On The Fly

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...

The Remarkable Ronnie-Happy Birthday You’re sixty-six years! What a wonderful age! A brand-new " Route 66 " turn of the page. In the town of old Cuba , right where you began, you’ve retired ... and become a much busier man! You raised up three children, all sturdy and true, plus one extra child—who, of course, is just YOU. For though you grow older, you’re stubborn, it’s true, you refuse to grow up! (And we’re glad that you do.) Now grandkids arrive with a zoom and a shout, Like geese on espresso, they’re all let-let out! They’re frantic! They’re loud! They are bouncy and bright! They’ll keep you awake from dawn till night. So you grab up a pole or a gun, and you flee, "Gone hunting!" you yell, just to let yourself be. With a nap in the woods or a fish on the line, you tell yourself, "Ronnie, you’re doing just fine." So here’s to the garden where big veggies thrive, To the tall-as-a-mountain fish stories you drive! You’ve hit Sixty-Six! Now enjoy the whole...

Have you ever wondered about  the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...

In this episode. The Best Telescope By Patrick Ball Your telescope comes home in a box full of cheer, with galaxies promised and wonders quite near. The pictures shout WOW! The words say you’ll see. The whole universe—easy!—Just wait, you’ll agree. You open the box. Oh my, what a sight! There are tubes, knobs, and manuals . . . wait, that’s not right. It looks like it’s English, but maybe it’s not? So you build it–eventually–with the patience you've got. Then nighttime arrives. And suddenly— Yawn — You’re tired. You’re sleepy. You’re ready for dawn. The rig is too heavy. It’s bulky and grand. It’s cold to the touch, and it’s tricky to stand. It needs an alignment! It needs a new cord! The batteries died (and your brain is just bored). There’s an app that needs updating—right now, of course— While the telescope sulks like a stubborn ole’ horse. The couch calls your name with its soft, cozy light, so the telescope waits… just one more night. Then next week. Then someday. It slips out...

In this special bonus episode, Boy on a Beam. In a world long ago, when the days moved quite slow, Before buzzes and beeps and the fast things we know, A boy sat quite still on a very fine day, Just staring at nothing . . . and thinking away. No tablets! No gadgets! No screens shining bright! No earbuds stuck in from morning till night. No lists, no charts, and no chores to be done. He just sat there thinking—that's quiet-time fun! His name was Young Albert. He sat in his chair, Thinking of things that weren’t really there. “Suppose,” said Young Albert, with eyes open wide, “I ran super fast with my arms by my side! Suppose I ran faster than anyone knew, And caught up to sunshine that zoomed past me—too! If I hopped on its back for a light-speedy ride, What secrets would I find tucked away deep inside?” “Would stars look like sprinkles, all shiny and small? Would UP feel like sideways? Would BIG feel like Tall?” He giggled and wondered and thought, and he dreamed, Till his head fel...

In this episode, the Grid’s Future Might Lie with 'Outsiders.' In a previous episode of On the Fly, I posed a thought experiment: If the grid went down forever, what part of my work would still matter? That question sparked more conversation than I expected. One comment, in particular, made me stop and reread it twice: “Are you in touch with and talking with those in your own company about the question you are asking? It is your business, yes?” It’s a fair question. And the short answer is: Yes. These conversations happen—often, seriously, and with no shortage of charts and careful language. But the longer answer is this: The question itself was never meant to stay inside the building. When Expertise Becomes a Blind Spot. There’s a concept called functional fixedness . It’s what happens when experience—valuable, hard-earned experience—quietly limits what we imagine is possible.  When you work inside a system long enough, you get very good at improving it. You know which knobs...

In this episode. The Thought Experiment–Revisited The Boy on a Light Beam In 1895, a sixteen-year-old boy did something we rarely allow ourselves to do anymore. He stared into space and let his mind wander. No phone. No notes. No “Optimization Hacks” for his morning routine. Just a question: What would happen if I chased a beam of light—and actually caught it? That boy was Albert Einstein . And that single act of curiosity—a Gedankenexperiment , a thought experiment—eventually cracked open Newton’s tidy universe and rearranged our understanding of time itself. Not bad for an afternoon of daydreaming. Imagine if Einstein had been “productive” instead. He would have logged the light-beam idea into a Notion database, tagged it #CareerGrowth, and then promptly ignored it to attend a forty-five-minute “Sync” about the color of the departmental logo. He’d have a high Efficiency Score—and we’d still be stuck in a Newtonian universe , wondering why the Wi-Fi is slow. In a post I wrote back in...