Solvation

Violence Due to Lead?

A fascinating article has just emerged tying increases in violence to airborn lead in gasoline before that was outlawed. It's an extremely thorough study that correlates 90% of rising violence to lead exposure, with about a 20 year delay from when the lead went into the air.

So is this all just an interesting history lesson? After all, leaded gasoline has been banned since 1996, so even if it had a major impact on violent crime during the 20th century, there's nothing more to be done on that front. Right?

Wrong. As it turns out, tetraethyl lead is like a zombie that refuses to die. Our cars may be lead-free today, but they spent more than 50 years spewing lead from their tailpipes, and all that lead had to go somewhere. And it did: It settled permanently into the soil that we walk on, grow our food in, and let our kids play around.

Lead is extremely damaging to cognitive function (IQ) and the ability to control one's impulses. The article explains all this in detail. But the conclusion is pretty startling - it's not that hard to fix as things go, and it would massively solve all kinds of issues, from violent crime to educational woes with classroom chaos and individual children's health.

Put this all together and the benefits of lead cleanup could be in the neighborhood of $200 billion per year. In other words, an annual investment of $20 billion for 20 years could produce returns of 10-to-1 every single year for decades to come. Those are returns that Wall Street hedge funds can only dream of.

Testing is inexpensive. Here's where to buy a soil testing kit, and a water testing kit

Organic vs Conventional Farming - Bad Big Data

Ok, fine. I'll say something about that article going around (here's the NY Times version) that organic is not more nutritious than conventional produce: It's ridiculous.

I, like the vast majority of people, choose organic produce because of a desire to avoid the consumption of pesticides. That's why people started growing organically. That's why people still prefer to grow organically. I don't want to eat pesticides; I don't want farm workers to be exposed to pesticides. I don't want them in the air or the soil or the water supply.

When you see "Whaaaa?" results like this, first take a breath and think about why it is that it strikes you as odd. I think many people hit the "What about pesticides?" situation pretty quickly.

So the question really is: why did this researcher do this giant meta-analysis without looking at pesticides? In other words, when evaluating organic vs. conventional, why was the persistence of pesticides not even be a factor in the exploration?

Is that good, objective, medical research? I think not.

Some quick ninja-googling shows that the original author of that study, Dr. Bravata, widely cited as a Stanford University Scientist, is actually a "Stanford Health Policy Adjunct Affiliate." What does that mean? It means she's not only not on the faculty, she doesn't office at Stanford. She's in the loose connection of people Stanford has that makes the flow of money and students - and knowledge - happen more easily. However, she's not a PhD, and this isn't peer-reviewed work. She is part of a consulting group, Castlight. Castlight is a big data driven HR Health Benefits company. It aims to bring transparency into healthcare - which is actually something that is a great idea and which I'm highly in support of.

But with meta-analyses like the one saying organically-farmed foods are not more "nutritious" than conventional crops, which was released only a few months before the vote on California's Prop 37 (labeling GMO produce), one wonders at whether this researcher was just incompetent at framing her question, or whether there was some other reason for dropping this common (pdf) reason people choose organic food from the meta-analysis.

I have not attempted to find clarification on this with Castlight, Stanford, or Brevata and don't intend to. I'll just personally disregard the study and chalk it up to bad data analysis. For all I know there was a good purely scientific reason to exclude toxicological issues. But before you think "ok, then - organics are a waste of money" because of this study, I wanted to throw my two cents in.

Facebook v. Yahoo Advertising: The seduction of trashy data

Business Insider reports that an unnamed source inside Yahoo says:

"There's a story brewing about a next very big business it's building—one that competes with one of Yahoo's flagship ad products and would kill us."

This entails the clever use of what in the 1980's would be called a feedback loop - in other words, the concept has been around a long time. It's not any easier than it used to be to collect postal mail addresses; the only step you skip is the data entry.

"As the marketer's product is sold, the retailer asks the consumer for their email address, phone number, or home address."

OK. No. First, you'd have to give the same email or phone number to the company marketer as you use on facebook - and many people avoid giving physical address and phone information to facebook. All that is necessary for this to be less powerful than one would like? The fact that some people don't. Will marketers have enough sophistication to increase the error inherent in the analysis to accomodate accurate understandings of peoples' deliberate misinformation?

Second, there is already a strong way to close the loop: you offer frequency and loyalty programs (and cohesion and community).

Third, even if you are sophisticated in handling unknown data and are getting a higher participation rate than loyalty programs, you don't know whether seeing the ad and clicking through is why the person bought the thing, or whether it was in-store merchandising or price comparison, or the weather.

Yahoo has an opportunity here. How many people have wished for true community but been appalled by Facebook's machiavellianism and Google's massively awkward concept of the "ideal UX"?

Square's Male Interns & Research on Gender Bias

As explained in this excellent research, gender bias begins when women are just not "one of us" at the entry level position. #fit=fail. And then they are mentored ("you're doing it wrong") rather than sponsored ("let's get you into your next promotion").

"Has Cleantech Finally Arrived?" - Watching Intangible Assets

The 2012 National Cleantech Open in Santa Clara, CA asked the question "Has CleanTech Finally Arrived?"

There has been dancing around cleantech for a while; wondering about the continued presence (or not) of subsidies, the practicalities of timing funding and risk management through affiliation, and other tactical concerns of investors. While panelists debated the financial activity in the industry and funding flows related to subsidies and other political concepts, I prefered to look for indicators of growth in intangible assets to see whether the sector seemed to be taking hold or struggling for air, here in the US.

Repost: Books for Boys

Yet another person has asked me about books to buy for her elementary aged son whose ability to read fluently as a child has landed him in the realm of literary social and emotional situations that are far beyond him.

So I've decided to pull together a list.

Livetweet: Technology Policy Summit 2012

 ‏@kitode

(Read bottom to top)

@pkedrosky uses "illuminati" in a sentence, FTW #tps2012

enjoying @nigelcameron moderation #tps2012 

@pkedrosky is the same kind of fresh air on panel as @DeBerry (stephen) was when I first heard him. #tps2012

pkedrosky - "yes minister" problem in DC: want to do things but not be seen doing things. #tps2012

@pkedrosky : it's about young business, not small business. #tps2012 

oh yes and @Kathleendwarner startup America #tps2012

 US competitiveness panel @emanuelpleitez @vwadhwa as well as Paul and Nigel #tps2012

 heh - even the moderator @nigelcameron has only twitter-met @pkedrosky #tps2012 

and I FINALLY will get to hear @pkedrosky live #tps2012

@ericgoldman : "market based initiatives" is code for govt gangsterism #tps2012

"nice website you've got there... it would be a shame if something happened to it..." #tps2012

 @berinszoka says soft power by govt (eg wikileaks) is eroding intermediate protection=gangsterism #tps2012 #IFTF

Fred von Lohmann points out even with intermediate liability protection the companies curate brand anyway #tps2012

oh nice! - now talking about pr0n & intermediary liability... best after lunch programming ever! #tpa2012

poor @mmasnick trying to keep the conversation constructive... #tps2012

@hackersfounders bridged huge! (missing my bro mattmarg, who was a musician deeply pro open sites way back when.) #tps2012

 @mmasnick points out innovating tech is the way out, eg YouTube #tps2012

Taplin (accidentally?) proposed a good idea - content providers doing CSR 2provide $ 4 writers, artists #tps2012

best panel evah! moving onto 3d printing... #tps2012

wow Taplin called @mmasnick a shill! horrible form! #tps2012

me: and then perhaps we need to Reframe as risk mgmt not income #tps2012

me: isnt this really a currency conversion problem - how to convert brainwork to money? #tps2012

moderator @robpegoraro named this an intrastate food fight #tps2012

spirited debate on copyright between @mmasnick and Jonathan Taplin of @USC @annenberg #tps2012

Rhesa Jenkins finds her fast movers,find entrepreneurs&have innovation led by internal fastmovers #tps2012

I wish Oak would emulate SF on innovation. (Is this happening @Oaklandlocal ?) #tps2012

@marcidale what a great storyteller! wow! #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake says govts highly risk averse - small companies might fail. (me: horrible risk assessment metric) #tps2012

@dbinetti points out it took 3yrs to give away software that took 87 days to build. #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake points out near impossibility of IT procurement from small companies #tps2012

@Sharonspanhake points out solution in search of problem problem #tpa2012

@marcidale sez we want the opposite of giant marble buildings atop those steps that inspire awe but make ppl feel "I don't belong here"

challenges to engagement: intimidation factor (acronym, process, committees) #tps2012

code for America - blown away by volume and quality of pitches. (and where is impact investment $?) #tps2012

tech for civic engagement next @sarahgranger @dinette @marcidale @shannonspnhake #tpa2012

@kevinmarks says sea change is nontech understands tech, not about geeks anymore #tpa2012

@hackersfounders says untold story international copyright #tpa2012

prior msg about @larrydownes

entrpreneurs @larrydownesif sez if you think "what is the one thing I need from Washington?" don't go there. #tps2012

grassroots tech cares about: immigration next? patent office in CA? #tps2012

sopa - the day si valley understands dc exists, and vice versa #tps2012

moderator points out some congressppl want to recruit startups to elsewhere #tps2012

@nukuku relays backdoor conversation with startup entrepreneurs to get clue #tps2012

@hackersfounders - describes mob effect bc of lack of editorial rigor (airbnb, sopa, etc) #tps2012

@larrydownes sez re Sopa congress knows there was a lot of noise and they don't like noise #tps2012

new panel sopa pipa/bitroots @michellequinn @chefhja @hackersfounders @nukuku @larrydownes #tps2012

@techpolicy says equivalent issue MLS and entertainment industry #tps2012

@nartech - Wyne says realtor grp interesting case study in transformation of industry, move to investment advisor #nsp2012

@nartech has a tech incubator! #nps2012

@nartech (Melanie wyne) - interested in open data issues, alliance building with other biz groups.

new panel "why tech policy isn't just for high tech" #tps2012 @nartech

attendee contributes compliance etc costs universities boatloads #tps2012

kids situation - coppa is counterproductive to responsible Internet use #tps2012

attendee alleges Europe is leading and it's too "conservative" Tod responds Dutch law #tps2012

Tod Cohen of eBay says negotiations on sopa pipa were too polarized to discuss well&find solutions #tps2012

attendee contributes hollywood having internal "dialog" on privacy leg. #tps2012

@techpolicy what is your hashtag?

panelists @reyramsey and tekedra mawakana of aol r particularly interesting.

at @techpolicy - discussion of privacy - esp wrt kids.

Top Three "New Finance" Books

I'm on sabbatical from my blog but dropped by to recommend three key books.

If you're a manager or executive in a publicly traded firm, you must have the first one, "Winning Investors Over." In it, NYU Finance Professor Baruch Lev explains how to deal with everything from reporting requirements and earnings guidance to Corporate Social Responsibility programs and managing activist Boards. It's supported by copious research, which he references thoroughly.

The second book, "Intangible Assets," is a quick, more in-depth read that explains what you need to know to RIGOROUSLY think about non-financial assets. (If your book list is too long, I've summarized it here.)

The third book, "The New Financial Order," is a brilliant explanation on how risk management should be reconceived for a global society. Robert Shiller is the Yale economics faculty you may recall from his earlier book, "Irrational Exuberance" - he's got a fine track record as a visionary.

Post-Domestic Replaces Empty Nest

As many of you know, my son and only child left for college over a year ago. The term for my new stage of life had been coined fifty years or so back as "Empty Nester," because, long ago, the sole focus of a woman's life used to be childrearing, so when the child became an adult and moved away, she was expected to have some sort of identity crisis.

However, while there is clearly a transition, childrearing was not my sole identity, so I decided to coin a new term. I chose "Post-Domestic," because I am no longer am a full-time employee with the job "mom" to go along with whatever full-time employment I have had as "head of household." (I also use "single mom" judiciously, since while that states both my marital and parental statuses, it in no way conveys my financial responsibilities.)

I suspect stay-at-home dads will also appreciate avoiding the grief-stricken visual of "empty nest." 

Use it at will.

Developers, Designers, and Project Managers

When resolving conflict, it's important to remember that everyone comes from a different point of view. via GlobalNerdy.

 

 

Highlights of 2011

In 2011, my work focused on organizational and societal development, and its measurement. Here are some professional highlights from 2011, in chronological order. I'm deeply grateful for my teammates and partners, and for those who made these opportunities possible.

(1) I taught Organizational Behavior to 1st Year MBA students, most of whom were military veterans, and all of whom had limited business experience. I'd characterize the students as under-educated (only one could write well), highly motivated, and what I think of as "lawful": prefering discipline, order, and a strongly-normed environment. I learned that the first item of the curriculum is to learn how to learn from someone like me. I also came away from the process feeling like the entire approach to traditionally conceived Organizational Behavior needs to change drastically.

(2) I helped develop the Deliberative Society, a brand new service offering, based on over a decade of work at the Center for Deliberative Democracy with Reframe It software. This was instantiated at a major consulting firm as a trial offering. As a "support" member of the team, I collaborated in thinking through the productization of the offering, built some knowledge in the domain, and became familiar again with the culture of Top 4 consulting firms.

(3) I launched (heh!) Winged Pigs with Eric Grant, focusing on offerings to help startups deal with non-product related issues that can make or break its success. Our strengths are in organizational design, facilitating interpersonal dynamics and agile process design, and its measurement. There was a lot of encouragement but we ended the year without having successfully landed a VC portfolio company client. My business development skills evolved over the year; I believe we would have been more successful had I known then what I know now.

(4) I presented "Measuring Life," which is really an introduction to new economic thinking at TEDxHayward, a joint venture of CSUEB and Stanford University. I was happy to hear feedback that my talk was conceptually understandable and well-delivered. This is a growth area for me.

(5) I organized the Technology Track for the SoCap11, the Social Capital Markets conference with 1500 attendees over three days. The Technology Track was one of seven tracks. Highlights included Jay Nath, the Director of Innovation for the City and County of San Francisco talking about opening data sets and Jamais Cascio from Institute for the Future previewing his thoughts on an upcoming book showcasing the future in 50 years as well as some fascinating panels curated by the UN Foundation and Innosight. I enjoyed this tremendously - the right combination of management, interpersonal interactions, and creativity. I wish I had had more time - there is such great work going on (those are five separate links); a lot to curate.

Finally, and overarchingly, I became involved in several Communities of Innovation, particularly the Innovating Finance group, which has been guided by the success of the WWF UK and ICAEW Finance Innovation Lab. I'm noticing patterns here that I suspect will continue to reinforce each other in the new year.

I look forward to 2012!

Guiding Perspective for 2012

The year 2011 was, professionally, a bewildering taffy-pull of projects on topics relating to facets of organizational and societal reform and its measurement. On a personal level, it has been a year where I have made a lot of progress in composting grief.

I don't do resolutions. I feel they often come from a negative and punitive place, one that encourages us accidentally to tell our own story in a negative way. Why should we begin the year thinking about what we dislike about ourselves? That's just silly! Pick what you like, what you do well, and then expand from there.

I believe I did relatively well raising my son. I had a discussion with someone the other day about adolescent female sexuality, and I realized that retrospectively what I did in a nutshell was to focus my actions around building optimism and resilience. With that point of view firmly in place, decisions, actions, and even philosophies fell naturally into place.

So my Guiding Perspective (not Resolution) for 2012 is to use the point of view of building optimism and resilience for myself and society... socially, intellectually, physically, and financially.

I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and engaging New Year, and the ability to share your joy with many people.

 

Science, Math and Pink

Here, courtesy of Jezebel, is a little girl ranting on the pink ghetto and product-aisle insistence on her ascribing to the Princess Phase.

 

Interesting how she trips over how boys don't want to buy pink stuff (she was going to say that they did, but it rang false to her) - her dad "corrects" her, but we all know the Pink Ghetto exists beause "pink is for girls and NOT for boys." She seems more confident when she says that boys might want to play with princesses.

So, for the record: all girls do NOT want to be princesses. Instead, consider that 3-5 year olds want to emulate adults. Unfortunately, this means marketers give girls props to play at being a mommy or a princess (most marriageable maiden). Queens are typically evil, and why boys can play/explore other aspects of daily life (cities, farms), girls' props are usually confined to the domestic. So to repeat, girls just want to practice being adults, the same way that boys do.

Clearly there's a gigantic business opportunity to simply re-package non-domestic daily props in pink boxes. Throw some sparklies on there. Excellent: now you've got a pink microscope and chemistry set, pink road construction toys, and let's throw in a pink tool belt, presumably with sparklies. Then wrap princess costumes, vacuum cleaners, and baby dolls in boxes of bright primary colors for the boys, and you're done.

Why He Hires People Who Fail - An HBR Article

Great thoughts on creating a resilient outlook, by Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. 

Curious about this "fail wall"? Go read the original aricle. I have nothing to add.

Why Economics Needs Data Mining

Cosma Shalizi explains eloquently the major issues surrounding the accuracy of economic modeling. He talks about how we don't know whether what happened in the past can be relevant for he future.

Also, listening between the lines (at approximately 4:30), please hear the plea for the idea that if you're going to do models, you need data to validate them.

 

Cosma Shalizi urges economists to stop doing what they are doing: Fitting large complex models to a small set of highly correlated time series data. Once you add enough variables, parameters, bells and whistles, your model can fit past data very well, and yet fail miserably in the future. Shalizi tells us how to separate the wheat from the chaff, how to compensate for overfitting and prevent models from memorizing noise. He introduces techniques from data mining and machine learning to economics -- this is new economic thinking. via ineteconomics.org

 

 

CleanTech Open Global Forum 2011 - Part 1

Oddly, cleantech markets and social capital markets are barely aware of each other, despite obvious areas of complementary expertise. So I traipsed to San Jose to the Clean Tech Open Global Forum to interact with the very high quality CleanTech entrepreneurs, and those entities that fund them.

I have a project in mind to facilitate the bridging of these investment ecosystems that I hope will unlock further capital, but for now, let me simply report on some excellent startups I spoke with.

Impact investors would be interested in what I think of as Alchemy 2.0, and Regenerative Products

• Waste (post-consumer, especially) to energy
• Waste (post-consumer or industrial) to disaster recovery goods
• Energy Grid-busters
• Off-grid irrigation and energy solutions
• Those companies in the gray area described below that add Social Entrepeneurial connection into the communities they serve, primarily via directly creating Green Jobs and providing education.
• Very low impact transportation solutions, whether local fabrication, mass transit, remote monitoring, etc.

Impact investors MIGHT be interested in super-stopgaps

• Efficiency solutions for water use
• Alternative building materials
• Efficiency solutions for currently deployed energy or power systems; including transportation
• Behavioral change solutions even if they provide only incremental energy/water advantages, because of the learning involved
• Alternatively-powered individual vehicles (rather than mass transit)

Lost in translation are those solutions that appear to work against inevitable change

• Cleaner dirty energy
• Industrial waste to consumer goods

 

In Part 2, I'll expand on specific companies.

Where are the Jobs?

In this article, the assertion is that there aren't enough jobs, because jobs have been taken away by technology or by outsourcing work.

But... Isn't there plenty of work to do to clean up the environment (and possibly help people) around where you live or work? Who's paying people to do that? No one? Why not?

What's broken is structural. What's going on these days is an inability to identify what work needs to be done. This is because our measurement system for productivity making tchotchkies is out of alignment with what makes life worthwhile: lessening suffering and increasing creative expression, and those goods and services that enable these ends. But we don't measure suffering or wellbeing - we only measure profits. We assume that magically, entrepreneurs will design the right products - the products that the market demands.

But how are those market needs identified? How are investment decisions made?  When we align those two questions with actual "first world" needs, we will see the resurgence of jobs.

Until then, due to our economic lack of imagination, we will remain reliant on creating goods for people who don't need them, just want them. "Want" describes a soft market. If we want firmer ground to stand on, we must do the difficult work of identifying what is needed.

CleanTech Open Global Forum - Top 5 Picks

1. Hydrovolts - I first saw them when they were a finalist in 2009. They have a non-solar off-grid energy solution. This is a microturbine that drops into a water canal. It's designed for extreme environments. These are smart experts who are solving the system of remote power generation issues and there is current demand for their product. They're looking to begin building their next round after the first of the year.

2. Growing Energy Labs, Inc. - They have an off- and on-grid solution for microenergy storage. They have a specific progression of ramp up for which they are seeking funding now. The executive team is polished, experienced, and highly educated.

3. Ventana - Moving further away from power generation, this is a fascinating technology within the world of waste->energy. In this case, mixed, unsorted plastics ("virgin waste") are converted to fuel. There is an 80-90% conversion rate. I can explain a bit more of the science in person, but the long story short is it's reasonable - basically they take very long hydrocarbon chains and "cut them up" into the length of fuels. The risks here are in scale-up and manufacturing. However the benefit is that it makes it cheap and less risky to mine landfills. I know this is not something particularly of interest, but it might be a good one to pass along. Amit Tandon is here through the weekend, resides near Delhi and I suspect is US-educated (very fluent verbally and culturally). Khosla Ventures was interested in him; I don't know if it would make a difference if they led the round. +91 1733 220087 amit.tandon@ventanacleantech.com

4. Kiverdi - a bit further away is Kiverdi, which uses microorganisms to tune refining reactions, taking waste syngas and creating useable chemicals out of that. I mention it because it was very interesting. The CEO is Lisa Dyson. She has a PhD in physics from MIT, is very personable and professional, is a woman, and is black, so definitely worth keeping on the radar in general. lisa.dyson@iverdi.com 510 394 4443. Based in SF.

5. ElectronVault - This is another energy storage play, based in Palo Alto. For more info: http://electronvault.com/solutions/off_grid/  Kathy Kennedy, VP Corp Dev, 650 425 7510 x 556 kathy.kennedy@electronvault.com

Alternative Energy Investment

Out of public companies only, in everything related to advanced materials (nanotech, solar, etc.), my gig was to pick something related to alternative energy. They needed to buy and hold for 3 years. After a few months of analysis, I picked AMSC, which produces superconductive wire and products that incorporate it. They were not profitable yet. Very few analysts covered them, possibly because understanding superconductivity does require some fairly specific knowledge. The ROI was around 190%. This was from 2006-2009.

 

Millenials (GenY) Believe in the Social Contract

It has come to my attention YET AGAIN that many feel that Millenials (b. 1981-2001) have a sense of entitlement; that they expect too much.

While I'm sure there are those within the generation who fit that mold, I disagree with its overarching characterization of the generation.

Every generation has its own culture. Individuals may or may not strongly identify with it (or identify much at all), and after all they might consider a different culture to be more relevant to them on a personal level (i.e. country-of-origin, socio-economic, professional - "jock" vs. "nerd", etc.)

Because every generation has its own culture, interactions between generations can be misunderstood in exactly the same way any representatives from any two different cultures might misunderstand each other: they look at each other through the lens of their own context.

Specifically in the case of Millenials, they were nurtured in groups. Watching Millenials as kids - they were like a litter of puppies: They were put onto project teams as early as preschool; my son actually took group final exams in high school. They were shoved into clubs and sports teams and then told to found their own in the competition to get into good colleges. They formed ad hoc "startups" with their roommates, and many of these lasted long enough to do at least one useful project. They want to land in big companies, do good for society, and generally approach life optimistically and positively. They BELIEVE in the concept of Social Contract.

Contrast this to the Baby Boomers and GenX: Boomers were encouraged to be individualistic. They revered the lone visionary, the breakthrough artist. They talk about and fought for personal freedoms. GenX were the ones who turned the tide, against unfettered individual excess but not willing to assume social cohesion, GenX were the kids who couldn't even trust the social contract their dad made with their mom... but because of that, they knew what it was, they valued it, and most of us spent our careers searching for ways to build that back in.

So what we've got here are Millenials - people who DEMAND that social contracts be honored. They're being evaluated by GenX and Boomers. There are GenX who either think they're spoiled ("Social contract? Dreamer!") or are misty-eyed that the world is being set right again ("You can trust? We've healed!")....and Boomers who are either used to heaping disdain on GenX and forgot to stop ("You made a bad choice? Whose fault is that? You disgust me!") or who are Shocked that their lovely, obedient children, who spent their childhood paying into the social contract by benignly taking parental advice, now have the expectation that they're to get something in return ("Well, there are no *promises*...") or continue to expect the social contract to work in their favor ("Oh you young people are so wonderful! Who wants an underpaid internship?")

Personally, I'm in the misty-eyed GenX group. I think Millenials demanding that they are considered part of the social fabric after following instructions and jumping through hoops is a healthy(ish) thing. I'm really sick of hearing about their sense of entitlement, when what we're actually saying is that their parents taught them to believe that if you are a team player, and you do what your team asks, you'll be rewarded. If greedy parents led those expectations to be too high, it's the parents' fault.

I think the Millenials are about to shock us all with their fierce allegiance to social cohesion and social justice. I think some GenX will come through as modern day Pattons, leading the Millenials through the ersatz minefields to get into a strong position from which to end the destruction of the planet.

Go team!