11/10/2019

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (second half, final book in the Theodore Roosevelt series)

This had me in tears on the streets of NYC, which was fitting considering I was walking around TR’s hometown. The sheer breadth of this human’s interests, understanding, writing and reading is beyond legendary status. Each of the three volume series by Morris describe TR’s ability to be completely at home in conversation with royalty to biologists to natives in Peru. I appreciate the obsession with just wanting to know more and being unable to consume enough to be satisfied.

In the epilogue Morris mentions that TR was constantly/consistently compared to Radium. I hate that I had to get through almost 3000 pages before getting to that most perfect description.

TR called his wife (Edith) “Mother Adamantine.”

On a military note, TR’s personal willingness/desire to fight aside, the eagerness of his children throughout the course of their lives stopped me in my tracks. Only a few weeks ago I read about George Marshall’s personal choice to check with Eleanor Roosevelt before approving one of TR’s sons request to go to the front of the line during WWII. The man, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., was FIFTY-SIX when he died on the front lines in France. While he was getting off of the boats on D-Day, he reportedly yelled “It’s a great day for hunting!” He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The day TR Jr died, a photographer noticed a large group of US Brass attending a funeral in a French field. The photographer was struck by the number of Stars (STARS) he began noticing, so decided to point his lens in that direction. No less than TEN US Generals attended the burial (Patton & Bradley among them). Link to that story here.

US Generals attending the burial of US Army Brigadier General, Medal of Honor Recipient Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Who Can You Trust? by Rachel Botsman

No one, basically. This made me think about AI in new and different ways, as well as (finally) outlining WHY I need to care about blockchain.

Trust comes in different forms - personal, institutional, distributed. What an interesting concept. How quick we in the US are to give our trust away.

While living and working in Germany, I was constantly reminded not to trust institutions by the people around me. It was not something built in or taken for granted in any way. This wasn’t a feeling among just the techie Germans, but instead a pervasive way of thought with the every day completely non-tech related people I knew outside of work. I was working in former East Germany, but I’ve had similar experiences in West Germany. That consistent reminder made me realize how sick the US really is when it comes to blind trust.

An oldie but still gives me a (sad) chuckle: Brooklynites and privacy in 2014..