my taste, perhaps because it’s large / more challenging to explore, rather than it being uninteresting. I can imagine loving it if I were a local!

33. Pinnacles National Park — One cool hike with really nice rocks and views from the top, and some tromping around for kids in a small river basin not too far from the parking lot.

34. Mesa Verde National Park — Very cool ruins of ancient societies. But without being able to get too close too often, and the focus on reading the history, the effort to visit makes … less sense.

35. Montezuma’s Castle National Monument — See above. Definitely cool to visit one or even a few parks like this, but the frustration of being removed and not really being able to explore, makes this more like a museum than a park for me.

36. Theodore Roosevelt National Park — Amazing, wide expanses with wild buffalo. Quiet and serene. Rolling hills to the max. Should be a National Park, but, if I hadn’t already been on a road trip to visit here, I’m not sure I would have felt happy with my investment to enjoy this.

Places I am dying to go.

1. Banff National — I’ve heard many people tell me they’ve really enjoyed it. Want to take a motorcycle trip up there!

2. Glacier National Park — Similar to Banff, though more stories of Banff being better. Still, never been to Montana, just want to enjoy!

3. Acadia National Park — I’ve lived all over New England and yet never visited Maine! My step-mother visits all the time and swears by this park. I gotta go!!

5. Shenandoah National Park — Found this when researching a road trip from Tennesssee to New England with my Nashville-living brother. Looks amazing; scenic, cool views and drives, interesting rocks even!

6. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — I’ve somehow missed this park in my multiple excursions to the Colorado Plateau and its erosive storytelling. I’ve heard up-and-down things about this area, but I bet with sufficient recreation interest (rather than drive-through interest), it’s amazing!

**NEW** 7. Capitol Reef National Park — Highly recommended by a friend. I may have driven quickly through it, but never explored. Feeling excited now!

8. Cedar Breaks National Monument — Like a mini-Bryce Canyon, was recommended by the link below — and I’m now totally inspired!

State Parks Better than National Parks

1. Anza Borrego State Park — One of the most amazing recreational parks, for those with equipment and guts to explore off of the paved roads. Font’s Point alone is worth the effort. Would rank top-15, potentially top-10 as a National Park, with so much diversity in what can be explored…

Really, really smart links that rock

Best US National Parks to Escape Crowds — Lists very popular parks, and alternative that are quieter — and super interesting.

1. Dream On, by Aerosmith (tab) —
2. Nothing Else Matters, by Metallica (tab) —
3. Hotel California, by The Eagles (tab)-
4. Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana —
5. Stairway to Heaven, by Led Zeppelin (tab)

I’m also using the following instructional videos to learn Guitar and Bass:

• Very, Very, VERY First Beginner Bass Lesson (7 Steps), by BassBuzz —
• 10 AWESOME riffs that taught me guitar (easy to hard), by Paul Davids —referred by BassBuzz, who also did a similar video for bass.

And finally, here’s some songs I practice on my own…

• Thunderstruck, by AC/DC
• Over the Hills & Far Away, by Led Zeppelin
• Oh Me, by the Meat Puppets

One of the key ingredients for my recipe to lose 20 pounds this year is: soup! Here’s my list of soups that keeps me on track.

Or shall I say, “soup”? Heated water with any and all ingredients. Recently, I realized: I can actually research delicious soup recipes. I love all kinds of soup!

Here’s my favorites that I found:

More veggie

• Pumpkin curried soup — Takes more prep, a bit spicy, but feels very clean. Mix of pureed vegetables and coconut curry is so nice!
• Tomato soup with goat cheese — Pure veggie, with tomato, onion, garlic and pepper (I did fresh) at the core. Texture and flavor are a bit like tomato sauce, but the goat cheese is what really makes this taste gooood.

More heavy

• Corn and leek bisque — Can be extremely sweet, due to the natural sweetness of corn. A bit heavy with the amount of cream as well.
• Hungarian mushroom soup — heavvvy on the cream (sour cream) and flavor! Easy to make :D

No Need to Try

• Butternut squash, versions 1 (slow-cook) and 2 (regular) — These follow similar ingredients to the Pumpkin curried soup, but add apples for sweetness. Likely heavy on the curry, according to comments…
• Tomato bisque with fried cheese — Similar to tomato soup, but with cream. We want more clean veggie than cream, so we’ll hold off on this one.

Next to try

• Tom Kha Soup
• Coconut curry soup

Try sometime

• Vegetable curry soup
• Coconut chicken soup
• Fish stew with aoli
• Salmon chowder
• Seafood bisque
• French onion soup
• African peanut soup
• Coconut curry lentil soup
• Italian wedding soup
• Tortilla soup

This dataset is clearly a powerful one, and props to the Stanford CEPA for doing the work to curate it. The methods for constructing the dataset generally sound reasonable (see two exceptions in “concerns” below).

I find two things alarming.

First, that the NY Times digs into the gender-achievement-economic interaction in Math before the effect of gender-achievement in English (both in the headline and text; the English effect is lost in a sub-paragraph sentence when describing the dataset). In the original paper, this is not the case — they (rightly) point out the gender-achievement gap for both together.

Why should we focus on one gender-equality gap and not another? Can we rightly assume that the two are independent of each other? And why ignore the main effect of gender in achievement, or its variability with age?

Second, the study itself attempts to explain th gender-achievement-economic interaction in Math, but not the gender-achievement effect in English. The effect in English is stunningly large and consistent — why is it left without discussion?

I will repeat: can we rightly assume that achievement in English and Math are independent of each other? I don’t know, but I do know the question is worth asking, as we need to know: would achievement in one subject area affect performance in another? I can see arguments for (e.g. time in one takes away time in the other) and against (e.g. transferrable intellectual ability). The data are there for the original study to do so, but it is not done.

So we are left without answers to alternatives. For example: could low-income areas be hitting a floor effect (i.e. overall, all students have very low achievement, or fail to push any students to be high achievers), and so mask an overall effect of males outperforming females in Math, as we see for females outperforming males in English? Or perhaps there’s a social effect in lower income areas that discourages boys from math — plausible, given that we are identifying social effects that discourage girls.

And so, I worry. I worry when two publications seem to push main results and simple follow-up questions to focus on a single result, particularly when the result published coincide with the publications’ general narratives, and the things brushed aside do not.

Let’s instead address all the data, look for models that incorporate all important results, and search for policies that help all students achieve to their maximum potential.

Footnote: I do have other concerns with the paper and methodology; these are more niggly things that give me pause, but ultimately can’t prevent further discussion:

• The paper was published outside of a peer-reviewed journal, directly to their website, by the Stanford CEPA (Center for Education and Policy Anaysis)
• The paper may have been released early to a single source (the NY Times). This raises a concern that the analysts who published this paper come with a let-leaning perspective that may affect what questions they ask and how they interpret the results.
• The paper uses post-hoc reasoning in places, which are red flags for data analytics. E.g. when justifying the decision to aggregate schools to districts, the authors add justification from what the results look like: “our estimated gender achievement gaps are much more precise for districts than for individual schools”
• The paper only reports relative achievement, never overall scores. This makes it impossible to fully evaluate the complex transformations made to the original data, and makes it impossible to evaluate alternative conclusions to those discussed in the paper and article.
• The paper uses means rather than medians. This leaves it unclear when boys fail to outperform girls in math, whether it’s a trend across all students in a grade/district, or the failure to promote high achievers.

“Kingsman” managed to irk me on every front. It was an ugly, ugly movie — not for its gratuitous violence, but for its completely cliche characters and plots, its portrayal of men as heroes vs. women as in need of help or as sexual rewards, and for its underlying message (despite its best efforts to explicitly say otherwise) that actually: most people don’t matter.

The lack of originality in the movie, in terms of plot and character arc, has been covered elsewhere, so I will focus on the other two here.

Kingsman’s portrayal of women

I believe it’s fundamentally important to analyze how women are portrayed in comparison to men in the same movie. We are social, and we understand social roles by judging how peers compare to each other.

While compared to other movies, Kingsman seems to have a number of strong female characters (e.g. Gazelle is a strong character, Roxy wins the role as the next Lancelot, and the Scandinavian princess is the one character shown to resist Valentine’s plot), compared to their in-movie peers, women consistently come up short when compared to their closest in-movie peers:

• The three protagonists of the movie are all men.
• Roxy, the winner of the competition for the Lancelot spot, only lands the spot when Eggsy shows compassion that he is essentially applauded for. In addition, Roxy is shown to need Eggsy’s during her training and even after winning the competition, as she is afraid of heights, while Eggsy is supported by her only temporarily (upon first arrival) and in a relatively inconsequential manner.
• The Scandanavian princess does one relatively strong thing (refuses to cooperate with Valentine despite being jailed), but I found her completely undermined. First… she’s a princess (non-elected official). Much more importantly, her role in the movie winds up being as a sexual prize to Eggsy; rather than even thinking to offer him any of the meaningful prizes at her disposal, she offers sex. It’s absurd — but not in the slapstick manner the movie tries (and frequently fails) to achieve.
• Even Gazelle, the one strong “bad” female, is completely overshadowed by Valentine. Valentine is portrayed as brilliant, colorful, and funny. Gazelle is, in comparison, robotic and shallow. Even her best skill — her fighting skills — is dominated by Eggsy. Like every other woman in the movie, in her every aspect she is overshadowed by a male in the movie. The same cannot be said for the three male protagonists in the movie.
• All the little things are happy to continue established stereotypes and cliches — kingsman are … men — all of them. Only one recruit is a woman, and she succeeds largely because of Eggsy. Eggsy’s mom is battered, weak, and the victim of her husband’s death.

I also refuse to dismiss these issues simply because the bad guys are men, or because the movie is filled with male buffoons. Bad guys are still strong characters, and portray important role models. And just as in social situations, we tend not to relate to (nor attend to) the lowest-rung buffoons when other relatable characters rank higher. Disparaging the only women shown while having male heroes is simply not offset by having a bunch of male buffoons, who nobody identifies with nor really remembers afterwards, in the flick as well.

Kingsman’s portrayal of you and me

Kingsman seems to want to portray itself as a movie about class warfare and the importance of the individual. Valentine, the evil genius, aims to solve the world’s ills by “culling” the earth’s population while selectively saving the elite. The Kingsman (and Eggsy) foil this plan; by allowing them to, the movie seems to be trying to say, loudly and clearly, that the establishment of an elite class at the expense of the non-elite is simply not OK.

Only if their loud, but unspoken message were the same! Unfortunately, the cliched message above is really undercut by how the job is accomplished and the visuals that accompany it. Every important character in this movie is a member of the elite. The kingsman are largely elite in class, but that matters little. What matters is that their skill sets, their weaponry, and their minds are all elite. They are super-human. They are not actually like us — not in the way they move, not in the weapons they carry, and not in the ways they solve problems.

All along the way, people are murdered and killed without any fanfare. Whether it’s at the church, as defenders of Valentine’s hide-out, or any other number of murdered characters, the movie only pauses for the deaths of the elite. The movie trains us to dismiss death of anybody … unless they are elite.

This is not an issue just with Kingsman — it’s an issue with our celebrity obsession, and is pervasive in hollywood movies. However, in Kingsman the issue is so at odds with the overt message that I found it simply sickening to watch. I found it equivalent to parents who rail against children’s hyperactivity and childhood obesity, yet feed their children sweet treats before they even have the ability to ask for them.

Am I too uptight?

Seems that the director may find reviews such as these as “uptight”. Apparently the director really intended for gender equality and class equality to be major themes in the movie, and it’s my own failure to understand and accept the movie on his terms.

We’ve seen this kind of nonsense offered time and time again — it’s called victim blaming, and it’s not helping. Instead, my take-away from Kingsman is that if you want your story to be told, whether it’s about gender equality or class equality, it is not good enough to say what you say overtly. You have to make sure what you say through pictures and innuendo matches. Otherwise, you’re probably contributing to ingraining just the wrong thing.

Or, as I like to say: the manner makes the person. ☺

How I got Jimmy Graham purely through tireless waiver wire work

I traded for Jimmy Graham today.

I’m over the moon!

Jimmy Graham is such a valuable fantasy football player, and plays at such a difficult position, that he’s “undroppable”—if he’s on your team, you can’t simply get rid of him, you have to trade him to someone else:

Tight end is the most maddening position. If you’re not blessed by having a good tight end, it winds up like online dating—a new match every week.

Over 10 games, I used *5* different tight ends. Niles Paul, Jordan Reed, Charles Clay, Jermaine Gresham, and Owen Daniels scored 28 points for me. Over that same time, playing only 8 games, Jimmy Graham scored 95.

I’ve been scouring the waiver wire to try and fill holes at QB and TE, trying to collect players that can fill injury gaps and be trade assets. My hope was to pick up a player who could be half as good as Jimmy Graham. I did even better—I got players who got me Jimmy Graham.

This is the story of how I got him ☺

Step 1: I got Odell Beckham Jr. the moment Victor Cruz went down. I have been watching Beckham Jr. since I read this Grantland piece. Fast, great worth ethic and motivation, great route runner, great hands, a more accurate Eli Manning, and plays with Reuben Randle on the other side—everything said he’ll be great. And he has been.

After having him for 3 weeks, I was able to trade Odell Beckham Jr. for Greg Olsen.

Step 2: collect assets along the way. I keep an eye on players I think can quickly become valuable, particularly ones with really high ceilings.

• Jerick McKinnon — He’s been touted since the beginning of the year by Matthew Berry. After Adrian Peterson’s suspension, he was behind Matt Asiata for a few weeks. I picked him up even then, just in case… and he’s been the starter for three weeks, averaging 8 points per game—even without scoring a touchdown, nor breaking any of the big plays (yet!) that is expected (though just wait for this week in Chicago…)
• Ronnie Hillman — I’ve been eyeing Hillman all year. Peyton Manning throws. Denver will never be a big running team, and Hillman is a fast, skilled pass-catcher. When Montee Ball went down, I got him immediately. He delivered!
• Adrian Peterson — I am shocked that people haven’t been tracking his situation that closely. The moment I heard he was possibly resolving his legal status, I grabbed him and stashed him. He was the #1 pick!
• Ryan Tannehill, Carson Palmer, RGIII — I have a big hole at QB, so I’ve been trying to pick up quality QBs all year. I picked up Carson Palmer pretty quickly; on TV he looked great, and his numbers were so consistent. Tannehill’s numbers were always better than he looked on TV, but he was also pretty consistent. Though none of these were included in the trade, they allowed me to feel out potential trades.

Step 3: Work it! I proposed a lot of failed trades. For each, I gave a clear explanation of why I thought the trade helped both teams and was fair.

And that’s it. I think that’s a very fair haul for Jimmy Graham; A tight end that’s scored just as many points so far, McKinnon and Peterson are a high-upside starting RB pair, and Hillman has a chance to re-emerge.

All from the waiver wire ☺

Mark Cuban has said clearly, on multiple occasions, that he’s not interested in running for public office. And why would he be? Politicians are largely cronies and sell-outs; president is not a position of power. Instead, power lies with those who drive the agenda of politicians: the big businesses that fund them. Nobody’s trying to hide that secret anymore—America knows that money drives politics, but a sense of complacency still hangs in the air.

But the great thing about fighting those who do things the wrong way is: you have a competitive advantage when you’re on the right side. That’s why it’s the right side! Either you have a better financial strategy, an outlook and policy that is more inclusive and inspiring for more people, or you have knowledge, expertise, and engineering skill on your side. These are all the reasons that I believe movements like gay marriage and equality, global warming, and atheism will ultimately flourish while short-sighted policies like limitations on genetic engineering will disappear.

The leaders of tomorrow are those who get the facts right, who leverage their knowledge to make better investments of their time and money, and are able to inspire all people—not just the ones who care about the facts, but also those who are more focused on their community. Those who are practical rather than being elitist, those who worry about getting the job done now rather than getting the job done on their terms.

It’s started. Fed up with advocates of policy change to combat climate change, who have failed to motivate the American public through dissemination of facts, Tom Steyer has pledges to play the game that’s been created by opponents to climate change. He has pledged 100 million dollars to advertise across 7 states the importance of policy change and movement towards green energy. Opponents who state that the campaign is self-serving may be right, but that is a distraction. All that matters is that he’s right, he’s personally addressing the need to reach the people alienated by fact-based approaches and fight opponents at their own game. Global warming is not a battleground about forcing the world to be fact-driven; it’s a battle to avoid killing off our global compatriots through drowning, starvation, or terminal dehydration.

Mark Cuban will lead America. He may not hold the official title of president, but it’s irrelevant. Those who hold the money, media, and technology hold the power. Those who pay attention to facts, who inspire others, and who stay ahead of the technology curve will maintain it. Mark Cuban consistently gets it right in each of these arenas. He gets it from the business side, from the technology side, from the media side. He gets it from the humanitarian side, from the bill of rights side, from the fairness-and-dont-be-a-bullshitter side.

The dude’s a smart guy, a compassionate guy, a hard-working and bottom-line-kind of guy. I’m very thankful that we have him helping to lead the way, because Mark’s voice is the closest thing to my voice that is out there. I know others who feel the same way. And I am thankful that a guy like Mark who always seems to “get it” knows that running for office isn’t the way to have impact, it’s to just keep doing what he’s doing.

Welcome… to the moonrise.

I am a moonrise fanatic. When I hear myself talk to other people about the moonrise, I start giving them a funny face… because I can hear how crazy I sound.

I thought I’d seen it all… until I found myself flying over Africa on the Royal Dutch Airlines.

I talk about the moonrise. A lot. Don’t believe me? Fine, let’s do this.

First: here’s my main resource for keeping track of the moonrise time.

Whenever I travel, I check the moon phase. I always know the sunrise and sunset times, and the full moonrise is always opposite the sunset, so as soon as I know the full moon is coming… I can’t be stopped.

Best moonrise experience: at the VLA (Very Large Array) in Nowhere, New Mexico (seriously—that place really is nowhere). Really cool place to be, and it just … popped up there unexpectedly. Or maybe it was the time I caught it at the Grand Canyon. Or right behind spectacular downtown San Diego. From Shelter Island. Or from Point Loma. Who knows.

Ever since visiting the Hadza in Tanzania—out in the roadless areas around Lake Eyasi, surrounded by Baobab trees, and filled with a stillness without English… I’ve wanted to return to watch a moonrise, with moonlit Baobab trees casting long shadows across the Tanzanian rolling plains. Or moonset. I’m flexible.

The Tanzanian bush; imagine what a moonrise could be like there.

I recently traveled to Rwanda. I knew that the full moonrise was creeping closer, and knew that I might have a chance to see it while in Gitwe, a relatively remote village in southern Rwanda. Now that I’m familiar with Rwanda’s endless rolling hills, that could have been cool.

What could be cooler? Watching the moonrise from the plane.

And so it came to be, due to a weather delay in our flights, that I would be flying over Africa during the full moonrise. Gotta see it. Gotta.

You can imagine my anxiety and irritation when the international legs of our flight wouldn’t allow seat selection before check-in. Nor after check-in. So after 1.5 days of travel and delays, the first thing I did upon arrival in Amsterdam? That’s right—I got on one of the airline self-checkin computers. No available free window seats remaining on our flight? No problem—I’ll pay! 50 Euros? Whatever!

Exit row. Window seat. Left side. Flying south, facing… east.

I was on the ground, but flying high. And when I got on the plane, and into my seat, I was grounded. I had the window seat… DI-RECTLY behind the wing. My view to the northeast: decent. My view to the east? Bigfatwing.

Those who know me understand the suffered silence I endured for 5 hours, trying to distract myself with work, kicking myself for selecting this seat. After all, I had even visited seatselector.com to read about what seats actually had windows—yes, I paid for a window seat with no window once—yet somehow, I was soon to be foiled by the wing. I should have known, I kept badgering myself. Fuuuuu.

And after 5 hours, the moonrise broke me.

Seeing the colors of the sky begin to change, I got desperate. Those who know me know I hate asking for anything, and that I’m extremely shy. Breaking through this extreme shyness and reluctance, I visited the Dutch stewardess in the back and begged her, in perfectly good English, to let me sit in business class to watch the moonrise. We had all been walked through the empty business class while boarding the plane, and I had heard at least 3 people during the flight request to be upgraded. I paid for a seat, I reasoned; I’m desperate! I pleaded.

My desperate puppy eyes and earnest pleas were enough to earn visit from the senior stewardess who was calm, patient, and very direct:

• When will the moonrise be? I don’t know.
• How long will it take? I’m not sure.
• OK, sounds interesting. Follow me.

And so it came to be, I watched the moonrise from business class, with the company of my new stewardess friend. And this is what we saw.

This is what the moonrise looks like from a plane, from up above Africa.

Did you expect the moon to rise through the clouds? I cetrainly didn’t.

Don’t believe me? Think it’s a hoax?

Then try this.

No joke.

No explanation.

No expectation.

Just a moon rising through the clouds.

I don’t get it. Explain it to me!

I could show you each of the hundred pictures I took in the 30 minutes it took for the moon to emerge from the clouds and slowly rise from below us. None capture the experience of seeing the moon rise from below, as if it’s of the Earth itself—like some kind of balloon coming from the ground up to meet you.

I would never forget the feeling that the moon is of the Earth.

I have a wonderful, amazing, beautiful, kind girlfriend Kelly. I’ve had 1.5 years with her, with more to come—MORE TO COME! In a life filled with impermanence and uncertainty, moving from place to place and career to career, it’s great to have something solid.

Solid like a brick.

But truth be told, there’s another relationship in my life. I never meant things to be this way, and I don’t know where things will go from here. But I live, travel, and talk using my old Nokia 6010. We’ve been together for almost 10 years.

My first cell phone was a Nokia—a blue 8210. Since then, I’ve had a heinous history with phones. Well, not so much as phones, but any pocketable devices: phones, wallets, keys. Though Kelly is thin, I just thank God that she’s not small enough to fit into any of my pockets

I broke every rule of my upbringing to purchase my favorite phone — a sleek, white, high-gloss flip phone while I was in Japan. There were dozens of similar flip phones offered for 1 yen; and every ounce of my upbringing told me: take the deal! But as it is with love at first site, I fell for her pearly surface and clean lines. After a day of trying to shake the feeling, I returned and paid 7500 yen ($75) for the phone. And after a year in Tokyo… not a scratch on her surface.

I didn’t think I could do that. I didn’t think I would do that.

When I returned to the states, I had to package up my favorite phone. I didn’t have anyone to call or text, phones didn’t have internet access, and the return to my home soil reinvigorated my thrifty side. I found a discount at Walmart for a Nokia pre-paid phone—grey, brick-shaped, sitting like a lump in my pocket. I pushed on with the “deal” and bought into their “Gold Plan” — 1000 minutes @ 10 cents a minute, good for a year.

It was an arrangement of convenience that I’d often try to escape.

My first foray: the iPhone. I’m not one to latch on to trends, but I wanted to build an iPhone app for a deals website that I had created. At the time, that actually required to purchase an iPhone. So with a heavy heart, I bought an iPhone. Sleek, beautiful, and “smart”. None of those traits prevented me from dropping it, nor from dropping it again. Add “robust” to the list of iPhone features—it was only after 1.5 years and the 12th time I dropped it that the screen cracked and I couldn’t use it any longer.

So then I recharged my balance.

My second attempt at a smart phone was a Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V. We never really saw eye-to-eye; she was thicker than my iPhone, the OS was slower and less sleek, and the apps were not as good. But I did get Internet tethering to work, and her price couldn’t be beat—$35/month for more data than I could use. Alas, she and my wallet must have hooked up and left me on a gloomy Friday morning, as I never saw either of them again.

And waiting for me, still with a battery charge and a “Gold” balance, was my Nokia.

And so we’ve grown into each other. Here we are, 7 years later, and I’m happy with my grey, brick-shaped phone. No matter how many times I drop her, her clock keeps ticking, her ringer keeps ringing, and her battery maintains her charge.

Nokia, I have been tamed.