If only momentarily, there are some people that get to experience the feeling and emotion of flight. During what appears to be a rescue operation, a person jumped from one of the upper floors of a high-rise building onto a large inflatable mattress as a part of a rescue mission. The video is full of suspense because you watch the flight for what feels as a lifetime before the person lands safely.

Complexity is something with which we have a love-hate relationship. We love the challenges complex problems bring. And equally, due to their inherit ambiguity, we hate them. Complex problems, unlike those which are complicated, must be managed and mitigated rather than fully resolved. The real world is complex. It is full of inputs and outputs which we don't fully understand. Take the story of a farmer that wanted to get in better sync with our environment. By its very definition, farming was one of our first and most...

Recently I have been listening to the latest season of Embedded. Embedded is a podcast series that initially began by digging deep on a single news story. It has since evolved into following a subject closely and doing an entire season based on that. For example, prior to this season, they did an entire season on Trump Stories. Most recently, the season was based on Mitch McConnell. There were five episodes and in each one they told one aspect of McConnell that when done left me angered. For...

#2020election #trumpmotives #trump After two and a half years of a Trump presidency that has brought tears, shame, discourse and discord, polarization and an avalanche of democratic candidates, I have come to realize Trump's motives are not inherently evil, nor irrational. No, they are fully rational and always anchored in popularity and money. You can take almost any issue that has come up since his presidency began and you can categorize it into one of those two buckets; popularity, money or both. Take the following examples: North Korea...

#vaccines #malaria For most folks in the US, Malaria is something they hear about in the news, the global news segment. In a country of over 300 million people, Americans are seldom affected by the parasite (1700 cases annually). Unlike other illnesses we've become accustomed to hearing about, malaria is a parasite that, after transmission, matures and reproduces in the liver. Once matured, the parasite moves into the blood stream, where it finds a home in our red blood cells. So far, the only way to deal with...

In the US, today is Father's day. Back in May, we talked about how Mother's day is celebrated at different times in the year across the world. I won't do that today. Instead I want to talk about the difference in marketing. The message for Mother's day is to buy gifts for Mom. The message for Father's day is to take Dad out to eat. Have you noticed that? Or is it just me? Really, pay attention to the marketing and look at the difference. For Mothers it's...

https://youtu.be/PzfS1n8ED10 The silliness and craziness hit a new high this week when Trump unveiled his proposal for a makeover of Air Force One. In an interview with ABC news where Trump discussed various topics, including whether or not he would accept help from a foreign country to win an election (he said he would), he revealed his plans to repaint the iconic plane, Air Force One. The cost of the repaint? Over $3 billion. That is simply insane. Like always, Trump did a poor job communicating much more...

#trafficsolution #trafficjam #commuting If you have always lived in the US, this observation may be alien to you. And if it seems alien at first, please think about it and then let me know your thoughts. Traffic in the US, in large metropolises, has only gotten worse. The promise of less traffic through either self-driving cars or car-sharing has yet to materialize. Instead, the latter, has actually created more traffic as it has become a means of income for some people. My observation and suggestion is for highway...

The fight took place over the weekend, June 1, for the unification of the Heavyweight Boxing Title of the World. For this fight, Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz were contending to unify the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles. The fight only lasted 20 minutes (less 7 full rounds) and by the time it was over, a chubby kid was the new Champion. Watching the two fighters side by side prior to the fight, only Ruiz’s family and coach could have believed he’d win.

If you said Lithium, which has half the density of water, you'd be wrong. The answer is graphene aerogel, which holds the world record as the least dense solid.