rockstar.esq

This thread reminds me of a question posted online. "What's the medical term for a fear of chainsaws?". The #1 voted response was "Common sense"!

George, I'm going to have to remember that one!

Lots of very thoughtful replies here, thank you all! Anachronist, your brother reminds me of so many people in my past. They had a willingness to make themselves useful, which tended to make them irreplaceable. Twisted, I can appreciate your "trust but verify" approach with people. A lot of rookies don't present themselves too well. It's rewarding to have that trust pay off with a good worker/client/colleague. George, I can't begin to express how often I gauge the abilities of an expert by their willingness to check what they think they know. It has to be said that all too many experts upset their clients with a tendency to answer according to their specialist interests rather than providing a useful answer to their client. Frosty, I appreciate how you fleshed out the acceptable "faking it" against the "Knack" for seeing what matters. I harp on about "clarity of purpose" because I see a ton of situations where people insist on bureaucratic best practices in lieu of thinking things through. JHCC, that's an exceptionally elegant summation.

I had a conversation with a client a while back that was very thought-provoking. He's working at a General Contractor as a Project Manager / Estimator. Without question, this gent is more successful than at least a dozen past hires at this firm. He's not only landing profitable work, he's delivering the jobs on time and on budget. As with most stuff, there are a few qualifiers that matter. He's primarily working with repeat clients who typically have a committee that makes decisions. There doesn't seem to be much evidence to suggest that he's actually competing against other contractors for the bids. That being said, he's actually able to get some of the most indecisive client committees to sign contracts and generally get things done. Yet he feely tells me that he feels like an imposter since he lacks any sort of formal training, or even relevant past work experience in construction. I have the dubious distinction of having worked for quite a few clients who didn't know what they were doing. It's my considered opinion that most of the people working in Construction Management are doing more harm than good even as they follow industry best practices. There's a whole lot of seasoned professionals with unshakable confidence in their conviction that nobody can be trusted. Every particle of their bureaucracy is finely tuned to generate frustrating and costly snags. Conversely, there are a whole lot of rookies out there "faking it till they make it", by presenting an air of confidence they don't actually feel. A whole lot of them don't want to make a mistake, so they try to buffalo the world with endless and mindless demands for "more information". Every request for greater detail is a transparent attempt to find a gigantic arrow to point them in a safe direction. These folks call lots of meetings where everyone participates, but nobody does anything. Then there's my client who seems to build trusting relationships everywhere he goes. I don't know how he's avoiding the crooks and the fools, but somehow he's finding his way through. He doesn't seem to get pushed around by the clients either. It certainly re-frames the concept of an imposter for me. What do you think?

It occurs to me that the chain mail might be used in tension against the structural frame to create a stronger and stiffer wall section than just the structural steel alone. I also wonder if it acts as a passive dehumidifier for water vaper passing through.

Twisted Willow, I can't speak for surefires as I don't have any of the new ones, but the streamlight and Fenix LED lights last at least double as long on the same batteries as the Surefire I had with a Xenon lamp. Like Frosty, I'm old enough that I started my apprenticeship with Maglights. I've done a lot of attic work with a mini mag light in my mouth! It was in such constant use that I used to buy bulk packs of replacement lamps for the mini mag light. I also bought industrial grade AA batteries from the supply house because they generally got me one more hour of run time. I also had a four D cell model for area lighting. They were so heavy and awkward for service work that I tended to set it in the corner of a room so that it'd refract off two walls and a ceiling. I got a few lumps on my noggin when it fell on me during auto work. It had an unerring ability to only fit in one spot of the machinery to halfway light whatever I was doing. Somehow it knew when I had both hands committed to a task, and then it would pounce. Like a bee, it often died in the attack. I got to where I could replace the lamp on it in dark, confined spaces with a head wound, without crying too much. Still, it was always better than dragging a 120V cord connected trouble light around. Those really upped the ante in terms of angry equipment. It was pretty common to hammer in a staple, which broke the lamps filament plunging you into darkness. So you grope blindly for the light, which helpfully burns you. If you're particularly unlucky, your reaction to the burn will be to drop the light. Sometimes the wire cage protecting the lamp was not up to the task of preventing the glass bulb from shattering so that adds another obstacle in your now blind escape from an attic. On the plus side, you could follow the trouble light cord back out, and then you could follow the blood trail back to where you were working! George, I've never been caving before but LED headlamps have become cheap and effective enough that they're pretty common on construction hardhats. That being said, they're not all created equal. I have one made by Milwaukee that offers better color rendering which is particularly important to me as an electrician. It's also got several light levels which really helps for close up tasks. One thing I wish they'd consider doing is to put an old fashioned multi position switch on the danged thing. It's got a single pushbutton for everything, so you've got to scroll through the brightness levels to get to dark. The lowest output level is just before off so I often have to check that it's really off, otherwise I'm burning battery life for nothing. It's also a smidge frustrating that it automatically dims one level when the batteries are dying. I suppose it's better than going full dark, but it'd be super handy if it had a simple battery gauge on it so you knew to swap them before going someplace dark. Then again, it hasn't hit, burned, or cut me so that's nice.

I've had sure fires, stream lights and now I'm on to a Fenix PD35. Adjustable brightness is very useful in my life. It'll get bright enough to light the far corners of a derelict warehouse, while also allowing me to read a tiny label inside of a panel. The original surefires burned through batteries like crazy. I replaced my lost streamlight with the Fenix. Couple of years later, my wife found the streamlight in a woodpile. It works fine, only now she's claimed it.

JHCC , Frosty, Limiting principles wouldn't need to exist if the entire spectrum of options were acceptable. Consider a really simplified example like eating. One end of the spectrum is death by starvation, on the other end is death by gluttony. Bringing the boundaries in a bit, we could have malnourishment on one end, and morbid obesity on the other. It's not death at the boundaries, but death is not far off. Bringing the boundaries in a bit more, and we could have general healthy eating guidelines that define where corrective action should be considered. The guideline exists to initiate a change in thinking. Everything is shades of gray compared to it's neighbor condition, but any particular place on the spectrum is conspicuously different from median, range, or average. There's meaningful information getting buried in the "shade of gray" description. We're fooling ourselves to say otherwise. A few weeks ago I watched a presentation that explained how the U.S. Coast Guard boats conduct open water sector searches. It's somewhat difficult to explain without a diagram, but I'll try. Imagine a point identifying the calculated/probable location of the people needing rescue. Now imagine a three equilateral triangles arranged such that each has a single corner touching the point. The three triangles are arranged such that they look a bit like a radiation symbol. OK, now imagine the rescue boat following the path of those triangles, such that they only make left turns. One starts to wonder why they do this, because it sure looks like they spend a lot of time pretty far from where they need to be. It's only when we realize that the entire search area is dynamic, that this pattern makes sense. See everything in that area of that ocean is drifting in a direction for each moment in time. Any boat moving set distances followed by set course alterations (equal deflection left turns) , will end up zig-zagging through the drift path of the group in need of rescue, because they're caught in the drift just like the people they're rescuing. It doesn't matter if the drift path is linear, curved, circular, or whatever. What they're doing is allowing all the incredibly complex dynamics of ocean currents to steer their search where it needs to go. The search boat's zig zagging doubles the probability of crossing the group in need of rescue's actual path. My point with all of this, is that limiting principles don't exclusively benefit the single axis spectrum of possibilities. What they do, is allow people to see when drifting in one spectrum leads to serious consequences in other ways. If the search boat didn't make equilateral triangles, they could effectively steer themselves out of the drift path. Any pattern option is shades of gray in terms of the ideal for stumbling into a static position, but real life outcomes are virtually never about static positions. There are a lot of good intentions applied in one spectrum, which end in predictably horrible outcomes in another. I don't think the answer is to focus on the necessity of allowing a range of good intentions. I believe the answer is to be honest and accountable about the practical outcomes of what we do. That includes choosing not to see where one thing becomes another. People tend to find the things they're actually looking for. If everything is an island to itself where no shade of gray can be wrong, we deprive ourselves of meaningful inflection points for consideration. A lot of the things we think, aren't true. Our imagination often speaks with the same voice as our memories of lessons learned. We can soothe ourselves by rationalizing the mistakes we know we shouldn't have made. This is how we learn to believe or accept things that don't represent who we are. I believe cognitive dissonance is a sign that we're losing freedom to reconcile our thoughts in pursuit of flexibility to justify our actions. This sure seems to be making a lot of people miserable. I think limiting principles are integral to discipline. In my personal experience, discipline is integral to freedom.

Anachronist, I appreciate your point, principled people can definitely encounter friction in the working world. There's a foreman in our company like this. I've had several occasions to defend his work where I reminded all parties concerned that we pay him to get things done properly. On that score, he's one of our best employees. While I wish for his sake that his life was less encumbered by conflict, I respect his principles and how they lead to good work getting done. George, it's interesting to see how different things can be from one perspective to another. While I would agree with you that black and white rules are more appealing to me, I find my colleagues aren't of the same mind. The "shades of gray" approach seems to be especially popular with colleagues who employ strategies like plausible deny-ability and "there's fault on all sides" reasoning. What's also interesting, is how this parallels your point about how people do whatever worked last time. In their case, they have an entire career built on the absence of principle. JHCC, You really nailed it. The lack of limiting principles makes it virtually impossible for people to recognize when they're set up for cognitive dissonance. As a result, they tend to mindlessly grind on with whatever worked last time, even when the ratio of success to failure declines. You're point about the negotiating is really insightful. Tons of people wash out of my profession because they mindlessly grind away on estimates until they get fired. They are taught that you can't win unless you bid, so they try to increase throughput after every loss. Eventually they become so incredibly efficient at losing a high volume of bids that they get fired. If these people started with stating what they actually need to achieve, it'd be obvious that they actually need to secure profitable work by mitigating risk. That creates a set of limiting principles based on who you are, and what you're good at to define which prospects are actually viable. Figuring out what your clients actually need is a HUGE part of this. The whole "build it and they will come" approach to business is incredibly destructive. There are often good reasons for why clients don't exist.

Back in college I had a few "soft skills" business classes that sought to teach negotiation, mediation, communication, etc. Unlike my other classes which often hewed towards applying consistent strategies or formulas to solving problems. These "soft skills" classes emphasized that there "were many correct answers/approaches" to any given problem. At the time, I noticed that there was really no effort to define what a "wrong answer" or a "wrong approach" might look like. The closest we got, was when the instructor suggested that we could "keep trying" with different strategies until we found success. So far this all might seem obvious, but it relies on a very superficial level of thinking. This lesson presupposes that any effort to persuade a person will result in neutral or positive reaction. I suspect a lot of my classmates assumed that civility and good intentions were the only necessary safeguards against a negative reaction. I've encountered working professionals who could unleash an unholy torrent of hostile negotiations tactics without raising their voice, resorting to obscenity, or engaging in any form of dishonesty. Going in against them with only civility and good intentions as your defense would be like a mouse citing parliamentary process to a hungry feline. None of which is to say that I believe there is always only one answer to a given problem. This brings me to limiting principles. In situations where answers will be in "shades of gray" we often trick ourselves into believing that the boundaries of black or white do not exist. For example Is X right or wrong? Well, in some situations it's justified, in other's it's not. We can choose to decide each situation individually, or we can set a limit based on a principle. Inevitably, the limit enforced by the principle will call the principle into question. A lot of people seem to prefer the former over the latter, because limiting principles by definition, restrict your options. I believe this approach leads to cognitive dissonance which is the discomfort people experience when they hold mutually exclusive beliefs or attitudes. Here are a pair of mutually exclusive beliefs that are common phrases in business. "You get what you pay for" / "What did you expect of the lowest bidder". This suggests that best value corresponds to highest price. "Market value"/ "Market leader" This suggests that the best or absolute value corresponds to the lowest price. It doesn't matter if you're buying or selling with this cognitive dissonance, you can't arrive at a reasonable answer. This is obviously wrong, as most commercial empires were built by profitably offering great value at low prices. Imagine a tight rope strung above a net which is above a hard floor. Tightrope acrobats do all sorts of amazing things within that narrow straight-line available to them. But every action is governed by a limiting principle. Weight can be shifted in "shades of gray" but only in perfect counterbalance, otherwise they fall. They can move anywhere along the rope, but the sag increases as they approach center span. This changes the dynamics of landing a jump, get it wrong, and they fall. Now a lot of readers might jump to the conclusion that all the shades of gray can be lumped together into either a success or failure that is ultimately meaningless because the performers end their show in net either way. This ignores the entire point of the skill. Anybody can fall into a net. The net isn't a tightrope acrobat's limiting principle. Falling is a tightrope acrobat's limiting principle. Once they fall, they're just like everybody else. Did you notice that I never defined the height of the rope in this example? That'd be another limiting principle. If the rope was laying on the net which was laying on the ground, the rope wouldn't move so easily under the tightrope acrobat's feet. There would be no sag, no bounce, nor distance to fall. In short, it's no longer an acrobatic feat. From here, we could argue that rope dynamics should a limiting principle for tightrope acrobats. OK so how does this apply to business? Well my classmates went out into the working world trying to represent their companies well. They figured their civility and good intentions were a net which would catch their every fall, after which they could just climb the nearest tower and try again. They didn't train on tightrope walking, because they were taught "there are many correct approaches". Yet everywhere in life we've got perfectly understandable boundaries like schedule, budget, quality, integrity, competition, and honesty, that really narrow the viable paths to success. The Pareto principle teaches us that 80% of the outcomes result from 20% of the actions. That's a metaphorical tightrope which applies as much to processes as it does to people. A limiting principle which focuses your efforts on the 20% of people and processes that generate 80% of the desired outcomes leads to a 4x reward, with zero loss. Bear in mind that simply chasing successful people and processes isn't enough to land work, one must offer something useful in exchange. Aim at opportunities you can actually hit in terms of your cost, abilities, and value relative to the relevant market. As a limiting principle, the viability of any given opportunity should correspond to your individual market leadership. Here again, focusing on what you are good at, is a limiting principle which actually improves your probability of success. Even in situations where one is testing their abilities in new ways, the focus is on defining what works, rather than chasing all possible tails.

Billy, I had heard a little about Patton being involved in their design. Thank you for the lead on Matterhorn. I found a bunch of surplus stores selling them for right around $130.00 so we may have stumbled on the only thing going down in price right now!

JHCC, It's entirely possible to come to incorrect conclusions using either method, and you're correct that Holmes used both. I was careful to quote textbook descriptions and they generally agree that deductive starts with a theory, whereas Inductive reasoning starts with observations before working toward theory. A simpler way to put this is deductive is top to bottom reasoning, whereas inductive is bottom to top reasoning. Nodebt, I appreciate your effort to elaborate on your struggles and I wish you well with them.

Nodebt, I can see yours and Doyle's point in terms of personal growth, or deriving meaning from a struggle. I can also see how dealing problems can range from difficult-but-possible, all the way to a lightning strike to the noggin where participation doesn't require cooperation. This conversation comes at an interesting time for me. I've got a lot of people in my surroundings that are really good at process oriented thinking, but they struggle to see how systems or relationships affect the outcome of their process. At the individual level, they're struggling with the old fight or flight decision. Once they commit to a choice, they neglect the effect that inertia that can have on their subsequent decisions. For example, let's say they're trying to obtain approval to move forward in some obviously bureaucratic but largely undefined process. They decide they're afraid of delays or rejection, so they decide to comply with easily identified processes that don't appear to lead where they want to go. Once they're in flight mode, they seldom want to break stride to reconsider whether the next layer of process is worth resisting. Again, nothing about the process appears to lead where they want to go. However they're now deep into the whole "sunk cost" fallacy where they figure they've invested so much time already that they'll just sink a bit more to see it through. Time passes and they finally arrive at the end point, only to be told they started in the wrong line. The go to a different line, and repeat the entire performance. Maybe they get what they need, but often they "learn" that there are at least two paths to failure. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, there are people who sail through the same bureaucracy because they had; the temerity to question process, the resolve to do good work, and the willingness to map out what matters to who, and why. So while I generally agree that one can benefit greatly from exercising their abilities to problem solve, I think there are a lot of people whose biggest problem is getting overwhelmed with routine tasks. "Solving" such a problem only increases the threshold of their capacity, with no corresponding gain in knowledge, pride, or earnings. It's sad to put it this way, but a lot of people know they're getting paid to grind along. Picking up the pace doesn't savor of personal growth. In Doyle's books Sherlock annoyed plenty of his contemporaries by being curious about something that seemed to be unrelated minutia. Almost all of his weird tangents were critical to solving the mystery. This is because he used inductive reasoning, rather than the more popular deductive reasoning. Deductive starts with a theory, and develops hypotheses to support it, then seeks evidence to prove the hypothesis. TL/DR: The deductive process seeks evidence to prove the hunch. Inductive starts with empirical observation in search of patterns, then develops theories supported by the patterns. The inductive process uses evidence to test the theories. Whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is what the evidence proves. Inductive is often frustrating because many to most of our organizational constructs empirically operate at cross purposes. We waste enormous amounts of human potential creating noise, and barriers to our stated goals. At the same time, we willingly undertake tremendous efforts to be capable of replicating something that our predecessors likely considered drudgery. Consider a 1900's knife maker banging out a gross of blades every working day at a factory against the hobbyists in our knife section. It's rewarding to build those skills so long as you don't have to make production doing it for the rest of your life.

pnut, I checked them out. They remind me of a pair of Wolverines I had thirty years ago.

BGD, Like everybody before, I want to express my condolences. While I'm no expert in grief, I will say that feelings like anger and grief come in whatever order they come in, sometimes doubling back, or skipping ahead. There are a couple of things that might help. Imagine trying to spot an antelope on the plains as you're driving by. A highly focused scan doesn't really do it. Relaxing, un-focusing your eyes, and responding to what stands out will often do the trick. Apply the same principle every time you catch yourself re-hashing the injustice of it all. Let your mind wander a bit without ignoring your sincere feelings. Like the antelope, some things will jump out at you. A lot of it will be "shoulda, coulda, woulda" items, but every now and again, you'll find something useful. "Useful" being something you can either act on; like a new course of action, or something that makes it hurt less; like a path you might follow to gratitude, forgiveness, or peace. I wish you well

Thanks for all the replies. I've worn a few pairs of Red Wings over the years. I went over to Chippewa loggers which were more comfortable in the short term. However I find I have to replace the foam insoles every four months or so. There's a store near me that sells Whites, they're in the $600 range now. Nicks is right around the same amount, for custom made (in America) to order. It's my understanding that Whites and Nicks both use a hard leather stack for the sole/footbed. It eventually molds to your foot to where the support is perfect and there's no cushioning foam to wear out. The Whites boots at my local store all have 100% American made labels on them. Nicks offers a "rough out" leather option that really hides wear and tear on the toes and heels. Just looking at the thickness of the leather on Whites and Nicks, I would imagine that the break-in period is pretty long. Pnut, I'll check out Lehigh, that's for the tip. Nodebt, I've had kinda similar results on a few pairs of insulated boots over the years.

I've been looking into higher end boots that can be re-built and re-soled. Nicks makes a version of their builder boot in something called a "Tanker" which uses belts/straps instead of laces. I love the look of them, but I've never worn anything like that before. Thanks in advance.

JW513, After many years of consideration, I have concluded that the universal key to success in business comes down to two things. Timing Opportunity Hard working intelligent people fail all the time. Right along side them are stupid lazy people who jump in for the wrong reasons at the right time and find success. Business classes will touch on process oriented ; accounting, organization, law, and marketing on a superficial level. What those classes won't teach is clarity of purpose. The difference is more meaningful than it might appear. See when each part is a "trust the process" part of the whole, the connection between action and outcome gets broken. It'll hurt a lot of feelings admitting this, but most of the "best practices" are better suited to avoiding blame, than the pursuit of success. So when people ask "How do I price my work?" they typically get a lesson on estimating, which is broadly understood to be making a long list of stuff to add up for their total. That trusts the process, the book answer if you will, in a situation where there's probably competition in their market. See if they can't hit the selling price profitably, they just proved that either their timing is off, or their opportunity isn't what they thought it was. Nobody want's to see that conclusion, so they re-double their efforts on the best business practices. Clarity of purpose puts all of this in a different order. You want to be successful in a specific market. Get involved in that market. Go work for your future competitor, so you'll meet your future customers, employees, and vendors. Build your knowledge of business practices with classes, and use that knowledge to observe what actually matters in successful business operations. Look for opportunities to improve on what you find. All of that will make you a fierce competitor when you launch your business. Maybe look into boring stuff that grinds along without much fuss. Well managed operations tend to look like everything falls into place. Look for people with clarity of purpose and pay attention to what they focus on. Be advised that markets don't exist for all businesses. If there's nobody doing what you want to do, there's probably a good reason for that. I wish you luck

I've seen a few blacksmith related tattoos, one or two were on confirmed blacksmiths too. It's not something I would do. As I've aged, I've come to see a lot of work that aged very poorly. Some because the work faded, but a lot of it ages badly because trendy stuff goes out of fashion. A lot of people probably thought they chose something "timeless" or "classic" without giving much consideration to whether or not the tattoo artist is adhering to what will eventually be a short-lived style. I've seen this take a tragic turn with a friend who decided late in life that she wanted fuller looking eyebrows. The "artist" gave her "Angry Bird" eyebrows like buddies might put on a sleeping friend with a sharpie as a practical joke. The ink has since faded to green, the whole thing is just sad because nobody can look her in the eye for fear of offending her. I'm certainly not a fashion expert, however I can say that I've seen fashion changes that ranged from non-existent brows, to stuff that would have made Groucho Marx blush. Tattoos can act as a timestamp, locking in more than just the image. Briefly in the 1990's it was considered deep and introspective to get a tattoo of barbed wire around your bicep. Today that tattoo is almost a punchline. Now I see young ladies with horror themed tableaus covering neck to nethers. Once the bloom of youth has passed, I wonder if they'll be happy with their decision.

Today I learned that the local schools call snow days the night before based entirely on weather predictions. In my day, we'd have to listen as a radio host read all the schools that were closed the morning of. As a kid hoping for a day playing in the snow, the suspense was incredible. Seemed like at least once a year we'd have to trek through a huge snowfall for school, then the next time there was a tiny dusting, everything would be shut down. Felt unfair to have snow days when you couldn't go sledding.

Twisted, There's a central planning concept called "Prophylactic Development". Out here if Colorado there was a depression-era boom of pig-ugly multifamily buildings that started in 2008. These 5 story eyesores commonly have exposed staircase access to the units. The units are typically designed such that the vast majority are too small for a family. This reduces the child census, which in turn reduces the cost for building/maintaining/staffing all sorts of stuff like schools. Everything about them is catering to childless urban professionals who are young enough to put up with the profoundly cruel wind-tunnel staircases. Same story for hideous public art installations, mostly paved parks, and reedy thin trees. When "work from home" became the order of the day, the single family home market blew up as all the young professionals saw an opportunity to shed ridiculously high rent for tiny apartments in the shuttered metropolis. It occurred to me that many to most of these multi-family buildings just need elevators, and an anti-dystopian exterior remodel to make them suitable for independent senior living. Half the parking lots could be commandeered to build office, therapy, and nursing areas because the majority of residents won't have or need a personal vehicle. Throw in a generator for every fifth building or so to provide assisted living, and before you know it, the landscape of barren eyesores could give way to a renaissance of pro-human architecture. If Boomers were involved, they might consider what it'd be like to look at, and live with, this stuff for the next ten to twenty years. Perhaps spend some time considering how some aesthetics tend to age like milk, while others have brought tourists from around the world ever since they first went up. I'd personally love to see a resurgence of classically styled architectural ironwork in building facades, fixtures, and finishes.

Thomas, I wonder if the housing bubble will lead to multi-generational households, where the younger generation saves on rent, and the older generation saves on elder care. Slowing real estate transactions might be a way to gently deflate the bubble.

Thomas, Broadly speaking, I think you are correct. Although I would also say that it's always the nature of things for capital to pass into the hands of smaller groups. As it stands, I suspect anybody positioned to provide high volume elder care is going to be the first of those smaller groups relieving Boomers of their capital. When large numbers of Boomers start passing on, it will spike mortality rates and tax income for more than a decade. I'm putting a marker down that somewhere, someone, will use those statistics to claim "Generation Z are working too hard, because they're setting tax revenue records, and living shorter lives."

Anvil, you're obviously correct in your case. It's also noteworthy that economists who decide to categorize "generations" aren't always consistent about the duration Lost and Silent each spanned 17 years Boomers spans 18 years Gen X, Millennials, and Z all span 15 years Boomers are the obvious standout here, and maybe three years doesn't sound too significant until you consider that it's 20% more time than the following three generations were allotted. More to the point, it's kind of ridiculous to have generations that span more years than the average age of reproduction. The entire point economically speaking is to track major life cycles like childhood, adulthood, and retirement. I suspect special dispensation was given to Boomers due to the incredible mortality rates of the generations before. I absolutely cannot be thankful enough for all that those people went through. That being said, I think popular culture overlooks a lot of opportunity to understand generational differences. It's a shame, because everyone is set to be blindsided by the different generations obviously moving through their lives. Boomers are a huge group, anything they do affects everyone else. As Boomers pass on, it won't be long before Millennials are the commanding demographic of adults. Most of them will be getting a "late start" in life. I suspect many of societies barriers to advancement will change as a result. I hope we quit doing stupid things like economic bubbles, but history shows how common they are.

George, Thank you for filling in some gaps, it certainly puts my mind at ease to hear that a lawyer's case wouldn't be completely hobbled by judicial interruptions during the lawyers allotted speaking time. All the same, it sounds like a formidable challenge that goes well beyond simple debate or public speaking.