Trump Won on the Courage of his Convictions

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump won re-election as the 47th president on the courage of his convictions. It doesn't matter how vile, nonsensical or felonious those convictions are; he holds true to them.

 It doesn't matter if he's going to execute his plans; he comes across as rabidly believing in them. Once you win, you can change course, waffle, hem and haw, lie and prevaricate. The clear, frank, honest, consistency need only last till election day.

We all know Donald Trump's style: hold outrageous and outrageously simplistic beliefs based on naive, childish comprehension and present them in loud, bombastic, often incoherent fashion. Use shock jock vulgarity to press those points.

It works. Not for the sideshow cinematics but for the straightforward yes/no, "I don't care who I piss off" transparency and sincerity.

Everyone else in the game is politically correct to the point of obsequious meaninglessness. You cannot get a simple "yes/no" answer from a politician other than Trump or, more importantly, get them to state clearly and definitely their opinion on any issue whether of national security or their favorite ice cream flavor. They are deathly afraid of pissing off some constituent somewhere or worse, any constituent anywhere. They, therefore, take no stance, and merely pussyfoot on the shifting quicksand of immediate public opinion.

Trump realized that he can piss off 47% of the electorate and still win the election. The moral to this story is that you can pick, choose and hold fast to concrete positions and opinions that are supported by about half the nation or more. Don't waffle or hedge. Say "yes" or say "no" but answer the damn question. Be confident and consistent in those positions even in the face of withering criticism. Consistency in the face of attack makes you look even stronger.

Political correctness was killed by Donald Trump and we should thank him for that. Now, let's see if the Democrats, or anyone else, can stand up a candidate with sane convictions that they can clearly articulate and have the courage to uphold consistently in the face of benign and malignant questioning that is the modern media.

I'm So Not Inviting You to My Review

Terrible. It's a terrible movie. To start, I'm not a huge fan of Adam Sandler comedy; childish and slapstick. That's the case in this film, too. The jokes, including the alleged inside Jewish jokes, just fall flat. He used every cliché in a vast Jewish repertoire; none of them new. Just not funny. The story is, of course, trivial and obvious.

My real beef lies elsewhere. Sandler, both in real life and in this film, poorly represents the tribe. Yes, there are many different kinds of Jews; less observant, more observant, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and more. The problem is that to Sandler, in real life and on film,  nothing is sacrosanct. Anything and everything can be the butt (no pun intended) of a joke.

Worse, still, whether out of ignorance or time pressures in the film, he trivializes the rites and rituals of Judaism. This is tragic given his stardom, popularity and reach. Many folk in his larger viewership may have little or no other contact with Judaism. It is terrible that this terrible film will be the taste of such a beautiful religion that stays in their mouth.

Fix Twitter with Two Moves

    While we wait the decades it will take to learn where Elon Musk falls on the chaotic-good, chaotic-neutral, or chaotic-evil spectrum, there are two things he could do, immediately, that would "fix" Twitter. By "fix", I do not mean solving the eternal problem that some people will always have a louder megaphone than others. By "fix", I mean, achieving the goal of turning Twitter into a useful, public "Town Square" and understanding the difference a group of people, peaceably assembled for civil discourse and mob rule.

    While I am not an originalist, in any sense of the term, it is, often, useful to reflect on the origin of some of the metaphors we use. The notion of a "town square" merits such reflection.

"Because of this mingling of peoples and opinions, cities became spaces for citizens to make their political voices heard. Before and during the Revolution, cities served as vital civic arenas where political ideas and aspirations were publicly expressed by people from a variety of backgrounds."(The Role of Cities in the American Revolution).

    You could stand up in any town square and shout, at the top of your lungs, any opinion you cared to express. With this great, perhaps transformative, liberty, however, came a few caveats. Let us not fail to remember that society at this juncture was puritanical, paternalistic, misogynistic, classist and racist. 

At best, if your diatribe stirred the hearts of enough of your countrymen, it would be included in the governing documents of the society or, perhaps lead to tea being dumped in the harbor or even open revolt. At worst, however, your diatribe could lead you to a beat down by fists or rotten fruit, public humiliation, arrest, prosecution, hanging or worse. Peaceably assembled groups can quickly become mobs when affronted. Words have meaning and words have consequences. These consequences, whether imposed by the mob or civil society, moderate the tone and content of the speech.

    Electronic speech in the modern age has no consequences. In fact, perhaps worse, bad behavior is often rewarded. The size of anonymous mass is too large for either civil prosecution or mob persecution to provide effective guard rails.

Eliminate Anonymity

    Back in the day, there was no anonymity;  Silence Dogood pseudonyms aside. "Oh, that's Dave, the town drunk, spouting off again. He's harmless," one might hear. Or, "that's that radical lawyer, John Adams. He's dangerous," perhaps another. Everyone knew everyone; remember at the time of the revolution, Philadelphia had a population 30,000, well below some Universities today. The first thing Elon Musk should do is end anonymity. The initial purpose of the "blue checkmark" was to do this, albeit in an unfair way. If the gods of Twitter decided you were important in some way, they removed your anonymity and you spoke as a representative of yourself. They 'verified your authenticity'. A basic security transaction; authentication. My bank authenticates me every time I use their app. On, Twitter, the unwashed masses can and do remain anonymous or, at least, unverified.

    Twitter, with it's new Twitter Blue service has fumbled authentication in favor of more easily implemented verification. In other words, Twitter says, for Blue, you have to say you are someone, but they don't authenticate that you are who you say you are. Thus, Mario flipping off Musk. Twitter should insist that your username is the name on your credit card (No prepaid anonymous credit/debit cards). You can change your nickname a hundred times a day, but that only changes the costume you wear, not your identity. The same with corporations and public offices and officers though there may be other paperwork involved.

    Eliminating anonymity changes user behavior. Think of the hesitation that entered your thoughts just reading the suggestion above. Are you really going to let the world know that the real you is the source of all those slightly snarky, slightly pervy Dad jokes? Not to mention your antisemitic, anti-rule-of-law, or election denying diatribe's. Your Mom's adage to "think before you speak" becomes critical. You could now be publicly shamed, sued for slander or libel, or maybe even punched in the nose for speech that goes outside of society's guardrails.

Throttle the API

    The second thing that Elon Musk could do to fix Twitter is limit the number of tweets per person per hour. Humans have limits of intellectual and physical energy. You can only stand in the town square or stand in filibuster for so long. Even Ben Franklin and his press could publish only so much information in a finite amount of time. There were no APIS, AIs or bots. These electronic artifices dilute the conversation. They increase the noise without increasing the signal. Limiting the number of tweets per  account per hour to something on a human scale (20 tweets an hour? 60?) would be a huge step forward. Every tweet should be written by hand or at least published at that pace.

    Media companies clearly have a role to play in modern society. As their role becomes more important to society they must weigh the common weal against their greed and fiducial responsibilities. Removing anonymity and limiting the speed of conversation to a human scale are two ways to do just that.

#Twitter #Elon Musk #FixTwitter 

Parmigiano Reggiano at the CASEIFICIO UGOLOTTI cheese factory, Parma, Italy

Our continued wanderings around the heat of northern Italy lead us to Parma, Italy, in between Bologna and Milan. (With Modena, the capital of balsamic vinegar production and Ferrari cars between Bologna and Parma). The two primary agricultural products here are Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Parma Ham. We opted for the cheese.

There are 5 adjacent régions (Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Mantua and Bologna) located between the Po and Reno rivers that make up the exclusive area that produces Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. "Parmigiano Reggiano" is a controlled brand that represents a "protected domain of origin" (PDO/DOP). "The Consortium" determines the rules of the Parmigiano game and these rules have been codifed in EU law. There are many aged, salted white cheeses, but Parmigiano Reggiano only comes from here. In fact, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium is actively involved in the process. First, and foremost, the Consortium must approve your factory, assign you a number and it is the authority that comes and inspects your product and stamps it as 1st, 2nd or 3rd quality.

We toured the Caseificio (literally "casein maker") Ugolotti (the founder of the factory 40 years ago). The factory, shop and restaurant are on the outskirts of Parma, just a short city bus ride from the downtown.

The factory must (and does) receive milk twice a day from local farms. All of the milk used to produce Parmigiano Reggiano must be from the region. The diet of the cows in terms of grass, hay and corn is specified and controlled by the Consortium. You can read all the rules of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese making for yourself.

The morning milk run

None of the milk is pasteurized. The evening milk is allowed to sit and separate into cream and skim milk. This skim milk from the evening before is mixed with the whole, fresh (must be delivered within two hours of milking) morning milk. Some of the whey is added back in. Rennet (only from calf's stomach!) is then added to the milk. the excess whey is sold for animal feed. Nothing is wasted.

The Caseificio Ugolotti, we visited, produces 18 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano every day (7 days a week).

Each vat holds 1000 liters of milk. Note that the photo is deceiving. The bottom of the vat is below the floor. Each vat will produce two wheels of cheese which (when dried) will weigh 40 Kg. This factory produces 2 wheels a day, thus 9 vats.

After the curd forms and is broken up, the cheese is cooked at a precise temperature and coagulates into granules and these settle to the bottom of the vats. 

After an hour or so of settling, the cheese is pulled up by hand; a two man job.

And placed into the initial molds. 

The cheese will sit under a weight in the milk room for 24 hours. The goal is extracting water. From there, they go to the salting room.

The cheese wheels, now 24 hours old, will be placed in metal forms, lined with a stencil that has the all important labeling information that goes onto the cheese rind. The factory's official number. After another 24 hours they are placed in the salt baths. This is a fully saturated salt solution. they will stay here for 3 months after which the salt has penetrated 3 cm into the wheel. Each wheel is turned daily, by hand.

After 3 months, the cheese wheels are moved to the aging room.

Parmigiano Reggiano must be aged for a minimum of 12 months. There are 12,000 wheels shown in this picture, aged from 12 months to 60 months! At a retail price of approximately €15 per kilogram, this picture represents approximately $10M of cheese!!

After a year of aging, the Consortium visits the factory (quarterly) and assigns a grade to each wheel. This is done, by hand,  by tapping the wheel and listening for hollows. First quality has no hollows or large cracks. The Parmigiano Reggiano brand and year is then hot branded into the side of the first quality wheels. Minor hollows and cracks are assigned second quality. The second quality wheels are scored with 1 cm ridges to identify them as second quality. They can still be sold for industrial and restaurant purposes. The third quality wheels have all Parmigiano Reggiano labelling removed and are sold for industrial purposes.

Interestingly, the contract of the master cheese maker (and, of course, you must have a master cheese maker) specifies he must produce 90% 1st quality wheels per year. If he produces more than a certain amount of 3rd quality wheels, he is on the hook financially for them! (I asked about malpractice assurance but they didn't understand the concept.)

The storage room is kept quite warm and quite humid so some mold does form on the outside of the wheel. It's not a health risk but doesn't look good so there is, of course, an automated robot (fromt he 1950's) that moves down the rows and brushes the rims of the cheese wheels free of mold.

Of course, after the tour, we had a delicious tasting of 12, 24 and 36 month aged chesses. And, there is a beautiful restaurant and gift shop in which to buy further products. Overall, a great factory tour and a very interesting product.

The Ducati Factory and Museum Tour, Bologna Italy

While meandering through the heat and crowds of northern Italy, our travels brought us to Bologna, home of the discoverer of the radio, Marconi, and the father of Italian motorcycling, Ducati.

Ducati, now owned by Audio/Volkswagen, produces their motorcycles, here in Bologna, in a 78000 m² (840,000 sq ft) factory. The factory is, of course, located on Via Antonio Cavalieri Ducati street.

They offer tours, of both a museum and the factory, in English and Italian albeit on slightly different schedules. Online réservations and tickets are required. Masks and closed toe shoes are also required.

The tour of the factory and museum costs 32€, about $35 as I write this. A bit pricey, to my mind, like their bikes.

After passing through security at the gate and receiving a souvenir lanyard and ID card, the group gathers in the visitor center.

All kinds of Ducati swag, except for the bikes themselves are available. Again, fairly pricey but a mecca for Ducati fans.

The tour is quite good. There is, however, NO PHOTOGRAPHY, quite a bummer. They put stickers on the lenses of your phone!

In the winter, off season, the factory produces about 100 bikes a day with about 200 employees. In the summer, they produce 300 bikes a day with seasonal workers booting the rolls to 600. All of the bikes are spoken for. No dealer inventory at this time.  There were lots of young adults assembling bikes, all wearing black Ducati shorts and red Ducati shirts (following the Star Trek, red shirt for engineering tradition).

The factory follows the Toyota Kaizen, just-in-time, manufacturing process. There is engine assembly, engine testing, engine/frame integration, whole bike testing, quality control and inspection and shipping operations. 90% of the parts of the bike are sourced in Italy. Only two parts are machined at the factory. One is the cam for the Ducati Desmodromic valve closure mechanism, of which Ducati is very proud. This arrives as a rough casts and is machined to tight tolerances on site. A full, dry, moving model of an engine with the Desmodromic system is displayed.

The engines (4? different models) are assembled by two person teams on 11-32 stations depending on the engine. Each station has a prefilled tray of parts for that station as well as all of the tools needed for assembly. Cordless electric drivers each with their own bits (and torque settings, I imagine) are available. No bit changing. Every engine is held in a jig that allows it to be positioned in nearly any orientation necessary for assembly.

The completed engines are oiled and tested by an electric motor to 2500 rpm with measurement of oil pressure.

The engines are then boxed, temporarily, and moved to the engine/frame integration lone by a robotic cart that follows a painted line on the floor. This was one of the only robotic machines. The bikes are essentially assembled by hand.

The frame/engine integration lines are four person teams that move with the bikes from station to station. Again, prefilled parts trays and every tool at every station.

After frame/engine integration, the bikes are fueled and started in front of large ventilation hoods. All systems tested and measured with digital connections to a handful of connectors.

The bikes are then taken to a Dynomometer like setup for moving tests.

Next comes the final inspection for cosmetics. AS THEY SAID, this is mostly done by women who they think have a better eye for imperfections. Their words.

Then the bikes go to shipping. Of note, the shipper does final assembly of seats, mirrors and small plastic fairing parts before delivering to dealers. You cannot pick up a bike at the factory, but there is a dealership across the street!

Of note, there is a separate section of the factory behind a sealed, bright red, Ducati door where they work on the one off, competion, moto GP bikes. They take this competition very seriously and security is very tight.

The museum has a separate entrance and is above a portion of the factory. Interestingly, Antonio Ducati was a peer of Marconi and worked on early radio technology. His Factory produced radio components. Destroyed in the war, Ducati rebuilt as a motorcycle production facility.

At the entrance you can test for several of the current models of bikes.

They then have a collection of essentially all of the racing bikes from the earliest days of electric bicycles to the latest GP bikes.

Overall a very nice collection and  display.

In front, you can see where employees park😂

An enjoyable and educational morning.