SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. – Dickey Betts, a driving force behind the Allman Brothers Band that launched Southern rock and influenced the jam band scene, died Thursday at his Florida home — USA Today Betts was best known for his legendary guitar skills, but he also wrote the Allman Brothers Band’s only Top 10 hit, “Ramblin’ Man.” During Bob Dylan’s Sept. 30, 1995, concert at the USF Sun Dome in Tampa. Florida, Betts joined Dylan on stage for several numbers including “Ramblin’ Man.” Betts told the story of how it came to be while seated at his Sarasota County home in 2014. Dylan says, “Let’s do ‘Ramblin’ Man.’” “All right, let me write the words down,” Betts tells him. “I know the words,” Dylan says. “I should have wrote that song.” Betts unleashed one of his warm, charming laughs. “I said, ‘Bob, just sing whatever you want to.’ I didn’t think… Read more →
Mordecai: What happens after?
The Stranger: Hmm?
Mordecai: What do we do when it’s over?
The Stranger: Then you live with it.
David Mamet on Acting
When they were shooting Casablanca . . . someone comes to [Humphrey Bogart] and says, “they want to play the ‘Marseillaise,’ what should we do? — the Nazis are here and we shouldn’t be playing the ‘Marseillaise.’” Humphrey Bogart just nods to the band, we cut to the band, and they start playing “bah-bah-bah-bah.” Someone asked what he did to make that beautiful scene work. He says, “they called me in one day, Michael Curtiz, the director, said, ‘stand on that balcony over there, and when I say “action” take a beat and nod,’” which he did. That’s great acting. Why? What more could he possibly have done? He was required to nod, he nodded. There you have it. The audience is terribly moved by his simple restraint in an emotional situation — and this is the essence of good theater: good theater is people doing extraordinarily moving tasks as… Read more →
Biden is Exploring
https://t.co/w8ehaGQO3l — Paul Epps (@paulepps) April 10, 2024 He’s exploring that? It’s a little late in the day to be exploring closing the border. The first thing he did on taking office was to undo all of Trump’s executive orders related to closing the border. If he has the power to open the border, he has the power to close the border. Or just close it. Assume you have the power and see if the courts say you don’t. Read more →
Diesel or Steam
Diesel or steam You’re standing in the doorway after class when Jimmy wants to know if you prefer diesel or steam. You can’t simply say pass and hope to leave. There’s no time to defer. You have to say right now as if you knew the answer. But what to say? The two things blur so which to choose? And why did he ask you? Others are waiting. Nobody explains. Their eyes are curious. Your answer’s due though you know next to nothing about trains and engines. So you vaguely plump for steam and are approved. Now steam runs through your veins you’re of the party. Life becomes a dream of existential choices. Jimmy’s gone. Out in the playground where your classmates scream and tussle, odds are million to one you’ll get them right but choices must be made and loyalties defined. What’s done is done. Diesel is wrong! You… Read more →
I Don’t Think the Jobs Report Was Good
I don’t think the jobs report was good. I don’t think the economy is good. I just read a series of comments on the story linked above and commenters were euphoric. Why do we see one sunny report after another on jobs, unemployment and the economy while Forbes reports that 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 29% are doing even worse, i.e., their income doesn’t cover their expenses? Why has the sentiment on LinkedIn been so dismal? The jobs numbers are illusory. The jobs are all part time. Last month’s jobs were all part time. Full-time employment actually went down. We’ve added 6.2 million jobs since May 2022 and full-time employment has gone up by only 263,000. Number of jobs “created” has gone up much faster than number of people employed, I suspect because a single person working multiple jobs counts as multiple jobs. The unemployment numbers… Read more →
I Got Mine
I read a post today on LinkedIn that started out like this: “Your salary increase will be 2%,” I told her. It was one of my worst moments as a people leader. She was my star performer, my right hand person. 1000% business critical to our team. Yet 2% was the best our company would give her. It was far beneath her value, and we both knew it, and I couldn’t do better for her. The author goes on to say that he advised her to look for a new job that would pay what she’s worth, which she did. And the moral of the story is that you can’t complain when employees leave if you don’t give them reasons to stay. Surprisingly to me, the poster got a lot of recognition and praise for his handling of this tale of woe. I don’t like the story myself. As I… Read more →
A Dissent on the Biden Radio City Fundraiser
What we saw last night was the president’s ‘let them eat cake’ moment. Millions of Americans are suffering because of the mismanagement of this economy. I say this frequently. We’re seeing record numbers of foreclosures, people are having their cars repossessed, we are seeing a silent job loss because the reports are now showing that the actual growth in employment is in part-time jobs, not in full-time jobs. It is totally and completely unseemly, in this economic environment, for our president to say that we’re going to try to set the record for the amount raised. No money to help people buy eggs and bacon. No money to make sure that people can afford gasoline. — Horace Cooper Read more →
Daniel Kahneman, 1934-2024
https://t.co/CZwiPjRrZ3 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 29, 2024 Kahneman was a genius not only at formulating original insights into human behavior but at explaining them in a way that’s interesting and understandable to the non-expert. I can’t recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow highly enough. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. RIP Daniel Kahneman Read more →
Freedom of Speech is Too Dangerous
https://t.co/k770FhDgoE — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 24, 2024 What Justice Jackson said to raise eyebrows was “Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods.” Correct! One clear goal of the First Amendment is to hamstring the federal government from doing what it would like to do: control our speech. I would have expected a Supreme Court justice to have learned this in law school, not in on-the-job training. Justice Jackson went on to say, “The government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country . . . by encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” she said. There’s always a euphemism handy for “information the government doesn’t want you to know,” e.g., “misinformation” “disinformation,” “harmful information,” etc. We can’t have freedom of speech! It’s too dangerous! As a thought experiment,… Read more →
Kobe Bryant is My Basketball Teacher
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EppsNet at the Movies: Emily the Criminal
This movie probably doesn’t deserve the whole five stars but I have a real affinity for characters like Emily (played by Aubrey Plaza), who, like the Mark Baum and Vinny characters in The Big Short, are people with a code of honor, a sense of awareness, not looking for trouble, but not willing to put up with insolence or nonsense. To give you a sense of what I mean — and this may need a very minor spoiler alert — a group of criminals has stolen a significant amount from Emily’s boyfriend (also a criminal but less physical than the other criminals) and she’s making a case that they should go and get it back because, among other reasons, the boyfriend owes her a cut of what was stolen. The boyfriend is against the idea. “These are very serious people,” he says. Emily replies, “No, no, we’re serious people. Ok?… Read more →
It All Depends on Who’s Slinging the Hash
‘This Is Shocking’: Some Democrats Demand CNN Apologize, Denounce Alleged ‘Islamaphobia’ Made Against Ilhan Omar https://t.co/PkDdBuwt6f via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 16, 2024 It is shocking! I haven’t been as shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe. I think Democrats really do believe that the role of corporate media in general and CNN in particular is to serve as a public relations arm of the Democratic party. A journalist taking an adversarial position vis-a-vis a Democratic representative should not be allowed to have a job. What CNN commentator Scott Jennings said is that Ilhan Omar is a “public relations agent for Hamas living in the United States Congress.” To me, that’s a pretty good one-liner, no better or worse than political barbs I read every day. All the people that I see complaining about the remark are people who’ve called Donald Trump Hitler, Satan, a fascist,… Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: The Big Short
My connection with the events depicted in The Big Short is that I worked in the information technology department of a mortgage bank in the run-up to the 2007 implosion of the subprime mortgage market. Many of the big players in that market, like New Century and Countrywide, were based here in my backyard — in Orange County and Pasadena. Given that it was fairly evident at the time that complicated financial instruments were being dreamed up for the sole purpose of lending money to people who could never repay it, it’s remarkable that very few people foresaw the catastrophe and that even fewer actually had the nerve to bet on it to happen. Long story short, the major rating agencies — Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s — were incompetent in their rating of subprime mortgage bonds, giving investment-grade and, in some cases, triple-A ratings to high-risk instruments. A lot… Read more →
Biden Apologizes for “Illegal”
Biden Expresses Regret for Calling Laken Riley’s Alleged Killer ‘an Illegal’ https://t.co/McWvsZB68h — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 11, 2024 There’s so much about this that I don’t like. He doesn’t express regret for an immigration policy that allows people to enter the country illegally and to stay in the country even after being arrested for multiple crimes. He doesn’t express regret for a young woman being murdered as a result of that policy. There’s no moral equivalence between word games and murder. It’s beyond contemptible. Anyone who thinks it’s important to tell people how to speak, what words they can and can’t use, is a person to be ignored and shunned. As a free citizen, I’ll speak the way I want to. Biden was given a secure border and instructions on how to keep it secure. He issued close to 100 executive orders undoing everything the previous administration had done.… Read more →
International Women’s Day 2024
Happy International Women’s Day 2024! (Belated — I meant to post this yesterday.) So many girls and women who’ve been a joy to work with as students, colleagues, teachers, mentors. I wish I could relive every moment with you. If you think you may be in that group, you probably are. If you’re not sure, message me and I’ll tell you. 🙂 I think I remember women better because there haven’t been as many of them. I work in software engineering. Women are underrepresented in software engineering. You may have heard. Women and men are different so it doesn’t seem surprising that they choose to do different things with their lives. Software engineering has been a good career for me because I like solving problems and building things, so I’ve been able to make a living doing, for the most part, things that I like and things that (I think)… Read more →
New Digital SAT Seems Pretty Easy
https://t.co/HSdNfODnIP — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 10, 2024 I took a digital SAT recently. I’ve got a BA in Journalism and an MS in Computer Science, so I’m very well-rounded, like a sphere. I eat standardized tests for breakfast. The English portion, or Reading or whatever they call it now, seems much easier to me. I got 800 (out of 800) on that. There’s no more “read a column and a half of text, then answer 10 questions about it.” You read a paragraph, answer one question and move on. There are no more analogies. There are no obscure vocabulary words. Math is still math, although as noted in the story, if you’re getting a lot of answers right, then they start serving you harder questions. I got 780 on the Math portion. TL;DR: It’s an easy test. I got an almost perfect score and believe me, kids, I’ve been… Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: Man From Reno
You probably haven’t seen this. Or heard of it. It was funded by a Kickstarter campaign, released on iTunes, then later on Netflix. The synopsis should note that it’s a neo-noir. Some of the marketing materials make it look like a Murder, She Wrote crime caper. It isn’t. It’s dark. I just sat staring at the screen for several minutes after it ended. Rating: Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
When I Grow Up, I Want to Work for a Woke Company
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Has Crime Gone Up or Down? Yes
I can’t believe I’ve lived as long as I have without knowing this, but the United States has two primary ways of measuring the nation’s crime rate: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). I’ve always thought that the FBI UCR was the definitive word on crime stats. If you’ve got the UCR data, that’s it. Game over. Not true! The data above are a year old, but you can see that 2022 UCR data shows a drop in the violent crime rate, while NCVS data shows that total violent crime rose in 2022. UCR Data vs. NCVS data The FBI’s UCR statistics reflect crimes reported by the public to police. But most crimes are not reported to the police. To help account for the omissions, the NCVS measures crime in a nationwide household survey of respondents ages 12 and… Read more →