Tag Archives: Education

18 July 2026

Racism Is Bigger Than Bigotry

By Rick Ladd

In 1973, while preparing to travel to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, I underwent extensive political education on race, class, imperialism, and American society. Among the most memorable lessons came from members of the Black Panther Party. They distinguished personal prejudice and bigotry from something broader and more deeply rooted: racism as a system—something embedded in institutions, laws, customs, economic arrangements, and accepted ways of doing things.

That distinction has stayed with me for more than half a century because it explains something that our ordinary public vocabulary often conceals. Americans commonly use the word racist to describe an openly prejudiced person: someone who uses racial slurs, expresses hatred, refuses to associate with people of another race, or consciously believes one race is superior to another. Those behaviors are certainly manifestations of racism. But when racism is reduced to such behavior, the larger system disappears from view.

The lesson I heard in 1973 belonged to a broader Black Power analysis already articulated by Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, and political scientist Charles V. Hamilton. In their 1967 book Black Power, they distinguished “individual racism” from “institutional racism.” Individual racism, they wrote, is generally visible and attributable to particular people. Institutional racism is more subtle, arising through the operation of established and respected institutions. As they observed, people who would never personally bomb a church or attack a Black family could nevertheless support institutions and officials that perpetuated racial inequality.[1]

For purposes of clarity, I use prejudice to mean a preconceived judgment about a group; bigotry to mean a stubborn and often hostile attachment to such judgments; and discrimination to mean unequal treatment. I use racism more broadly to describe the network of attitudes, practices, institutions, and distributions of power through which racial hierarchy is created or reproduced.

These categories overlap. Psychological definitions often describe racism as a form of racial prejudice, while also recognizing institutionalized racism in schools, health care, employment, law enforcement, and other systems. Sociologists tend to place greater emphasis on racism’s systemic character—on the way interconnected institutions produce unequal access to resources and unequal life chances.[2]

The point, therefore, is not that personal racism does not exist. It plainly does. The point is that personal bigotry is only one level at which racism operates.

The inadequacy of “I’m not a racist”

When someone says, “I’m not a racist,” the statement usually means something like this: I do not hate Black people. I do not use racial slurs. I would not deliberately mistreat someone because of race.

That may be entirely sincere. It is also an answer to the least demanding question.

The larger question is not merely whether I consciously hate anyone. It is whether the institutions I inhabit, support, benefit from, or leave unexamined continue to distribute wealth, security, education, health, opportunity, and punishment along racial lines.

A person can be free of conscious racial hostility and still participate in a racially unequal system. A loan officer may treat every applicant politely while applying standards shaped by decades of discriminatory lending. A real estate agent may never utter a racial slur while steering clients toward different neighborhoods. A school official may care about every child while administering district boundaries created by residential segregation. A physician may sincerely believe in equal treatment while relying on a medical algorithm that underestimates the needs of Black patients.

That is why innocence of intention cannot be the sole measure of racism. Intent matters, but systems also have histories, incentives, routines, and consequences.

Redlining: prejudice converted into geography

Redlining is one of the clearest examples of racism becoming structural.

During the 1930s, federal agencies and local real estate professionals classified neighborhoods according to their supposed mortgage risk. Neighborhoods containing Black residents, immigrants, or other groups regarded as undesirable were frequently given the lowest ratings. Redlining did not merely deny particular individuals a mortgage. It denied credit and investment to entire communities. The federal government’s own housing materials acknowledge that the 1938 Federal Housing Administration underwriting manual incorporated racially discriminatory policies.[3]

The consequences extended far beyond the original mortgage decision. Families denied affordable mortgages were less able to purchase homes, accumulate equity, borrow against that equity, finance education, start businesses, or pass property to their children. Neighborhoods denied investment experienced deteriorating housing, weaker commercial development and, in many cases, reduced public and private services.

Meanwhile, families admitted to federally supported suburban housing markets accumulated appreciating assets. Those assets could be inherited. Their neighborhoods acquired stronger tax bases, better-financed services, and reputations that attracted further investment.

No contemporary homeowner needs to have participated personally in redlining for its effects to influence the value of a home, the quality of a school district, the availability of credit, or the inheritance a family receives. The original prejudice has been converted into property, geography, and accumulated advantage.

The Federal Reserve reported that in 2022 the median wealth gap between White families and Black families exceeded $220,000. Redlining alone does not explain the entire gap, and it would be simplistic to pretend that it does. But it demonstrates how discriminatory policy can shape wealth for generations after the openly discriminatory rule has been repealed.[4]

Sundown towns: exclusion without Southern signs

Sundown towns provide another example. These were communities that excluded Black people—and sometimes other racial, ethnic, or religious groups—through ordinances, police enforcement, threats, restrictive covenants, intimidation, or widely understood local custom.

They were not exclusively Southern. The National Park Service notes that sundown towns were more common in the North and West than many Americans realize. For Black travelers, an ordinary road trip could become a calculation about where it was safe to buy gasoline, eat, sleep, or remain after dark. The Negro Motorist Green Book existed in part because the supposedly open American highway was not equally open to everyone.[5]

The disappearance of a threatening sign did not automatically undo the community the sign helped create. Decades of exclusion affected who owned property, who attended local schools, who developed business and political networks, and whose families benefited from rising land values. Later generations could inherit the resulting advantages without personally approving of the original exclusion.

Again, this is the difference between an event and a structure. The event may be over; the structure created by the event may remain.

The double standard in ordinary transactions

Systemic racism is not confined to dramatic episodes of history. It can appear in routine decisions that seem individual and unconnected until they are measured collectively.

Consider employment. In a widely cited field experiment, researchers sent employers fictitious résumés with equivalent qualifications but different names. Résumés bearing conventionally White-sounding names received approximately 50 percent more callbacks than those bearing conventionally African American-sounding names. The disparity appeared across industries and occupations, including among employers describing themselves as equal-opportunity employers.[6]

Consider housing. In a national paired-testing study, equally qualified White and minority homeseekers approached housing providers about advertised properties. Blatant refusals had declined, but minority applicants were still told about and shown fewer homes and apartments. A subsequent HUD review found that paired-audit studies consistently detected statistically significant discrimination against historically disadvantaged groups.[7]

Consider appraisals. A 2024 Federal Housing Finance Agency study found that, after controlling for numerous property and appraisal factors, appraisals below the contract price were at least 23 percent more likely in majority-Black neighborhoods than in otherwise similar neighborhoods with no Black residents. The researchers also found evidence that appraisers’ familiarity with a neighborhood could reduce the effect, suggesting that institutional information practices—not necessarily overt personal animosity alone—helped produce the disparity.[8]

The pattern is difficult to dismiss:

The same qualifications, but a different name.
The same financial readiness, but fewer homes offered.
A comparable transaction, but a different valuation risk.

No racial slur is required. No one involved has to announce a doctrine of racial superiority. Yet the burden repeatedly falls in the same direction.

Housing becomes education

Housing segregation does not remain a housing issue. It becomes an education issue because American public schools are organized largely by residential location and are financed in part through local property revenues.

The Government Accountability Office has noted that discriminatory history, residential wealth disparities, school district boundaries, and local property-tax financing remain intertwined. Poor, Black, and Hispanic students generally attend schools with fewer resources and worse outcomes. GAO also found that when communities separated from existing school districts to form new districts, the new districts tended to be substantially Whiter and wealthier than those left behind.[9]

A family may say, “We moved here for the schools,” without harboring conscious racial hostility. But that apparently private choice occurs within a housing and school system whose geography was not created innocently. The issue is not that every family making such a decision is personally bigoted. The issue is that millions of individually understandable choices can reinforce a structure created through exclusion, unequal investment, and inherited property advantage.

Discretion and the racial double standard

Racial inequality also appears where institutions give decision-makers broad discretion.

Researchers examining nearly 100 million traffic stops found that Black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when darkness made a driver’s race harder to perceive. They also found that police applied a lower evidentiary threshold when deciding to search Black and Hispanic drivers than when deciding to search White drivers.[10]

This does not prove that every police officer is consciously bigoted. Nor does every disparity, by itself, prove discrimination. But when similarly situated people encounter different thresholds of suspicion—and when the pattern persists across a vast number of decisions—the matter can no longer be reduced to a few identifiable “bad apples.” Training, discretionary standards, supervision, institutional incentives, deployment patterns, and accountability systems all become relevant.

The Justice Department’s investigation of Ferguson, Missouri, illustrated this institutional dimension. It found that the city’s emphasis on generating revenue had shaped police and municipal court practices, systematically violated constitutional rights, and both reflected and exacerbated racial bias. The problem was not simply what individual officers believed privately; it was what the institution rewarded and required publicly.[11]

Racism without an explicitly racial rule

Perhaps the clearest modern example comes from health care.

Researchers examined a widely used commercial algorithm intended to identify patients who needed additional medical attention. The algorithm used prior health-care spending as a proxy for illness. But because less money had historically been spent on Black patients with comparable medical needs, the algorithm interpreted lower spending as evidence that those patients were healthier. Black patients assigned the same risk score as White patients were actually sicker, and the bias reduced by more than half the number of Black patients identified for extra care.[12]

The algorithm did not need to express hatred. Its bias arose from treating an unequal historical outcome—medical spending—as though it were a neutral measure of medical need.

That is what “baked in” means. Yesterday’s inequality becomes today’s data. Today’s data become tomorrow’s decision. A system can reproduce racial inequality while presenting itself as objective, colorblind, and mathematical.

Not every disparity is proof—but every pattern deserves examination

A serious argument about systemic racism should not claim that every difference between racial groups is automatically caused by racism. Such a claim would be intellectually careless.

Evidence matters. We should compare similarly situated people, examine institutional history, identify the operative rules, test alternative explanations, measure outcomes, and look for mechanisms connecting policy to consequence.

But we must be equally careful not to impose an impossible burden of proof—one that recognizes racism only when a person explicitly confesses racial hatred. Systems do not possess private emotions. They reveal themselves through their design, incentives, practices, and patterned outcomes.

The relevant question is not simply, “Can we find a bigot?” It is also, “What does this institution repeatedly do, to whom, and why?”

From innocence to responsibility

Understanding systemic racism does not require believing that every White person is malicious, that all members of any racial group have identical experiences, or that class, gender, geography, and other forces do not matter. Nor is it a demand for inherited personal guilt.

It is a demand for responsibility.

Guilt asks, “Am I personally a bad person?”

Responsibility asks, “What have I inherited, what do I participate in, what consequences does it produce, and what am I prepared to change?”

“I’m not a racist” can become a form of evasion when it ends the conversation rather than beginning it. It allows a person to treat the absence of conscious hatred as evidence that no further examination is necessary. It turns racism into a question of personal manners and moral self-image while leaving housing, employment, education, policing, health care, and inherited wealth safely outside the frame.

A better response would be: I may not consciously wish to discriminate, but I live within institutions shaped by racial history. I have an obligation to understand how they operate, to listen to those who experience their burdens, to examine evidence rather than defend my innocence, and to support changes when apparently neutral systems produce unjust results.

The distinction I learned in 1973 remains essential. Bigotry is often loud, personal, and recognizable. Systemic racism can be quiet, respectable, procedural, and self-perpetuating. Bigotry may announce itself with an insult. Racism may arrive as a zoning ordinance, an appraisal, an algorithm, a school boundary, a résumé callback, or a discretionary search.

The opposite of bigotry is not expressing hatred. But the opposite of systemic racism requires more than private tolerance. It requires public justice.

Innocence is not the same as justice—and “I’m not a racist” is not the same as confronting racism.

[1] Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton, “Black Power,” excerpted from Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), Teaching American History.

[2] American Psychological Association, “Racism, Bias, and Discrimination.”

[3] Robert K. Nelson et al., “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America,” Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond.

[4] Aditya Aladangady, Andrew C. Chang, and Jacob Krimmel, “Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty: Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances,” FEDS Notes, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, October 18, 2023.

[5] National Park Service, “The Green Book: An Historic Context.”

[6] Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination,” NBER Working Paper 9873, July 2003.

[7] Margery Austin Turner et al., “Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, June 2013.

[8] Daniel Grodzicki, Sean Cannon, Christopher W. Davis, and Ken Lam, “Home Purchase Appraisals in Minority Neighborhoods,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Working Paper 24-06, November 4, 2024.

[9] U.S. Government Accountability Office, “K–12 Education: Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, but Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines,” GAO-22-104737, June 16, 2022.

[10] Emma Pierson et al., “A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops Across the United States,” Nature Human Behaviour 4 (2020): 736–745.

[11] U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department,” March 4, 2015; see also the DOJ’s United States v. City of Ferguson case page.

[12] Ziad Obermeyer et al., “Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations,” Center for Healthcare Marketplace Innovation, October 25, 2019; underlying study: “Dissecting Racial Bias in an Algorithm Used to Manage the Health of Populations,” Science 366, no. 6464 (2019): 447–453.

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24 August 2025

How I’m Using AI

By Rick Ladd

I have been using ChatGPT as a sort of medical/lifestyle partner/advisor for several months now. I created a project specifically for the purpose of sharing my vitals and other health related data, e.g. sleep patterns from my Apple watch, BP info from my weekly visits for Epoetin injections, weight and blood sugar measurements, as well as the results of blood tests, which Kaiser gives me access to.

When I arise in the morning, I get a nice graphical display of how much time I spend awake, in REM, in Core Sleep, and in Deep Sleep. All I do is take a screenshot from my phone and upload it to the project and it recognizes exactly what it is and incorporates the data into my overall health assessment.

Yesterday, I received the results from a CAT scan of my lungs. There was a plethora of medical terminology I am hardly familiar with. However, when I copied and pasted the results into my project, ChatGPT not only recognized what it was, but provided me with a layman’s analysis of each finding, the most important of which was the absence of cancer (whew!).

Anybody else using AI in a personally helpful way?

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7 May 2025

The Secret to Innovation Isn’t Learning More—It’s Forgetting Less

By Rick Ladd

In today’s hyper-connected, information-overloaded world, companies spend billions on training programs, knowledge-sharing platforms, and professional development. The conventional wisdom is simple: the more you learn, the better you’ll perform. But what if the key to innovation isn’t about learning more, but rather about forgetting less?

It might sound counterintuitive, but this subtle shift in perspective can transform how you think about knowledge management and creativity in your organization.

The Forgetting Curve: Your Biggest Knowledge Leak

The problem starts with how our brains work. Research by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus introduced the concept of the “forgetting curve.” Essentially, we forget up to 50% of newly learned information within an hour and as much as 90% within a week—unless we take deliberate action to reinforce it.

This isn’t just an individual issue. Consider the collective implications for organizations where employees undergo training, attend meetings, or share insights. If 90% of that knowledge is forgotten or left unutilized, what’s the point of investing in learning initiatives?

Forgetting is natural, but it’s also a huge leak in your company’s knowledge pipeline. And while many organizations focus on teaching employees new skills or introducing the latest tools, they often overlook the need to help employees retain and apply what they’ve already learned.

The Innovation Gap: How Forgetting Limits Creativity

Innovation thrives at the intersection of knowledge and application. It’s not about the sheer volume of information you have but how effectively you can connect the dots between what you know and what you do.

When knowledge is forgotten, those dots disappear, making it harder to generate fresh ideas, solve problems, or build on past successes. Employees waste time reinventing the wheel, repeating mistakes, or duplicating effort because critical lessons learned have been buried in the sands of time.

The result? A company that feels stuck, constantly chasing the next big thing while failing to capitalize on the wealth of knowledge it already has.

Flipping the Script: How to Forget Less

So, how do you ensure your organization forgets less—and builds a culture of continuous innovation? Here are three actionable strategies:

1. Reinforce Learning Through Spaced Repetition

Spaced repetition is a proven technique for combating the forgetting curve. Instead of a single training session, reinforce critical knowledge over time. For example, follow up on workshops with microlearning modules, quizzes, or discussion groups that revisit key concepts. This repetition strengthens memory retention and ensures that knowledge sticks.

2. Capture Knowledge in Accessible Systems

Don’t let valuable insights evaporate into thin air after a meeting or brainstorming session. Use knowledge management tools to document and organize critical information. Platforms like Notion, Confluence, or SharePoint make it easy to store and retrieve knowledge so that your team can access it when they need it most.

3. Foster a Culture of Knowledge Sharing

Encourage employees to share their learnings and experiences with their peers. This could be through informal lunch-and-learns, internal blogs, or mentorship programs. When knowledge is shared, it’s reinforced—not just for the sharer but for the audience as well.

The Competitive Edge: Retention Over Acquisition

The companies that will thrive in the future aren’t the ones that simply learn the most but the ones that retain and apply their knowledge effectively. By focusing on forgetting less, you can unlock the full potential of your team’s creativity, reduce inefficiencies, and build a culture of innovation that lasts.

Remember, innovation isn’t about accumulating more—it’s about making the most of what you already have. What steps will you take today to help your organization forget less?

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10 April 2023

Testing The Waters

By Rick Ladd

I have been working (read “struggling”) on my memoirs/autobiography for longer than I care to think about. I’ve managed to write close to 90,000 words and am sure I need to write another 90,000 (at least) in order to feel I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Some of what I’m including comes from blog posts I’ve authored over the past decade and a half. Now I’ve decided to take a slightly different tack and publish some of my work here in my blog, in the hope I can get some feedback—at least from my friends who sometimes read what I write here. What follows is the first draft of my Preface to what I’m tentatively entitling “A Stunning Display of Intelligence”, the meaning of which is contained therein. If you read this, and have a mind to, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts, suggestions, etc. Thank you.

I’ve not been one to toot my own horn, preferring to let my actions speak for themselves. This is, in part, because I suffer from impostor syndrome, or something similar to it. My particular iteration of this syndrome isn’t a cause of great anxiety. It’s more like I’ve always felt everyone knew everything I did and what I knew or was capable of wasn’t all that special. It’s only in the last decade I’ve come to understand how this affected me and began to throw off whatever constraints it placed on my progress and enjoyment of life.

It was the blog of an online friend, someone I have never met in person but, because of our mutual interest in the advent of what was called Web 2.0, as well as social media and its application to the enterprise, that brought me my first glimmer of a deeper understanding. He named his blog “The Obvious” and, when I asked him why that was so he told me it was because his impostor syndrome led him to believe the things he wrote about were “obvious” to others; hence the name.

This work of mine is my way of not necessarily showing off, or displaying my accomplishments, but of sharing my experiences, many of which for numerous reasons I have been reluctant to talk about at all with nearly anyone save for those who were with me when they happened and who helped me plan or plot to accomplish. Some of the things I’ve done, especially when I was young and impetuous, not to mention bullet-proof and invincible, were illegal. My virtue is never having been caught, not necessarily being a good citizen. Although, in my defense I will argue much of those activities might have been illegal, but they were hardly wrong. Enjoying the pleasures of Cannabis is one of them. I will discuss this in greater detail a bit later.

My life, while reasonably normal, has not been all that conventional. By that I mean I’ve done most of the things normal people do, I just haven’t done them in the same order others normally have. I have long suggested I’ve lived a great deal of my life in reverse and I believe I am accurately depicting how I’ve done it. For instance, although I did not attend undergraduate school, I was admitted to law school eight years after I graduated high school, graduating with a Juris Doctorate three years later. Many years after that experience (33 to be exact) I earned a Master’s Degree in Knowledge Management. It was shorty after my 62nd birthday. I have considered getting a Bachelor’s Degree just to complete the backward educational hat trick, but at this stage of my life it’s unlikely. I did some undergrad work at the University of Phoenix and Cal Lutheran when I was working on the Space Shuttle Maine Engine (SSME) program at Rocketdyne. I think I finished a semester at the University of Phoenix and a year or more of work in an adult evening degree program at Cal Lu, but it was difficult to reconcile taking classes designed primarily for 18 – 22 year olds still wet behind the ears. The knowledge I could have taught some of those classes was a bit aggravating too. I will discuss these efforts a little later.

I didn’t become a father until I was 55 years old, when my wife and I, after trying to get pregnant, traveled to the People’s Republic of China to adopt our oldest child. It was a two-year, difficult, and amazing adventure. A few years later, in what I’ve often thought of sarcastically as a stunning display of intelligence, we adopted another child from China. Hence the title of this memoir. Later on I will introduce you to my girls, Fooshie and Typhoon Girl.

A word of caution. As I am writing down my recollections I am also researching dates and locations to ensure my memories are as accurate as one can expect from a seventy-five year old man. I have never been one to exaggerate my experiences, but I know that time can play tricks on one’s memory. I am making every attempt to be accurate, but I realize a few of these memories may be slightly distorted. For instance, I know I was five years old when I had surgery to correct my clubbed left foot, but I’m pretty certain (based on my research of when he played for the Los Angeles Angels) I was five years old when I picked up a foul ball during batting practice and, at his request, returned it to Chuck Connors. I’m not sure I can reconcile being mobile enough to get that ball with having some fairly major surgery done to my foot and ankle. Nevertheless, I have managed to slog through what remains of my mind and am presenting what I remember as best I can.

It is also nigh on to impossible to refer to many of the organizations I worked for or the places I visited and which meant something to me and my development or experience back then, because some of these memories are from a long time ago. As an example, one of the companies I worked for and which played a bit of a role in making my visit to Cuba somewhat strange was purchased long ago and, in fact, was re-branded sometime after that purchase-and that was a long time ago.

A substantial portion of this memoir was written over the past 10 – 15 years and posted on one of the two blogs I’ve maintained since early 2006, when I published my first post at The Cranky Curmudgeon (http://crankycur.blogspot.com/). I posted there for a few years until 2014. I did not publish very often the last few years because I had started another blog with WordPress, which I call Systems Savvy (https://rickladd.com/). My first publication there was at the beginning of 2008. I have since published there sporadically and continue to do so; currently a bit over 700 times, not including saved drafts. Some of those posts were simple, short, and sweet while others were somewhat lengthy and more complex and nuanced. Several of them recount experiences of mine, while other reflect on lessons I believe I’ve learned from work or life.

Long ago I came to the conclusion the only thing that mattered for me, in terms of what I accomplish in my life, was that I gained wisdom. When I first began to feel that way I was only in my thirties and I knew that you can’t just hang out a shingle and declare oneself a wise person. I also knew that wisdom comes with time and experience; some would say after a great deal of false starts and failures too. Whether or not I’ve reached that particular plateau will be for others to decide and I am hopeful you will find a nugget or two buried in my remembrances, especially those that are from the more seminal experiences of my now fairly long life.
I’ve struggled to find my voice for, well, pretty much forever and I’m not sure I’ve managed to do a good job with this memoir.

However, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to believe I can at times sense the hot breath of the grim reaper on my neck and I feel a strong need to get this done before it’s too late. As well, I want to leave some coherent (ha!) record of who—and why—I am for my daughters. They lost two fathers before they were old enough to understand what was happening to them and I want them to have something to hang on to after I’m gone. I am, for the most part, the only father they can remember.

For years I considered writing memoirs about certain parts of my life and experience; mostly my political and counter-culture activities and my becoming a first-time adoptive father so late in life. However, various circumstances militated against my doing so, not the least of which was my inability to just sit down and write, as well as organize my thoughts and memories. In this work I have decided to go through my life and get as much of it down as possible. As I began outlining and organizing my thoughts I found it increasingly easier to link various parts, the sum of which can be confusing when taken all at once.

I have therefore attempted to organize my thoughts in such a way the reader can get a sense of what I have learned from a particular part of my life without having to understand the entirety of it, the gestalt if you will. I think you will find it easy to skip over portions that aren’t terribly interesting to you and still get something of value. At least I hope that is the case. I know my life has been unconventional. Not all of it, but substantial chunks of time and experience. I’ve tried to convey what I’ve learned from those periods, as well as the more normal everyday experiences we all seem to go through. I hope you’ll find it of interest, if not enlightening.

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7 October 2021

Back In The Saddle

By Rick Ladd

I posted the following to LinkedIn two days ago. It was the first time I’ve posted there in approximately two years. I was very apprehensive about sharing some of these personal details on the site, as I’ve always used it strictly for business, but I felt it necessary to explain to my over 1300 connections where I’ve been for the last two years. I’m gratified to be able to say it was more than well received and I am now jumping back into the fray as carefully (and delicately) as possible.

Hey everybody. Well, at least the people who know me and, perhaps, have wondered where I’ve been. Two years ago, my youngest daughter announced she wanted to drop out of school. She was a sophomore in high school at the time.

Needless to say, I dropped everything I was doing and concentrated on helping her deal with the issues that were causing her to feel like giving up was the best course of action. As an older, internationally adopted toddler, she was saddled with some difficult learning issues and has struggled to get through her classes. Fortunately, she has an IEP (Individualized Education Program) which allows her teachers and the school to take those issues into consideration.

She is now a senior and is attending a school that is an independent learning academy. During the pandemic lock-down of our local schools, she thrived working at home. She has a problem with other children and having to work with dozens surrounding her has always been a challenge.

Her new school, coupled with a new medication for depression she started taking (and which seems to be working) has tamped down her anxiety, which means I’m not living moment-to-moment awaiting her next trauma and having to deal with it.

So – I’m just coming up for air after two years of trauma, exacerbated by the pandemic and my having been infected with Covid at the beginning of this year. I am still experiencing some long-haul symptoms, but am doing remarkable well for someone my age, with my comorbidities.

I may not be fully functional until next June, when she graduates (God willing and the creek don’t rise,) but I’m working on it and will be spending more time on LinkedIn as I seek a few clients/gigs. I’m deeply thankful I was in a position to spend as much time as I have with her, but I’m really looking forward to having more time to spend on myself and my continuing desire to be useful to others.

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14 December 2020

Is There A Doctor In The House?

By Rick Ladd
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I suspect just about everyone is aware of the flap over an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal regarding our soon-to-be First Lady’s credentials. Written by Joseph Epstein, it’s entitled “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.” and subtitled “Jill Biden should think about dropping the honorific, which feels fraudulent, even comic.”

My most recent job was as the Business Manager for a Machine Learning (AI) Software Development firm, the co-founder of which had a PhD in computer science. When last I spoke with her, which was at least a year ago, she was not using her title, which she feared was seen as somewhat presumptuous. I’m not sure how she feels about it now, and I’m inclined to agree with those who see this op/ed piece as misogynistic and hollow. Frankly, I have often wondered if I could use the honorific “Dr.” in front of my name because I have earned a Juris Doctorate (JD) when I graduated Law School in 1976. However, I’ve never done so because the amount of schooling, and the quality of work, required for the degree don’t match up to that of a PhD or EdD. Actually, I tend to agree with those who suggest calling oneself “Dr.” when in possession of a law degree is ridiculous and pedantic.

It’s been discussed at great length by now, torn apart and analyzed by people far better at it than I, but I’d like to bring up what I think is an ancillary issue to that of the rank sexism and hypocrisy that exists wrt men and their seeming inability to accept women as their equals. What I’m referring to, which affects both men and women, regardless of race, creed, or color (though there are differences in degree and approach) is the depth of anti-intellectualism that has come to seemingly dominate our public life.

Just look at how many people are not only comfortable with, but are absolutely adamant about, ignoring science, facts, and reality-based analysis/synthesis. The number of people who believe most scientists are only doing what they do for the money is astounding. It’s likely one of, if not the, main reasons we’re doing so poorly in handling the pandemic here in the States.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Hardly! I recall deciding in the third grade (that would have been around 1955) I didn’t want to be seen by everybody as an egghead, which changed the trajectory of my life . . . and probably not in the best way it could have. I remember feeling at the time that I wouldn’t have any friends if I continued on the path of academic excellence I had been on. Part of me wishes I hadn’t made that choice, though my life turned out pretty well regardless. It’s just that, in retrospect, the decision was made because of the negative view most people I knew seemed to have about being too intelligent; or, at least, being willing to use that intelligence in a positive way.

I believe this is one of the reasons the United States is in the bind it’s in right now. We’re just coming off of a four-year bender with the sleaziest and dumbest President in our nation’s history. He came to power as the result of years of anti-intellectual posturing and reality TV-informed ignorance. I am thankful I have never watched one reality TV show, especially not The Apprentice or Celebrity Apprentice. It’s clear Donald Chrump managed to suck a large portion of the nation into believing he was a highly successful businessman when, in fact, he’s a serial fuck-up who managed to burn through tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars given to him by his father.

These past four years of the worst “leadership” of my lifetime has been brought to us by our nation’s well-developed sense of anti-intellectualism. This does not bode well for maintaining our position as a preeminent nation of entrepreneurs and innovators. Our quality of life in the United States is what it is in large part because of our scientific accomplishments. It amazes me so many people don’t recognize the value that science has added to our lives, be it at work, home, or play. Virtually every aspect of our lives is enhanced by science and the products and enhancements it brings to us on a heretofore regular basis. I fear we’re going to lose that edge. Perhaps we already have. More the pity.

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21 November 2020

How To Be A Patriot

By Rick Ladd
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It seems to me that anyone who really cares about their country, who is a genuine patriot, has to care for everyone. Life is NOT a zero-sum game, where the gains enjoyed by others are a loss to you and yours. No, life and human society are highly complex, interdependent systems where every part has a role to play, and when we don’t provide optimal conditions for the health and well-being of some of the parts, the whole body suffers. Would you want your car’s engine to go without one of its spark plugs? While it would still get you to where you were going, it wouldn’t do it as efficiently, nor as effectively. In the end, it would almost certainly cost more to deal with the results of an imbalance in the engine than it would to ensure all its components were kept in good working order.

Yet many approach life as though they are living on an island. It’s difficult to fathom the level of insensitivity, blindness to reality, and the callous lack of empathy it takes to turn one’s back on people who may not directly affect your life in a way you can feel immediately, but who nevertheless impact the organizations and institutions you deal with all the time.

For instance, by not ensuring all children receive healthcare, adequate nutrition, and early education, we ensure our up and coming workforce will be less prepared than they otherwise could be for the kinds of jobs that will be available in the near future. The net result is we not only handicap those children, we also handicap their families, their friends, and the entire nation. By guaranteeing they need more help for far longer than might otherwise be the case, we add to both their burden and ours.

We hobble ourselves with mistaken, outdated, unsupportable notions that give far more importance to diversity as a bad thing; as something that takes away from our sense of worth, of self. Instead of understanding, celebrating, and taking advantage of all the ways in which we complement and enhance each other, too many of us turn those virtues into imaginary vices and use them to divide and separate us. What a pity.

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27 October 2019

For My Eyes Also

By Rick Ladd
California Lutheran University Campus

I’ve begun work on something I have wanted to do for a long time but, for numerous reasons (some of which actually make sense in retrospect) have not been able to accomplish. I’m speaking of writing a book. Actually, I’ve had three books in mind for a few years: One sharing my blog posts; one about the years I spent in the Peace & Justice movement, with special emphasis on the movement against the war in Vietnam; and, my memoirs. I can say with reasonable objectivity, I have had a rather unconventional and interesting life.

Since the beginning of March of 2018, I have been working part-time as the business manager for a small AI software development firm. In doing so, I transitioned from my Mac to a PC laptop in order to comply with the company standards. Today I moved my Mac out into a place in our living room where I can sit quietly and write. Since this is the first time I’ve actually spent a while at the Mac, I have been going through my files and am somewhat pleased to discover there are a lot things I’ve written over the years that should prove helpful in writing (at least) my memoirs. Some of the things I’ve written are only a couple of sentences or a paragraph or two, but they convey the essence of a thought I can expand upon. On the other hand, some of them are completely unintelligible.

What I’m going to do here, however, is use this blog to publish a term paper I submitted 19 years ago, when I was attending classes at California Lutheran University, in their Center for Lifelong Learning offering, ADEP (Adult Degree Evening Program.) It’s 22 pages long, so I’m going to post it in sections, as I wrote it. Today I’m sharing the intro. As I’ve re-read parts of it, I’m reasonably certain some will end up in at least my memoirs, as they are part of my unusual education.

Introduction

Although this paper is being written as part of the requirements for a grade in Organizational Management, its impetus and content are driven by a real life situation at the company I work for, Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power, a business unit of the Space and Communications Division of the Boeing Company. As suggested in the course syllabus, I selected a subject which I felt had some relevance to my company’s activities and my position within it.

As with many organizations throughout the world, mine is struggling with understanding and implementing the concepts of Knowledge Management. These concepts, and the issues surrounding them, are numerous and complex. As an example, one question which must be asked is how does an organization determine the importance of the information it uses and how does it weight that importance? How does it determine who needs it, who wants it, who might benefit from knowing of its existence, or whether or not it should be available to everyone who might wish to make those determinations for themselves?

Furthermore, there are numerous software developers who are touting their particular method of capturing data and making it available to a company’s workforce. Each of these developers will attempt to convince you their method is best for your application. Of course, this situation is hardly different from that faced by anyone who has to determine what method they will use, or what software they will purchase, for any task. Nevertheless, at this early stage of the game it doesn’t make the task any easier.

I propose, in the following pages, to set forth some of the history of Knowledge Management, from tribal times to today, and the perceived need for Knowledge Management, both in general, and with particular emphasis for my company, Rocketdyne. I will look at what knowledge management means, and briefly mention some of the tools which are being used to develop its use. The definition of tacit knowledge, and the importance of understanding it when implementing Knowledge Management will be discussed, along with a brief look at how we acquire and share knowledge. I will close with a glance at what is probably the most daunting task facing a company which desires to utilize Knowledge Management to its advantage, the need for dramatic cultural change.

Before beginning, however, I would like to quickly explain the nature of this paper’s subtitle, “Breaking the Information Bottleneck”. Here, the word bottleneck has the same meaning we use when speaking of a traffic jam. Most of us have experienced being caught on the freeway when suddenly we come to a crawl or dead stop. Usually there is an explanation for the delay. Sometimes, however, there is no apparent reason.

In the same way that freeways experience bottlenecks, so too does any system which requires the smooth flow of some activity or commodity. On the shop floor, it is generally components, though it can also be tooling, raw material, or usage hardware. In the office it is generally data or information, and when its flow is restricted the organization suffers.

I believe, with the advent of computers, and their widespread use through Local Area Networks and intranets, and with our increasing dependence on technology to solve our problems, we have forgotten how sharing knowledge actually works and, in the process, created huge information bottlenecks which will not go away until we learn once again how to manage knowledge.

Unfortunately, the scope of this paper is woefully inadequate to fully treat all the issues involved in this major change now occurring. It is my hope that I will be able to expand upon and use it to help melt the glacier of resistance which surrounds my organization at present and makes change painful and tedious.

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21 August 2019

WTF Happened?

By Rick Ladd

I just introduced #WTFWednesday, as in WTF happened, on Facebook. Here is the photograph I presented to my friends that I just discovered in my seemingly never-ending caches of paperwork, photos, etc., that keep popping up. I believe this is my 1st grade class at Chase St. Elementary School, in Panorama City, California. After WWII, Panorama City advertised itself as the “Heart of the Valley,” the San Fernando Valley, that is . . . like totally.

I only know what happened to one of the kids in this photo; the one in the Hopalong Cassidy shirt, third from the right, third row up. The kid with the large, goofy ears. Last I heard, he was still trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.

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