Theranos and its founders were trapped in the hype and “drink the Kool-Aid” mentality that eventually led to its downfall. Had Elizabeth Holmes had more humility and willingness to scale her grandiose promises of what could be done within a few years, she might have had a small start-up whose innovations could have been part…
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Perspectives on Theranos: Silicon Valley Kool-Aid Culture
Elizabeth Holmes was recently convicted for fraud in her role as the figurehead and firebrand for her medical start-up Theranos. The whole sordid tale is contemporaneously accounted in John Carreyrou’s excellent book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, as well as several documentaries that express surprise on how so many smart…
COVID Vaccines in 100 Days or Less
Could we have had vaccinations against COVID-19 sooner, or given what we know now, taken more time to discover the rare side-effects we only know of now, before mandating the shots for all? In the book The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic by Joe Miller, based on the speed of the…
The Fun of Unscientific Social Distancing Markers
“Why was six feet the magic distance to stand apart from one another in order to avoid catching the deadliest and most dangerous virus of all time(TM) in the United States? It’s how far apart all the markers were spread to show us where to stand. That’s 1.8 meters in metric distance, and not the…
About Me
I make a big deal about understanding the source and context of an opinion, so you might want to know a little about who I am and how that influences by opinions. The opinions I state here have nothing to do with the organizations and people who hired me, but that experience and training has…
Concern Trolling Control Freaks
I am sick. Not sick of coronavirus, but sick of the coronavirus-powered control freaks who shriek and virtue-signal at the prospect of people outside an intimate bubble seeing each other in person and at every unbemasked face. It started in April when some fed-up business owners came out to protest the ongoing lockdown. In response,…
Roll With It: Diving into 2021
If you haven’t surfed or gone swimming in the ocean, you may not know the most effective way to get out behind the waves. You can, of course, as many people do, try to jump up over them and swim against them. This is less efficient than diving under the waves and letting the wave…
Hippie Hiking Adventures in TN
As the Rutherford County sheriff tailed me through Murfreesboro, I finally came to the realization that by Tennessee standards, I am a godd**n hippie. By northern California standards, I was just a regular person, somewhat on the nerdy side. But there I also didn’t drive 50 miles during the COVID-19 pandemic to get two growlers…
Tornado Town
Peter and I were sitting down to breakfast together on Tuesday morning, and he looked at my phone and said “why are your friends and family all asking if you’re ok?” Wondering what happened to me, I checked the news first, and found out that a category 3 tornado had whipped through Nashville around 1…
Minneapolis in 2 Days #8: Time to Go
After the show, we had dinner at a nice diner in Edina, and then decamped to the Whalen’s basement to sip some excellent scotch, drink wine, and listen to music. We had an early flight so we left before dawn and still barely caught our flight. It was sad to end out vacation as it…