Category Archives: Random Thoughts

28 November 2011

Acronyms and the Indefinite Article

By Rick Ladd
Raw Material for Acronyms

Acronym Raw Materials

A Trivial Pursuit

If you work in a large organization, chances are you’re familiar with a reasonably large number of acronyms. At the aerospace company for which I once labored there were hundreds upon hundreds; so many we required a company-specific dictionary to understand what they were. There were certain acronyms for which most people hadn’t the faintest idea what they actually stood for. They just became the names people used for the component or report the acronym designated.

There’s a question I often wrestled with – and argued over with others – regarding the proper use of the indefinite article when writing contains one or more of these acronyms. For the grammar police (of which I am a proud member), this isn’t a trivial question. It goes like this. For an acronym, when spoken (or sub-vocalized) with a vowel sound at its beginning, but for which the full pronunciation of the term begins with a consonant sound, which is more correct? “A” or “an”?

For instance, the acronym LOL stands for “laugh out loud”. When saying the acronym itself it begins with the vowel sound “eh”. However, when saying the entire phrase it begins with the consonant sound “l”. From my POV (which, btw, is an acronym that begins with a consonant sound regardless of which way it’s spoken), I have always used the indefinite article “an” if it begins with a vowel sound.

This may seem trivial, especially with an acronym like LOL. However, one of the most widely used terms at my former place of business was SSME, which stands for Space Shuttle Main Engine. It was used a lot and when I used the acronym I would always use it as “an SSME”. However, because when the entire name of the product was used it began with the consonant sound “S”, some people would use “a SSME”. Of course, if you were to see the acronym, but read it as the entire phrase, this would make sense. However, my experience was the opposite; almost everybody used the four letters. Hence, I thought it appropriate to write “an SSME”.

Mystery Solved

As I said, this will be to many a very trivial issue. Nevertheless, inasmuch as the correct use of language is important to many (including moi), I was reminded of this distinction last night when commenting on a Facebook post by a friend. As I was writing today’s post, I was preparing to say I’ve not seen a rule that specifically addresses this issue, but I paused and did a quick Google search. Much to my surprise, and with not a little satisfaction, I found it addressed at Purdue’s “Online Writing Lab” (OWL). Here’s the specific rule.

So . . . if you have occasion to use acronyms which start with a vowel sound, whereas the item for which the acronym is a replacement starts with a consonant sound, the rule is to use the indefinite article “an”, as opposed to “a”.

I believe World Peace is just around the corner!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Business, Random Thoughts

5 October 2011

A New Personal Direction – Blogging As Catharsis

By Rick Ladd

Where to go? Where to go?

Why Systems Savvy?

There’s a reason I named this blog Systems Savvy though, to be truthful, I haven’t really done what I intended when I decided on the title. Blogging for me has been somewhat aimless as I’ve attempted to find my voice and considered what I wanted to accomplish. For the last year and a half, starting with my decision to accept the early retirement package offered by my former employer, I’ve considered how to use it to both promote my new business and educate the people I wanted to reach.

The result has been a number of fairly well-directed posts on various issues involving small business and social media marketing. However, I am only beginning to become accomplished at marketing, in general, and frequently feel I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said – and said better – by others.

Lately, especially during a period of time I have been working with an associate on a fairly ambitious proposal (which, last week, was declined), I haven’t had much to say at all. I have, however, been giving a lot of thought to the direction I would like this blog to go in, and I think I’ve come to a decision on what I want to do. Let me explain.

My original intent was to look at various world views, philosophies if you will, that attempt to provide a systemic approach to understanding nature, society, economy, etc. The thinkers I have come to respect and, I think, understand include people like W. Edwards Deming, Russell Ackoff, and Peter Drucker (among others) from the business world, and Karl Marx (an eyebrow raiser, I know, but more about that in later posts) and Friedrich Engels, especially with respect to the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism. This effort began on January 7, 2008 where, in my first post, I explained what I hoped to accomplish. Unfortunately, the distractions and obligations I referenced back then kept me from accomplishing what I then thought would be useful . . . and possible.

Changing Direction

Now, after being somewhat forced to accept what for me was a way too early retirement package, and having embarked on my journey back into the world of small business, I’m finding I need to rethink the direction this blog should take. I want to bring it somewhat back to my original intent – with one small wrinkle. I need to write more about the lessons I’ve learned; not merely with respect to the things I experienced and accomplished in my over two decades at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, but also with respect to those things I learned in the preceding two decades in small business, as well as the many experiences I’ve had outside of the business world. One more thing. I’m not dead yet and I am far from inactive in my community.

To do this, it seems I will have to buck one of the “rules” of blogging, i.e. “it’s not about me“. This concept has made it exceedingly difficult to share some of the things I wish to write about for two main reasons. One I wrote about earlier, and that’s this feeling I’ve had all my life that everyone knows what I know. After all, it’s obvious! Right? The second is I’ve been repeatedly asked to write about many of my life experiences, which are not quite “mainstream” and from which I have gleaned some lessons that have been important . . . at least for me, but I’ve been constrained by that admonition against making it about oneself, as well as my inborn desire to please, not offend, others.

I’m constantly working on the first of these issues and here’s what I’ve come to think about the second. I am NOT in the middle of my career. After all, I’m now collecting Social Security and a pension from my previous employer. Less than a year from now I will be eligible for Medicare and, increasingly, I will need it to deal with the medical problems that come from aging. Most bloggers I know (not all) are between 20 and 30 years younger than I am. They have decades to go in their worklife. I may have a decade or two left, but the prospect is far less certain and, truth to tell, I really want to slow down a bit.

I think a change is in order. I think I need to write about all the things I care about. I have also previously written about the dilemma I faced when I realized the disparate “friends” I had on Facebook and how it momentarily took me aback and caused me to reconsider what I was willing to share – with everybody! As then, I have come to the conclusion I can, and should, write about the things that interest me, no matter how they might seem disconnected . . . because they aren’t! They’re taken from my life, my experiences, and the conclusions I’ve drawn or the questions I still have regarding them. If some are offended by this, oops! Too bad.

Me and You as Systems

I am interested in systems theory; systems thinking. Part of my understanding about it is we are all part of various systems. As living organisms we are ourselves systems. For over 60 years I’ve felt, as most of us do, forced at times to separate my life into its constituent parts: Personal; professional; political; religious; philosophical; etc. Yet they are all – for me – intimately related and inextricably intertwined. They are what has made up my life.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit melancholy as I realize my time is surely winding down. I hope to have at least a couple more decades left in me, but there are physical changes making it clear that it won’t be the same. I am showing signs of essential tremors, which my mother had and which sometimes make it hard for me to eat with a fork or grab a small bottle out of the medicine cabinet. Just this past Monday I had a suspicious mole removed from the scar on my back that is the result of surgery to remove a melanoma a couple of years ago. My hair is mostly gray. I have chicken skin, moderate hypertension, and type II diabetes! There are other signs. Perhaps I’ll write about them too.

So here’s the deal. Although I will continue to build my business, which includes a large dose of pro bono and civic-minded activities as well as remunerative ones, I intend to increasingly share my thoughts about the rest of my life as well. I know I have written some posts that were personal, political, and even relating to religion (thought certainly not promoting it), but I have lately been going in the direction of making this a business blog. I will no longer do that. I’m not sure this is the right thing to do. Were I younger, perhaps it would definitely not be the right thing to do. However, I’m not really worried about looking for a job or offending my parents. They both shed their mortal coils years ago.

Frankly, I don’t know if anything I have to say is all that important, but I have the opportunity to write about it and, if nothing else, it will be available for my children, who are now only 7 and 10 years old. I want to leave something so they will be able to better understand who I was and, especially, just how much I love them and want the very best for them. That’s important to me!

Photo Credit: Directions by mistermoss – via Flickr

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Business, Family, Personal, Politics, Professional, Random Thoughts

11 May 2011

The Kingdom of Spamalot

By Rick Ladd
A Can of Spam

All Hail The King!

Checking my dashboard for this WordPress blog, I discovered I have received 15 comments that have been isolated as spam. Sometimes there are legitimate comments that get quarantined and I want to be careful to review each one of them for legitimacy. What’s particularly interesting to me is how many of them tell me I’ve posted the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are two other things that seem to distinguish virtually every one of these. First, there is almost always a misspelling that generally consists of a spelling transposition, i.e. the letters are all there but not in the right places. Second, most of them use an acronym generally reserved for texting. Here are some examples:

  • YMMD with that asenwr! TX
  • That’s way the bseetst answer so far!
  • You’re the graetest! JMHO
  • Never seen a bteter post! ICOCBW
  • With the bases loaded you strcuk us out with that answer!
  • That’s raelly shrewd! Good to see the logic set out so well.
  • AKAIK you’ve got the asnwer in one!
  • Wow! Great tihnknig! JK
  • Great common sense here. Wish I’d thugoht of that
Another interesting thing is some of these comments are in response to other comments that aren’t directly responsive to what I wrote, but are clearly related to a couple of keywords in the post. For instance, I wrote a post about bacon and one of the comments was a discount offer for smoked meats, which I decided not to remove as it might actually be of interest to someone. Others are comments to a test I did.
I’m unclear on what these comments are doing for anybody, assuming they aren’t caught, marked as spam, and deleted – which is what I’m going to do with all of them. Anybody know why this happens? Are they just link fishing or something? There no doubt is a term for this I’m just unfamiliar with.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Random Thoughts

11 April 2011

Heavenly Bacon . . . or Sky Bacon?

By Rick Ladd
Sizzle, baby, sizzle

Death strips or Yummy Lozenges?

This blog is hosted by WordPress.com. I love it. It’s easy to maintain an organized, continuous presence on the web (assuming I post fairly frequently) and I have found it to be a continuously improving Content Management System as well, i.e. more than just a blog for me. This year the folks at WordPress launched a sort of challenge to those who use their services. It was to blog every day, if possible, or at least every week. I chose to accept the latter challenge, though I have declined to use the subjects they suggest every day.

However, today they suggested writing something about bacon and I just couldn’t resist. Having been raised in the world of smoked and luncheon meats (bologna, ham, hot dogs, head cheese!, liverwurst, and bacon – to name a few) I have a long-standing love/hate relationship with them. I am intimately familiar with almost all of them (head cheese was never a favorite of mine, but I’ve sold and delivered a fair amount), and I am pretty familiar with the health consequences of eating them, though there are lots of conflicting viewpoints; some with merit.

That said, I spent the summer between my first and second years of Law School (1974) working at a butcher shop in Gardena, California. We had a large, automated bacon-slicing machine and kept several hundred slabs of bacon around, which we sliced fresh each day. On Saturday, I would keep my eye on the case the sliced stuff was in and, when I noticed we had revealed a particularly lean part of the tray we laid out, I would snag a pound to take home for next day’s breakfast. My girlfriend at the time was from Vermont and we always had blueberry pancakes made on a Vermont Soapstone, drizzled with the best Vermont Fancy Maple Syrup. The bacon was thick-cut and the rind (skin) was left on, making each piece crunchy. These were incredible breakfasts, the memory of which has stuck with me all these years.

Now what does the title I’ve used have to do with anything remotely involved with bacon? There is a dessert found in many Mexican as well as Central and South American cuisines. It’s called Flan and, if you have not experienced it, think custard and Crème caramel for somewhat of an analogy. There are similarities. Like many dishes, there are numerous variants and the skill of the person baking it can change a delightful experience into a ho hum downing of a reasonably tasty sponge. Texture is quite important with this dish, IMO.

The type of Flan that stands out in my mind, however, is the Cuban version. It’s called Tocino del Cielo and it is – I guess – at least twice as rich as the kind I favor the most. For my tastes, it’s a little bit too rich. Nevertheless, it is clearly savored by quite a few people. Now to the title. I have always translated the name of this Cuban Flan in two different but related ways. The first is Sky Bacon or, literally, Bacon of the sky. My favorite translation, though, is Heavenly Bacon. Given that bacon is probably the richest meat you can purchase and cook without any preparation, I think attaching the word to an incredibly rich dessert makes some sense and, even though I find it a bit overbearing, adding heavenly kind of makes sense as well.

Do you know me (or someone who knows me)?

Six Degrees Probably Won't Cook This Dude

Do you like bacon, or do you think it will kill you to eat it? If the latter, do you eat it anyway?

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Food-Cooking-and Eating, Random Thoughts

23 November 2010

The Ubiquity of Communication

By Rick Ladd
Don't bother me.
The guy has it tough, yeah?

The other night I was sitting in the family room and our (formerly) male cat, Zack, was sitting on my lap enjoying me showering affection on him. As I’m petting him I’m talking and, mostly, using his name and telling him how much I love him and what a good cat he is . . . and he is, perhaps, one of the best cats I’ve encountered in my life. He is one of those cats that craves human company and follows us around the house seeking it. He’s really a great cat.

I was just relaxing, no doubt getting as much out of giving affection as Zack was out of receiving it, and I found myself thinking about how I communicate with him. He clearly knows his name, or does he? He responds when I call him, frequently by loping over from wherever he might be to receive a quick pet or a scritch. However, he’ll do that pretty much regardless of whether I’m saying his name or using some other term of endearment – and there are many, including just cooing at him in stupid, abject drooly-talk.

He seems to recognize all of them, so is he responding to his name, one of his many nicknames, some blathering expression of unbridled affection, or just the sound of my voice, which he no doubt also associates with food? Actually, given that I’m not really engaging him in meaningful conversation, does it really matter? He seems to always get the message. Maybe it’s just that he’s a slut for affection. I know all about that :).

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Random Thoughts

18 November 2010

Android Bloggage

By Rick Ladd

I might blog more with my phone if this keyboard wasn’t so difficult to type with. Guess I’ll keep plugging away in the hope I can get at least as fast as my two thumb/two finger BlackBerry method allowed. Anybody else out there struggling with this issue?

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Info Tech, Random Thoughts

15 November 2010

Brand Haiku – Ode to Philz

By Rick Ladd

A new Facebook friend of mine, Christopher Carfi, made me aware of this entertaining project that’s gaining some traction on the Interwebs . . . Brand Haiku. I got sucked in a little bit and wrote two of them (though I realized the first wasn’t about a brand at all, which is why I wrote the second, actually). So here’s a link to The Social Customer Manifesto, where I got started. There seems to be a lot of interconnected activity out there on this subject. I believe I’m adding to it by blogging my comments (i.e. my haiku, which appear below).

Brand Haiku – Ode to Philz.

The door is open
Kids wait silent in the van
Fall semester calls

My daughters greatly miss
The four free-wheel shopping carts
Once found at Trader Joe’s

Addendum: I have once again realized I missed the mark here; at least on the original intent expressed in the concept of “Brand Haiku”. Although I do now (in my second attempt) mention a brand, I am essentially relating a complaint or pointing out what my daughters and I consider a short-coming. I am, therefore, now adding a third attempt, to wit:

New Android phone’s a bust
’til Target geek points out app
That kills useless tasks

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Collaboration, Marketing/Branding, Random Thoughts

12 November 2010

Heaven Is Where You Find It?

By Rick Ladd

Where Would You Rather Be?

I just got an email from an organization asking me two questions designed to get my interest in their activities on behalf of preventing any cuts to Social Security. The questions are:

  • Do you want to work until you die?
  • Do you want to eat cat food in your old age?

I pretty much have a strong opinion on the latter question, though the prescription diet one of our cats requires does smell somewhat inviting at times. I’m afraid, though, the lack of variety would disappoint me.

As far as the first question goes, I don’t have quite as clear cut an answer. I’ve always assumed I would work until I dropped. After all, that’s what all the men in my family did; at least all the real men. I managed to disabuse myself of the notion that was a good thing a long time ago. However, I also retained (and continue to retain) a vestige of whatever work ethic I was raised with.

Here’s the thing. I don’t want to “work” work, that is be forced to report to a job I dislike, working with people I don’t care for, and working for people I don’t respect. That would indeed be Hell-on-Earth. At the same time, I want to be engaged, challenged, and – above all else – relevant until my last breath. I can’t imagine doing otherwise. But that involves doing, which is – strictly speaking – working.

So I guess my answer to the first question is “Yes. I do want to work until I die”. I also want my Social Security to be there for me, so maybe he should have asked the question differently. Then again, maybe there aren’t a lot of people out there who see work the same way I do. How about it?

ADDENDUM (as of 27 February 2012)

It’s been over 15 months since I wrote this, and 21 months since my retirement from PWR. I’ve been looking for work and also looking for interesting things to get involved in. I have yet to be terribly successful at the former, but I can’t honestly say I’ve tried as hard as I could. That’s in part due to my desire to spend as much time as I can being a good father to my two young children. I don’t think there are too many people my age who have young children to raise. All of my friends have been grandparents for at least a decade or so.

To hear some people tell it, you would think organizations should be beating down my door to get someone of my age, with my experience, to help them deal with social business transitions and the imminent retirement of the generation (Baby Boomers) I’m in the vanguard of, age-wise. I’m not convinced. I think our cultural affection for youth is still pretty strong and I have my doubts that HR departments or Management in general are all that anxious to hire someone who will soon be 65 years old.

I do believe I have a great deal to offer the right organizations and intend on getting a lot more aggressive about seeking out consulting or contract gigs, and I’m in it for the long haul. After all, my kids are only 10 and 8. Nevertheless, I think it’s going to take a while to break through the prejudice against us old folk. In the meantime, I’m pleased with the progression my writing is taking and I’m grateful for those of you who take the time to read what I have to say.

I assume mine is a bit different than many blogs. According to sysomos, as of June 2010 bloggers over the age of 51 make up only 7.1% of the blogging population. Less than half are male and slightly less than one-third originate in the United States. Without putting too fine a point on it, I figure that means there are likely about 5 other bloggers in my demographic group . . . if that. Since my readership is continuously growing, and no one has yet called me a damn fool, I guess I’ll continue in the direction I’ve been heading; which means an eclectic blend of personal and professional musings. I may have a few surprises in store as well. Just to see if anyone’s really paying attention.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Personal, Random Thoughts

27 August 2010

By Way of Thanks, This is for you Troy.

By Rick Ladd

Whenever we talk about using social media inside the firewall (Enterprise 2.0) or even talk about people on the Internet using Facebook, making purchases, providing feedback and reviews on products and services, etc., one of the major issues that comes up is that of trust. I think about trust a lot, because it’s absolutely necessary for any virtual team to be able to work together. I’ve discussed this somewhat in other posts regarding the need for face-to-face meetings, etc.

So . . . trust is really important to me because it’s really important to the things I believe need to happen in business for us to move into the next phase shift (paradigm, level, incarnation, whatever you wish to call it). I’m bringing this up because I had the most extraordinary experience over this past weekend that I think is related to trust – at least, it makes me think of trust when I reflect on what happened. Surely, it shouldn’t have been so extraordinary and maybe some of you will disagree that it was out of the ordinary (which, after all, is what extraordinary means, hmmm?). So . . . let me share with you what was an incredible experience for me.

I was in San Francisco for my oldest daughter’s eight annual reunion of the families we traveled to China with to adopt our children. We were staying at the Hilton Union Square; a very nice and very crowded hotel. We were only there for Friday evening through Sunday – a grueling road trip from just North of Los Angeles and Friday night we were attending a dinner at the home of one of the families in our group who live near my old stomping ground of Haight-Ashbury (actually, that was back in 1967 and might be the setting for a few posts in the future).

We had just finished getting something from our car, which was parked on the 8th floor of one of the towers, and I was waiting for my wife with our children in the elevator vestibule. I knew she would be a moment and I had just sat down. My youngest was pretty wired and she started spinning around when she lost her balance, hitting her face right on the edge of the table between the two chairs my oldest and I were sitting in. She started crying immediately. I pulled her up from the floor and saw lots of blood on her teeth, gums, and lips. Just then my wife arrived and I left her holding our daughter while I went downstairs to see if there was a Doctor available in-house. I found a security guard, who came upstairs with us and immediately offered to give us a ride in the hotel limo to the ER at St. Francis Memorial.

When we arrived at the hospital and were almost immediately show into a room where both a Doctor and Nurse attended to my daughter, I suddenly realized I had left my iPad somewhere other than in the waiting room. As it turned out I had left it on the floor in that vestibule. In my haste to get my daughter to the ER, I set down the iPad and never thought about it until she was receiving the medical attention she needed. Now I had to fight the urge to panic, as I had become very attached to that device. As well, I hadn’t really done what I should have to secure my data and private information and all the possible ramifications were swimming through my head. Nevertheless, I concentrated on making sure my girl was OK, though I managed a phone call to hotel security to ensure it wasn’t in the limo or the vestibule where we had been.

Now . . . having said all that, this really isn’t what the story is about; at least it has little to do with the point I wish to make here (other than to set the stage). Another thing I had done was decide to leave my BlackBerry in our hotel room, thinking I really wouldn’t want – or need – to talk to anyone on the phone. After all, I had my iPad and could essentially communicate via email, twitter, facebook, and sms to just about anyone I knew or cared about.

One more thing. As it turned out, our daughter had split her lips a bit and scratched her upper gums, but she didn’t need stitches and her teeth were fine. All we needed was an ice pack and, of course, the assurance of the Doctor that she was not in need of any surgery or other procedures to ameliorate any permanent damage <whew!>

So . . . now we had a ride back to the hotel (generously provided by Hilton Security), but we didn’t have the address to the house we were going to and, at that point, nobody seemed to be answering their phone. My wife had her cell, but she doesn’t have email on it and my BlackBerry had the address in one of the emails I could access with it. I was forced to go up to the room and, when I arrived, I found there was both an email and a voicemail from the person who had found my iPad and was anxious to return it to me. I was floored! Both my wife and I were certain I’d never see it again.

To make a long story longer (just kidding), I was able to hook up with this person and the following morning we met in the lobby and I got my iPad back. This blog post is, ultimately, my way of thanking him in the only way he would allow me. I offered him a reward, but he wouldn’t even let me take my hand out of my pocket. He did let me give him a hug when we parted and I hope we will stay in touch. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems to me there aren’t enough people like him around these days.

Now I need to tell you who he is. His name is Troy Maragos. He is the Director of Compassion Ministry and Local Outreach at the Harvest Bible Chapel Niles. I need to thank him publicly and, even more, because I am not a religious person, I need everyone to know how much I value (and trust) the kind of person this man is. When I was in my first year of law school, one of my professors said something that has stuck with me over the years (decades, actually; over three of them). He said “If I had to choose between a person who had the right politics but no humanity, and a person with the wrong politics but who had humanity, I’d pick the latter every time.”

This experience points out a somewhat analogous situation, I think. Here is a man who’s religion is not only different than the one I was born to (I was raised as a Jew and I am bar mitzvah), but who has religion as his occupation; surely something anathema to my own non-religious life. Nevertheless, he demonstrated the humanity I always seek in people. He was not merely selfless, but relentless in seeing the right thing was done.

I have a huge amount of respect for that and I am deeply thankful our lives crossed at the time they did. I want to wish him the best and hope he finds success in all he does. The world needs more people like him, in my opinion.

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Random Thoughts

12 July 2010

Double Rainbows Herald Crazy Synchronicity

By Rick Ladd

Wow!!

My Serendipitous Rainbows

Right after (and I do mean “right” after) I had shown some friends the “Crazy Double Rainbow Guy” YouTube video, it started to rain a bit. This, in and of itself, was quite unusual here in Southern California. July is not known for a month in which you can expect any kind of precipitation. As I was grilling some hot dogs and hamburgers for the kids and our adult guests (it was my oldest daughter’s 9th birthday party), I looked up and saw a somewhat faint, yet quite distinct, double rainbow.

It was neither as full, nor as bright, as the one that had inspired such ecstasy in the crazy guy, but there it was . . . as was my Flip videocam. I had put on an apron (something I seldom do) and stashed the camera in one of the pockets. I managed to record a bit of my crazy-ass double rainbow and a few comments from my perspective as well. I offer them here not as any especially entertaining video, but rather as a way to memorialize the event, which I considered quite serendipitous and synchronicitous (if I may be so bold as to make up my own words :)) Here’s the link. Hope anyone who sees it (undoubtedly not many will) finds it at least a bit entertaining.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Family, Random Thoughts, Science