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The EPA-administered Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) will be investing $27 billion in federal resources, and mobilizing significant additional private capital, over the next five to seven years to address the climate crisis. Among GGRF-eligible clean energy investments are renewable energy projects on contaminated sites such as brownfields, landfills, and former mine lands. In this webinar, learn how some GGRF grantees could support financing for renewables on contaminated sites and how others may choose to consider clean energy redevelopment of these sites. The webinar is timely because EPA recently obligated funds to GGRF state, tribal, and multi-state nonprofit grantees, meaning that some GGRF grantees are now able to begin accessing their funds to implement their GGRF financing programs. Other GGRF grantees are starting a one-year planning period to engage with their communities and finalize financing program designs.    The webinar will include an update on GGRF's three programs — the National Clean Investment Fund, the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, and the Solar for All program — from EPA program leadership as well as a panel discussing creative renewable energy strategies for contaminated sites under GGRF.   The GGRF panel discussion and Q&A with federal and state officials and a renewable energy developer will educate state, tribal, and other government agency officials and their stakeholders on how:Federal GGRF finance funding can spur further private capital to significantly accelerate renewable energy development;GGRF-funded programs may achieve additional, local redevelopment benefits by encouraging renewable energy in low-income and disadvantaged communities where contaminated lands are often located;New community solar projects can be a key mechanism for expanding solar access for low-income residential customers;Community solar represents the fastest-growing revenue model for contaminated site renewable projects nationally;An agency can pursue renewables on contaminated lands within GGRF financing sources if it wishes to do so; andTo find additional EPA resources to support development of renewable energy on contaminated sites.  For information on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, please see: https://www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund. For information on the 60 Solar for All grantees selected for a cumulative $7 billion in awards, please see: https://www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund/solar-all. To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/GGRF-Opportunities_092524/

The EPA-administered Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) will be investing $27 billion in federal resources, and mobilizing significant additional private capital, over the next five to seven years to address the climate crisis. Among GGRF-eligible clean energy investments are renewable energy projects on contaminated sites such as brownfields, landfills, and former mine lands. In this webinar, learn how some GGRF grantees could support financing for renewables on contaminated sites and how others may choose to consider clean energy redevelopment of these sites. The webinar is timely because EPA recently obligated funds to GGRF state, tribal, and multi-state nonprofit grantees, meaning that some GGRF grantees are now able to begin accessing their funds to implement their GGRF financing programs. Other GGRF grantees are starting a one-year planning period to engage with their communities and finalize financing program designs.    The webinar will include an update on GGRF's three programs — the National Clean Investment Fund, the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, and the Solar for All program — from EPA program leadership as well as a panel discussing creative renewable energy strategies for contaminated sites under GGRF.   The GGRF panel discussion and Q&A with federal and state officials and a renewable energy developer will educate state, tribal, and other government agency officials and their stakeholders on how:Federal GGRF finance funding can spur further private capital to significantly accelerate renewable energy development;GGRF-funded programs may achieve additional, local redevelopment benefits by encouraging renewable energy in low-income and disadvantaged communities where contaminated lands are often located;New community solar projects can be a key mechanism for expanding solar access for low-income residential customers;Community solar represents the fastest-growing revenue model for contaminated site renewable projects nationally;An agency can pursue renewables on contaminated lands within GGRF financing sources if it wishes to do so; andTo find additional EPA resources to support development of renewable energy on contaminated sites.  For information on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, please see: https://www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund. For information on the 60 Solar for All grantees selected for a cumulative $7 billion in awards, please see: https://www.epa.gov/greenhouse-gas-reduction-fund/solar-all. To view this archive online or download the slides associated with this seminar, please visit http://www.clu-in.org/conf/tio/GGRF-Opportunities_092524/

Unless you've been living under rock, you've probably heard of ChatGPT - the AI chatbot taking the world by storm for its ability to create content for social media, your website, blog, videos... you name it! ChatGPT can generate virtually anything in a matter of seconds.In fact GPT is so valuable that Microsoft are investing 10 billion dollars into open.ai - the business behind ChatGPT - with plans to incorporate AI into their Microsoft Office Suite, Bing and other tools and platforms. But with great power comes great responsibility

Series: All! Jesus has all authority, So that all nationsMight pledge all allegiance to him.Title: “How to Practice Church Discipline” (Darien Gabriel)Scripture: Matthew 18:15-20 NIVHeavily relied on O'Donnell for this one. (See below)Bottom line: We all practice church discipline by lovingly confronting those who sin against us (per Matthew 18) with the aim of restoring the relationship.DISCUSSION QUESTIONSSERMON OUTLINE & NOTESMAIN REFERENCES USEDDISCUSSION QUESTIONSDiscussion questions for group and personal study. Reflect and Discuss1. What does it mean to become like children in verse 3? What is the difference between having childlike faith and being immature in your faith?2. How does the requirement of humility in verses 1-4 compare with our culture's view of greatness?3. Explain how a biblical view of the church goes against a culture that prizes independence?4. How should the parable of the Lost Sheep in verses 10-14 inform our view of church discipline?5. Respond to the following objection to church discipline: If our church disciplines members, then unbelievers will be turned off and discouraged from coming.6. What is the ultimate goal of church discipline?7. What does Matthew 18 have to add to our view of church membership?8. List things that should and should not be matters of church discipline.9. What is the main point of the parable of the Unforgiving Servant (wv. 23-35)?10. If you aren't showing mercy to others, how might that be an indica tion that you are not being shaped by the gospel?Final Questions (optional or in place of above)What is God saying to you right now? What are you going to do about it?Find our sermons, podcasts, discussion questions and notes at https://www.gracetoday.net/podcastWeekly questions I answer in preparation for the sermon:Q. What do I want you to know? A. How to practice church disciplineQ. Why? A. Because it leads to a holier and healthier church familyQ. What do I want you to do? A. Practice church discipline/confrontation per Matthew 18Q. Why? A. Because these steps lead to a holier, healthier church family. OUTLINE & NOTESOur oldest grandson is almost 2-1/2 years old. He trusts his parents and grandparents right now. He has an implicit faith in us. When we tell him something, he just believes us. You might call him innocent. He is not! You might call him naive. But for now he trusts us implicitly and humbly. He just knows he doesn't know near as much as we do.This is what I think Jesus was trying to communicate to his 12 earlier here. To know that you're a son off the king, you must humble yourself and turn and become like a 2-3 yr old trusting your Heavenly Father in all he says.ContextMatt. 18:1–20:34 The Community of the Messiah Revealed. This is the fourth of Jesus' five major discourses in Matthew's GospelAs his earthly ministry draws to a close, Jesus has spent considerable time clarifying his identity and mission (chs. 14–17). He instructs his disciples on the nature of his covenant community, explaining the kingdom community's characteristics (18:1–35), its implications for the sanctity of marriage (19:1–12), and its value (19:13–20:34). ESV Study Bible noteWhat's important to remember about this context is that Jesus is dealing with how local believers interact with each other. They pursue wandering brothers and sisters in Christ. They lovingly confront sinful behavior. This is different than confronting someone in the world outside of the church.IntroductionBottom line: We all practice church discipline by lovingly confronting those who sin against us (per Matthew 18) with the aim of restoring the relationship.Church discipline is the act of lovingly confronting one who sins against us so that they humbly respond with repentance restoring their relationship with us and the Lord. How do we do this?First, Why confront?My notes after reading O'DonnellHave you ever been legitimately confronted over something you did wrong? Or sin?It's a humbling experience. Makes you feel small. “But small, as we learned (earlier in Matthew 18), is the appropriate size to get into the kingdom as well as move up in it. Thus, if confrontation can lead to that kind of smallness, it is something we all, from time to time, very well need.” P. 509Why confront?This passage is about how the church (the people) confronts the one who sins against them. But before we tackle how, let's understand why we even do it.Most churches want to do this as much as a parent wants to spank a child in the Super Walmart. It's hard form some to hear that a church can excommunicate someone. It sounds harsh, judgmental, unloving and so against the spirit of the age. This is why we start with why?4 reasons one Christian confronts another:1 from our passage and 3 from the surrounding contextThe first reason for Christian confrontation is the value of one straying sheep.Notice how Jesus moves from his parable of the lost sheep directly to this. Matthew inserts nothing in between. Presumably, Jesus does not stop talking in between.From: Sheep—how God values each individual Christian, even and especially strayed sheepTo: ThisWhy? Because they are thematically linked.The Father's concern for sinners and the Shepherd's rescue of those who've wandered from the fold are now the church's concern. The Church confronts because we value each and every sheep, even and especially straying sheep.The second reason for Christian confrontation is the hope of forgiveness and family reconciliation.Immediate context: Theme is the forgiveness of a brother's sin.Note “Brother” is generic for Christian but is also familial language. He could have used “disciple”Family reconciliations are the best. Think of the prodigal son. (Luke 15)The third reason for Christian confrontation is, a little laxity leads to a lot of lapsing. Paul said, “a little leaven leaven's the whole lump.” 1 Cor 5:6A little leaven (neglected sin in the church) leaven's the whole lump (affects whole church)A little laxity (let this or that sin go unchecked) leads to a lot of lapsing (I guess if he does that, I can do this)Cutting off sin (18:8-9) “That by guarding our own personal holiness we guard others, especially those weaker in the faith” p. 511Ex. “Newly baptized Christian sees an elder in the church sinning, and that elder is not confronted and corrected by the church, then the younger Christian will likely be tempted to similarly sin.” p. 511“Christian confrontation helps protect and purify the church (like salt), and it helps prevent the spread of sin throughout the Body of Christ.”The fourth reason for Christian confrontation is that it is a command of Christ…because Jesus is Lord.”Reproof and love go together.“Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Lev 19:17-18Tolerating sin is not loving.Because God loves, God disciplines.It's the loving shepherd who goes after the lost sheep.The unloving shepherd stays at homeHe's either indifferent (what's 1 out of 100), orHe's lenient (oh, sheep will be sheep)So, Christians are to confront sinning Christians becauseWe value one straying sheepWe hope for forgiveness and family reconciliationWe know that a little laxity leads to a lot of lapsing, andChristian confrontation is a loving command from the most loving man who ever lived.Then, How confront?3 Strikes and You're Out (Quick and dirty)Confront one on one. If they listen, you've won them over. It's over.If they don't, proceed to step two.Confront with 2-3 witnesses. If they listen, you've won them over. It's over.If they don't, proceed to step three.Confront with the church. If they listen, you've won them over. It's over.If they don't, you expel them from the church and treat them as a non-Christian.More detailed outline…How to Lovingly Confront—3 Steps (O'Donnell)Go and win (gain) First, 3 important detailsNotice who is confronting whom—it's brother to brother…Not brother to person in the world.There's a time for that—this isn't about that.Notice when this occurs—only “if your brother sins against you.” (In ESV text; footnoted in NIV)Just between you and him alone (if have “against you” personally as in ESV)And it is “sin”, behavior that is clearly and consistently contrary to Christ's commandsThis is not bad personality traits or poor hygieneNotice (speaking on sin) that Jesus assumes Christians will sin Step 1: Go and win (Gain) PRIVATE CORRECTION / LOVING CONFRONTATION First step is not…To waitTo sit and sulkTo give a cold shoulder or silent treatmentIndifferenceTit for tatTo gossipTo slanderRather, step 1 is a private conversation—underline “just between the two of you” (15)Gently and/orWith holy harshnessNathan modeled this in a balanced way with King David (2 Sam 12:1-7)Paul throughout his ministry; Gal 2:11 I opposed Peter to his faceJesus showed holy harshness in 18:8-9Regardless, the spirit is that of humility and love, a solemn concern for your brother's soulSo we go hoping to win i.e. restore, gain to God and to fellowship with the churchHoping to bring light to their darkness. If he sees this darkness, confesses it, asks for forgiveness, you're won or gained your brotherStep 2: Establish Testimony (evidence) SMALL GROUP CLARIFICATION Jesus is practicalJesus is also realistic. Most of us get defensive when confronted. Why? Because we're proud. Instead of melting like butter, we harden like clay.“Jesus' lesson on becoming like little children applies well here as well. Humility is needed! and such humility is helped along by bringing others to hear the case.” P. 5162 or 3 others/witnesses comes from Deut 19:15. Why?To protect against a false accusation—brother B is exaggerating or lying about brother A's offense. To help brother A, if he's been rightly accused, to see his sin as sin, or in other words, to add their voice of reproof so he might repent, andTo be public witnesses, if needed, if the matter comes to the whole church (2 Cor 13:1; 1 Tim 5:19)Step 3: Church Censure CHURCH ADMONITION & POSSIBLY EXCOMMUNICATION A censure is an official reprimand and judgment. Here it is the church saying, “3 strikes and your out—you've been excommunicated from the fellowship.”p. 516First, let's be clear on who is to blame here—it's the unrepentant brother—he has refused to “listen”This text isn't just how to confront—it's how to respond to confrontation3 Strikes and you're out“If a sinner won't cut off his sin, the church cuts him off.” V. 17That is, treat him like someone who has betrayed the covenant (like a traitor tax collector) and someone who does not currently believe in the covenant (gentile or pagan); their actions move leaders to declare that they are not a follower of ChristIn NT, excommunication meant not allowing this unrepentant “brother” to participate in the public gatherings—A worship serviceLord's SupperPrayer meetingA judicial meeting For some, this is the limited versionFor others, it was unlimited restriction:“If any false teacher ‘comes to you…do not receive him into your home or give him any greeting'” (2 John 10)“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice (i.e. Matthew 18:15-17), have nothing to do with him.” (Titus 3:10)“[Do] not …associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is justly or sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviled, drunkard, or swindler”—[Do] not even eat with such a one.” (1 Cor 5:11)“Yet for both—with limited and unlimited restriction—the hope was held out that this ‘severe measure' would make the sinner come to his senses, that this ‘brother' would act like a brother should —repent and return.” P. 5171 Cor 5-62 Thess 3:14-15Coming out of 15-17, Jesus masterfully assumes there will be pushback. “Says who?” AUTHORITY“You see, when a brother or sister is excommunicated, before they leave (and/or sue) the disciplining church and go to another, they will nearly always reply to the disciplining church, ‘You're not God. Who gives you the right?' And to that objection our Lord leaves his church 18-20, his gentle way of saying ‘shut it'” pp. 517-18“These verses are not about the value of prayer meetings.”“Rather, these verses are about Jesus giving his divine authority to forgive sins (or loose) or not forgive (to bind) into the hands of the church.” P. 518“If the local church gathers together in the name of Christ—even two or three—to judge another brother (that's the context, v. 17 esp.), then what these brothers decide on earth is decided (already) in heaven. Why? Jesus' answer is, ‘Because I say so'…It's a matter of transference of authority.” P. 518“The church has been given the authority to forgive (receive back into fellowship) or excommunicate (remove from fellowship). This is how we use the keys to the kingdom.ConclusionOur bottom line today is that we all practice church discipline by lovingly confronting those who've sinned against us with the aim of restoring the relationship. Are you ever confronting sin?When you do, do you do so with humility and love and the aim to restore the relationship?Is someone confronting you? Are you responding with humility and repentance?Is the Lord challenging you to join your local church?What is God saying to you right now?Let's pray.Church discipline -various levels by warren wiersbe“Various levels of church disciplinePersonal differences between Christians (Matt. 18:15–18; Phil. 4:1–3). If a brother or sister sins against me (either deliberately or unknowingly), I should go to that person privately and seek to get the matter settled. Only if the person refuses to settle the matter should I bring anyone else in; and the problem must not go to the church family until every other means has been exhausted.Doctrinal error. Determine first of all why the person is teaching wrong doctrine. Perhaps it is because of ignorance and lack of Bible knowledge. In that case, patiently teach him the truth (2 Tim. 2:23–26). If he persists, rebuke him (Titus 1:10–14). Paul had to do this to Peter (Gal. 2:11ff). If the error continues, avoid him (Rom. 16:17–18), and then separate yourself from him (2 Tim. 2:18ff; 2 John 9ff).A believer overtaken by sin (Gal. 6:1–3).Even the great Apostle Peter denied the Lord. And David yielded to lust and committed adultery. When a Christian is caught in known sin, the spiritual members of the church must seek to restore him with gentleness and love. The word restore here means “to set a broken bone”—and that takes tenderness and patience. Too often the church quickly passes judgment on a believer who has sinned, and the damage done causes problems for years to come.A repeating troublemaker (Titus 3:10). The word heretic does not refer to doctrinal error, but to a proud attitude of one who gets people to “take sides” in the church. The Greek word means “to make a choice.” This leads to divisions and cliques in the local church (see Gal. 5:20 where heresies ought to be translated “sects, parties”). There is hardly a church that does not have its parties for or against anything—the pastor, the building program, even the color of the kitchen walls. Usually these “heretics” are people who like to be important; they want a following. Often they have deep emotional problems that Satan can use to create spiritual problems in the church. Perhaps they are frustrated at home or on the job; or perhaps they have, in the past, been hurt by some pastor or church. These “factious people” should be given two official warnings. If they repeat their sin of dividing the church, they should be given a third warning and rejected. “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned” (Titus 3:10–11, niv). It is my conviction that such people should not hold office in the church. It is also my conviction that, if they leave the church “in a conviction that, if they leave the church “in a huff,” they should be restored to fellowship only twice. The third time—they are out!Open immorality (1 Cor. 5).The church must mourn over the sinner (the same word is used for mourning over the dead) and seek to bring him to repentance. If he refuses, the church collectively should dismiss him (1 Cor. 5:13, where the Greek word means “expel”). If he repents, he must be forgiven and restored to fellowship in the church (2 Cor. 2:6–11). In the case of the “lazy saints,” Paul told the believers to exhort them, warn them, and if they did not repent, withdraw intimate fellowship from them. This probably meant that these believers were not permitted to share in the Lord's Supper, and that the church members would not invite them to their homes. Second Thessalonians 3:14 does not apply to every case of discipline. It applies only to the matter of saints not working for a living. “Have no company” literally means “do not get mixed up with”; the same word is used in 1 Corinthians 5:9. There is a difference between acquaintanceship, friendship, and fellowship; for fellowship means “to have in common.” For obedient saints to treat disobedient Christians with the same friendship they show to other dedicated saints is to give approval to their sins. However, Paul (knowing the tendency of human nature to go to extremes) cautioned them not to treat the offenders like enemies. “They are still your brothers in Christ,” he added. Lot was out of fellowship with God and Abraham because he lived in Sodom; yet Abraham rescued Lot from the enemy because Lot was his brother (Gen. 14, and note especially v. 14). It requires much patience, love, and grace to help an erring brother; and this is why Paul added a final motive for earning a living.”Church Discipline by Warren WiersbeThe Question of Chapter 18"At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Matthew 18:1 The rest of the chapter is a response to that question. --God's Search and Rescue Plan: Church Discipline by David V. Edling, p. 6From John Stott wrote in "Christian Counter-culture":"The addition of the words as we also have forgiven our debtors is further emphasized in verses 14 and 15 which follow the prayer and state that our Father will forgive us if we forgive others but will not forgive us if we refuse to forgive others. This certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It is rather that God forgives only the penitent and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit. Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offence against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely triffling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offences of others, it proves that we have minimized our own. It is the disparity between the size of debts which is the main point of the parable of the unmerciful servant. It's conclusion is: 'I forgave you all that debt (which was huge)...; should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?'" pp. 149-150MAIN REFERENCES USED“Preaching the Word” Commentary, Douglas Sean O'Donnell, Edited by Kent Hughes“Matthew” by RC Sproul“The Bible Knowledge Commentary” by Walvoord, Zuck (BKC)“The Bible Exposition Commentary” by Warren Wiersbe (BEC)“Exalting Jesus in Matthew” by David Platt (CCE)Outline Bible, D WillmingtonNIV Study Bible (NIVSB)ESV Study Bible (ESVSB)God's Search and Rescue Plan: Church Discipline by David V. Edling

As Black History Month 2023 winds down, this week's Talking Michigan Transportation podcast highlights the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program and some of the success stories.First, Lisa Thompson, administrator of MDOT's Office of Business Development, which includes the DBE program, explains why the federal government requires state DOTs to help give historically disadvantaged groups an equal footing in procuring transportation contracts.Thompson explains that the origins of the program and case for support dating back to the Reagan administration, including revisions over the years, as outlined by the U.S. Department of Transportation:This program has been the Department of Transportation's most important tool for promoting equal opportunity in federal transportation contracting since it was first signed into law by President Reagan in 1983. Effective March 4, 1999, the department issued a new final regulation to guide the administration of the DBE program. This new regulation has three major goals:To create a level playing field on which DBEs can compete fairly,To mend but not end the DBE program, andTo make the DBE program more effective and efficient for all participants.In a second segment, Rhonda Rowe, owner and chief executive officer of Rowe Trucking, LLC in Detroit, talks about how the program has helped her family business thrive for several decades. Her business is among those highlighted in a special MDOT initiative.

I know most people hate legalese, and contracts seem full of that kind of language. But services agreements and NDAs are inevitable in today's business world. They are the lifeblood that can make or break your business; in this episode, I talk about why. You will learn:How contracts are necessary to avoid assumptions;Seven reasons to learn to love your contracts; andTo build a sustainable, scalable, and salable business, you have to know the basics about contractsI'm going deeper into specific provisions, the timing of contract utilization, and much more. As always, I look forward to your questions, and feel free to contact me to learn more.Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videosMusic credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

Chapter 105　　As soon as they had set foot in that land, Pinocchio,Lamp-Wick, andall the other boys who had traveled withthem started out on a tour of investigation21. Theywandered everywhere, theylooked into every nook andcorner, house and theater. They became everybody'sfriend.　　Who could be happier than they?　　What with entertainments and parties, the hours, the days,the weekspassed like lightning.　　"Oh, what a beautiful life this is!" said Pinocchioeachtime that, by chance, he met his friend Lamp-Wick.　　"Was I right or wrong?" answered Lamp-Wick. "Andto thinkyou did not want to come! To think that evenyesterday the idea came into yourhead to return hometo see your Fairy and to start studying again! If todayyouare free from pencils and books and school, you oweit to me, to my advice, tomy care. Do you admit it? Onlytrue friends count, after all.""It'strue, Lamp-Wick, it's true. If today I am a reallyhappy boy, it is all becauseof you. And to think that theteacher, when speaking of you, used to say, `Donot gowith that Lamp-Wick! He is a bad companion and someday he will lead youastray.'""Poor teacher!" answered the other, nodding his head.　　"Indeed I know how much he disliked me and how heenjoyedspeaking ill of me. But I am of a generous nature,and I gladly forgivehim.""Great soul!" said Pinocchio, fondly embracing his friend.　　Five months passed and the boys continued playing andenjoyingthemselves from morn till night, without everseeing a book, or a desk, or aschool. But, my children,there came a morning when Pinocchio awoke and foundagreat surprise awaiting him, a surprise which made himfeel very unhappy, as youshall see.皮诺乔、小灯芯，以及赶车的带来的一大车孩子，进了城一下车就马上投入这种大混乱之中。才几分钟，诸位很容易想象到，他们已经和所有的孩子交上了朋友。天底下还有谁能比他们更幸福，更快活呢？　　在没完没了的种种玩乐当中，一个钟头又一个钟头，一天又一天，一个星期又一个星期，飞也似地过去了。　　“噢！多美的生活啊！”皮诺乔每次碰到小灯芯就说。　　“看，我的话不错吧？”小灯芯回答说，“还说你不想来呢！还想回你那个仙女的家去，把时间浪费在学习上呢！……你今天用不着再为什么书本和学校伤脑筋了，你都得谢谢我，谢谢我的好主意，谢谢我的关心，对不对？只有真正的朋友才会帮你这么大的忙。”　　“你说得对，小灯芯！今天我成为真正快活的孩子，全都亏了你。可你知道老师跟我是怎么讲你的？他总是跟我说：‘别跟小灯芯这小流氓在一起，因为小灯芯是个坏同学，只会怂恿你做坏事！'……”　　“可怜的老师！”小灯芯摇摇头回答说。“我知道得太清楚了，他讨厌我，老说我坏话，可我宽宏大量，我原谅他！”　　“你真是宽宏大量！”皮诺乔说着，热情地拥抱他的朋友，在他脑门上亲了亲。　　他们书也不读，学校也不上，一天天就这样无忧无虑地玩啊，乐啊，一下子五个月过去了。可是有一天皮诺乔清早醒来，就像老话说的，遇到了一个晴天霹雳，一下子什么劲都没有了。21 investigation n.调查，调查研究参考例句：· In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。· He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

Speaker: Hugh Carson - Luke 4:31-44Visit CFC Online: tccherrydale.com Address: 401 State Park Rd Greenville, SC 29609

God's always perfect timing can be one of the largest hurdles we have to understand in our lives.I am sure each one of us can easily recall various times in our life praying day, after day, after day, after day for some situation? Perhaps it was for healing, for provision of finances, for a life-partner, for anyone of a hundred different things, people, or situations. Yet, it seemed as if those prayers were unanswered, as if God was just letting you remain in a state of limbo without a clear answer.The world around you was continuing to move on while leaving you in a place you did not want to be. I can well recall times in my own life seeing people happily living their lives, wondering how could they do this? Impatiently, I wanted God acting now to resolve my situation. Furthermore, I did not want to endure another day of unanswered prayers.We all want good things to happen in our lives, but too often we want it now, not later. When it doesn't happen that way, we are tempted to ask, "When, God, when?" Most of us need to grow in the area of trusting God instead of focusing on the "when" question. If you are missing joy and peace, then most likely you are not fully trusting God.Realising God's timing in my life has been one of the BIGGEST lessons I have had to learn. Often this is not easy, but involves a conscious daily commitment to patience and surrendering my life to Him. Through it all, however, it can be one of the most freeing and peaceful lessons you can learn.1. God has a timetable for everything that happens“There is an APPOINTED TIME for everything, and there is a RIGHT TIME for every event under heaven” Eccles 3:1 (NASB)God uses the phrase “right time” 96 times in the Bible. God has a right time for everything! This verse lets us know that we do not all live in the same season at the same time. We should never be jealous of someone who is enjoying harvest while we are still in the planting season. Remember, they had to go through a season of planting just as you might be now. Seeing the results that person might now be enjoying should actually be an encouragement to understand and trust that God is doing the very best for you in your present season. Seeding time represents learning the will of God. Each time I choose God's will instead of my own, I am planting a good seed that will in God's timing bring a harvest.2. God does not tell us the details in advance“God has given us a desire to know the future. He always does everything just right and on time, but people can never completely understand what He is doing” Eccles. 3:11 (NCV)There are three primary reasons why God does not show us the future:It would scare us, and possibly overwhelm us.We would try to manipulate it.God wants us to TRUST Him completely.“Jesus answered, The Father is the One who sets the fixed dates and the times of their fulfillment. You are not permitted to know the timing of all that He has prepared by His own authority” Acts 1:7 (The Passion Translation - TPT)3. God is never in a hurry, and He's never late2 Peter 3:8 (TPT) “So, dear friends, don't let this one thing escape your notice: a single day counts like a thousand years to the Lord Yahweh, and a thousand years counts as one day.”God's sense of time is very different to our own. God is timeless and He is not bound by time. God's timing is perfect. Most times I am in a hurry and God is not. My timing is imperfect. God is not early, nor late…He is always right on time!GOD speaking to the prophet Habakkuk: “For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3 (NASB)3. God's timing is not always convenientEverything God does is out of love. God is love! Everything happens at the right time, and not at the easiest time with no pain involved.4. At the right time God can do anything instantlyGod spoke the entire universe into existence instantly. We try to accomplish things in our way, in our own time, and our situation is not going anywhere.God said: “I am the Lord, and when it is time, I will make these things happen quickly.” Isaiah 60:22 (NCV)Too often we try to take control over every part of our situation. We try doing things we feel are right without asking God first, invariably for the situation to only get worse. Nothing short of complete surrender to God is what is required; only then are things likely to start to change for the better.THE MOST DIFFICULT PLACE TO BE IN LIFE IS GOD'S WAITING ROOM - YOU ARE IN A HURRY AND GOD IS NOT!I believe these words sum up for many of us in just one sentence how we can feel at times. Why is this taking so long God, why do I have to go through all this, I am tired Lord, I cannot do another day of this… Lord why is this continuing on?The book of Genesis tells the story of Joseph, who waited many years for the fulfillment of the dream God had given him. He was falsely accused and imprisoned before the time came for him to do what God had shown him he was to do. The book of Exodus tells us that God led the Israelites the longer, harder way on their journey to the Promised Land because He knew they were not yet ready to go in. There had to be time for their training, and they had to go through some very trying situations. They wasted a lot of time wondering about God's timing, but God never failed to take care of them and show them what He wanted them to do. The same is true in our lives.Seven years ago the out-break of civil war suddenly forced the abandonment of the agricultural project which I managed in South Sudan. At the time I was owed by my employer more than one year's salary payments. This sudden change of circumstances with four children to support subsequently left us in an extremely tenuous situation for several years. It was, however, a great time of spiritual growth as a couple and family where we came to clearly recognise God as our source, much more clearly than at any point previously in our lives. With the passing of time God also plainly guided my patient handling of the relationship with my former employer so that exactly at His timing when His plans were ready to be revealed the long-owed moneys are now moving for God's purposes to be fulfilled. God's perfect timing, almost seven years later.So why are there delays that do not fit to our timetable:To test our faith, andTo grow our character.God is more interested in what you become, than what you do.The Lord says: “At the RIGHT TIME I will answer your prayers!” Isaiah 49:8 (NCV)God answers EVERY prayer…. “no” is an answer, and “not yet” is an answer. A delay is not a denial. When we experience a delay it tends to cause a lot of negative emotions. A delay creates stress, anger, worry, envy, and sometimes self-pity.Such delays can seem to be the hardest times and lessons in our life. The salary payment delay I described was YEARS, not days, weeks, or months. In that period we certainly learnt to trust God more completely than ever previously. We learnt to hand over and depend more than ever on God as our source. God wanted us to completely trust Him, and Him alone.God wants us to do four things while we are in His WAITING ROOM:Fear NotFret NotForget Not, andFaint Not1.FEAR NOT! Trust God completelyInstead of fear dominating my life, I now have faith dominating my life. Over the years I have learnt to trust God in times that I do not understand. Trusting God causes my fear to subside. In researching this message I read varying accounts that the phrase “fear not” appears in the Bible anywhere from 200 up to 365 times – if it is the later, then that's one “fear not” verse for every day of the year!Jesus said: “Don't yield to fear. All you need to do is keep on believing.” Mark 5:36 (TPT)2. FRET NOT! Be patient and humbleWhen I checked the definition of the word fret it says: to be constantly or visibly worried or anxious.Every time you wait patiently on God, it is a sign of faith and humility.“Wait and trust the Lord. DON'T FRET when others get rich or when someone else's plans succeed. And don't get angry or upset – it only leads to trouble.” Psalm 37:7-8 (NCV)Too often we can have our eyes on others, instead of focussed on God. We are comparing ourselves and our situation to others. Worry is worthless! You are wasting that moment. Worry cannot control the past or the future, it messes up the right now. Instead of worrying - PRAY!“Don't be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life.” Philippians 4:6 (TPT)3. FORGET NOT! Study God's promises to youThe Bible is filled with the promises of God to each of one of us, more than 6,000 promises in fact. It is our OWNER'S MANUAL of life.“If you keep looking closely into God's perfect Word that sets people free, and you keep on studying it, and you DON'T FORGET it, and you put it into daily practice – you will be BLESSED by God in ALL you do!” James 1:254. FAINT NOT! Don't give up“So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the RIGHT TIME we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up or quit” Galatians 6:9 (The Message)DON'T GIVE UP - LOOK UP!Remember that it is all in God's perfect timing. He has a timetable for everything, He does not tell us all the details, God is never in a hurry, He is never late, and His timing is not always convenient! Consequently, in the storms of life we can trust God, we can be patient and humble, we can count on God's promises and keep our eyes on Him. Our job is not to figure out when, but to make up our mind that we will not give up until we cross the finish line and are living in the radical, outrageous blessings of God. Trusting God brings life. Believing brings rest.I pray a blessed week ahead for each and every one of you in daily walk with the Lord. May His perfect timing be revealed in some aspect of your life this week to encourage and draw you closer to Him.

Kiwi Security Trainer Mike Ouwerkerk talks about how to Teach Suspicion Don’t let your family get liquidated orGet their hearts broken or taken Advantage of.Follow these basic security rulesSpot suspect questions5 common fear tacticsImplement the rules on this episode and… Share this podcast with your family soThey stop calling you for advice andTo fix their insecure technology miss-steps

Bill lives & breathes small business. He takes us through his work as Executive Director of Small Business Australia https://www.smallbusinessaustralia.org/ which has a simple philosophy that he believes boils down to three things;To see things simplerTo see things fairer, andTo see things betterIn this episode Bill talks about;His own small business background, including the legendary Doctor Dog, founding fathers of the Melbourne street food sceneWhat he learnt at Harvard University that is useful to all small business ownersWhat small business owners can do to educate themselves and improve their business performanceHis top tips to survive challenges brought on by Covid19The importance of communicating with staff, suppliers, financiers and others important to the businessThe important role that small businesses have in local communitiesThe #buylocalcampaign recently launched by Small Business AustraliaWhere to find financial support for your small business and especially the new  traineeship opportunities https://www.smallbusinessaustralia.org/traineeship-opportunities/The "Five-step Small Business Survival Guide"The benefits of joining Small Business Australia https://www.smallbusinessaustralia.org/get-involved/

Hello RV family – welcome to Episode 16, and the final episode of our Route 66 series. I suppose this episode isn’t really Route 66 based, but we did pick up some of it on the way home and it is the finishing leg of that trip which took us all the way down Route 66 from our home in Ontario Canada to California right to the End of the Trail Sign at Santa Monica Pier. To hear all about California, tune in to our episode on Leg 3For all the Historical Route 66 Icons we saw between Oklahoma and Arizona, listen to Leg 2; andTo hear how our Journey stated, and what inspired us to take the trip in the first place, check out our Leg 1 episodeAs always, we couldn't have done this without a few tools along the way, namely our super-duper planning app: Roadtrippers as well as a hard copy of the EZ 66 Guide for Travellers which we picked up on the trip, but you can find on AmazonIf you want to try Roadtrippers, the basic account is free, but when you're ready to upgrade to Roadtrippers Plus, (trust us, it's worth it), you can sign up HERE and get $5 off your membership by using our exclusive listener code: RVCANUCKSAs always we feel blessed that you take the time to tune in each week and we love taking you along on this journey.

This chapter is mostly about one of my favorite sightings, the 1952 Washington D.C. flap. I'm sure we will do an episode on it soon. While we get a highly interesting inside look at the events, a few theories have emerged since this book was written. At any rate, one of my favorite chapters. A few topics in the chapter that may or may not be interesting as a reference to people who may want to reference them: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. 1952 Washington UFO Wave The 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington,[1] was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington, D.C. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap" - "Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports." Langley AFB Langley Air Force Base (IATA: LFI, ICAO: KLFI, FAA LID: LFI) is a United States Air Force base located adjacent to Hampton and Newport News, Virginia. It was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established after the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917.[2]On 1 October 2010, Langley Air Force Base was joined with Fort Eustis to become Joint Base Langley–Eustis. The base was established in accordance with congressional legislation implementing the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The legislation ordered the consolidation of the two facilities which were nearby, but separate military installations, into a single joint base, one of 12 formed in the United States as a result of the law. Andrews AFB Andrews Air Force Base (Andrews AFB, AAFB) is the airfield portion of Joint Base Andrews which is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force.[3] In 2009, Andrews Air Force Base merged with Naval Air Facility Washington to form Joint Base Andrews. Andrews, located near Morningside, Maryland in suburban Washington, DC, is the home base of two Boeing VC-25A aircraft with the call sign Air Force One when the president is on board, that serve the President of the United States.[4]The host unit at Andrews is the 316th Wing, assigned to the Air Force District of Washington. It is responsible for maintaining emergency reaction rotary-wing airlift and other National Capital Region contingency response capabilities critical to national security and for organizing, training, equipping and deploying combat-ready forces for Air and Space Expeditionary Forces (AEFs). The 316th Wing also provides installation security, services and airfield management to support the President, Vice President, other U.S. senior leaders and more than 50 tenant organizations and federal agencies.The 316th Wing provides security, personnel, contracting, finance and infrastructure support for 5 Wings, 3 Headquarters, more than 80 tenant organizations, 148 geographically separated units, 6,500 Airmen in the Pentagon, as well as 60,000 Airmen and families in the national capital region and around the world. The 316th Wing supports contingency operations in the capital of the United States with immediate response rotary-assets. It also provides security for the world's highest visibility flight line and is responsible for ceremonial support with the United States Air Force Band, Honor Guard and Air Force Arlington Chaplaincy.[5]The Wing commander is Colonel TYLER R. SCHAFF. Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant THOMAS C. DANIELS.For statistical purposes the base is delineated as a census-designated place by the U.S. Census Bureau. As of the 2010 census, the resident population was 2,973. Bolling AFB Bolling Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in Washington, D.C. In 2010 it was merged with Naval Support Facility Anacostia to form Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling. From its beginning, the installation has hosted elements of the Army Air Corps (predecessor to today's Air Force) and Navy aviation and support elements. B-26 The Martin B-26 Marauder was an American twin-engined medium bomber that saw extensive service during World War II. The B-26 was built at two locations: Baltimore, Maryland, and Omaha, Nebraska, by the Glenn L. Martin Company.First used in the Pacific Theater of World War II in early 1942, it was also used in the Mediterranean Theater and in Western Europe.After entering service with the United States Army aviation units, the aircraft quickly received the reputation of a "widowmaker" due to the early models' high accident rate during takeoffs and landings. This was due to the fact that the Marauder had to be flown at precise airspeeds, particularly on final runway approach or when one engine was out. The unusually high 150 mph (241 km/h) speed on short final runway approach was intimidating to many pilots who were used to much slower approach speeds, and whenever they slowed to speeds below those stipulated in the manual, the aircraft would often stall and crash.[3]The B-26 became a safer aircraft once crews were re-trained, and after aerodynamics modifications (an increase of wingspan and wing angle-of-incidence to give better takeoff performance, and a larger vertical stabilizer and rudder).[4] The Marauder ended World War II with the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber.[5]A total of 5,288 were produced between February 1941 and March 1945; 522 of these were flown by the Royal Air Force and the South African Air Force. By the time the United States Air Force was created as an independent military service separate from the United States Army in 1947, all Martin B-26s had been retired from U.S. service. After the Marauder was retired the unrelated Douglas A-26 Invader then assumed the "B-26" designation which led to confusion between the two aircraft. F-94 The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was developed from the twin-seat Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star in the late 1940s as an all-weather, day/night interceptor. The aircraft reached operational service in May 1950 with Air Defense Command, replacing the piston-engined North American F-82 Twin Mustang in the all-weather interceptor role.The F-94 was the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner and was the first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953. It had a relatively brief operational life, being replaced in the mid-1950s by the Northrop F-89 Scorpion and North American F-86D Sabre. The last aircraft left active-duty service in 1958 and Air National Guard service in 1959. AWOL Absent Without Leave According to the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice, desertion is defined as:"(a) Any member of the armed forces who–(1) without authority goes or remains absent from his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away therefrom permanently;(2) quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service; or(3) without being regularly separated from one of the armed forces enlists or accepts an appointment in the same or another one of the armed forces without fully disclosing the fact that he has not been regularly separated, or enters any foreign armed service except when authorized by the United States; is guilty of desertion.(b) Any commissioned officer of the armed forces who, after tender of his resignation and before notice of its acceptance, quits his post or proper duties without leave and with intent to remain away therefrom permanently is guilty of desertion.(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct." Air Force Letter 200-5 1. Purpose and Scope.  This Letter sets forth Air Force responsibility and reporting procedures for information and materiel pertaining to unidentified flying objects.  All incidents observed by Air Force personnel or received at any Air Force installation from a civilian source will be reported in accordance with this Letter, except that all airborne sightings by Air Force personnel, Civilian Air Patrol, and regularly scheduled United States airline pilots will also be reported as provided by JANAP 146 series (CIRVIS).

The second half of Chapter 11. Its bananas! Some stuff, from the web: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. Skyhook Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons. DC-3The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, and a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and can operate from short runways.The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental US from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and with only 3 stops. It is one of the first airliners that could profitably carry only passengers without relying on mail subsidies.[4]Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus transport aircraft and the DC-3 was no longer competitive due to its size and speed. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful on less glamorous routes.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013. T-33The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service. B-25The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. C-54The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. It was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States.

Sorry everyone, short on time this week so I had to do this as a two parter. Chapter 11 has lots of interesting stuff. Ruppelt hints at quite a lot, and I wonder how much he is holding back. Was he muzzled by the military, or is this all part of a larger con? Whatever the case, the 1952 flap was one of the strangest in UFO history. A few topics from this part of the chapter that may or may not be interesting, from the old wiki: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. Skyhook Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons. DC-3The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, and a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and can operate from short runways.The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental US from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and with only 3 stops. It is one of the first airliners that could profitably carry only passengers without relying on mail subsidies.[4]Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus transport aircraft and the DC-3 was no longer competitive due to its size and speed. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful on less glamorous routes.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013. T-33The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service. B-25The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. C-54The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. It was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States.

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #14 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox How To Scale The Scrum Framework (Distributed & Large Scrum Projects)? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Framework – as described so far – works best for a single Scrum Team in one location. However, in reality, a singular Scrum Team often cannot implement a project entirely, or the team members have to spread over multiple locations. As a consequence, the number of teams has to increase with various distributed teams. In many instances, we have also been observing that those teams are distributed in geographically distant locations or continents. There are numerous reasons which motivate organizations to distribute their teams across different locations: Technical Reasons: Some knowhow to build separate components of the software are not locally available in the headquarters, Expertise Reasons: Some capabilities related to the execution of different software engineering activities are not locally available. For instance, test automation, user interface design, or integration of in-house software to the software of other vendors can require experts outside the headquarters, Size-related Reasons: The project takes more people on board to deliver it to its clients in a predefined timeline. If this is the case, then the project organization will need more members than it can conceivably fit one single Scrum Team. So the Scrum Team has to be distributed,Business-related Reasons: Use of human resources from lower-cost locations or enabling the continuity of work by using engineers from different time-zones could build a good business case. As communication is an integral part of the Scrum Framework, all Scrum Team members should pay attention to overcome the challenges to deal with working within a distributed project environment. Furthermore, all team members should have access to communication tools, including audio/video conferencing and screen sharing tools. These commonly used project management tools support teams to enable healthy and continuous communication. Those can include product backlogs, sprint backlogs, incident lists, knowledge/ news sharing tools, and so on. Project Organization: Multiple Teams The simplest way of expanding the Scrum Framework while working in a larger-scale project setup is to increase the number of teams in the same location. If multiple teams need to work together to implement a project, it is best to grow the number of teams progressively. What does this mean to you? Multiple Teams in a Single Location In most organizations, progressive growth is more manageable than launching ten different new teams in one go. The best practice is to start with a single Scrum Team. After a few successful Sprints, one or two additional Scrum Teams can join the project. Once you ensure that these multiple Scrum Teams work together well, you can keep on adding further Scrum Teams to your distributed project organization. Increasing the Number of Teams There are two typical ways of creating new Scrum Teams:You split an existing Scrum Team into multiple teams and add new Scrum Team members where and when necessary,You construct a new Scrum Team from completely different engineers who haven’t involved the project so far. Splitting an existing Scrum team has the advantage of leveraging the Scrum Team members who are already knowledgeable and who have already experienced with the ongoing project. Therefore, those new teams are usually at least at some degree productive as soon as they’re formed. The major drawback of this scenario is that the existing and fully functional Scrum Team has now been split into two teams. That could always cause some issues with the motivation of Scrum Team members. Especially if those changes are happening without an in advance announcement and justification from senior leadership, and when the team members are mentally and technically unprepared. When adding completely new teams, these already existing teams can continue with their Sprints without any interruption and extra integration effort. However, it will take longer to build up the necessary know-how and momentum to ramp-up the entirely newly formed Scrum teams. Independent from the decision on how you add new Scrum Teams to your organization bear in mind the following principles: Start with a small number of Scrum teams,Increase the number of teams gradually,Ensure the continuity of work and smooth delivery of software and business value during the times of change and growth,If there’re significant problems that hinder productivity and continuity of work, first focus on fixing them rather than the expansion with new Scrum Teams. Project Organization: Distributed Teams The major complexity of multiple teams manifests itself when the new Scrum Teams have to be distributed over various locations. Communication barriers between people, coordination difficulties of work, and misunderstandings of joint project norms across teams are only a few of many when it comes to mentioning this complexity. Multiple Teams in Multiple Locations The consequences of not addressing these challenges are severe. Companies have to count billions of dollars of wasted IT budget because of the lack of their skills in Organizational Leadership andScaled Scrum Expertise. There are four critical suggestions for you to cope with these challenges: You ensure that new Scrum Team members are trained in the Scrum Framework as a Scaled Scrum Expert,You ensure that new Scrum Team members are introduced to the project adequately, so they have a proper understanding of what they’re serving for. Not only technically but also from a professional business value point of view, so they can make decisions in their work to increase the value of their contribution,You ensure that the project norms are established. Similar to a single Scrum Team, which has its norms of how to communicate, how to plan, how to get the work done, a multiple project team organization should have its higher-level norms too. So these teams can communicate, plan, operate, solve problems, and deliver client and business value together.You ensure that the new team members do at least temporarily work together with the experienced project members. That could require remote site visits and on-the-job training. That’s totally fine and even desired. Thanks to this approach, the knowhow can be smoothly transferred, and the two-ways and personal dialog between people in different teams and locations can be established. Virtual Teams Another option of a distributed Scrum Team is having its members spread over multiple locations. Such a team is called a “Virtual Team”. The main challenge here is to ensure flawless communication among the team members. Scrum Team members must still need to conduct all Scrum Rituals (Scrum Events) to coordinate their work, but now they have to do this while not all of them are present in the same room. Virtual Teams Scrum Team members co-located in the same location should still work together in the same room. And yet, they now have to rely more on the use of collaboration and communication tools. They can join the Scrum Events from the same meeting room to connect to the other half of the virtual team via video conferencing technologies. Scrum Product Owner Team As we have covered many times in this material so far, regular communication between the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team is crucial for the successful delivery of a project. We need to ensure that the Scrum Product Owner is always available to Scrum Teams located in different locations. Therefore, it is often necessary to have multiple Scrum Product Owners working together. Ideally, there is one dedicated Scrum Product Owner for each team. The Scrum Product Owners should then build a dedicated “Scrum Product Owner Team” to work together effectively. One of the Scrum Product Owners should be assigned to the role of the “Chief Scrum Product Owner”. He or she is responsible for ensuring that: The correct product is built to satisfy the demands of its client,All Scrum Product Owners collaborate efficiently, and they enable their teams to build the business and technical value for their clients. Since the Scrum Product Owner Team is responsible for the complete requirement engineering, it is beneficial to have other competencies and stakeholders in this team. Those can include the representatives of the business case, relevant stakeholders, enterprise architects, and technology architects. All Scrum Product Owners should work within a single large Scrum Product Backlog containing all stories relevant for the project. Each Scrum Team is responsible for delivering some of these user stories. And yet there will be still instances of specific user stories that require the attention and deliverables from multiple Scrum teams. Component vs Feature Teams When distributing work among different teams, we can make the teams accountable for specific software components or features. That is why we call them “Component Team” or “Feature Team.” Component Teams When using Component Teams, each team is only responsible for the implementation of dedicated components from the overall system. To finish a user story, it is usually necessary to split the user stories into smaller pieces to implement them within a single component. The dependencies between the components of these Component Teams make continuous integration an inevitable part of successful deliveries. Scrum Product Owner Team Thus, a feature cannot be usually delivered within a Sprint because its implementation depends on the deliverables from user stories of other teams. That results in increasing batch sizes and lead times of ongoing, not yet integrated work. That doesn’t sound so good, because Scrum Teams should target delivering shippable software increment in smaller batch sizes and shorter lead times. The advantage of component teams is that they make it easier to focus on and build expertise about architectural and design details of particular components. That could be massively beneficial for components that require discovery and innovation. On the other hand, the members of component teams do only specialize in individual components of the whole system. They could lose their bird-eye view and business necessity of features. Keep in mind that our clients do not compensate us to deliver components, but features with which they will execute their businesses. Without this relentless focus on features, overall optimization, and integration of software might take extra time. Since decisions of component teams tend to optimize single components, those decisions can construct invisible bottlenecks for the success and performance of the overall solution. Component Teams Feature Teams Feature teams are fully responsible for the implementation of user stories as they’re specified within the Product Backlog.The teams do no longer need to be divided for various components. Each Feature Team is responsible for delivering a fully-functional feature and a business value associated with this feature. Feature Teams Members of feature teams possess cross functional skills. They act as autonomous as it is possible to deliver fast. The advantage of feature teams is that the team maintains the system-knowledge, and this makes it easier for them to integrate their features with the rest of the system. However, for feature teams, it may become more challenging to build sufficient know-how about components. Furthermore, bringing up an autonomous feature team that can deliver fast and independently takes time as building an interdisciplinary functional team is not that easy. And yet, these are the high-performer teams which get the job done in most organizations, probably including yours. How Do We Choose Component Teams vs Feature Teams? In practice, most of the large organizations use both dedicated Component Teams and Feature teams too. Component and Feature Teams Team C, on the chart, is a Component Team. It provides planned and on-demand infrastructure services to other teams that function as Feature Teams. Team C does not directly implement end-to-end user stories per se. They deliver the requirements of the user stories committed by the Feature Teams. That allows the minimization of the number of qualified people in Feature Teams with the know-how of those components. The Scrum Master In The Distributed Project Environment In a distributed project environment, the role of the Scrum Master is even more essential. In those project configurations: There will be extra effort required to align the teams on the values of the Scrum Framework,It will take longer to establish individual team and project norms (standards) which influences numerous teams,Last but not least, there will be many impediments due to the increased number of dependencies between teams and their deliverables. One important rule to bear in mind that the Scrum Master should physically locate where his or her team is. Otherwise, it will be almost impossible for the Scrum Master: To remove the impediments for his team,To Establish their norms, andTo help them to improve their use of the Scrum Framework. The best practice is to have a Lead (Primary) Scrum Master to guide the overall use of the Scrum Framework across multiple teams. In other unit Scrum teams, which form the larger Scrum organization, someone should be acting as a local Scrum Master too.

This chapter covers a wide range of sightings and topics, but focuses on the transition from Grudge to Bluebook. Some topics covered this time around, in no particular order: Edward J. RuppeltEdward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[ UFOAn unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified or explained. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Flying SaucerA flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Project BluebookProject Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Project SignProject Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge. Project GrudgeProject Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951. Mitchel AFBMitchel Air Force Base also known as Mitchel Field, was a United States Air Force base located on the Hempstead Plains of Long Island, New York, United States. Established in 1918 as Hazelhurst Aviation Field #2, the facility was renamed later that year as Mitchel Field in honor of former New York City Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who was killed while training for the Air Service in Louisiana.Decommissioned in 1961, Mitchel Field became a multi-use complex that is home to the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Nassau Coliseum, Mitchel Athletic Complex, Nassau Community College, Hofstra University, and Lockheed. In 2018 the surviving buildings and facilities were recognized as a historic district and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[ ATICOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. RadarRadar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for "radio detection and ranging".[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization. During RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5 at Yatesbury Training Camp "radio azimuth direction and ranging" was suggested.[citation needed] The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, self-driving cars, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels.Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents. B-50The Boeing B-50 Superfortress is an American strategic bomber. A post–World War II revision of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, it was fitted with more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radial engines, stronger structure, a taller tail fin, and other improvements. It was the last piston-engined bomber built by Boeing for the United States Air Force, and was further refined into Boeing's final such design, the B-54. Not as well known as its direct predecessor, the B-50 was in USAF service for nearly 20 years.After its primary service with Strategic Air Command (SAC) ended, B-50 airframes were modified into aerial tankers for Tactical Air Command (TAC) (KB-50) and as weather reconnaissance aircraft (WB-50) for the Air Weather Service. Both the tanker and hurricane hunter versions were retired in March 1965 due to metal fatigue and corrosion found in the wreckage of KB-50J, 48-065, which crashed on 14 October 1964. F-94The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was developed from the twin-seat Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star in the late 1940s as an all-weather, day/night interceptor. The aircraft reached operational service in May 1950 with Air Defense Command, replacing the piston-engined North American F-82 Twin Mustang in the all-weather interceptor role.The F-94 was the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner and was the first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953. It had a relatively brief operational life, being replaced in the mid-1950s by the Northrop F-89 Scorpion and North American F-86D Sabre. The last aircraft left active-duty service in 1958 and Air National Guard service in 1959. F-82The North American F-82 Twin Mustang is the last American piston-engine fighter ordered into production by the United States Air Force. Based on the P-51 Mustang, the F-82 was originally designed as a long-range escort fighter in World War II. The war ended well before the first production units were operational.In the postwar era, Strategic Air Command used the planes as a long-range escort fighter. Radar-equipped F-82s were used extensively by the Air Defense Command as replacements for the Northrop P-61 Black Widow as all-weather day/night interceptors. During the Korean War, Japan-based F-82s were among the first USAF aircraft to operate over Korea. The first three North Korean aircraft destroyed by U.S. forces were shot down by F-82s, the first being a North-Korean Yak-11 downed over Gimpo Airfield by the USAF 68th Fighter Squadron. ADCAerospace Defense Command was a major command of the United States Air Force, responsible for continental air defense. It was activated in 1968 and disbanded in 1980. Its predecessor, Air Defense Command, was established in 1946, briefly inactivated in 1950, reactivated in 1951, and then redesignated Aerospace rather than Air in 1968. Its mission was to provide air defense of the Continental United States (CONUS). It directly controlled all active measures, and was tasked to coordinate all passive means of air defense. Air Materiel CommandAir Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is a major command (MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). AFMC was created on July 1, 1992, through the amalgamation of the former Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) and the former Air Force Systems Command (AFSC).AFMC is headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. AFMC is one of nine Air Force Major Commands and has a workforce of approximately 80,000 military and civilian personnel. It is the Air Force's largest command in terms of funding and second in terms of personnel. AFMC's operating budget represents 31 percent of the total Air Force budget and AFMC employs more than 40 percent of the Air Force's total civilian workforce.The command conducts research, development, testing and evaluation, and provides the acquisition and life cycle management services and logistics support. The command develops, acquires and sustains the air power needed to defend the United States and its interests. This is accomplished through research, development, testing, evaluation, acquisition, maintenance and program management of existing and future USAF weapon systems and their components. Wright-Patterson AFBWright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) (IATA: FFO, ICAO: KFFO, FAA LID: FFO) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast of Dayton; Wright Field is approximately 8.0 kilometres (5 mi) northeast of Dayton.The host unit at Wright-Patterson AFB is the 88th Air Base Wing (88 ABW), assigned to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command. The 88 ABW operates the airfield, maintains all infrastructure and provides security, communications, medical, legal, personnel, contracting, finance, transportation, air traffic control, weather forecasting, public affairs, recreation and chaplain services for more than 60 associate units.The base's origins begin with the establishment of Wilbur Wright Field on 22 May and McCook Field in November 1917, both established by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps as World War I installations. McCook was used as a testing field and for aviation experiments. Wright was used as a flying field (renamed Patterson Field in 1931); Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot; armorers' school, and a temporary storage depot. McCook's functions were transferred to Wright Field when it was closed in October 1927.[2] Wright-Patterson AFB was established in 1948 as a merger of Patterson and Wright Fields.In 1995, negotiations to end the Bosnian War were held at the base, resulting in the Dayton Agreement that ended the war.The 88th Air Base Wing is commanded by Col. Thomas Sherman.[3] Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant Steve Arbona.[4] The base had a total of 27,406 military, civilian and contract employees in 2010.[5] The Greene County portion of the base is a census-designated place (CDP), with a resident population of 1,821 at the 2010 census. DC-6The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market. More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military, and wildfire control roles.The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118. B-29The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, becoming the only aircraft to ever use nuclear weaponry in combat.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.[6][7]The B-29's advanced design allowed it to remain in service in various roles throughout the 1950s. The type was retired in the early 1960s, after 3,970 had been built.A few were used as flying television transmitters by the Stratovision company. The Royal Air Force flew the B-29 as the Washington until 1954.The B-29 was the progenitor of a series of Boeing-built bombers, transports, tankers, reconnaissance aircraft and trainers. The re-engined B-50 Superfortress became the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop, during a 94-hour flight in 1949. The Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter airlifter, first flown in 1944, was followed in 1947 by its commercial airliner variant, the Boeing Model 377 Stratocruiser. This bomber-to-airliner derivation was similar to the B-17/Model 307 evolution. In 1948, Boeing introduced the KB-29 tanker, followed in 1950 by the Model 377-derivative KC-97. A line of outsized-cargo variants of the Stratocruiser is the Guppy / Mini Guppy / Super Guppy, which remain in service with NASA and other operators.The Soviet Union produced 847 Tupolev Tu-4s, an unlicensed reverse-engineered copy of the aircraft.More than twenty B-29s remain as static displays but only two, Fifi and Doc, still fly. Benjamin W. ChidlawGeneral Benjamin Wiley Chidlaw (December 18, 1900 – February 21, 1977) was an officer in the United States Air Force. He directed the development of the United States' original jet engine and jet aircraft. He joined the United States Army Air Service, at the time a precursor to the United States Air Force (USAF), in 1922 and for several years served in training and engineering positions. By 1940 he was chief of the Experimental Engineering Branch and involved with the development of jet engines. During World War II he was deputy commander of 12th Tactical Air Command and later organised the establishment of the 22nd Tactical Air Command in the European Theater of Operations. After the war he remained in senior command positions and finished his career with the USAF in 1955 as commander in chief of the Continental Air Defense Command with the rank of general. He died in 1977 at the age of 76. Weather BalloonA weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable. MeteorA meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star or falling star, is the visible passage of a glowing meteoroid, micrometeoroid, comet or asteroid through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere,[10][23][24] creating a streak of light via its rapid motion and sometimes also by shedding glowing material in its wake. Although a meteor may seem to be a few thousand feet from the Earth,[25] meteors typically occur in the mesosphere at altitudes from 76 to 100 km (250,000 to 330,000 ft).[26] The root word meteor comes from the Greek meteōros, meaning "high in the air".[23]Millions of meteors occur in Earth's atmosphere daily. Most meteoroids that cause meteors are about the size of a grain of sand, i.e. they are usually millimeter-sized or smaller. Meteoroid sizes can be calculated from their mass and density which, in turn, can be estimated from the observed meteor trajectory in the upper atmosphere. [27] Meteors may occur in showers, which arise when Earth passes through a stream of debris left by a comet, or as "random" or "sporadic" meteors, not associated with a specific stream of space debris. A number of specific meteors have been observed, largely by members of the public and largely by accident, but with enough detail that orbits of the meteoroids producing the meteors have been calculated. The atmospheric velocities of meteors result from the movement of Earth around the Sun at about 30 km/s (67,000 mph),[28] the orbital speeds of meteoroids, and the gravity well of Earth.Meteors become visible between about 75 to 120 km (250,000 to 390,000 ft) above Earth. They usually disintegrate at altitudes of 50 to 95 km (160,000 to 310,000 ft).[29] Meteors have roughly a fifty percent chance of a daylight (or near daylight) collision with Earth. Most meteors are, however, observed at night, when darkness allows fainter objects to be recognized. For bodies with a size scale larger than 10 cm (3.9 in) to several meters meteor visibility is due to the atmospheric ram pressure (not friction) that heats the meteoroid so that it glows and creates a shining trail of gases and melted meteoroid particles. The gases include vaporised meteoroid material and atmospheric gases that heat up when the meteoroid passes through the atmosphere. Most meteors glow for about a second. FireballA fireball is a brighter-than-usual meteor. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) defines a fireball as "a meteor brighter than any of the planets" (apparent magnitude −4 or greater).[34] The International Meteor Organization (an amateur organization that studies meteors) has a more rigid definition. It defines a fireball as a meteor that would have a magnitude of −3 or brighter if seen at zenith. This definition corrects for the greater distance between an observer and a meteor near the horizon. For example, a meteor of magnitude −1 at 5 degrees above the horizon would be classified as a fireball because, if the observer had been directly below the meteor, it would have appeared as magnitude −6.[35]Fireballs reaching apparent magnitude −14 or brighter are called bolides.[36] The IAU has no official definition of "bolide", and generally considers the term synonymous with "fireball". Astronomers often use "bolide" to identify an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that explodes.[37] They are sometimes called detonating fireballs (also see List of meteor air bursts). It may also be used to mean a fireball which creates audible sounds. In the late twentieth century, bolide has also come to mean any object that hits Earth and explodes, with no regard to its composition (asteroid or comet).[38] The word bolide comes from the Greek βολίς (bolis) [39] which can mean a missile or to flash. If the magnitude of a bolide reaches −17 or brighter it is known as a superbolide.[36][40] A relatively small percentage of fireballs hit Earth's atmosphere and then pass out again: these are termed Earth-grazing fireballs. Such an event happened in broad daylight over North America in 1972. Another rare phenomenon is a meteor procession, where the meteor breaks up into several fireballs traveling nearly parallel to the surface of Earth.A steadily growing number of fireballs are recorded at the American Meteor Society every year.[41] There are probably more than 500,000 fireballs a year,[42] but most will go unnoticed because most will occur over the ocean and half will occur during daytime. True MagazineTrue, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue. It was sold to Magazine Associates in August 1975, and ceased publication shortly afterward.High adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts were highlighted in articles such as "Living and Working at Nine Fathoms" by Ed Batutis, "Search for the Perfect Beer" by Bob McCabe and the uncredited "How to Start Your Own Hunting-Fishing Lodge." In addition to pictorials ("Iceland, Unexpected Eden" by Lawrence Fried) and humor pieces ("The Most Unforgettable Sonofabitch I Ever Knew" by Robert Ruark), there were columns, miscellaneous features and regular concluding pages: "This Funny Life," "Man to Man Answers," "Strange But True" and "True Goes Shopping." Life MagazineLife was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography.Life was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators, and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.In 1936, Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life. Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point. Possibly the best-known photograph published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945, as they celebrated Victory over Japan Day in New York City. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life's profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages.After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[1] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[2] On January 30, 2012, the LIFE.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com The PentagonThe Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on 11 September 1941, and the building was dedicated on 15 January 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[6][7] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[7] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in The Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[7] of corridors. The central five-acre (20,000 m2) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.[8]On 11 September 2001, exactly 60 years after the building's construction began, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people (59 victims and the five terrorists on board the airliner, as well as 125 victims in the building), according to the 9/11 Commission Report.[9] It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.The Pentagon is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark Ground Observer CorpsThe first Ground Observer Corps was a World War II Civil Defense program of the United States Army Air Forces to protect United States territory against air attack. The 1.5 million civilian observers at 14,000 coastal observation posts performed naked eye and binocular searches to detect German or Japanese aircraft. Observations were telephoned to filter centers, which in turn forwarded authenticated reports to the Aircraft Warning Service, which also received reports from Army radar stations. The program ended in 1944.[2] A few Aircraft Warning Service Observation Towers survive as relics. Royal Canadian Air ForceThe Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; French: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower".[3] The RCAF is one of three environmental commands within the unified Canadian Armed Forces. As of 2013, the Royal Canadian Air Force consists of 14,500 Regular Force and 2,600 Primary Reserve personnel, supported by 2,500 civilians, and operates 258 manned aircraft and 9 unmanned aerial vehicles.[1][4] Lieutenant-General Al Meinzinger is the current Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Chief of the Air Force Staff.[5]The Royal Canadian Air Force is responsible for all aircraft operations of the Canadian Forces, enforcing the security of Canada's airspace and providing aircraft to support the missions of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army. The RCAF is a partner with the United States Air Force in protecting continental airspace under the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The RCAF also provides all primary air resources to and is responsible for the National Search and Rescue Program.The RCAF traces its history to the Canadian Air Force, which was formed in 1920. The Canadian Air Force was granted royal sanction in 1924 by King George V to form the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1968, the RCAF was amalgamated with the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army, as part of the unification of the Canadian Forces. Air units were split between several different commands: Air Defence Command (interceptors), Air Transport Command (airlift, search and rescue), Mobile Command (tactical fighters, helicopters), Maritime Command (anti-submarine warfare, maritime patrol), as well as Training Command.In 1975, some commands were dissolved (ADC, ATC, TC), and all air units were placed under a new environmental command called simply Air Command (AIRCOM). Air Command reverted to its historic name of "Royal Canadian Air Force" in August 2011.[6] The Royal Canadian Air Force has served in the Second World War, the Korean War, the Persian Gulf War, as well as several United Nations peacekeeping missions and NATO operations. As a NATO member, the force maintained a presence in Europe during the second half of the 20th century. V-2 RocketThe V-2 (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, "Retribution Weapon 2"), technical name Aggregat 4 (A4), was the world's first long-range[4] guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.[5]Research into military use of long-range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army. A series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary,[6] the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, and a further 12,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.[7]As Germany collapsed, teams from the Allied forces—the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union—raced to capture key German manufacturing sites and technology. Von Braun and over 100 key V-2 personnel surrendered to the Americans and many of the original V-2 team ended up working at the Redstone Arsenal. The US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2 manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, and moved it to the Soviet Union. Dr. Walter RiedelWalter J H "Papa" Riedel ("Riedel I") was a German engineer who was the head of the Design Office of the Army Research Centre Peenemünde and the chief designer of the A4 (V-2) ballistic rocket.[1][2] The crater Riedel on the Moon was co-named for him and the German rocket pioneer Klaus Riedel.Employed by the Heylandt Company from 27 February 1928, in December 1929, Riedel was assigned responsibility for the development of rocket motors using liquid propellants, initially in collaboration with Max Valier who had joined the company at that date.[1][3][4][5] Riedel took over full responsibility for the rocket motor development in 1930, after Valier’s untimely death following a rocket motor explosion during a test using paraffin oil (kerosene) as fuel instead of ethyl alcohol.[3]In 1934, research and development of the Heylandt Company was taken over by the Army and amalgamated with the Wernher von Braun Group at the Army Proving Grounds at Kummersdorf, near Berlin, in order to carry out research and development of long-range rocket missiles. In March 1936, von Braun and Walter Riedel began consideration of much larger rockets than the A3 (under development at that time), which was merely a test vehicle and could not carry any payload.[6] Along with Walter Dornberger, plans were drawn up for a more suitable and better equipped test site for large rockets at Peememünde, to take the place of the rather confined Kummersdorf.[6][7] From 17 May 1937, following the transfer of the rocket activities from Kummersdorf to the Army’s new rocket establishment at Peenemünde, Riedel headed the Technical Design Office as chief designer of the A4 (V2) ballistic rocket [1][7]After the air raid by the British Royal Air Force (Operation Hydra) on Peenemünde in August 1943, the transfer of the development facility was ordered to a location giving better protection from air attack. The air raid had killed Dr Walter Thiel (propulsion chief) and Erich Walther (chief of maintenance for the workshops), two leading men at the Peenemünde Army facilities.[7] In mid-September 1943, Riedel and two others surveyed the Austrian Alps for a new site for rocket development to replace that at Peenemünde. The chosen location was at Ebensee, on the southern end of the Traunsee, 100 km east of Salzburg.[8] The site consisted of a system of galleries driven into the mountains, and received the code name Zement (Cement). Work on the site started at the beginning of 1944 and was intended to be completed in October 1945.[9] From 1 October 1943, Riedel was responsible for supervising the transfer, to Ebensee, of the Peenemünde development facility.From 29 May 1945 to 20 September 1945, following the end of World War II, Riedel was held in protective custody (Sicherheitshaft) at the US Third Army’s internment camp at Deggendorf, situated between Regensburg and Passau.[1] From 1 November 1945 to 10 March 1946, he was employed by the Ministry of Supply (MoS) Establishment at Altenwalde (near Cuxhaven), and from 11 March to 31 July 1946, at the MoS Establishment at Trauen (near Braunschweig).[1] After the Trauen Establishment was disbanded, Riedel emigrated to England, to work initially (from 1947) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, and later, from 1948 until his death in 1968, at the MoS Rocket Propulsion Establishment in Westcott (near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire). In 1957, Riedel became a British citizen.[10]Riedel died while visiting East Berlin in East Germany. Weasel WordsA weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "most people think”, and "researchers believe". Using weasel words may allow one to later deny any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place. Weasel words can be a form of tergiversation, and may be used in advertising and political statements to mislead or disguise a biased view.Weasel words can soften or under-state a biased or otherwise controversial statement. An example of this is using terms like "somewhat" or "in most respects", which make a sentence more ambiguous than it would be without them. Air Force Letter 200-5 1. Purpose and Scope.  This Letter sets forth Air Force responsibility and reporting procedures for information and materiel pertaining to unidentified flying objects.  All incidents observed by Air Force personnel or received at any Air Force installation from a civilian source will be reported in accordance with this Letter, except that all airborne sightings by Air Force personnel, Civilian Air Patrol, and regularly scheduled United States airline pilots will also be reported as provided by JANAP 146 series (CIRVIS). TeletypeA teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initially they were used in telegraphy, which developed in the late 1830s and 1840s as the first use of electrical engineering[1], though teleprinters were not used for telegraphy until 1887 at the earliest.[2] The machines were adapted to provide a user interface to early mainframe computers and minicomputers, sending typed data to the computer and printing the response. Some models could also be used to create punched tape for data storage (either from typed input or from data received from a remote source) and to read back such tape for local printing or transmission.Teleprinters could use a variety of different communication media. These included a simple pair of wires; dedicated non-switched telephone circuits (leased lines); switched networks that operated similarly to the public telephone network (telex); and radio and microwave links (telex-on-radio, or TOR). A teleprinter attached to a modem could also communicate through standard switched public telephone lines. This latter configuration was often used to connect teleprinters to remote computers, particularly in time-sharing environments.Teleprinters have largely been replaced by fully electronic computer terminals which typically have a computer monitor instead of a printer (though the term "TTY" is still occasionally used to refer to them, such as in Unix systems). Teleprinters are still widely used in the aviation industry (see AFTN and airline teletype system), and variations called Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf (TDDs) are used by the hearing impaired for typed communications over ordinary telephone lines. DC-4The Douglas DC-4 is a four-engine (piston) propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s. From 1945, many civil airlines operated the DC-4 worldwide.  George AFB John SamfordJohn Alexander Samford (August 29, 1905 – December 1, 1968)[1] was a lieutenant general in the United States Air Force who served as Director of the National Security Agency.    General Sory Smith Thomas K. FinletterThomas Knight Finletter (November 11, 1893 – April 24, 1980), was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman. 

Scrum Institute, Scrum Framework Episode #8 has been proudly brought to you by International Scrum Institute, https://www.scrum-institute.org You can also listen Scrum Institute’s Podcast from Apple, Spotify, Castbox and Google Play. Listen to Scrum Institute Podcast on AppleListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Google PlayListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on SpotifyListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Listen NotesListen to Scrum Institute Podcast on Castbox What Is The Role Of The Scrum Team? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Framework recognizes three roles: The Product Owner,The Scrum Team Member,The Scrum Master. In addition to other programs it’s providing to its worldwide students, International Scrum Institute provides three primary training and certification programs for these three roles. These programs are namely Scrum Product Owner Accredited Certification (SPOAC), Scrum Team Member Accredited Certification (STMAC), and Scrum Master Accredited Certification (SMAC) . A proper scrum organization must adequately possess people from all these three skill-sets. That’s particularly essential to succeed with the scrum software development framework. None of these roles is indispensable and irreplaceable. They cannot be combined with the other scrum roles and functions.Each Scrum Product Owner typically works together with one scrum team. Each Scrum Team has its own Scrum Master, and each Scrum Master cares and works with one single Scrum Team. Please don’t underestimate the importance of understanding the purpose and function of these roles and employing them with adequate talents. Many times we observed that the root cause of difficulties of a scrum team is either because these roles are not understood or they don’t employ the right people. Each of these roles has a defined set of responsibilities. Only if the owners of these roles fulfil these responsibilities, closely interact, collaborate, and work together, they can finish a Scrum project successfully. Scrum Roles & Stakeholders The Scrum Team Within the Scrum Framework, dedicated Scrum Teams do all work delivered to the business clients. A Scrum Team is a collection of individuals working together to provide the requested and committed product increments. To work effectively, it is essential for a Scrum Team that everyone within the team: Embraces values of the Scrum Framework such as Courage, Focus, Commitment, Respect, and Openness, Adheres the same norms and rules,Follows the common goal, which wires them to both IT and business outcomes. When setting up a new Scrum Team, you always need to keep in mind that no new team will deliver with the highest possible performance right from the beginning. After setting up the team, it has to go through certain phases as described by the Tuckman-Model: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. Tuckman's Stages of Team Development How long it takes until the Scrum Team reaches the Performing Phase varies from team to team. Hiring good basketball players for the same club will not make a good basketball team as soon as they start to play together. They first need to learn and adapt their playing styles, their strengths and weaknesses to assist each other, and to play in harmony. Scrum teams are not that different. Therefore, it’s vital to keep in mind that it usually takes about 3 to 5 Sprints until the team becomes mature enough to deliver its results effectively and predictably. Characteristics of a Scrum Team Scrum Teams have the following characteristics: Team members share the same norms and rules,The Scrum team as a whole is accountable for the delivery,The Scrum Team is empowered,The Scrum Team is working as autonomous as it is possible,The Scrum Team is self-organizing,The skills within the Scrum team are balanced,A core Scrum Team is small and has no sub-teams,The Scrum Team members are dedicated to their teams with 100% capacity,Scrum Team members are collocated, and they ideally share the same room. Rules & Norms The environment, business, IT, and geographical ecosystem of Scrum Teams invisibly define some of the norms the teams follow. And yet, to become a truly successful Scrum Team, some rules and norms should be explicitly developed and exercised during the Norming phase. These common standards are essential, and they can’t be overemphasized to deliver smooth gameplay, IT, and business results. Otherwise, the Scrum Team members would have to continually switch back and forth between different value systems and rule sets, and they waste their valuable time. Just a few examples of such norms and rules are: The goal, scope, duration, location, participants and outcomes of Scrum Rituals (Events),Required level of details to write clear, concise and unmistakable Definition Of Dones (DoDs),Guidelines to prioritize and estimate user stories and tasks, Guidelines, procedures and the level of details to create living documents, Tools to use and tools not to use (remember, sometimes less is more), Coding standards,Tools and guidelines to build/perform manual/automated tests and ensure quality,The process to resolve bugs,The process to handle change requests,The process to prepare to product increment demonstrations during Sprint Review Meetings,The process to handle the outcomes of each Scrum Ritual (Event), Frequency, depth, and duration of Backlog Refinement Meetings. Accountability The Scrum Team as a whole is responsible for delivering the committed user stories in time and with the highest possible quality. A good result or a failure is never attributed to a single team member but always the result of the Scrum Team. Empowerment & Self-organization The Scrum Team has to be empowered to define What the team commits to deliver at the end of the Sprint, How the committed user stories will be broken down into tasks,Who will perform a specific task and in which order the tasks are implemented. Only if the Scrum Team is empowered to decide these and similar internal decisions, the team members will work with higher performance and motivation for the interest of their client stakeholders. Balanced set of skills Each Individual within the Scrum Team will most certainly have specialized skills, focus, and personal preference of interests. However, to achieve the best possible performance, your Scrum Team needs to have a balanced set of skills. Only then the Scrum Team will be able to deal with the ever-changing IT and business challenges, and they can act as autonomous as it is possible. That means a Scrum Team should be multidisciplinary (designers, developers, testers, architects, etc.) right from the beginning. On the other hand, this also means that each team member should learn a little bit from each other’s specialization. For instance, to be able to finish a committed user story until the end of the Sprint, a developer should willingly write and execute tests, and consult the tester whenever necessary. The roles of the Scrum Team members are not compartmentalized like the architect, the developer, the tester, and so on. They all share the same title, “Scrum Team Member” regardless of their core personal competencies. Size of the Scrum Team Scrum Teams are small. The ideal size is 7 +/- 2 people. Note that if the Scrum Team contains more than nine members, your team will most probably suffer due to excessive overhead of alignment and communication. And yet, there is no one size fits all answer. Your Scrum Teams may still productively function even if they have less than five or more than nine members. The only way to find this out is to test, learn, and adapt. If you find out that a team of 13 people cannot perform well enough, then these Scrum Teams need to be split into two teams. These Scrum Teams should closely align, and they correlate their goals and user stories. Besides that, they work independently. Collocation To minimize unnecessary communication overhead, each Scrum Team should be collocated. If the work has to spread over multiple geographical locations, independent Scrum Teams need to be created. These teams need to align and correlate their goals and user stories. Responsibilities of the Scrum Team The Scrum Team has specific responsibilities they need to fulfill: They have to breakdown the user stories, create tasks, define priorities and estimates, and they self-organize the implementation. In other words, they have to create, process, and deliver the Sprint Backlog.They have to perform Daily Scrum Meetings.They have to ensure that at the end of the Sprint, potentially shippable product increment is delivered and demonstrated. They have to update the status and the remaining work efforts for their tasks to allow the creation of a Sprint Burndown Diagram. What Is The Role Of The Scrum Master? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Master serves all participants of a Scrum Project and the external stakeholders to comprehend and apply the Scrum Framework correctly. He or she supports the Scrum Team to execute the Scrum Framework successfully and contributes them to improve their productivity and performance continuously. The role of the Scrum Master is to establish the Scrum Process in its organization, the new way of thinking and acting. Furthermore, the Scrum Master acts as a change agent. He or she coaches the team to develop new team norms and standards. The Scrum Master has its desk somewhere very close to the rest of the scrum team. Essential tasks of a Scrum Master owner are: To establish the Scrum Framework in his or her business and IT ecosystem,To act as a change agent and support the adaptation of existing processes to maximize productivity of the Scrum Team.To coach the Scrum Team to understand and live the values of the Scrum Framework,To ensure efficient and close collaboration between the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team,To remove impediments which hinder the continuity of work,To lead progress of work by serving,To moderate the Scrum Rituals (Scrum Events).To guard the Scrum Team from external interference and interruptions while the team does work it has originally committed for a Sprint. Easily Learn Scrum and Officially Prove Your Know how To effectively do this work, a Scrum Master needs to possess savvy moderation and coaching skills. He or she needs to be a continuous learner to inspire others to learn, change, and grow. To learn more about Scrum Master’s duties as a facilitator, I recommend you to have a look at this article: If I had 5 Minutes to explain Scrum Master As a Facilitator. To learn more about Scrum Master’s duties as a facilitator, I recommend you to have a look at this article: If I had 5 Minutes to explain Scrum Master As a Facilitator. The Scrum Master is part of the Scrum Team and acts as a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. In the beginning, this will be a full-time job so that the Scrum Master will not be able to contribute to the Sprint results directly. However, after a few Sprints, while the Scrum Team approach to the Performing phase of the Tuckman model, the initial workload as moderator and coach will reduce. So, the Scrum Master could actively contribute to the Sprint goals. Since there must be trust between the Scrum Master and the Scrum Team members, it can always be a good idea that the Scrum Team chooses its Scrum Master. However, in reality, the management usually imposes who the Scrum Master will be. To get the required trust, the Scrum Master should have no line management responsibility above the Scrum Team members. Otherwise, open communication in the Scrum Team and joint ownership of work and decision-making ability of the Scrum Team can suffer. Guarding The Scrum Team, Removing Impediments An essential job of the Scrum Master is to safeguard the Scrum Team from a false sense of urgency. Line management and the Scrum Product Owner often attempt to add unplanned user stories to the Sprint Backlog while the team focuses on the work of a planned Sprint. However, one of the critical aspects of the Scrum Framework is that all user stories are known and committed only during the Sprint Planning Meetings. The Scrum Team cannot be forced to take over new user stories. The job of the Scrum Master is to ensure that until the next Sprint Planning Meeting, these new user stories are stored in the Scrum Product Backlog. Alternatively, if the ongoing Sprint does not make any business and/or technical sense to continue, it can be canceled, and a new Sprint can be planned. Scrum Team members should only concentrate on delivering client value by building potentially shippable product increment. The Scrum Master helps by removing impediments that block or slow down the progress of work. Examples of removing impediments could be: To arrange support, resources,To find missing know how, andTo do hands-on work to help the Scrum Team Members. Scrum Master as a Change Agent One of the cornerstones of the Scrum Framework is the continuous improvement through Inspect & Adapt. The Scrum Master hosts and moderates the Scrum Retrospective Meeting, and his or her job is then to facilitate, control and measure the change of the identified shortcomings. Facilitation of Scrum Rituals (Event) The Scrum Framework defines several meetings that have to be organized and facilitated by the Scrum Master: Scrum Grooming (Backlog Refinement) Meetings,Sprint Planning MeetingsDaily Scrum Meetings,Sprint Review Meetings, andSprint Retrospective Meetings What Is The Role Of The Scrum Product Owner? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Product Owner is a central role within the Scrum Framework. That role unifies product and project management tasks, and it’s also firmly integrated with software development and delivery. The product owner’s role is far broader than traditional project management, program manager, or product management roles. He or she represents the end customers and/or other stakeholders and is responsible for maximizing the value of the product by ensuring that the Scrum Team delivers the right work at the right time. The Scrum Product Owner decides the software requirements provided for a specific software version, and when the software will be released. She represents functional and nonfunctional demands from end-users. That means that the Scrum Product Owner has to work very closely with the Scrum Team and coordinates their activities over the entire lifecycle of the project. No one else is allowed to impose the Scrum Team to work for a different set of priorities. Essential tasks of a Scrum Product owner are: To manage and clarify project requirements,To guide releases and to ensure return on investment (ROI),To closely work with the Scrum Team and enable it to deliver the correct work on time,To manage stakeholders and their expectations,To manage the Scrum Product Backlog. The Scrum Product Owner can delegate certain activities (like physically maintaining the Scrum Product Backlog). However, he or she still owns the accountability of his or her tasks. Managing the Product Backlog The Scrum Product Owner is the only person allowed to own the contents of the Scrum Product Backlog. That means he or she needs to: Create, maintain and clearly describe user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog,Prioritize user stories to accomplish business goals and fulfil the mission of software product,Ensure that the Scrum Team correctly comprehends and implements the user stories in the Scrum Product Backlog. Release Management The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for reaching the project goals. He or she creates and maintains the release plan and decides about deliveries, end-user functions, and the order they need to be delivered. Scrum Product Owners often manage the costs and budget of Scrum Teams too. They collaborate with the Scrum Team members to fine-tune, prioritize, and estimate user stories. Stakeholder Management External stakeholders should not directly bring their demands to the Scrum Team members. Instead, the Scrum Product Owner should collect and assess required functionalities with the stakeholders (for instance, with internal clients, representatives of external clients or end-users). The Scrum Product Owner combines, filters and initially prioritize these user stories before they're discussed them with the rest of the Scrum Team. Collaboration With The Scrum Team For a successful project, the Scrum Product Owner and the Scrum Team must work very closely. The Scrum Product Owner is responsible for ensuring that the Scrum Team members are informed and aligned about the aimed goals of software they’re building. During Sprint Review Meetings, the Scrum Product Owner is responsible for inspecting, accepting, or declining deliverables of the Scrum Team. What Is The Role Of The Scrum Team Member? This Might Surprise You! The Scrum Team Members implement the software. They jointly decide the number of requirements that they can undoubtedly deliver during a particular product increment called“Sprint”. A high-performer scrum team has most of the software engineering skills typically in it. Software developers, architects, testers, database administrators, and team members from all other roles work together. They jointly build and deliver great software their client is paying for. Scrum team members do no longer belong to a functional silo of a matrix organization. Developers do no longer belong to software development competence centers, and testers do no longer belong to the software testing competence center, and so on. Regardless of their past coordinates in the organization, members of a scrum team belong to their particular scrum project. Now their job is to build the best possible software to deliver the requirements of their scrum product owner. Characteristics of scrum teams are: Empowered and Autonomous,Cross-functionalSelf-organized and smallFull-time participantsWorking in the same roomOne for all, all for one. It's an excellent time to remind that the Scrum Team members follow Scrum values persistently. CourageFocusCommitmentRespectOpenness

Another fabulous chapter of Ruppelt's highly interesting book. This time we have a detailed look at the Lubbock lights. We get to see how a flap was investigated back in the golden age of UFOs. Some miscellaneous stuff from things that might have been mentioned in this episode: Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases." The Lubbock Lights were an unusual formation of lights seen over the city of Lubbock, Texas in August and September 1951. The Lubbock Lights incident received national publicity in the United States as a UFO sighting. The Lubbock Lights were investigated by the U.S. Air Force in 1951. The Air Force initially believed the lights were caused by a type of bird called a plover, but eventually concluded that the lights "weren't birds... but they weren't spaceships...the [Lubbock Lights] have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon." However, to maintain the anonymity of the scientist who had provided the explanation, the Air Force refrained from providing any details regarding their explanation for the lights. An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft. Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976. After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized. Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force (USAF). It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased on January 19th, 1970. Project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12. A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted. Albuquerque abbreviated as ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the 32nd-most populous city in the United States. The city's nicknames are The Duke City and Burque, both of which reference its 1706 founding by Nuevo México governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés as La Villa de Alburquerque, named in honor of then Viceroy the 10th Duke of Alburquerque, the Villa was an outpost on El Camino Real for the Tiquex and Hispano towns in the area (such as Barelas, Corrales, Isleta Pueblo, Los Ranchos, and Sandia Pueblo). Since the city's founding it has continued to be included on travel and trade routes including Santa Fe Railway (ATSF), Route 66, Interstate 25, Interstate 40, and the Albuquerque International Sunport. The population census-estimated population of the city as 560,218 in 2018, it is the principal city of the Albuquerque metropolitan area, which has 915,927 residents as of July 2018. The metropolitan population includes Rio Rancho, Bernalillo, Placitas, Zia Pueblo, Los Lunas, Belen, South Valley, Bosque Farms, Jemez Pueblo, Cuba, and part of Laguna Pueblo. This metro is included in the larger Albuquerque–Santa Fe–Las Vegas combined statistical area (CSA), with a population of 1,171,991 as of 2016. The CSA constitutes the southernmost point of the Southern Rocky Mountain Front megalopolis, including other major Rocky Mountain region cities such as Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Denver, Colorado, with a population of 5,467,633 according to the 2010 United States Census.Albuquerque serves as the county seat of Bernalillo County, and is in north-central New Mexico. The Sandia Mountains run along the eastern side of Albuquerque, and the Rio Grande flows north to south through its center, while the West Mesa and Petroglyph National Monument make up the western part of the city. Albuquerque has one of the highest elevations of any major city in the U.S., ranging from 4,900 feet (1,490 m) above sea level near the Rio Grande to over 6,700 feet (1,950 m) in the foothill areas of Sandia Heights and Glenwood Hills. The civic apex is found in an undeveloped area within the Albuquerque Open Space; there, the terrain rises to an elevation of approximately 6880+ feet (2,097 m).The economy of Albuquerque centers on science, medicine, technology, commerce, education, entertainment, and culture outlets. The city is home to Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, Presbyterian Health Services, and both the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College have their main campuses in the city. Albuquerque is the center of the New Mexico Technology Corridor, a concentration of high-tech institutions, including the metropolitan area being the location of Intel's Fab 11X In Rio Rancho and a Facebook Data Center in Los Lunas, Albuquerque was also the founding location of MITS and Microsoft. Film studios have a major presence in the state of New Mexico, for example Netflix has a main production hub at Albuquerque Studios. There are numerous shopping centers and malls within the city, including ABQ Uptown, Coronado, Cottonwood, Nob Hill, and Winrock. The city is the location of a horse racing track and casino called The Downs Casino and Racetrack, and the Pueblos surrounding the city feature resort casinos, including Sandia Resort, Santa Ana Star, Isleta Resort, and Laguna Pueblo's Route 66 Resort.The city hosts the International Balloon Fiesta, the world's largest gathering of hot-air balloons, taking place every October at a venue referred to as Balloon Fiesta Park, with its 47-acre launch field. Another large venue is Expo New Mexico where other annual events are held, such as North America's largest pow wow at the Gathering of Nations, as well as the New Mexico State Fair. While other major venues throughout the metropolitan area include the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the University of New Mexico's Popejoy Hall, Santa Ana Star Center, and Isleta Amphitheater. Old Town Albuquerque's Plaza, Hotel, and San Felipe de Neri Church hosts traditional fiestas and events such as weddings, also near Old Town are the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, Explora, and Albuquerque Biological Park. Located in Downtown Albuquerque are historic theaters such as the KiMo Theater, and near the Civic Plaza is the Al Hurricane Pavilion and Albuquerque Convention Center with its Kiva Auditorium. Due to its population size, the metropolitan area regularly receives most national and international music concerts, Broadway shows, and other large traveling events, as well as New Mexico music, and other local music performances.Likewise, due to the metropolitan size, it is home to a diverse restaurant scene from various global cuisines, and the state's distinct New Mexican cuisine. Being the focus of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District gives an agricultural contrast, along acequias, to the otherwise heavily urban setting of the city. Crops such as New Mexico chile are grown along the entire Rio Grande, the red or green chile pepper is a staple of the aforementioned New Mexican cuisine. The Albuquerque metro is a major contributor of the Middle Rio Grande Valley AVA with New Mexico wine produced at several vineyards, it is also home to several New Mexican breweries. The river also provides trade access with the Mesilla Valley (containing Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas) region to the south, with its Mesilla Valley AVA and the adjacent Hatch Valley which is well known for its New Mexico chile peppers. Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense, tasked with air defense for the Continental United States. It comprised Army, Air Force, and Navy components. It included Army Project Nike missiles (Ajax and Hercules) anti-aircraft defenses and USAF interceptors (manned aircraft and BOMARC missiles). The primary purpose of continental air defense during the CONAD period was to provide sufficient attack warning of a Soviet bomber air raid to ensure Strategic Air Command could launch a counterattack without being destroyed. CONAD controlled nuclear air defense weapons such as the 10 kiloton W-40 nuclear warhead on the CIM-10B BOMARC. The command was disestablished in 1975, and Aerospace Defense Command became the major U.S. component of North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). Reese Air Force Base was a base of the United States Air Force located 6 mi west of Lubbock, Texas, about 225 mi WNW of Fort Worth. The base's primary mission throughout its existence was pilot training.The base was closed 30 September 1997 after being selected for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1995 and is now a research and business park called Reese Technology Center. Kirtland Air Force Base (IATA: ABQ, ICAO: KABQ) is a United States Air Force base located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator Col. Roy C. Kirtland. The military and the international airport share the same runways, making ABQ a joint civil-military airport.Kirtland AFB is the largest installation in Air Force Global Strike Command and sixth largest in the Air Force. The base occupies 51,558 acres and employs over 23,000 people, including more than 4,200 active duty and 1,000 Guard, plus 3,200 part-time Reserve personnel. In 2000, Kirtland AFB's economic impact on the City of Albuquerque was over $2.7 billion.Kirtland is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command's Nuclear Weapons Center (NWC). The NWC's responsibilities include acquisition, modernization and sustainment of nuclear system programs for both the Department of Defense and Department of Energy. The NWC is composed of two wings–the 377th Air Base Wing and 498th Nuclear Systems Wing–along with ten groups and 7 squadrons.Kirtland is home to the 58th Special Operations Wing (58 SOW), an Air Education and Training Command (AETC) unit that provides formal aircraft type/model/series training. The 58 SOW operates the HC-130J, MC-130J, UH-1N Huey, HH-60G Pave Hawk and CV-22 Osprey aircraft. Headquarters, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center is also located at Kirtland AFB. The 150th Special Operations Wing of the New Mexico Air National Guard, an Air Combat Command (ACC)-gained unit, is also home-based at Kirtland. The United States Atomic Energy Commission, commonly known as the AEC, was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology.[4] President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947.[5] This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.[6]During its initial establishment and subsequent operationalization, the AEC played a key role in the institutional development of Ecosystem ecology. Specifically, it provided crucial financial resources, allowing for ecological research to take place.[7] Perhaps even more importantly, it enabled ecologists with a wide range of groundbreaking techniques for the completion of their research. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the AEC also approved funding for numerous bioenvironmental projects in the arctic and subarctic regions. These projects were designed to examine the effects of nuclear energy upon the environment and were a part of the AEC's attempt at creating peaceful applications of atomic energy.[8]:22–25An increasing number of critics during the 1960s charged that the AEC's regulations were insufficiently rigorous in several important areas, including radiation protection standards, nuclear reactor safety, plant siting, and environmental protection. By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that the U.S. Congress decided to abolish the AEC. The AEC was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which assigned its functions to two new agencies: the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[9] On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, which created the Department of Energy. The new agency assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration (FEA), the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the Federal Power Commission (FPC), and various other Federal agencies. The Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), managed and operated by the National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International), is one of three National Nuclear Security Administration research and development laboratories in the United States. In December 2016, it was announced that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, under the direction of Honeywell International, would take over the management of Sandia National Laboratories starting on May 1, 2017.[5][6][7][3]Their primary mission is to develop, engineer, and test the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. The primary campus is located on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the other is in Livermore, California, next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. There is also a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii.[8]It is Sandia's mission to maintain the reliability and surety of nuclear weapon systems, conduct research and development in arms control and nonproliferation technologies, and investigate methods for the disposal of the United States' nuclear weapons program's hazardous waste. Other missions include research and development in energy and environmental programs, as well as the surety of critical national infrastructures. In addition, Sandia is home to a wide variety of research including computational biology, mathematics (through its Computer Science Research Institute), materials science, alternative energy, psychology, MEMS, and cognitive science initiatives. Sandia formerly hosted ASCI Red, one of the world's fastest supercomputers until its recent decommission, and now hosts ASCI Red Storm, originally known as Thor's Hammer. Sandia is also home to the Z Machine. The Z Machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. It is operated by Sandia National Laboratories to gather data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear guns. The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker"[N 1] is a strategic bomber built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built. It had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built, at 230 ft (70.1 m). The B-36 was the first bomber capable of delivering any of the nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal from inside its four bomb bays without aircraft modifications. With a range of 10,000 mi (16,000 km) and a maximum payload of 87,200 lb (39,600 kg), the B-36 was capable of intercontinental flight without refuelling.Entering service in 1948, the B-36 was the primary nuclear weapons delivery vehicle of Strategic Air Command (SAC) until it was replaced by the jet-powered Boeing B-52 Stratofortress beginning in 1955. All but five aircraft were scrapped. The North American B-25 Mitchell is a medium bomber that was introduced in 1941 and named in honor of Major General William "Billy" Mitchell, a pioneer of U.S. military aviation.[2] Used by many Allied air forces, the B-25 served in every theater of World War II, and after the war ended, many remained in service, operating across four decades. Produced in numerous variants, nearly 10,000 B-25s were built.[1] These included a few limited models such as the F-10 reconnaissance aircraft, the AT-24 crew trainers, and the United States Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, becoming the only aircraft to ever use nuclear weaponry in combat.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.[6][7]The B-29's advanced design allowed it to remain in service in various roles throughout the 1950s. The type was retired in the early 1960s, after 3,970 had been built.A few were used as flying television transmitters by the Stratovision company. The Royal Air Force flew the B-29 as the Washington until 1954.The B-29 was the progenitor of a series of Boeing-built bombers, transports, tankers, reconnaissance aircraft and trainers. The re-engined B-50 Superfortress became the first aircraft to fly around the world non-stop, during a 94-hour flight in 1949. The Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter airlifter, first flown in 1944, was followed in 1947 by its commercial airliner variant, the Boeing Model 377 Stratocruiser. This bomber-to-airliner derivation was similar to the B-17/Model 307 evolution. In 1948, Boeing introduced the KB-29 tanker, followed in 1950 by the Model 377-derivative KC-97. A line of outsized-cargo variants of the Stratocruiser is the Guppy / Mini Guppy / Super Guppy, which remain in service with NASA and other operators.The Soviet Union produced an unlicensed reverse-engineered copy, the Tupolev Tu-4.More than twenty B-29s remain as static displays but only two, Fifi and Doc, still fly.[8] A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage. The crew, payload, fuel, and equipment are typically housed inside the main wing structure, although a flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blisters, booms, or vertical stabilizers.[1]Similar aircraft designs that are not, strictly speaking, flying wings, are sometimes referred to as such. These types include blended wing body aircraft, Lifting body aircraft which have a fuselage and no definite wings, and ultralights (such as the Aériane Swift) which typically carry the pilot (and engine when fitted) below the wing. Q clearance or Q access authorization is the Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance required to access Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information, as well as Secret Restricted Data. Restricted Data (RD) is defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and covers nuclear weapons and related materials. The lower-level L clearance is sufficient for access to Secret Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) and National Security Information, as well as Confidential Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information.[1][2] Access to Restricted Data is only granted on a need-to-know basis to personnel with appropriate clearances."For access to some classified information, such as Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) or Special Access Programs (SAPS), additional requirements or special conditions may be imposed by the information owner even if the person is otherwise eligible to be granted a security clearance or access authorization based on reciprocity."[2]Anyone possessing an active Q clearance is always categorized as holding a National Security Critical-Sensitive position (sensitivity Level 3).[3] Additionally, most Q-cleared incumbents will have collateral responsibilities designating them as Level 4: National Security Special-Sensitive personnel.[4] With these two designations standing as the highest-risk sensitivity levels, occupants of these positions hold extraordinary accountability, harnessing the potential to cause exceptionally grave or inestimable damage to the national security of the United States. Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public research university in Lubbock, Texas. Established on February 10, 1923, and called until 1969 Texas Technological College, it is the main institution of the four-institution Texas Tech University System. The university's student enrollment is the seventh-largest in Texas as of the Fall 2017 semester.The university offers degrees in more than 150 courses of study through 13 colleges and hosts 60 research centers and institutes. Texas Tech University has awarded over 200,000 degrees since 1927, including over 40,000 graduate and professional degrees. The Carnegie Foundation classifies Texas Tech as having "highest research activity". Research projects in the areas of epidemiology, pulsed power, grid computing, nanophotonics, atmospheric sciences, and wind energy are among the most prominent at the university. The Spanish Renaissance-themed campus, described by author James Michener as "the most beautiful west of the Mississippi until you get to Stanford", has been awarded the Grand Award for excellence in grounds-keeping, and has been noted for possessing a public art collection among the ten best in the United States.The Texas Tech Red Raiders are charter members of the Big 12 Conference and compete in Division I for all varsity sports. The Red Raiders football team has made 36 bowl appearances, which is 17th most of any university. The Red Raiders basketball team has made 14 appearances in the NCAA Division I Tournament. Bob Knight has coached the second most wins in men's NCAA Division I basketball history and served as the team's head coach from 2001 to 2008. The Lady Raiders basketball team won the 1993 NCAA Division I Tournament. In 1999, Texas Tech's Goin' Band from Raiderland received the Sudler Trophy, which is awarded to "recognize collegiate marching bands of particular excellence".Although the majority of the university's students are from the southwestern United States, the school has served students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. Texas Tech University alumni and former students have gone on to prominent careers in government, business, science, medicine, education, sports, and entertainment. The North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabrejet, is a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States' first swept-wing fighter that could counter the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights in the skies of the Korean War (1950–1953), fighting some of the earliest jet-to-jet battles in history. Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.[3] Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.[citation needed]Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan, and Italy. In addition, 738 carrier-modified versions were purchased by the US Navy as FJ-2s and -3s. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. The Sabre is by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.[1] A micrometeorite is a micrometeoroid that has survived entry through the Earth's atmosphere. The size of such a particle ranges from 50 µm to 2 mm. Usually found on Earth's surface, micrometeorites differ from meteorites in that they are smaller in size, more abundant, and different in composition. They are a subset of cosmic dust, which also includes the smaller interplanetary dust particles (IDPs).[1]Micrometeorites enter Earth's atmosphere at high velocities (at least 11 km/s) and undergo heating through atmospheric friction and compression. Micrometeorites individually weigh between 10−9 and 10−4 g and collectively comprise most of the extraterrestrial material that has come to the present-day Earth.[2]Fred Lawrence Whipple first coined the term "micro-meteorite" to describe dust-sized objects that fall to the Earth.[3] Sometimes meteoroids and micrometeoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere are visible as meteors or "shooting stars", whether or not they reach the ground and survive as meteorites and micrometeorites. The Kodak 35 was introduced in 1938 as the first US manufactured 35mm camera from Eastman Kodak Company. It was developed in Rochester, New York when it became likely that imports from the Kodak AG factory in Germany could be disrupted by war.While Kodak had invented the Kodak 135 daylight-loading film cassette in 1934, prior to 1938 they only offered the German made Kodak Retina' to work with this cartridge. US built 35mm cameras used the 828 paper backed 35mm roll-film (Bantam Series).[1][2] Plovers (/ˈplʌvər/ or /ˈploʊvər/) are a widely distributed group of wading birds belonging to the subfamily Charadriinae.There are about 66 species[1] in the subfamily, most of them called "plover" or "dotterel". The closely related lapwing subfamily, Vanellinae, comprises another 20-odd species.[2]Plovers are found throughout the world, with the exception of the Sahara and the polar regions, and are characterised by relatively short bills. They hunt by sight, rather than by feel as longer-billed waders like snipes do. They feed mainly on insects, worms or other invertebrates, depending on the habitat, which are obtained by a run-and-pause technique, rather than the steady probing of some other wader groups.[3]Plovers engage in false brooding, a type of distraction display. Examples include: pretending to change position or to sit on an imaginary nest site.A group of plovers may be referred to as a stand, wing, or congregation. A group of dotterels may be referred to as a trip.[4] A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger borosilicate glass bulb. The outer bulb may be clear or coated with a phosphor; in either case, the outer bulb provides thermal insulation, protection from the ultraviolet radiation the light produces, and a convenient mounting for the fused quartz arc tube.Mercury vapor lamps are more energy efficient than incandescent and most fluorescent lights, with luminous efficacies of 35 to 65 lumens/watt.[1] Their other advantages are a long bulb lifetime in the range of 24,000 hours and a high intensity, clear white light output.[1] For these reasons, they are used for large area overhead lighting, such as in factories, warehouses, and sports arenas as well as for streetlights. Clear mercury lamps produce white light with a bluish-green tint due to mercury's combination of spectral lines.[1] This is not flattering to human skin color, so such lamps are typically not used in retail stores.[1] "Color corrected" mercury bulbs overcome this problem with a phosphor on the inside of the outer bulb that emits white light, offering better color rendition.They operate at an internal pressure of around one atmosphere and require special fixtures, as well as an electrical ballast. They also require a warm-up period of 4 – 7 minutes to reach full light output. Mercury vapor lamps are becoming obsolete due to the higher efficiency and better color balance of metal halide lamps.[2] Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving Grounds) is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. Part of the facility is a census-designated place (CDP), which had a population of 3,116 at the 2000 census, and 2,093 as of the 2010 census. The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Canada as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War.[2] The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single "turborotor" blowing exhaust out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer.Originally designed as a fighter-like aircraft capable of very high speeds and altitudes, the project was repeatedly scaled back over time and the U.S. Air Force eventually abandoned it. Development was then taken up by the U.S. Army for a tactical combat aircraft requirement, a sort of high-performance helicopter.[3] In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in September 1961.Through the history of the program, the project was referred to by a number of different names. Avro referred to the efforts as Project Y, with individual vehicles known as Spade and Omega. Project Y-2 was later funded by the U.S. Air Force, who referred to it as WS-606A, Project 1794 and Project Silver Bug. When the U.S. Army joined the efforts it took on its final name "Avrocar", and the designation "VZ-9", part of the U.S. Army's VTOL projects in the VZ series. ...And lots of other exiting stuff!!!

Another fantastic entry from the historic UFO legend, Edward J. Ruppelt. This time we learn about the transition of military command from disbelievers to worriers. Ruppelt also tells the story of how he got put in charge of the UFO project. Packed full of interesting topics, such as projects Sign Grudge and Bluebook, ATIC, flying saucers, Behind the Flying Saucers by Frank Scully, Silas Newton, Donald Keyhoe, The United Nations, Sioux City, DC-3, DC-6, B-29, MIG-15, T-33, F-86, the Mantell Incident, Godman AFB, cigar shaped ufos, Life Magazine, the Pentagon, the Office of Public Information, Bob Ginna, White Sands Proving Grounds, cinetheodolites, triangulation, radar, inversion layers, Air Defense Command, anomalous propagation, Wright-Patterson AFB, the Fort Monmouth incident, the Grudge Report, Cal Tech, Long Beach Radio Range, George AFB, Edwards AFB, and so much more! This chapter is not one to be missed!Some topic notes from wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1930[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased in January 19th project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force and active for most of 1948.Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.[1] Project Sign was followed by another project, Project Grudge.Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.[2] The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized.Frank Scully (born Francis Joseph Xavier Scully; 28 April 1892 – 23 June 1964)[1][4] was an American journalist, author, humorist, and a regular columnist for the entertainment trade magazine Variety.Donald Edward Keyhoe (June 20, 1897 – November 29, 1988) was an American Marine Corps naval aviator,[2] writer of many aviation articles and stories in a variety of leading publications, and manager of the promotional tours of aviation pioneers, especially of Charles Lindbergh.In the 1950s he became well known as a UFO researcher, arguing that the U.S. government should conduct research in UFO matters, and should release all its UFO files. Jerome Clark writes that "Keyhoe was widely regarded as the leader in the field" of ufology in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s.The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization that aims to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations.[2] It is the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world. The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City; other main offices are in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna and The Hague.Sioux City (/suː/) is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 82,684 in the 2010 census, which makes it the fourth largest city in Iowa.[5][6] The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County, of which it is the county seat, though a small portion is in Plymouth County. Sioux City is located at the navigational head of the Missouri River. The city is home to several cultural points of interest including the Sioux City Public Museum, Sioux City Art Center and Sergeant Floyd Monument, which is a National Historic Landmark. The city is also home to Chris Larsen Park, commonly referred to as "the Riverfront", which includes the Anderson Dance Pavilion, Sergeant Floyd Riverboat Museum and Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. Sioux City is the primary city of the five-county Sioux City, IA–NE–SD Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), with a population of 168,825 in 2010 and a slight increase to an estimated 169,405 in 2018.[7] The Sioux City–Vermillion, IA–NE–SD Combined Statistical Area had a population of 182,675 as of 2010 but has decreased to an estimated population of 178,448 as of 2018.The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2. It is a low-wing metal monoplane with a tailwheel landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp (890 kW) Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines. It has a cruise speed of 207 mph (333 km/h), capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs (2,700 kg) of cargo, a range of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), and could operate from short runways.Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes as it could cross the continental US and made worldwide flights possible, carried passengers in greater comfort, and was reliable and easy to maintain. It is considered the first airliner that could profitably carry only passengers.[4] Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus military transport aircraft, and the DC-3 could not be upgraded by Douglas due to cost. It was made obsolete on main routes by more advanced types such as the Douglas DC-6 and Lockheed Constellation, but the design proved adaptable and useful.Civil DC-3 production ended in 1942 at 607 aircraft. Military versions, including the C-47 Skytrain (the Dakota in British RAF service), and Soviet- and Japanese-built versions, brought total production to over 16,000. Many continue to see service in a variety of niche roles: 2,000 DC-3s and military derivatives were estimated to be still flying in 2013.The Douglas DC-6 is a piston-powered airliner and cargo aircraft built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1958. Originally intended as a military transport near the end of World War II, it was reworked after the war to compete with the Lockheed Constellation in the long-range commercial transport market. More than 700 were built and many still fly today in cargo, military, and wildfire control roles.The DC-6 was known as the C-118 Liftmaster in United States Air Force service and as the R6D in United States Navy service prior to 1962, after which all U.S. Navy variants were also designated as the C-118.The Boeing B-29 Superfortress is a four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber designed by Boeing and flown primarily by the United States during World War II and the Korean War. Named in allusion to its predecessor, the B-17 Flying Fortress, the Superfortress was designed for high-altitude strategic bombing but also excelled in low-altitude night incendiary bombing, and in dropping naval mines to blockade Japan. B-29s also dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which contributed to the end of World War II.One of the largest aircraft of World War II, the B-29 had state-of-the-art technology, including a pressurized cabin; dual-wheeled, tricycle landing gear; and an analog computer-controlled fire-control system that allowed one gunner and a fire-control officer to direct four remote machine gun turrets. The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $43 billion today[5])—far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project—made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (Russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-15; USAF/DoD designation: Type 14; NATO reporting name: Fagot) is a jet fighter aircraft developed by Mikoyan-Gurevich for the Soviet Union. The MiG-15 was one of the first successful jet fighters to incorporate swept wings to achieve high transonic speeds. In combat over Korea, it outclassed straight-winged jet day fighters, which were largely relegated to ground-attack roles, and was quickly countered by the similar American swept-wing North American F-86 Sabre.When refined into the more advanced MiG-17, the basic design would again surprise the West when it proved effective against supersonic fighters such as the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in the Vietnam War of the 1960s.The MiG-15 is believed to have been one of the most produced jet aircraft; in excess of 13,000 were manufactured.[1] Licensed foreign production may have raised the production total to almost 18,000.[citation needed] The MiG-15 remains in service with the Korean People's Army Air Force as an advanced trainer.The Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star (or T-Bird) is a subsonic American jet trainer. It was produced by Lockheed and made its first flight in 1948. The T-33 was developed from the Lockheed P-80/F-80 starting as TP-80C/TF-80C in development, then designated T-33A. It was used by the U.S. Navy initially as TO-2, then TV-2, and after 1962, T-33B. The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service.The North American F-86 Sabre, sometimes called the Sabrejet, is a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States' first swept-wing fighter that could counter the swept-wing Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights in the skies of the Korean War (1950–1953), fighting some of the earliest jet-to-jet battles in history. Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras.[3] Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.[citation needed]Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan, and Italy. In addition, 738 carrier-modified versions were purchased by the US Navy as FJ-2s and -3s. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. The Sabre is by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The event was among the most publicized early UFO incidents.Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about.[1] Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb, and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen, his plane went into a downward spiral, and crashed.In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (the first head of Project Blue Book) wrote that the Mantell crash was one of three "classic" UFO cases in 1948 that would help to define the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, and would help convince some Air Force intelligence specialists that UFOs were a "real", physical phenomenon.[2] The other two "classic" sightings in 1948 were the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Gorman dogfight.[3]Historian David M. Jacobs argues the Mantell case marked a sharp shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for “silly season news”. Following Mantell's death, however, Jacobs notes "the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well."Godman Army Airfield (IATA: FTK, ICAO: KFTK, FAA LID: FTK) is a military airport located on the Fort Knox United States Army post in Hardin County, Kentucky, United States. It has four runways and is used entirely by the United States Army Aviation Branch.Life was an American magazine published weekly until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography.Originally, Life was a humor magazine with limited circulation. Founded in 1883, it was developed as being in a similar vein to British magazine Punch. This form of the magazine lasted until November 1936. Henry Luce, the owner of Time, bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name, and launched a major weekly news magazine with a strong emphasis on photojournalism. Luce purchased the rights to the name from the publishers of the first Life, but sold its subscription list and features to another magazine with no editorial continuity between the two publications.Life was published for 53 years as a general-interest light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the greatest writers, editors, illustrators, and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point. Possibly the best-known photograph published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945, as they celebrated Victory over Japan Day in New York City. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Life's profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages.After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[1] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[2] On January 30, 2012, the LIFE.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com.The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is also often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.Located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the building was designed by American architect George Bergstrom and built by contractor John McShain. Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motivating power behind the project;[5] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.The Pentagon is the world's largest office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2) of space, of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[6][7] Some 23,000 military and civilian employees,[7] and another 3,000 non-defense support personnel, work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[7] of corridors. The central five-acre (20,000 m2) pentagonal plaza is nicknamed "ground zero" on the presumption that it would be a prime target in a nuclear war.[8]On September 11, 2001, exactly 60 years after the building's construction began, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the western side of the building, killing 189 people (59 victims and the five perpetrators on board the airliner, as well as 125 victims in the building), according to the 9/11 Commission Report.[9] It was the first significant foreign attack on Washington's governmental facilities since the city was burned by the British during the War of 1812.The Pentagon is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Historic Landmark.White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a military testing area operated by the United States Army. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945.A cinetheodolite (a.k.a. kinetheodolite) is a photographic instrument for collection of trajectory data. It can be used to acquire data in the testing of missiles, rockets, projectiles, aircraft, and fire control systems; in the ripple firing of rockets, graze action tests, air burst fuze tests, and similar operations. Cinetheodolites provide angular measurements of the line of sight to the vehicle. This permits acquiring accurate position data. Together with timing systems, velocity and acceleration data can be developed from the position measurements. Cinetheodolites can serve as primary sources of position and velocity data to about 30 km slant range.These instruments were developed from a family of optical devices known as theodolites by the addition of a movie camera, thus adding the ability to track the vehicle in flight and to obtain continuous trajectory data.In trigonometry and geometry, triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to it from known points.Specifically in surveying, triangulation involves only angle measurements, rather than measuring distances to the point directly as in trilateration; the use of both angles and distance measurements is referred to as triangulateration.Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.Radar was developed secretly for military use by several nations in the period before and during World War II. A key development was the cavity magnetron in the United Kingdom, which allowed the creation of relatively small systems with sub-meter resolution. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States Navy as an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging.[1][2] The term radar has since entered English and other languages as a common noun, losing all capitalization.The following derivation was also suggested during RAF RADAR courses in 1954/5: at Yatesbury Training Camp: Radio Azimuth Direction And Ranging. The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air and terrestrial traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems, antimissile systems, marine radars to locate landmarks and other ships, aircraft anticollision systems, ocean surveillance systems, outer space surveillance and rendezvous systems, meteorological precipitation monitoring, altimetry and flight control systems, guided missile target locating systems, and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing, machine learning and are capable of extracting useful information from very high noise levels. Radar is a key technology that the self-driving systems are mainly designed to use, along with sonar and other sensors.[3]Other systems similar to radar make use of other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is LIDAR, which uses predominantly infrared light from lasers rather than radio waves. With the emergence of driverless vehicles, radar is expected to assist the automated platform to monitor its environment, thus preventing unwanted incidents.In meteorology, an inversion, also known as a temperature inversion, is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the thermal lapse rate. Normally, air temperature decreases with an increase in altitude. During an inversion, warmer air is held above cooler air; the normal temperature profile with altitude is inverted. [2]An inversion traps air pollution, such as smog, close to the ground. An inversion can also suppress convection by acting as a "cap". If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any moisture present can then erupt into violent thunderstorms. Temperature inversion can notoriously result in freezing rain in cold climates.Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) was a Unified Combatant Command of the United States Department of Defense, tasked with air defense for the Continental United States. It comprised Army, Air Force, and Navy components. It included Army Project Nike missiles (Ajax and Hercules) anti-aircraft defenses and USAF interceptors (manned aircraft and BOMARC missiles). The primary purpose of continental air defense during the CONAD period was to provide sufficient attack warning of a Soviet bomber air raid to ensure Strategic Air Command could launch a counterattack without being destroyed. CONAD controlled nuclear air defense weapons such as the 10 kiloton W-40 nuclear warhead on the CIM-10B BOMARC.[1] The command was disestablished in 1975, and Aerospace Defense Command became the major U.S. component of North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).Anomalous propagation (sometimes shortened to anaprop or anoprop)[1] includes different forms of radio propagation due to an unusual distribution of temperature and humidity with height in the atmosphere.[2] While this includes propagation with larger losses than in a standard atmosphere, in practical applications it is most often meant to refer to cases when signal propagates beyond normal radio horizon.Anomalous propagation can cause interference to VHF and UHF radio communications if distant stations are using the same frequency as local services. Over-the-air analog television broadcasting, for example, may be disrupted by distant stations on the same channel, or experience distortion of transmitted signals ghosting). Radar systems may produce inaccurate ranges or bearings to distant targets if the radar "beam" is bent by propagation effects. However, radio hobbyists take advantage of these effects in TV and FM DX.Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) (IATA: FFO, ICAO: KFFO, FAA LID: FFO) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene and Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patterson Fields, which were originally Wilbur Wright Field and Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot. Patterson Field is approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) northeast of Dayton; Wright Field is approximately 8.0 kilometres (5 mi) northeast of Dayton.The host unit at Wright-Patterson AFB is the 88th Air Base Wing (88 ABW), assigned to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Materiel Command. The 88 ABW operates the airfield, maintains all infrastructure and provides security, communications, medical, legal, personnel, contracting, finance, transportation, air traffic control, weather forecasting, public affairs, recreation and chaplain services for more than 60 associate units.The base's origins begin with the establishment of Wilbur Wright Field on 22 May and McCook Field in November 1917, both established by the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps as World War I installations. McCook was used as a testing field and for aviation experiments. Wright was used as a flying field (renamed Patterson Field in 1931); Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot; armorers' school, and a temporary storage depot. McCook's functions were transferred to Wright Field when it was closed in October 1927.[2] Wright-Patterson AFB was established in 1948 as a merger of Patterson and Wright Fields.In 1995, negotiations to end the Bosnian War were held at the base, resulting in the Dayton Agreement that ended the war.The 88th Air Base Wing is commanded by Col. Thomas Sherman[3] Its Command Chief Master Sergeant is Chief Master Sergeant Steve Arbona.[4] The base had a total of 27,406 military, civilian and contract employees in 2010.[5] The Greene County portion of the base is a census-designated place (CDP), with a resident population of 1,821 at the 2010 census.The Grudge reportProject Grudge issued its only formal report in August 1949. Though over 600 pages long, the report's conclusions stated:A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC Air Material Command will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.NOTE: It is apparent that further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein. It is further recommended that pertinent collection directives be revised to reflect the contemplated change in policy.B. All evidence and analyses indicate that reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of:1. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects.2. A mild form of mass-hysteria and war nerves.3. Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or to seek publicity.4. Psychopathological persons.Not long after this report was released, it was reported that Grudge would soon be dissolved. Despite this announcement, Grudge was not quite finished. A few personnel were still assigned to the project, and they aided the authors of a few more debunking mass media articles.The California Institute of Technology (Caltech)[7] is a private doctorate-granting research university in Pasadena, California. Known for its strength in natural science and engineering, Caltech is often ranked as one of the world's top-ten universities.[8][9][10][11][12]Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910 and the college assumed its present name in 1920. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán.[13][14] The university is one among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research.[15] Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. First-year students are required to live on campus and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus House System at Caltech. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks,[16] student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.As of November 2019, Caltech alumni, faculty and researchers include 74 Nobel Laureates (chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes), 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners. In addition, there are 56 non-emeritus faculty members (as well as many emeritus faculty members) who have been elected to one of the United States National Academies, 4 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Science or Technology.[4] Numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA.[4] According to a 2015 Pomona College study, Caltech ranked number one in the U.S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD.George Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located within the city limits, 8 miles northwest, of central Victorville, California, about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California.George AFB was closed pursuant to a decision by the 1988 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission at the end of the Cold War. It is now the site of the Southern California Logistics Airport.Established by the United States Army Air Corps as an Advanced Flying School in June 1941, it was closed at the end of World War II. It was again activated as a training base by the United States Air Force with the outbreak of the Korean War in November 1950. It remained a training base throughout the Cold War and in the immediate post-Cold War period, primarily for the Tactical Air Command (TAC) and later the Air Combat Command (ACC), training USAF, NATO and other Allied pilots and weapon systems officers in front-line fighter aircraft until being closed in 1993.Since 2009, the California Air National Guard's 196th Reconnaissance Squadron (96 RS) has operated an MQ-1 Predator Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) training facility at the Southern California Logistics Airport.Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) (IATA: EDW, ICAO: KEDW, FAA LID: EDW) is a United States Air Force installation located in Kern County in Southern California, about 22 miles (35 km) northeast of Lancaster, 15 miles (24 km) east of Rosamond and 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of California City.It is the home of the Air Force Test Center, Air Force Test Pilot School, and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center. It is the Air Force Materiel Command center for conducting and supporting research and development of flight, as well as testing and evaluating aerospace systems from concept to combat. It also hosts many test activities conducted by America's commercial aerospace industry.Notable occurrences at Edwards include Chuck Yeager's flight that broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1,[3] test flights of the North American X-15,[3] the first landings of the Space Shuttle,[4] and the 1986 around-the-world flight of the Rutan Voyager.

Chapter 6! Once again, tons of interesting stuff by Ruppelt, the former head of Project Bluebook. UFOs, Grudge, Sign, the Grudge Report, White Sands Proving Grounds, Skyhook Balloons, The Mantell Incident, Flying Saucers, Kenneth Arnold, True Magazine, airline pilot reports, the Farmington sighting, Dr. Donald Menzel, ATIC, weather balloons, a MIB-like encounter, more sick burns, something that sounds suspiciously like the recent tic-tacs, and MORE!!!Some misc topic notes from Wikipedia:Edward J. Ruppelt (July 17, 1923 – September 15, 1960) was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced "Yoo-foe") for short."[1]Ruppelt was the director of Project Grudge from late 1951 until it became Project Blue Book in March 1952; he remained with Blue Book until late 1953. UFO researcher Jerome Clark writes, "Most observers of Blue Book agree that the Ruppelt years comprised the project's golden age, when investigations were most capably directed and conducted. Ruppelt was open-minded about UFOs, and his investigators were not known, as Grudge's were, for force-fitting explanations on cases."[2]Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, the third study of its kind, following projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices officially ceased in January 19th project Blue Book had two goals:To determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, andTo scientifically analyze UFO-related data.Thousands of UFO reports were collected, analyzed, and filed. As a result of the Condon Report (1968), which concluded there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and a review of the report by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated in December 1969. The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations:No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security;There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; andThere was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.[1]By the time Project Blue Book ended, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most of them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, etc.) or conventional aircraft. According to the National Reconnaissance Office a number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret reconnaissance planes U-2 and A-12.[2] A small percentage of UFO reports were classified as unexplained, even after stringent analysis. The UFO reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, but names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be identified. Most UFOs are identified on investigation as conventional objects or phenomena. The term is widely used for claimed observations of extraterrestrial spacecraft.Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1951.The Grudge reportProject Grudge issued its only formal report in August 1949. Though over 600 pages long, the report's conclusions stated:A. There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC Air Material Command will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.Project Sign was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force and active for most of 1948.Project Sign's final report, published in early 1949, stated that while some UFOs appeared to represent actual aircraft, there was not enough data to determine their origin.[1] Project Sign was followed by another project, Project Grudge.Project Sign was first disclosed to the public in 1956 via the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects by retired Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt.[2] The full files for Sign were declassified in 1961.[3]White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a military testing area operated by the United States Army. The range was originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945.Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the Cherenkov detector were first used on Skyhook balloons.On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). The event was among the most publicized early UFO incidents.Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell may have died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which in 1948 was a top-secret project that Mantell would not have known about.[1] Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb, and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude he blacked out from a lack of oxygen, his plane went into a downward spiral, and crashed.In 1956, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (the first head of Project Blue Book) wrote that the Mantell crash was one of three "classic" UFO cases in 1948 that would help to define the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, and would help convince some Air Force intelligence specialists that UFOs were a "real", physical phenomenon.[2] The other two "classic" sightings in 1948 were the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter and the Gorman dogfight.[3]Historian David M. Jacobs argues the Mantell case marked a sharp shift in both public and governmental perceptions of UFOs. Previously, the news media often treated UFO reports with a whimsical or glib attitude reserved for “silly season news”. Following Mantell's death, however, Jacobs notes "the fact that a person had died in an encounter with an alleged flying saucer dramatically increased public concern about the phenomenon. Now a dramatic new prospect entered thought about UFOs: they might be not only extraterrestrial but potentially hostile as well."A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1930[1] but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.Kenneth Albert Arnold (March 29, 1915[1] – January 16, 1984[2]) was an American aviator and businessman. He is best known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported modern unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in tandem near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.True, also known as True, The Man's Magazine, was published by Fawcett Publications from 1937 until 1974. Known as True, A Man's Magazine in the 1930s, it was labeled True, #1 Man's Magazine in the 1960s. Petersen Publishing took over with the January 1975, issue. It was sold to Magazine Associates in August 1975, and ceased publication shortly afterward.High adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts were highlighted in articles such as "Living and Working at Nine Fathoms" by Ed Batutis, "Search for the Perfect Beer" by Bob McCabe and the uncredited "How to Start Your Own Hunting-Fishing Lodge." In addition to pictorials ("Iceland, Unexpected Eden" by Lawrence Fried) and humor pieces ("The Most Unforgettable Sonofabitch I Ever Knew" by Robert Ruark), there were columns, miscellaneous features and regular concluding pages: "This Funny Life," "Man to Man Answers," "Strange But True" and "True Goes Shopping."Donald Howard Menzel (April 11, 1901 – December 14, 1976) was one of the first theoretical astronomers and astrophysicists in the United States. He discovered the physical properties of the solar chromosphere, the chemistry of stars, the atmosphere of Mars, and the nature of gaseous nebulae.[1][2] The minor planet 1967 Menzel was named in his honor,[3] as well as a small lunar crater located in the southeast of Mare Tranquilitatis, the Sea of Tranquility.Air Technical Intelligence CenterOn May 21, 1951, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) was established as a USAF field activity of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence[2] under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. ATIC analyzed engine parts and the tail section of a Korean War Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and in July, the center received a complete MiG-15 that had crashed. ATIC also obtained[how?] IL-10 and Yak-9 aircraft in operational condition, and ATIC analysts monitored the flight test program at Kadena Air Base of a MiG-15 flown to Kimpo Air Base in September 1953 by a North Korean defector. ATIC awarded a contract to Battelle Memorial Institute for translation and analysis of materiel and documents gathered during the Korean War. ATIC/Battelle analysis allowed FEAF to develop engagement tactics for F-86 fighters. In 1958 ATIC had a Readix Computer in Building 828, 1 of 6 WPAFB buildings used by the unit prior to the center built in 1976.[2] After Discoverer 29 (launched April 30, 1961) photographed the "first Soviet ICBM offensive launch complex" at Plesetsk;[10]:107 the JCS published Directive 5105.21, "Defense Intelligence Agency", the Defense Intelligence Agency was created on October 1, and USAF intelligence organizations/units were reorganized.A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable.

This weeks guest is Ryan Narus. Ryan is a double graduate from Wake Forest University with an undergrad in Psychology and an MBA with concentrations in Operations and Marketing. Graduating in 2009 left him unable to find a B2B sales job, so he settled for car sales. Flash forward 4 years later and he won several awards, wrote a book, and discovered he was completely disillusioned with Corporate America, so he started a mobile home park business. Now he has been a part of 10 MHP deals spanning 1,245 pads and over $20MM in acquisitions, all with starting with more student loan debt than cash to invest in deals. He is going to share with us how to destroy all our excuses!Links: http://www.archimedesgrp.com/Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerWelcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon and their website Sam Knickerbocker com.Welcome back to fuel your legacy. And as always, we have some more incredible guests coming on. And today we're talking somebody who has made his millions he's crushing it in the mobile home park industry. If you've ever thought who owns that trash heap over there. I'm just kidding. His are probably nicer than the average. But no. So Ryan, he was fed a lie when he was younger, much like, probably most of us are you who are listening to this, that if you study hard to graduate from top universities, you're going to get a job, and everything's going to be hunky-dory and you're going to retire with ease and everything's gonna be fantastic. Well, he found out much like I'm sure you're finding out, which is why you're listening to this podcast, that not everything turns out as advertised. Thankfully, he has rebounded, really got into his rock bottom, and launched from that with a solid foundation. And now he's here to help you understand, hey, kind of where did that aha moment happen? How did you launch and how did he overcome the fear of failure? So I'm super excited. Ryan, take it away. Awesome. First, of foremost, Samuel, I want to thank you. I'm flattered to be here. We have a ton to talk about offline, because we're both huge fans of a very Reading and Writing I haven't even told you I've written a book which we can get into again offline but yeah I am so pumped to be here I really am and I don't have anything to sell I am literally doing this because I want to help you the listener escaped corporate America cuz it is awful awful awful man and you know what stinks about it it's that you're forced for this line which you hinted at which is work hard in school you'll go to a good college and then from there you'll have a job and then you work really hard at that job and then you get to retire. Well, it turns out like quite literally none of that is true you can work hard and still not to go to a good school. You can go to a good school I went to Wake Forest University, a very good school made the on Becky list. And so quote-unquote were elite or whatever, because people are on Becky's of the world, are paying to get their kids in on fake scholarships. Right so like a good school, not Ivy but a very good school is no guaranteed job. Oh my gosh, don't get me started about that. My wife's a huge Full House fan. So I like to give her trash for that good, but it's like did I went to Wake Forest twice I went once to get for undergrad, I got my degree in psychology and statistics, literally, to be a salesman. I wanted to be in sales. And I figured what better way to sell them to understand the psychology of the people you're trying to persuade. And it paid dividends, especially because I got a statistics minor, which also helped me optimize my selling schedule, which we can I did Moneyball statistics to opt I was a car salesman, I optimized my day based on a whole bunch of data I put together which is cool. But long story short, even after graduating with first an MBA, there's no gear I hadn't no guaranteed job coming out of it and both times I was going out of undergrad and grad. And I found myself stuck at a job where I did not want to get promoted because I hated it. And I didn't find any meaning or purpose in it. I found myself not wanting to go up. So not wanting to and not wanting to stay put. And then it's like, well, I'm making too much money here. Where am I going to go? Because I've adapted a lifestyle that has become part of my identity. And it's not just a sunk cost of racking up student loan debt and putting it a bunch of hours and years playing the office politics game, but it just becomes part of your identity. It's hard to let that go especially if you're used to a certain lifestyle, right? So you're living a middle-class lifestyle, you drive a certain car, you go to certain restaurants, you have certain friends, really hard to let that go. To give a teaser about where I'm going with this. Eventually, I gave all that up and moved into a mobile home. Chase my dream. Sosacrifice is a big part of where I'm going with this but to kind of go back so we don't do a huge Quentin Tarantino. Its where my journey started when I was in, obviously, when I was in high school really when even before that when I decided Wake Forest was my dream school and I wanted to go I did everything I could to get it. And I did. And I had several key moments in my life where I realized if I don't get my stuff together as I got like 1980 on the essay T, other PSAT so in the average at the times, this is when it was based off 1600 Wake Forest average was 1320. It wasn't even close. So I was like, Okay, well, we've got to get this score up and flash forward. Several years later, from my freshman year to my senior year, I scored a 13 to one out of 1600. So I got the average as T score. Then I had slightly above the GPA and I got accepted the way I can. It was like a dream come true getting to go to my dream school, I loved it. And I was following that trajectory, right? Like, hey, go to a really good school, you have a really good job when you come out. Well, turns out, I did it. It turns out I got a lot a job down. So I graduated in oh nine. So you can't be like, well, you just graduated right at the start of the Great Recession, well, actually had my job locked off, locked up before the economy took a tumble. It was that I picked the wrong job. Because I didn't know myself well enough. I didn't self assess well enough to know who I was at heart. So even though I had a psych major, and I took a ton of classes that basically browbeat you into the really trying to come to the realization that you need to understand who you are, what you like, and what you do not like, or you will make a decision based on what you think other people want you to do. What Are you real? Whether you realize that or not? Whether you're consciously going well, I'm going to do this because I don't want to make dad unhappy? Or you're going, Well, no, I want this. But really, do you want that? Or do you want the world so for example, investment banking, I know a ton of investment bankers that are doing it, quote, unquote, for themselves, but really, they're doing it because they want to impress other people. So the thing that I came into really, really hard and fast is I didn't have my dad was a college professor and marketing. He was not a psych person, right? He wasn't there to tell me, Hey, you really should figure out like really drill down into who you are at heart and what you want to be when you grow up. I didn't have that. And so I picked a job that was selling. It was a sports sales. And so I was like, Oh my god, sports and selling done right. This is going to be my life. And it ended up being I tricked myself into literally taking a telemarketing job, which was horrendous. And then It was like July, June or July of 2009. After I had graduated answer, everyone who just graduated who was going to get a good job, got a job. And so I was like, I can't find a sales job because number one, I'm not. I've already graduated. Right? So I can't read the graduate. And number two, the only people were hiring business to business sales, wanted someone with five years of experience and a Rolodex, who could roll in day one and be effective. And that was not me. What I needed was someone willing to take a chance on me. Thankfully, my karate instructor from high school was a car salesman who's a manager at Hendrick, Honda, and Charlotte, and they gave me a chance. And I could have easily been like, I went to Wake Forest University car sales is beneath me. I want the business to business sales, not consumer, not business to consumer. But instead, I said, You know what, I am not going to sit at my parent's house and feel sorry for myself. I'm going to go and do Do something to make the most of it. What I ended up doing was I ended up tracking my data, literally using Moneyball statistics with multivariate regressions to optimize my day and figure out who are the best leads to follow up on which ones can you let go? What part of the sales process is vital. And what I found during that process, literally just using a basic, very regression analysis, is if you can show people numbers for a car, even if they're like, I'm not buying today, your likelihood of selling them jumps from like 25% to 60. So better than a coin flip. So then all of a sudden, I craft my entire sales process around how can I convince someone to test drive their car and to just sit down with me for five minutes, and it absolutely revolutionized the way I sold cars and in my first full year, I hit Honda's highest award right out of the gate. I sold 200. And I think was 241 cars, so about 20 cars a month, right out of the gate at 24 years old. And I had a moment which where they shipped me up to Washington DC for like to stay at a five-star hotel. And it was this weird moment in my life where I drank way too much.And, and it wasn't that it's not that I'm I went up there to dress nice and be a party boy. It was that at the moment, I didn't realize that I was filling a void in my soul. So I thought I wanted to be a salesman. I thought it was good at it and an old boy I have made it. But at that moment when I was shaking hands with the district manager, and he looked me in the face and said, are you going to do this again next year? Like I better see you here next year. Of course, at the moment I was like you're going to see me here next year when I walked away without a warm To have my dinner and just sunk in that I was completely unfulfilled. It sunk in how many hours I spent doing that how much of my life I sacrificed to get to that moment. And basically, I was told, go do it again. You better do it again. And also it. It was pretty lucrative, relatively speaking, but it wasn't. It's not something that would ever make me millions unless I owned a car dealership. You know, I had a great I had a meeting with my general manager who told me point blank, he makes what, 300,000 a year, some huge number, but he's like, I never seen, my kids. He's like, you need to think long and hard if that's what you want. And I kind of realized at that moment, talking to my general manager, that if I wanted the car industry, I wasn't getting promoted up, because it takes me 20 years to get to be a general manager only to miss my kid's entire life. I realized around that time that I needed my name. On the side of the building Henrick Honda right and used to be Henrick Honda, because Mr. Hendrick rolls in and his Ferrari once a year to shake hands have dinner and tell everyone they're doing great. And then he drives back to Quail Hollow and hangs out with other multimillionaires, not billionaires, right? So to me I was like what I need is time freedom and I achieve time freedom by having my name on the side of the building but flashing back to hitting Hanta gold. What I realized then in there at that moment, was how completely unsatisfying making decent money is getting the literally the highest award you can get out of the gate is and, and at the time at 24 years old, I'm in the moment I filled that void without call and was totally embarrassed the next day. But it was one of those moments where I knew something was wrong at the moment and I didn't know how to fix it. And it wasn't until a few years later. Because I never hit that award again, by the way, because I've tried to make my life I tried to have a life balance that I couldn't achieve selling cars. And it wasn't until I sprained my ankle playing basketball, where I was sitting at home with ice on my ankle, where I went, I am not going to make money today. I'm 20 something, it was maybe 2526 years old. Not making money that day. And I went, I can't do this. And I went out and I bought the crutches. And I went out to sell cars using crutches, that same day, and just muscled through the pain. And it was really around that time where I realized I can do this in my 20s. That's annoying. If I get hurt when I'm in my 50s or 60s, or God forbid, I don't plan my retirement correctly, and I'm working in my late 60s. I can't afford to not have a paycheck coming in if I get hurt. And so it was the Several pivotal moments where I realized, number one, I don't want to get promoted upwards at the car dealership,I can't really go out because a car sales experience doesn't really translate somewhere else directly, I would really have to start at the bottom of the rung and I had gotten used to a lifestyle that is really hard to give up with, like I mentioned earlier people that whether you really truly want what you think they want you to have, or whether or whether you are just like falling victim to the pressure you think they're putting on you to live a certain lifestyle. It gets to you. And so I realized after a lot of reading, so I realized first and foremost, if it's not owning a car dealership, I need to own a business period. Because it's a lot of introspection and I went I meant to be my boss. And also during this period, I realized that Hate cars. What the heck am I doing here, but I utterly hate cars. They're depreciating assets. It was a really bad investment. I love investments. I ended up getting my series seven one day because I just loved it. And so I was like, I love investing. I love the idea of owning my own business. I love the autonomy. I love the idea of time freedom. So I'm a guy who likes to work 80 hours a week, but then occasionally I like to work 20 hours a week. So I want that flexibility and know that money is coming in and the only way to do that is to start a business. And so then I went step one self-reflection understand self assess. Who am I What do I like? Do I like my coffee completely black or like cream and sugar? Do I even like coffee? Do I? Am I a night owl? Am I an early bird? Like who am I at my core? What am I truly passionate about? And it's as soon as you can answer that question and even me myself after taking many many years of asking myself very hard. Questions, I still cannot look you in the face and tell you I confidently know myself. So if you're listening in, and you're like, I know myself, I know you don't. And it is, really, really painful. But it is worth it to just absolutely obliterate cell phone, deliver it, liberate your self-esteem and then rebuild it with a proper foundation. And like Steve Jobs says, and a bunch of other people says Warren Buffett to the best word in your business repertoire is the word No. Because I looked at over 100 businesses, I even started a couple that didn't go anywhere. But because I said no to a lot of sexy opportunities that ultimately didn't fit, who I was at heart and it made deciding things so much more efficient, so that when I eventually found mobile home parks, which is what I do full time now. It was, it was, my wife hates that I say this, but it was just like meeting her. The stars just aligned. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is who I'm supposed to be with. Like when I met my wife, we, we just, we clicked. And we just knew that we were getting married and very quickly, and we've been together seven years now and over seven years now, and I am in love with her. And we are happier now than we've ever have been. And I knew that early on. And it was the same thing with mobile home parks. So sorry, sweetheart, I know you're listening to this.But if you can't get there if you don't know who you are, and it's very similar to dating, right, like you want to go after the thing that looks the best, or the most popular thing or the thing that you think your friends are going to be proudest about. And what you need to realize is it's not that it's someone who fits you like a glove and compliments you so flashing back to the car dealership, I spent four years there. And then I decided you know what I need to do, I need to get my MBA because I don't understand business. And this will allow me to pivot into another company. And I also realize too, that at the car dealership, I was gaining amazing skills, how to sell how to market, how to do operations, how to take a really angry customer when I am the bad guy, because I'm the quote-unquote scummy car salesman and then have the and completely flip that on its head, have them leave with the warm and fuzzy and go next time I'm buying a car I'm coming to Ryan and I'm sending my friends here, because he's not a car salesman. This is a professional. So learning how to do all of that and so much more we're skills that I use, I used this morning at my current business. So I realized that whatever job I have is going to pivot into I was going to start whatever company I was going to start getting my MBA would and taking another job would not I can take something that is Even if I look at it, I'm like, well, that might be below me. I need to take it for the experience. And so I ended up going to work for Wells Fargo, which is their leadership program, which taught me many great things. And I was very thankful for that opportunity. But I realized very quickly at that opportunity that I was not meant to do that. And thankfully, while I was getting my MBA, I had discovered mobile home parks, and I was a year into it when I started at Wells Fargo. So I hate to say that I had one foot in the door and one foot out, but basically what I was doing during that first full year is proving that mobile home parks could make me money. And then the second full year was at Wells Fargo. I needed to scale that up and also plan to go full time. So it took me two full years from discovering mobile home parks, and three acquisitions to even go full time. And that's not to mention the three years I spent reading any book I could get my hands on so I used to challenge myself to a book a week and I've read well over 100 bucks, probably well over 200 bucks now, definitely slowed that down a lot like we were saying offline. But I forced myself to read. I forced myself to learn, I forced myself to network. And most importantly, I forced myself to self assess and understand who I am. So that way when it was time to make the jump to full time, it was time for a sacrifice. And when I did that, finally, I cut my salary big time, so I pay myself $35,000 a year $35,000 a year, I make more than that. But every penny above that I forced directly into my net worth. So it's like injecting steroids into my business because every penny I make since I'm an S Corp, it only gets taxed once. So I'm forcing funneling all that money into my business and not paying myself but just a salary, right and a measly one at that compared to what I probably could make in the open market. The reason is that it forces me to live a frugal lifestyle. So when I quit my job at Wells, I moved into a mobile home when I realized it was and I live there every other week for 14 months. So it wasn't like for a week, it was over a year. What I realized it was to get full time I had to make a sacrifice, I had to cut some crazy expenses of mine that I didn't truly make me happy. I had to live extremely frugally. I slept on a mattress. And I had two lawn chairs and a TV without a stand. It was leaning against my wall. And what I realized at that moment was I could pay myself to the property manager salary. So all of a sudden, I could make 35,000 a year, be an owner of a business. And if I get lucky, and I make a whole bunch more that year, I can funnel all that directly into business which I was lucky and there's a lot of luck involved to which I cannot stress enough luck and timing is completely out of your control and A huge part of it. But because I made that major sacrifice that allowed me to get full time and then the crazy thing about going full time and your side hustle is out of seemingly nowhere, you will see opportunities everywhere. And you're like, Oh my god, how did I miss this? And I will tell you how you missed it. It's because you're working 50 to 60 hours making someone else rich. And even if you're making 35,000 or less or not paying yourself at all, like I think the founder of Nike didn't pay himself for like 10 years. Yeah, he.He struggleduntil he struggled. Oh my goodness. And so you got to look at soda for a lot of reasons. I've been very lucky. So for a lot of reasons, like you have to, you have to make a massive sacrifice. And I have to tell you, from the moment I quit Wells Fargo today, I've been writing this Hi, it was June of 2016. 17 it's now October of 2019. So it's been two years and change. And I am so happy not being in corporate America anymore. I have a bunch of wonderful stories about achieving time freedom and how I've had my son, and how having time freedom it allowed me to literally be there for my premature babies birth, which never would have happened if I had to request PTO or early paternity time or get worried about being passed over for promotion or worse, work a commission-only sales gig. So if you hear my story, and we're about to dive into this a little deeper, I'm excited to see what questions you have for me, by the way, because I've seen you take some pretty furious notes there. If you're listening to this, know that it's going to require it. The word sacrifice means if you look it up the definition inherently means you're giving up something valuable to you and the hopes that you're getting something more valuable and exchange, right? But inherently, it's going to hurt. And in some cases a whole lot. But what you'll realize in very short order, once you destroy your self-esteem and rebuild it, the right way from the ground up, not with lies or not even lies, lies is a bit of embellishment. It's a hype story that other people are pitching to you that they're perpetuating, and they don't necessarily know that it's not true. So it's not necessarily a lie. It's just that when you are if you're the product of the five people you spend the most amount of time with, you know, and your, your mom is a plumber, your dad is a salesperson, like they're going to attack problems like a plumber or a salesperson, right? Like one of the best books I ever read. Besides four hour workweek, which is an amazing book, by the way, was the Millionaire Next Door because it makes you think like a millionaire like Rich Dad Poor Dad, brilliant book. It makes you think like a millionaire. So if you're you don't come from money because I didn't. I never thought like a middle-class person. So you have to think like a rich person. You have to make sacrifices, you have to self assess. And you have to be patient. Because it took it's not fair to say, Oh, I found mobile home parks and it took two years, and then took another two years and changed to get where I'm at now, it's not fair to say, well, in 2012, Ryan discovered he wanted to own his own business. And then three years later found mobile home parks. It's not fair to say that, that you know, that time was it because before then I was developing skills. And before then I was getting degrees from universities. And before then I was self-assessing to a smaller degree and reading books. So it takes a lot of time. And that's just not a sexy thing to say. And for someone who is stuck in a job that they're miserable that because I was there more than once. It sucked Here, but you need to hear that and you need to prepare yourself. Like Heidi Halverson says in her book motivation. The most successful people are the slight optimists. They're the ones who go, not who go, oh, I'm going to do this, or the ones who go, oh, I'm never going to do this. It's the ones who go, I'm going to do this, but it's going to be hard. So if you can have that mentality, you can look at it like it's a marathon. You will be like Bill Gates says you will be you'll probably overestimate what is it the quote is like, you'll overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do at 10. And to end before we go to questions, I'd like to say I made a LinkedIn post recently, where I copied and pasted my goals. So that's the first meeting that my business partner and I had in July of 2015. Our first meeting, we wrote down very specific goals, very specific goals with dates that we were to accomplish these goals by For a five-year time horizon, and actually up to a 10-year time horizon, I copied those goals. And I pasted them to LinkedIn, just a post. And I put where I'm at today, and I smashed all of them. So if you're listening to this, and you're going, oh God, Ryan took seven years to get to where he's at today from discovering he was meant to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you, it will go by a lot faster, and you will accomplish way more than you think you will. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of time in a day. And there's a lot of time in a year. And even I'll give you a good for example. Just I'll make this my denouement I do do a lingo every single day because it's been my life call to speak Spanish and I'm on like 855 days in a row or something like that. 15 minutes a day in Japan. Mucho Espanol our hit that I can speak Spanish now because not because It's not perfect, it's a disaster. But home is what we say works. And because I practice for 15 minutes every day no matter what, in two-plus years, I'm fluent. If you ask my tenants, they'll laugh and they'll be like as we go MCO up arrow as they own brave where they have large Espanol. So it's really funny, but he can see this man can speak Spanish, right? So what I'm getting at with all of this and where I'd kind of like to end and right out to the sunset for questions here is a little bit every day goes a long way.Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are going to dive in because I have I love this. It's one thing that I love. Well, there are multiple things that I love in life. But when you find people who think like you, and express themselves the way you do, and yet have completely different passions in you, it's exciting. Right? I would never feel like Finding a mobile home park is like meeting my wife yet, However, no, no but to be honest though, what I do right now is that's how I feel about what I do right now that my broker profession of helping people understand how money works. I am as in love with that as I am with my wife. And sometimes that's a struggle because it's like, oh, man, I wish you'd love me more, right? That'd be nice, you know, but really, this like I love this in every fiber and core of my being I love helping people understand money and prepare financially for their future. And I love what it does for my family. On the income side, so like there's, there's, yes, there are hard days, there are things that you don't love about your job. And there's probably stuff in the mobile home park when you have to evict somebody or have to clean up a trashy site, right? There are bad days, right? But it doesn't matter how bad that day is. I love every part of the bad as much as I love every part of the good and finding and that is I love this. If I were to be a relationship coach, I am on the money side, but not the, on the human side, right, but it's something that I've told all of my single friends who are and my siblings who are looking for a spouse. And it's something I learned through a lot of reading stuff before. But when I was looking for a wife, I said, Look, and this may be a little graphic for people who are whatever, just know, but but I was looking for a wife is like, Look, I have to be able to like wake up in the morning and have sex with you. That's like something I got to be able to do. Right. I can't marry somebody who I'm completely not attracted to. But attraction is a very small part of this equation. For me. I'm looking for compatibility over attraction every day all day. I'm looking for compatibility. If we're not compatible. I don't care how attractive you are. It will not make up for a lack of compatibility. And that is as true and relationships as Ryan pointed out as it is in business as it is in a career, if your career is not as like compatible with who you are, that's not possible. So Ryan I, just met briefly before we record this, I'm busy, I read his stuff. And he's probably seen me a little bit. I don't know if you pick this up or not. But my tagline or one of the taglines that I use when I'm speaking on stage is to identify your identity. That is like the core of my message, the core of fuel your legacy. I believe that your legacy is the enactment and the living of your identity. But first, you have to identify your identity. And then the fuel your legacy is a financial component of gaining the financial confidence to live your legacy regardless of the outcome, right and that's where that sacrifice comes in. But that sacrifice is only possible after you know you're backed up against the wall and you know, without a shadow of a doubt. This has been identified and I'm living it out and it's a gift to the world. And so I love that that you recognize that your, the lifestyle that you adopted had become part of kind of an identity that you had adopted. But not that you reallylike when you pulled back all the core, it wasn't who you were. Right? And that is lives where you reach.Yeah, it's so crucial to get to that point. And it is hard to hear it is hard to say okay, everything you believe about yourself, I need you to question everything, not leave anything on unsewn stone unturned like I love it said like, what do I like with my coffee? Do I even like coffee right? Question everything. How do I like to do my hair? Do I like to do my hair? What color do I like my hair right? What kind of clothes do I wear? Why do I wear these type of clothes do I want to end before we got I'm in a shirt and tie right now he's in a polo. And he's like, man, should I go put a tie on? I feel how to dress. Like, did you just do you? I mean, I have a meeting. So I met a shirt and tie today, but like, just dress how you're comfortable. Like there's no reason to dress a way that you're not comfortable if it's inauthentic to you, and I love that.So, I'm going to go way back to the beginning, because I think this is another crucial thing, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. But you said something that I think only aneither an experienced person and human development or, or somebody just thought a lot about it, but you persuade people and so many people think that a salesman is there to kind of be that sleazy person or manipulate them. So how would you define the difference between persuasion and manipulation I don't think there's a lot of difference. I know that's probably not what people want to hear. But manipulation is basically in layman's terms, doing things to affect someone's behavior to get what you want out of them, right. And persuasion is a form of manipulation. But at the same time, I think persuasion comes with a lot of negative connotations in that you think you're just going to wave a magic wand and persuade someone and the truth is, outside of a cult leader, that's not something that happens unless you're lying to someone. There's persuasion, you're not going. It's really hard to be that charismatic, that you're going to convince someone to do something against their will. Right. So in other words, in car sales, I sold Honda's reason why I picked is number one I drove the product, and I believed in the product. And so and also it carries its value. It doesn't break it last forever. I have a 2900 fit, stick shift, love it to death 250,000 miles on it, I'm gonna keep it as long as the thing goes, I've paid it off a long time ago. It's cheap. It's great on gas, I can do that. That's easy to sell. Right? Because when people come in, oh, you know, I don't want to make the wrong decision. Dude, I've had this for a while now I've had it for 10 years, right? Like, if you're looking to have something reliable, that's going to hold its value and be cheap, but safe, like a no brainer, right? So what you're doing in a sale, is you're presenting the facts in a way that allows someone to make their own decision. Now you have things like strategical missions where you might weave out that it's not as comfortable as the Toyota. Right so like, I'm not going to just volunteer that information or maybe you do so like there's a lot of gray area and sales which kind of opens the way for you to lie. And so my thing was when I got into car sales, I was like, I'm going to do this the right like I'm not going to be a scummy car salesman, one of two things is going to happen. I'm either gonna go do this honestly. And the whole world is just gonna implode. And it's not gonna work, or it's gonna work and it's going to wow people because they're going to be like, Oh my god, I curse that. Like if someone asked me like, what's more, comfortable Toyota, or Honda, I'm going to tell you the truth. The Toyota if you want to ride a couch, go get a Toyota. But here's the thing. If you want to enjoy if you want to feel like you have more control of your car, you pick a Honda. Right? So in other words, like persuasion to me, is it manipulation? Yes, it is. But that manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So for example, towards the end of my years at Honda, Toyota got rocked with safety issues. I mean, rocked with safety. And it wasn't just the car pedal thing getting stuck. It was they failed really big tests and I can't remember what it was. But I remember showing people like, hey, look, just FYI Toyota's are great cars, they hold their value, but just FYI, here is a serious issue that Toyota has that they have not addressed yet. And it's funny when even though I was presenting the facts in a way that was knocking down my competition, people didn't like that. I don't know. It's just not even bringing up period. And I think the takeaway there is manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So in that instance, I was like, Hey, this is a safer car. Check these third party sources, right. So am I manipulating someone for my self-gain? Yeah, absolutely. I want to sell you a Honda and you had not had you buy a Toyota. However, it's safer for you to buy this Honda right now at least right. So in other words, it doesn't always have to come with the various connotations. And kind of where I also think it's important to make note of if your incentives are aligned with your prospective buyers, that's everything. Right? So in other words, it becomes nefarious and deleterious for someone in an in a situation where they're being persuaded where it doesn't incentivize them to buy whatever you're selling. Right? So you're selling some snake oil, right? And truly, you know, in the bottom of your heart that the snake oil doesn't do anything, right. But the person trying to buy it is seeing something that's not there. And you are allowing them to see that and you are planting seeds there, whether you're being truthful or not. Whether you're omitting key details or you're directly lying to them. If somebody is looking at a story that you're telling, and they are buying that story, even though you know It's not true. That is a really bad thing. But even still, like that person is actively wanting to believe in something. So if you're a critical thinker, like you said, you ask tough questions of yourself and your surroundings. Even if it is really hard to ask those questions. You're never going to get persuaded. Unless someone directly lies to you. And even then trust but verify, man always checks the facts. Yeah, I agree. I, in my mind, I would say kind of the difference between if I had to separate the two words, I would say manipulation is, is more of mal intent. And persuasion is to help people be to get what they need. And it comes down to what is your intention? And are your values aligned? Are your values aligned with the buyer or are they not if they're not, and you're still trying to get them to buy something that at that point, I would say it's more like manipulation. It's mal intent, whereas persuasion it's a fine line, right because you're employing the same techniques. So, to use an extort a story from my past, I did door to door sales for five years for four and a half years. And, and I did it one year. And then I went out and I served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And when you're talking about Jesus Christ, the last, the last thing you want to do is like sell somebody, Jesus Christ, right, because maybe they're going to join for the wrong reasons and all this, right. There's some there are some ethical things there that for me, I was like, I want to sell them this, but I have learned all these sales tools on the door to door sales and happened to be that I knocked a lot of doors on my mission. So a lot of the skills and tactics applied to both to both situations and I would go through kind of ups and downs where I like I would be using the sales, tools, and tactics but I felt kind of dirty using them because I was I didn't want to sell somebody the Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, when I wouldn't use them, I felt like I was not giving them the best opportunity to see Jesus Christ in the best light. And so part of it is you're using these skills, these are skills you've been given, and it's okay to be persuasive, that I think comes down to what's your intent in being persuasive, because part of and this is where I would separate a salesman from a closer, right. And a salesman is somebody who is they're just with their pocket bolt book in mind, and they're how, how much money can I get out of this person? And they're just selling them anything. And then a closer their objective is not to get not to sell them something as much as to get a yes or no and help their client make a decision. If they can try and make a decision, yes or no, everybody wins, right? Most of the time. The client really respects that and will actually buy from you just because you were objective about the whole process, rather than going even though they probably could get something or they might have liked the toilet a better in the end right out of respect for knowing that you are living in alignment, that they'll do business with you because they can trust at that point where the salesman they always feel like okay, what's your not telling me? What, What's he trying to do just get my pocketbook. And I think that that's an important distinction, especially when we're going to start talking about kind of how you grew your business and how you overcame some different challenges. And that's an important thing to understand where you're coming from and the intention behind what you're doing. And I think, to identify that you have to go in and identify your identity, do that self-assessment, and, and start thinking about this.If you're lying to yourself, you're going to lie to other people, whether you realize you're doing it or not.Yep. And I say all the time, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Andto, to further that example, I didn't This is a great conversation but before we started recording, he, Ryan'sjust told him to hit record because of our conversationso good. So so I was telling him that sometimes if I've read three quarters or half or a quarter of a book and I feel like I've got the main idea and it's just becoming repetitive and multiple stories of the same, teach the same principle, I will stop a book halfway. I'm not committed to finishing a book just because I need to finish a book for my own like to see the finished bar on my audible. Like, if I've got it, I'm moving on, where he's like, man, if I open a can of beer, I've got to finish my can of beer. And so we Chuck all these and maybe that's a bad thing. And I think, no, there are advantages to both mentalities depending on what angle you're taking it. But I think the the the commitment to finish that commitment applied everywhere in his life. And it's about what is the finishing for him it was about finishing, identifying his identity and continue to live by his identity. And he's not going to be satisfied until that's completed. And he already told you, he's still working on it. He doesn't know exactly who he is, and he doesn't think you do either. And I would agree. I'm fairly confident with who I am like I can function knowing who I am. But I'm still questioning everything I believe every day and I'm seeking to have associations with people who question everything, I believe from a just aspect of business aspect to where I'm uncomfortable. I disagree with some people and maybe get a little bit angry about other people's opinions. But I put myself in those situations voluntarily because I want the challenge I want to grow. And I'm not satisfied until I've, I've completed my growth. And so it's just an interesting thing to think about. And then Say I want to touch on one thing before we go further. But there's this thing that you talked about. And I wonder what's the emotional thought process? You kind of talked about it, but when you realize that your time is worth more, your life is worth more. So many people they're working and they think it's okay like I'm surviving. But how do you value your life? How did you get to the point where like, Okay, my life is worth more than this job and I'm done with this job because my life the actual experiences that I could operate or have are worth more than this, this income. So I mentioned earlier one, one thing I challenged myself to do is meet everyone I could write it Everyone says, Oh, it's all about who you know, like, it's not who it's not what you know, it's who you know, everybody knows that. But almost no one applies that in their life. So I was like, Okay, and this is true axiom wisdom of those passed down through the many years. Like, let's see if there's any credence to this. I talked to anybody with a pulse. I don't care if you're a janitor or a CEO, or anywhere in between, I wanted to talk to you. And that's still true. Today, I'll talk to anybody. It's a big reason why I want to come on here too, by the way, like, I want to give people free content. So they can escape corporate America to like, I'm not selling anything. I'm not raising any funds for my properties. I just want to help people, but also like, What's in it for me? Well, I'll tell you what's in it for me. Hopefully, someone listening now will go, I need to get on the phone with this guy. Even if I don't offer him anything. And I want that because I want to hear from you. I want to understand your thought process. And I've met thousands of people in my life thousands and I've just, it's amazing how everyone is unique, yet. Everyone is very average. And it's until you realize how average You are where you realize like if you're a fan of the office like I am, I love Michael Scott as a character. He has this one episode which is Jericho, where he promised a bunch of kids that he was going to pay for their college. Evan, they graduated then they're like, hey, Michael Scott, where's their money? Hilarious episode. And, and he doesn't have the money, right? And so they like someone asked him like, why would you promise that you're going to pay all these kids colleges 10 years ago? And his answer was, well, 10 years ago, I figured by now I'd be a millionaire.And has funny as that is, it is so true across the board. So many people are like, I'm going to be rich one day. And when you ask them, they joke, oh, the lottery, or I'm going to get a promotion or this is going to happen or that's going to happen and no one wants to actually take the steps and To do that, right, and it's not at your job, unless you're crazy unless you're LeBron James, right? Unless you're like 1% of the 1% as athletic or smart or anything. Like, just think of think about basic statistics. If you want to be in the 1% of the wealth, you need to be 1%. good at something, you there needs to be 1% good looking, or 1% smart, or 1%, hard-working, or 1%. Lucky, right? You're not just going to get into the 1% because you exist even if you're the 90th percentile you that's not the 1%, right. So what I realized is, well, what's a really easy thing to be 1% in the 1% in what no one else is willing to do. So for me, it was easy it was like, Let's go meet everyone in the world because that's a really basic truth. Like to meet everyone you can and I've met some incredible people and Go and do things like living in a mobile home. And in my industry, no one wants to everyone wants to syndicate money. And put the guild deals together, no one wants to operate their deals. And not only do they not want to operate, but they also don't even want to go to their properties. Two hours ago, I was sitting in one of my properties, I go almost every day if I can have my properties, and for a long time, I was the physical property manager before I was able to start hiring people. And it's like, you need to be able to do those things. To do that, so So getting back to I think, ultimately what you're getting out there is like, you know, emotionally How do you get there? Well, step one is, you have to like you mentioned earlier, you have to understand that no matter what you pick in life, they're going to be awful things, awful things about it. Like the subtle art of not giving an F by Mark Manson where he's like, dude, any. Any job you pick is going to come with a pile of crap. You just have to pick the pile of crap. That, you know, you can live with every day and for me. For me, it's that I knew I wanted to do real estate. It just fits my skill set well and I and I knew I wanted to help charity somehow. And more specifically, I knew I wanted to help underprivileged kids, and name a better way to help underprivileged kids than to help give them a clean, safe place to live. I started as a partial scholarship, I offer to pay for college applications. I do free food giveaways, I try my best to help remove the stress from these families so that kids can focus on their school. And for me, that helps me through really bad days, because I have a lot of really, really bad days. But ultimately, it's like, it's like this man. I want to talk to everyone I can talk to and if you're listening in, I recommend you do the same because you'll never know who you're going to meet. And it could be a janitor that gives you the best information about your life. Never know. And you know, you got to find a way to escape the fear. A great book I can recommend is Susan Jeffers Feel the fear and do it anyway. And really what that book kind of taught me is that like that in four-hour workweek it's like, dude, imagine the worst-case scenario it's not that bad. Like if you vividly imagine the worst-case scenario, you're going to survive and that's the point not to be a spoiler on Susan Jeffers. That book is full of amazing things. But her big thing was right out of the gate. She's like, fear. It comes from thinking you can't handle a situation.To convince yourself you can handle it. Yep. Then.You can. Exactly and it's like courage. It's not you. Courage is not the absence of fear courage is feeling the fear of doing it anyway to quote her book.I completely agree. So how did you when you decided to quit? I mean, it sounds like from timeline if I got everything right. You got married three or four years before you quit your job completely correct.I got married in November of 2015, which was a couple of months up to Korea, every mobile home park and Okay, it was about a year and a half before I went full time.Okay. So about a year and a half. How did so one thing that a lot of people face when they try and move from corporate America and entrepreneurship, everybody faces it? If it doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. Tell me the story of your biggest naysayer. And how you silence them in your mind and said, Look, I'm doing it anyway. Oh, man, there's a lot. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people in corporate America. One guy laughed at me and was like, you're going to be a real estate agent. You're going to leave this at the Wells Fargo leadership program.The way that it's investigated by our government, yeah. Oh,yeah. I don't want us about things about Wells Fargo.I had a bad I was Think I was in a bad culture at Wells I there's a lot of folks at Wells I know that just absolutely love it so I think I was just unlucky in that regard but there's it you know I again if my way when my wife listens to this you get really mad but one thing that I think needs to be said is that whether somebody the closest people to you may be the biggest naysayers I'm not saying that my wife was not supportive or that she wasn't a native she was a naysayer so to speak, but there are a lot of things that she was saying and doing that she will if she was here to defend herself, she would be like, That's not fair. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But she grew up like a lower upper class. So like if I was like upper-middle class, she was like a lower upper class or like Country Club big house. Meanwhile, I was like, middle class, my dad's college professor, my mom's a salesperson, a good income, get private school. Wake Forest is private. You know, so I wasn't rich by any means, but we're middle class. But her parents were, I want to say wealthy, but they're definitely over that threshold of being considered coming from wealth. And so when I rolled home and was like, guess what, I've got amazing news. I found the one I found it around the one I meant to be with its mobile home parks. She said a lot of really bad words in a very elevated tone of voice. And I think that you know, I don't want to say that she was a naysayer saying I couldn't do it because she never said I couldn't do it. She was more like, you're thrusting our family and our future into literally recourse debt. In other words, if one of my properties goes belly up, they're coming after all of my assets. So I have full recourse debt over myself on my properties. So in other words, Ryan, you're going to put our family into full recourse debt. Literally, to a certain degree a trash can. I hate to say it, I'm supposed to say modular home communities, but a lot of people have looked at me and been like, why are you you're buying garbage cans? This is a horrible thing to say. But I get it if you come from a country club lifestyle, right? So number one, you're taking a recourse debt number two, you're going to pay yourself nothing. Right? $35,000 a year. I was it for the first few years I lost money. Well, the first year I lost money in the second year, I made money but I didn't pay myself anything. So I really lost and then the third year pay myself 35,000 and then I'm in the fourth year and change and it's still on purpose paying myself 35,000 a year. So from her perspective, this is awful. And she has no said as basically, I was I basically in an awful way was like you're being a dream killer.a horrible thing for me to say but I'm I think this is a story that people need to hear because when you have a Significant Other that was that loves you, and wants to build a life with you. And you come home one day, unannounced, and you're like, this is what I'm dedicating my life to. That's a crappy thing to do, especially when you're going to follow up by calling or a dream killer. So I did a lot of really lame things. And she will tell you, first and foremost publicly that she did a lot of really lame things, too. We recorded it on my podcast, I gave her the mic. And I was like, You know what, say whatever you want to rules, no bad words, and no giving away any of my secrets. And I let her just rail on me for like 10 minutes. And then for the light, it's like a 15-minute episode and the last five minutes, we just kind of have a cute little back and forth where we together talk about marriage through the lens of entrepreneurship. So ultimately, who's my biggest naysayer? You know, I don't know. I'm a person who hates losing. I'm competitive and it's not winning. To me is not nearly as much fun as not losing. I kind of make sense like the magnitude that I have an emotion I feel when I win is dwarfs the magnitude of the pain I feel when I lose. So it was tough the first year from someone who was my best friend and my spouse, right and so I reason why I say that because my wife is gonna get really mad when she hears that I told this story. But Sweetie, we have that episode so you can ask for it. The reason why I want to say that is I know that there are listeners to this episode right now who have a significant other who, for whatever reason, haven't bought in yet, or given them a lot of flack, I will tell you, you are not alone. And if you truly know in your heart, that you are meant to do something, you will find a way to persevere through that. And if that person that significant other is meant to be there with you, you will find a way to get through it together and come out even better because, at the end of that episode, we were both like, yeah, we love each other more now than we did going in This, I think that those are all really, you know, it's kind of lame for me to basically pick my spouse to answer that question. But the truth is, I think people need to hear that man, I do. And you can if you're if you know yourself and you found the spouse that like you said earlier you want to have sex with but also fits who you are at heart and you want to build something together. And they're truly supportive. Right? They're going to stand by you even if they fundamentally hate what you're getting into. Yep, I completely agree. I was. I was fortunate enough to when I was dating, I already had found what I was doing for eternity right before I got married. So that was part of it was kind of baked into the cake. However, I will say that over the last like a year and a half I've ramped up a lot of my public speaking a lot of my traveling and it's hard. It's been a topic of conversation in our marriage are saying K, well, how can we manage this? She doesn't she thought she would love being a mom, she doesn't love being a mom, which is hard because she also doesn't necessarily want to go earn all the income. So it's like, Okay, well, how do we balance that there are still responsibilities that have to be done. Now we have two kids, we can't send them back. So it is a management thing. And it's not necessarily I think what you said is actually, probably that the rawest and real if people love you, and you potentially are bringing them into something that they didn't feel like they signed up for, and better ways to deliver that message and to get the buy-in. Absolutely. dropping their head and say, well, baby, join me or get out. Right.Exactly. And so so with that, though,I love all this. We're going to have to have you on again because this just is not enough time to have this conversation. And we're going to talk a little bit after this about some things that I think could we might be able to work together on Elsa sounds like we have some similar missions. But I'm going to go through there are two more sections here. Well, first, how can we support you? How can we get in touch with you? If we did want to have a phone call with you? Where would we reach out to you to kind of hear more of your story or share our gratitude for you being so vulnerable? Yeah, absolutely. So literally just google me My name is Ryan and I are us that's and like, Nancy, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me second best places my website, Archimedes GRP. com. You can drop me a line on either place, I'm pretty much so wide open door  I have a lot of people that reach out to me that is like, Hey, can I buy your coffee? Or can I take you out to lunch or this or that? And it's like, dude, honestly, I just want to meet you like how does it benefit me? Just getting on the phone with you. I want to hear who you are. I want to hear your story. I want to know where you came from, where you're at and where you want to go. And I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. I thoroughly enjoyed Helping, I thoroughly enjoy connecting so offline when Samuel, I were talking I was I thought of two people I would love to introduce you to. That's who I am. And if I have you in my database, then I can connect people to you and you to people and I love that. So I like I said, I'm not selling anything. I don't have fun, I'm not looking for investors. I'm not self-promoting for anything. I just want to help people because I have to tell you, being stuck at a job is is torture. It's torture. I look from quitting to like six to 12 months after quitting corporate America, I lost something like 15 pounds, and I changed none of my habits. I was depressed. It's true. So if I can help people because I don't think you know, you can argue like AI is going to come in and take over thought jobs and automation is going to take over thought jobs. So we need to reinvent jobs going forward. You can make that argument but truth be told, go find your happiness because I got to tell you, when my son was born premature, being able to be there by my wife side, she's in the hospital for almost a week and then my son in the hospital for over two weeks and then Nick you to be there by their side when they needed me the most and not have to worry about work. That was worth the I don't care if someone was like, I'll give you a million bucks to miss this moment. I would never take it to be there at 3:45 pm on a Thursday in the middle of a workweek, watch my son be born. That was the most amazing experience in my life. Why there is no amount of money you could ever give me that would make me forego that experience. So to me, it's like, like what I am like, you are helping me by allowing me to help you because I want you to achieve that. So please reach out to me. I mean that Again, Ryan nearest anywhere us, Archimedes GRP. com Find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me I'd love to. Okay.So this night, I encourage everybody to reach out to him. I'm so grateful that I get to know him. I'm excited to connect with the people that he'smentioned to me offline. And I said I think there's some potential there for us to even work closer together. This is my last two sections here, and they're kind of my favorite. So we're doing legacy on rapid-fire. It's five questions. I'm probably only gonna ask you four of them though.And one word to one-sentence answers. Cool. Okay. The only caveat to that is this first question you must clarify.Okay. And you'll understand that when, when I ask it because everybody assumes that especially these more enlightened people that have been talking to everybody answers that same and I'm like, okay, expand. Okay. So, so here goes. What do you believe? is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy today.Timeand I'll expand on that. I think that the concept that I have works so I bought 10 mobile home I've been a part of 10 mobile home park transactions now. So far, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. But truth be told, it's going to take a lot I'm not you can't just go to the mobile home park store and buy a bunch of good mobile home park deals. It's the industry is flooded right now with people trying to enter the space so there's not a lot of good deals out there period. And even if there were, I wouldn't want there's my time is limited. So number one, it's like buying it's like planting seeds you the limiting factor there is the time you plant the seed and then you watch it grow but have to wait. You know if I buy it a great deal today. It's not like I make a bunch of money today. I will make the money when I sell or refinance and I'll get cash flow along the way. But, you know, you buy a property in the big jumps in your IRR. And you know the money that hits your bank account comes after many months or many years after you've executed a turnaround. So for me, the limiting factor is absolutely time. Okay,awesome. And what is the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?meeting my wife. Okay. I was abysmal with women. I could not I was annoying, unlikable, and it took me years of my life to learn how to talk to people. And my wife. I met her at the car dealership, she showed up to buy a Honda. She ended up buying a Volvo. So I was not. I was not manipulative. I was persuasive. And another, another light, but yeah, I was just god awful were women. And I taught myself how to speak to people and through getting proficient in interacting with people. When my wife presented herself it was, it was just it everything fell apart. It fell into place so easily for both of us, to get married and to grow our lives together.Awesome. And what's the greatest success than to this point in your life?Other than my sonI would say escaping corporate America. I mean, that's more than getting my black belt in karate or hitting a hundred gold or getting a master's degree or teaching myself Spanish. I got to say if you're listening to this and you think you are meant to be your boss and to escape corporate America, I am telling you, you are right. And it is. It is on par with getting married and having a child. That is amazing.Awesome. And what is one secret He believes contributed most to your success throughout your journey, habit, mindset or behavior.So many things, man habits, habits are everything. But I, again, I think the self-assessment is got to be the most important thing there.The 1% rule that I talked about earlier where you've got to find your 1% is huge, but I mean, if I have to pick only it's like I mentioned earlier, life is a marathon man. You will do a lot you will overestimate what you do in a year and underestimate what you do at 10.Totally. And then, so that's the end of that section. This is my favorite section. Okay, this is this question that is why I do this podcast. Okay. Okay.So we're going to pretend that you are dead. So your family sad now butsix generations from now. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren. They're sitting around a table that discussing your life, right? They're discussing your legacy. They're having this conversation. What do you want? Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren? What do you want them to be saying about your legacy and six generations from now?I want them to be saying, I'm glad he taught us to leave the world better than you showed up. So for me, I, you know, I don't want to divulge how much I'm worth. But it's gone from effectively negative to a lot. And it's because I take that mentality into my properties, right? So I want to buy something at or above appraisal value. So in other words, I'm happy to pay an unfair price advantage seller, because I know that I'm going to make that property better off for having been there. And the reason why I mentioned my scholarship and paying for college applications and doing things like Bible studies on the properties and going to my properties and talking to people face to face. Because I want the people on my properties to be better off for having been there. It's really easy to be like, Well, I hope in six generations I've amassed so much like I'm the Vanderbilts, right? So they have wealth and they can do what they want and not worry about money ever. But the thing of it is, studies show that by the third generation, most wealth is gone. And I have a friend who's third-generation wealthy and he, he's told me multiple times. He's like, I am breaking this, I'm going to be abnormal here. I am going to continue my family's wealth. He's a wicked, ambitious guy, right? There are a lot of people that once you hit that third iteration that's gone. And not only is that gone, but I think I possibly hit a really big milestone in my life to

Before we start this solocast, I wanted to share that today I actually did something that I haven't done in a really really long time, which I called an "audible." This means, at the final minute, I made a decision that was different than the plan. Today, there was actually supposed to be a different podcast episode for you to tune into, but over the weekend I had felt on my heart and my intuition that what I am sharing today is what needed to be shared, not what was originally scheduled. I've been going through a transformation of really trying to listen to my intuition and follow those hits of inspiration when I get them. And so today, you're getting this podcast episode instead of the one that was scheduled,Let's talk about planning and not planing, especially for the coming year when there are so many people talking about 2020 and your goals and what's your vision and what do you want. Andto be honest, sometimes we don't all feel that.In this episode you will...Get tips on how to properly plan your yearFind out the sizable time to planLearn why forcing your plan isn't always the bestHear about the questions to ask to help you when planning your next goalDiscover some steps to help you plan accordinglyKnow the importance of finding what excites youUnderstand that challenges are there to sharpen you Insights:"If we're trying to constantly force things and fill our calendars with specific things that we've already planned out and there's no space for magic. That's going to be challenging.""It's not a problem with finding information. It's more of having discipline to cert to discern the information to turn off social media to not listen to a podcast episode this week, or multiple podcast episodes this week, and to filter out the information that's coming in because if we are not taking time to filter that we could then be finding ourselves in a position of doing things, simply because other people are doing that."

You Inside Me by Tori Curtis   It'll be fun, he'd said. Everyone's doing it. You don't have to be looking for romance, it's just a good way to meet people. "I don't think it's about romance at all," Sabella said. She wove her flower crown into her braids so that the wire skeleton was hidden beneath strands of hair. "I think if you caught a congressman doing this, he'd have to resign." "That's 'cause we've never had a vampire congressman," Dedrick said. He rearranged her so that her shoulders fell from their habitual place at her ears, her chin pointed up, and snapped photos of her. "Step forward a little—there, you look more like yourself in that light."     Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 57 for May 21st, 2018. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to share this story with you. GlitterShip is now part of the Audible afflilate program. What this means is that just by listening to GlitterShip, you are eligible to get a free audio book and 30 day trial at Audible to check out the service. If you're looking for more queer science fiction to listen to, there's a full audio book available of the Lightspeed Magazine "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" special issue, featuring stories by a large number of queer authors, including  John Chu, Chaz Brenchley, Rose Lemberg, and many others. To download a free audiobook today, go to http://www.audibletrial.com/GlitterShip and choose an excellent book to listen to, whether that’s "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" or something else entirely. Today I have a story and a poem for you. The poem is "Dionysus in London" by Tristan Beiter. Tristan Beiter is a student at Swarthmore College studying English Literature and Gender and Sexuality Studies. He loves reading poetry and speculative fiction, some of his favorite books being The Waste Land, HD’s Trilogy, Mark Doty’s Atlantis, Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island, and Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. When not reading or writing, he can usually be found crafting absurdities with his boyfriend or yelling about literary theory.   Dionysus in London by Tristan Beiter   The day exploded, you know. Last night a womanwith big bouffant hair toldme, “Show me a storywhere the daughter runs into a stopsign and it literally turns into a white flower.” I fail to describea total eclipse and the throneof petrified wood sankinto the lakebed. James made love to Buckinghamwhile I pulled the honeysuckleto me, made a flower crown forthe leopards flanking mewhile I watched redand white invert themselves, whitepetals pushing from the center of the signas the post wilted until allthat remained was a giant lotuson the storm grate waitingto rot or wash away. I let it stay there while the Scottishking hid behind the Scottish playand walked behind me, one eye outfor the mark left when locked in.You go witchy in there—or at leastyou—or he, or I—learn to be afraidof the big coats and brassbuttons, like the ones in every hallcloset; you never know if they will turn,like yours, into bats and bugs and gianttarantulas made from wire hangers. The woman showed meour reflections in the shop windowwhile one or the otherman in the palace polishedthe silver for his lover’s tableand asked me whoI loved; I decidedon the creamlinen, since the woolwas too close to the pea coatthat hung by your door.I suppose that the catis under the car; that’s probably where it fled toas we walked, knowingwe already found thatthe ivy in your hair was artificialas the bacchanal, or yourevasion, Sire, of the question(and of the serpents who are wellworth the welloffered to them with the wet waxon my crown). I suppose the car is under the cat,in which case it must be a very largecat, or else a very small car.I eat your teeth. I see brilliantine teeth floatingin her thick red lipstick. Jamestears apart the rhododendronchattering (about) his incisorsand remembering the fleshand—nothing so exoticas a Sphinx, maybe a dustmote or lip-marksleft on the large leather chaise.Teeth gleam from the shadowswhere I wait, thyrsusraised with the conealmost touching the roofof the forest, to drown in a peacockas it swallows (chimneyswifts?) the sun—orwas it son—or maybe it wasjust a grape I fed it soit would eat the spiderscrawling from the closet.It struts across the palace greenlike it owns the place, likeit will replace the hunting-grounds with fields of stragglingmint that the kingwould never ask for. The woman teasesup her hair before the mirror, fillingthe restroom with hairsprayand big laughs before walking backinto the restaurant, where wewait to make ourselvesover—the way the throne didwhen the wood crumbled under thepressure of an untold story,leaving nothing but crystals and dust. We argued for an hour overwhether to mix leaves andflowers, plants and gems,before settling on fourcrowns, one for each of us. Her hair mostly covers hers.The cats will love it though,playing with teeththat were knocked into your winein the barfight (why did youorder wine in a placelike that, Buck?) and yougot replaced with gold, like Iwear woven in my braidsas the sun sets on the daughterthat, unsurprisingly, noneof us have. But if we did, she would turn yieldsigns into dahlias andthat would be the signto move on with the leopardsand their flashing teeth andbrass eyes and listen.To the walls and rivers,to the sculpture that is farwhiter than me falling. Andto the peacock which has justeaten another bug so you don’t have tokill it. Get yourself a dresserand cover it with white enamelit’ll hold up, and no insectslive in dressers. Keep the ivy and the pineconein a mother-of-pearl trinket boxwith your plastic volumizing hairinserts and jeweled combs.And put a cat and dolphinon it, to remember.     Next, our short story this episode is "You Inside Me" by Tori Curtis Tori Curtis writes speculative fiction with a focus on LGBT and disability issues. She is the author of one novel, Eelgrass, and a handful of short stories. You can find her at toricurtiswrites.com and on Twitter at @tcurtfish, where she primarily tweets about how perfect her wife is. CW: For descriptions of traumatic surgery.       You Inside Me by Tori Curtis   It'll be fun, he'd said. Everyone's doing it. You don't have to be looking for romance, it's just a good way to meet people. "I don't think it's about romance at all," Sabella said. She wove her flower crown into her braids so that the wire skeleton was hidden beneath strands of hair. "I think if you caught a congressman doing this, he'd have to resign." "That's 'cause we've never had a vampire congressman," Dedrick said. He rearranged her so that her shoulders fell from their habitual place at her ears, her chin pointed up, and snapped photos of her. "Step forward a little—there, you look more like yourself in that light." He took fifteen minutes to edit her photos ("they'll expect you to use a filter, so you might as well,") and pop the best ones on her profile. Suckr: the premier dating app for vampires and their fanciers. "It's like we're cats," she said. "I heard you like cats," he agreed, and she sighed.     Hi, I'm Sabella. I've been a vampire since I was six years old, and I do not want to see or be seen by humans. I'm excited to meet men and women between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five. "That's way too big of an age range," Dedrick said. "You want to be compatible with these people." "Yeah, compatible. Like my tissue type." "You don't want to end up flirting with a grandpa." I'm excited to meet men and women between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. I'm most proud of my master's degree. You should message me if you're brave and crazy.     It took days, not to mention Dedrick’s exasperated return, before she went back on Suckr. She paced up the beautiful wood floors of her apartment, turning on heel at the sole window on the long end and the painted-over cast-iron radiator on the short. When she felt too sick to take care of herself, her mom came over and put Rumors on, wrapped her in scarves that were more pretty than functional, warmed some blood and gave it to her in a sippy cup. Sabella remembered nothing so much as the big Slurpees her mom had bought her, just this bright red, when she’d had strep the last year she was human. She wore the necklace Dedrick had given her every day. It was a gold slice of pepperoni pizza with “best” emblazoned on the back (his matched, but read “friends,”), and she fondled it like a hangnail. She rubbed the bruises on her arms, where the skin had once been clear and she'd once thought herself pretty in a plain way, like Elinor Dashwood, as though she might be able to brush off the dirt. She called her daysleeper friends, texted acquaintances, and slowly stopped responding to their messages as she realized how bored she was of presenting hope day after day.     2:19:08 bkissedrose: I'm so sorry. 2:19:21 bkissedrose: I feel like such a douche 2:19:24 sabellasay: ??? 2:20:04 sabellasay: what r u talkin about 2:25:56 bkissedrose: u talked me down all those times I would've just died 2:26:08 sabellasay: it was rly nbd 2:26:27 bkissedrose: I've never been half as good as you are 2:26:48 bkissedrose: and now you're so sick 2:29:12 sabellasay: dude stop acting like i'm dying 2:29:45 sabellasay: I can't stand it 2:30:13 bkissedrose: god you're so brave   (sabellasay has become inactive)     "Everyone keeps calling me saying you stopped talking to them," Dedrick said when he made it back to her place, shoes up on the couch now that he'd finally wiped them of mud. "Should I feel lucky you let me in?" "I'm tired," she said. "It's supposed to be a symptom. I like this one, I think she has potential." He took her phone and considered it with the weight of a father researching a car seat. "A perfect date: I take you for a ride around the lake on my bike, then we stop home for an evening snack." "She means her motorcycle," Sabella clarified. He rolled his eyes and continued reading. "My worst fear: commitment." "At least she's honest." "That's not really a good thing. You're not looking for someone to skip out halfway through the movie." "No, I'm looking for someone who's not going to be heartbroken when I die anyway." Dedrick sighed, all the air going out of his chest as it might escape from dough kneaded too firmly, and held her close to him. "You're stupid," he told her, "but so sweet." "I think I'm going to send her a nip."     The girl was named Ash but she spelled it A-I-S-L-I-N-G, and she seemed pleased that Sabella knew enough not to ask lots of stupid questions. They met in a park by the lakeside, far enough from the playground that none of the parents would notice the fanged flirtation going on below. If Aisling had been a boy, she would have been a teen heartthrob. She wore her hair long where it was slicked back and short (touchable, but hard to grab in a fight) everywhere else. She wore a leather jacket that spoke of a once-in-a-lifetime thrift store find, and over the warmth of her blood and her breath she smelled like bag balm. Sabella wanted to hide in her arms from a fire. She wanted to watch her drown trying to save her. Aisling parked her motorcycle and stowed her helmet before coming over to say hi—gentlemanly, Sabella thought, to give her a chance to prepare herself. “What kind of scoundrel left you to wait all alone?” Aisling asked, with the sort of effortlessly cool smile that might have broken a lesser woman’s heart. “I don’t know,” Sabella said, “but I’m glad you’re here now.” Aisling stepped just inside her personal space and frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but are you—" “I’m trans, yes,” Sabella interrupted, and smiled so wide she could feel the tension at her temples. Like doing sit-ups the wrong way for years, having this conversation so many times hadn’t made it comfortable, only routine. “We don’t need to be awkward about it.” “Okay,” Aisling agreed, and sat on the bench, helping Sabella down with a hand on her elbow. “I meant that you seem sick.” She looked uneasy, and Sabella sensed that she had never been human. Vampires didn’t get sick—she had probably never had more than a headache, and that only from hunger. “Yes,” Sabella said. “I am sick. I’m not actually—I mentioned this on my profile—I’m not actually looking for love.” “I hope you won’t be too disappointed when it finds you,” Aisling said, and Sabella blushed, reoriented herself with a force like setting a bone, like if she tried hard enough to move in one direction she’d stop feeling like a spinning top. “I’m looking for a donor,” she said. “Yeah, all right,” Aisling said. She threw her arm over the back of the bench so that Sabella felt folded into her embrace. “I’m always willing to help a pretty girl out.” “I don’t just mean your blood,” she said, and felt herself dizzy.     It was easier for Sabella to convince someone to do something than it was for her to ask for it. Her therapist had told her that, and even said it was common, but he hadn’t said how to fix it. “Please, may I have your liver” was too much to ask, and “Please, I don’t want to die” was a poor argument. “So, you would take my liver—" “It would actually only be part of your liver,” Sabella said, stopping to catch her breath. She hadn’t been able to go hiking since she’d gotten so sick—she needed company, and easy trails, and her friends either didn’t want to go or, like her mom, thought it was depressing to watch her climb a hill and have to stop to spit up bile. “So we would each have half my liver, in the end.” Sabella shrugged and looked into the dark underbrush. If she couldn’t be ethical about this, she wouldn’t deserve a liver. She wouldn’t try to convince Aisling until she understood the facts. “In humans, livers will regenerate once you cut them in half and transplant them. Like how kids think if you cut an earthworm in half, you get two. Or like bulbs. Ideally, it would go like that.” “And if it didn’t go ideally?” (“Turn me,” Dedrick said one day, impulsively, when she’d been up all night with a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop, holding her in his lap with his shirt growing polka-dotted. “I’ll be a vampire in a few days, we can have the surgery—you’ll be cured in a week.”) “If it doesn’t go ideally,” Sabella said, “one or both of us dies. If it goes poorly, I don’t even know what happens.” She stepped off the tree and set her next target, a curve in the trail where a tree had fallen and the light shone down on the path. Normally these days she didn’t wear shoes but flip-flops, but this was a date, and she’d pulled her old rainbow chucks out of the closet. Aisling walked with her silently, keeping pace, and put an arm around her waist. Sabella looked up and down the trail. Green Lake was normally populated enough that people kept to their own business, and these days she felt pretty safe going about, even with a girl. But she checked anyway before she leaned into Ais’s strength, letting her guide them so that she could use all her energy to keep moving. “But if it doesn’t happen at all, you die no matter what?” Sabella took a breath. “If you don’t want to, I look for someone else.”     Her mom was waiting for her when Sabella got home the next morning. Sabella’s mother was naturally blonde, tough when she needed to be, the sort of woman who could get into hours-long conversations with state fair tchotchke vendors. She’d gotten Sabella through high school and into college through a careful application of stamping and yelling. When Sabella had started calling herself Ravynn, she’d brought a stack of baby name books home and said, “All right, let’s find you something you can put on a resume.” “Mom,” she said, but smiling, “I gave you a key in case I couldn’t get out of bed, not so you could check if I spent the night with a date.” “How’d it go? Was this the girl Dedrick helped you find?” “Aisling, yeah,” Sabella said. She sat on the recliner, a mountain of accent pillows cushioning her tender body. “It was good. I like her a lot.” “Did she decide to get the surgery?” “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her to choose.” “Then what did you two do all night?” Sabella frowned. “I like her a lot. We had a good time.” Her mom stood and put the kettle on, and Sabella couldn’t help thinking what an inconvenience she was, that her mother couldn’t fret over her by making toast and a cup of tea. “Christ, what decent person would want to do that with you?” “We have chemistry! She’s very charming!” She examined Sabella with the dissatisfied air of an artist. “You’re a mess, honey. You’re so orange you could be a jack-o-lantern, and swollen all over. You look like you barely survived a dogfight. I don’t even see my daughter when I look at you anymore.” Sabella tried to pull herself together, to look more dignified, but instead she slouched further into the recliner and crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe she thinks I’m funny, or smart.” “Maybe she’s taking advantage. Anyone who really cared about you wouldn’t be turned on, they’d be worried about your health.” Sabella remembered the look on Aisling’s face when she’d first come close enough to smell her, and shuddered. “I’m not going to ask her to cut out part of her body for me without thinking about it first,” she said. “Without giving her something in return?" her mom asked. "It's less than two pounds." “But it’s still her choice,” Sabella said. “I’m starting to wonder if you even want to live,” her mom said, and left. Sabella found the energy to go turn off the stovetop before she fell asleep. (Her mother had raised her responsible.)     12:48:51 bkissedrose: what happens to a dream bestowed 12:49:03 bkissedrose: upon a girl too weak to fight for it? 12:53:15 sabellasay: haha you can’t sleep either? 12:53:38 sabellasay: babe idk 12:55:43 sabellasay: is it better to have loved and lost 12:56:29 sabellasay: than to die a virgin? 1:00:18 bkissedrose: I guess I don’t know 1:01:24 bkissedrose: maybe it depends if they're good     “It’s nice here,” Aisling confessed the third time they visited the lake. Sabella and her mom weren’t talking, but she couldn’t imagine it would last more than a few days longer, so she wasn’t worried. “I’d never even heard of it.” “I grew up around here,” Sabella said, “and I used to take my students a few times a year." “You teach?” “I used to teach,” she said, and stepped off the trail—the shores were made up of a gritty white sand like broken shells—to watch the sinking sun glint off the water. “Seventh grade science.” Aisling laughed. “That sounds like a nightmare.” “I like that they’re old enough you can do real projects with them, but before it breaks off into—you know, are we doing geology or biology or physics. When you’re in seventh grade, everything is science.” She smiled and closed her eyes so that she could feel the wind and the sand under her shoes. She could hear birds settling and starting to wake, but she couldn’t place them. “They’ve got a long-term sub now. Theoretically, if I manage to not die, I get my job back.” Aisling came up behind her and put her arms around her. Sabella knew she hadn’t really been weaving—she knew her limits well enough now, she hoped—but she felt steadier that way. “You don’t sound convinced.” “I don’t think they expect to have to follow through,” Sabella admitted. “Sometimes I think I’m the only one who ever thinks I’m going to survive this. My mom’s so scared all the time, I know she doesn’t.” Aisling held her not tight but close, like being tucked into a bright clean comforter on a cool summer afternoon. “Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, her face up against Sabella’s neck so that every part of Sabella wanted her to bite. “Maybe,” she said, then thought better of it. “Yes.” “How’d you get sick? I didn’t think we could catch things like that. Or was it while you were human?” “Um, no, but I’m not contagious, just nasty.” Aisling laughed, and she continued, encouraged. “Mom would, you know, once I came out I could do pretty much whatever I wanted, but she wouldn’t let me get any kind of reconstructive surgery until I was eighteen. She thought it was creepy, some doc getting his hands all over her teenage kid.” “Probably fair.” “So I’m eighteen, and she says okay, you’re right, you got good grades in school and you’re going to college like I asked, I'll pay for whatever surgery you want. And you have to imagine, I just scheduled my freshman orientation, I have priorities." "Which are?" "Getting laid, mostly." “Yeah, I remember that.” “So I’m eighteen and hardly ever been kissed, I’m not worried about the details. I don’t let my mom come with me, it doesn’t even occur to me to see a doctor who’s worked with vampires before, I just want to look like Audrey Hepburn's voluptuous sister.” “Oh no,” Ash said. It hung there for a moment, the dread and Sabella’s not being able to regret that she’d been so stupid. “It must have come up.” “Sure. He said he was pretty sure it would be possible to do the surgery on a vampire, he knew other surgeries had been done. I was just so excited he didn’t say no.” Ash held her tight then, like she might be dragged away otherwise, and Sabella knew that it had nothing to do with her in particular, that it was only the protective instinct of one person watching another live out her most plausible nightmare. “What did he do to you?” “It wasn’t his fault,” she said, and then—grimacing, she knew her mother would have been so angry with her—“at least, he didn’t mean anything by it. He never read anything about how to adapt the procedure to meet my needs.” She sounded so clinical, like she’d imbibed so many doctors’ explanations of what had happened that she was drunk on it. “But neither did I. We both found out you can’t give vampires a blood transfusion.” "Why would you need to?" She shrugged. "You don't, usually, in plastic surgery." "No," Aisling interrupted, "I mean, why wouldn't you drink it?" Sabella tried to remember, or tried not to be able to, and tucked her cold hands into her pockets. "You're human, I guess. Anyway, I puked all over him and the incision sites, had to be hospitalized. My doctor says I'm lucky I'm such a good healer, or I'd need new boobs and a new liver." They were both quiet, and Sabella thought, this is it. You either decide it's too much or you kiss me again. She thought, I miss getting stoned with friends and telling shitty surgery stories and listening to them laugh. I hate that when I meet girls their getting-to-know-you involves their Youtube make-up tutorials and mine involves "and then, after they took the catheter out..." "Did you sue for malpractice, at least?" Ash asked, and Sabella couldn't tell without looking if her tone was teasing or wistful. "My mom did, yeah. When they still wanted her to pay for the damn surgery."     Aisling pulled up to the front of Sabella's building and stopped just in front of her driveway. She kicked her bike into park and stepped onto the sidewalk, helping Sabella off and over the curbside puddle. Sabella couldn't find words for what she was thinking, she was so afraid that her feelings would shatter as they crystallized. She wanted Ais to brush her hair back from her face and comb out the knots with her fingers. She wanted Ais to stop by to shovel the drive when there was lake effect snow. She wanted to find 'how to minimize jaundice' in the search history of Aisling's phone. “You’re beautiful in the sunlight,” Ais said, breaking her thoughts, maybe on purpose. “Like you were made to be outside.” Sabella ducked her head and leaned up against her. The date was supposed to be over, go inside and let this poor woman get on with her life, but she didn’t want to leave. “It’s nice to have someone to go with me,” she said. “Especially with a frost in the air. Sometimes people act like I’m so fragile.” “Ridiculous. You’re a vampire.” Her ears were cold, and she pressed them against Aisling’s jawbone. She wondered what the people driving past thought when they saw them. She thought that maybe the only thing better than surviving would be to die a tragic death, loved and loyally attended. “I was born human.” “Even God makes mistakes.” Sabella smiled. “Is that what I am? A mistake?” “Nah,” she said. “Just a happy accident.” Sabella laughed, thought you're such a stoner and I feel so safe when you look at me like that. "I'll do it," Ais said.  "What do I have to do to set up the surgery?" Sabella hugged her tight, hid against her and counted the seconds—one, two, three, four, five—while Ais didn't change her mind and Sabella wondered if she would.     "I have to stress how potentially dangerous this is," Dr. Young said. "I can't guarantee that it will work, that either of you will survive the procedure or the recovery, or that you won't ultimately regret it." Aisling was holding it together remarkably well, Sabella thought, but she still felt like she could catch her avoiding eye contact. Sabella had taken the seat in the doctor's office between her mother and girlfriend, and felt uncomfortable and strange no matter which of their hands she held. "Um," Ais said, and Sabella could feel her mother's judgment at her incoherence, "you said you wouldn't be able to do anything for the pain?" To her credit, the doctor didn't fidget or look away. Sabella, having been on the verge of death long enough to become something of a content expert, believed that it was important to have a doctor who was upfront about how terrible her life was. "I wouldn't describe it as 'nothing,' exactly," she said. "There aren't any anesthetics known to work on vampires, but we'll make you as comfortable as possible. You can feed immediately before and as soon as you're done, and that will probably help snow you over." "Being a little blood high," Ais clarified. "While you cut out my liver." "Yes." Sabella wanted to apologize. She couldn't find the words. Aisling said, "Well, while we're trying to make me comfortable, can I smoke up, too?" Dr. Young laughed. It wasn't cruel, but it wasn't promising, either. "That's not a terrible idea," she said, "but marijuana increases bleeding, and there are so many unknown variables here that I'd like to stick to best practices if we can." "I can just—" Sabella said, and choked. She wasn't sure when she'd started crying. "Find someone else. Dedrick will do it, I know." Aisling considered this. The room was quiet, soft echoes on the peeling tile floor. Sabella's mother put an arm around her, and she felt tiny, but in the way that made her feel ashamed and not protected. Aisling said, "Why are you asking me? Is there something you know that I don't?" Dr. Young shook her head. "I promise we're not misrepresenting the procedure," she said. "And theoretically, it might be possible with any vampire. But there aren't a lot of organ transplants in the literature—harvesting, sure, but not living transplants—and I want to get it right the first time. If we have a choice, I told Sabella I'd rather use a liver from a donor who was born a vampire. I think it'll increase our chance of success." "A baby'd be too weak," Aisling agreed. Her voice was going hard and theoretical. "Well, tell me something encouraging." "One of the first things we'll do is to cut through almost all of your abdominal nerves, so that will help. And there's a possibility that the experience will be so intense that you don't remember it clearly, or at all." Sabella's mother took a shaky breath, and Sabella wished, hating herself for it, that she hadn't come. Ais said, "Painful. You mean, the experience will be so painful." "If you choose to go forward with it," Dr. Young said, "we'll do everything we can to mitigate that."     Sabella had expected that Aisling would want space and patience while she decided not to die a horrible, painful death to save her. It was hard to tell how instead they ended up in her bed with the lights out, their legs wound together and their faces swollen with sleep. Sabella was shaking, and couldn’t have said why. Ais grabbed her by her seat and pulled her up close. “You said you couldn’t get me sick?” she asked. “No,” Sabella agreed. “Although my blood is probably pretty toxic.” Ais kissed her, the smell of car exhaust still stuck in her hair. “What a metaphor,” she murmured, and lifted her chin. “You look exhausted.” Sabella thought, Are you saying what I think you’re saying? and, That’s a terrible idea, and said, “God, I want to taste you.” “Well, baby,” Ais said, and her hands were on Sabella so she curled her lips and blew her hair out of her eyes, “that’s what I’m here for.” Sabella had been human once, and she remembered what food was like. The standard lie, that drinking blood was like eating a well-cooked steak, was wrong but close enough to staunch the flow of an interrogation. (She’d had friends and exes, turned as adults, who said it was like a good stout on tap, hefty and refreshing, but she thought they might just be trying to scandalize her.) Ais could have been a stalk of rhubarb or August raspberries. She moved under Sabella and held her so that their knees pressed together. She could have been the thrill of catching a fat thorny toad in among the lettuce at dusk, or a paper wasp in a butterfly net. She felt like getting tossed in the lake in January; she tasted like being wrapped in fleece and gently dried before the fire; her scent was what Sabella remembered of collapsing, limbs aquiver, on the exposed bedrock of a mountaintop, nothing but crushed pine and the warmth of a moss-bed. She woke on top of Ais, licking her wounds lazily—she wanted more, but she was too tired to do anything about it. “That’s better,” Ais whispered, and if she was disappointed that this wasn’t turning into a frenzy, she didn’t show it. They were quiet for long enough that the haze started to fade, and then Aisling said, “I couldn’t ask in front of your mother, but was it like that with your surgery? They couldn’t do anything for the pain?” Sabella shifted uncomfortably, rolled over next to Ais. “I was conscious, yes.” “Do you remember it?” It was a hard question. She wanted to say it wasn’t her place to ask. She tried to remember, and got caught up in the layers of exhaustion, the spaces between the body she’d had, the body she’d wanted, and what they had been doing to her. “Sounds and sensations and thoughts, mostly,” she said. Ais choked, and said, “So, everything,” and Sabella realized—she didn’t know how she hadn’t—how scared she must be. “No, it’s blurry,” she said instead. “I remember, um, the tugging at my chest. I kept thinking there was no way my skin wasn’t just going to split open. And the scraping sounds. They’ve got all these tools, and they’re touching you on the inside and the outside at the same time, and that’s very unsettling. And this man, I think he was the PA, standing over me saying, ‘You’ve got to calm down, honey.’” “Were you completely freaking out?” Ais asked. Sabella shook her head. Her throat hurt. “No. I mean—I cried a little. Not as much as you’d think. They said if I wasn’t careful, you know, with swallowing at the right times and breathing steady, they might mess up reshaping my larynx and I could lose my voice.” Ais swore, and Sabella wondered if she would feel angry. (Sometimes she would scream and cry, say, can you imagine doing that to an eighteen-year-old?) Right now she was just tired. “How did you manage?” “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think just, it was worth more to me to have it done than anything else. So I didn’t ever tell them to stop.”     “Please don’t go around telling people I think this is an acceptable surgical set-up,” Dr. Young said, looking around the exam room. It reminded Sabella of a public hearing, the way the stakeholders sat at opposing angles and frowned at each other. Dr. Young sat next to Dr. Park, who would be the second doctor performing the procedure. Sabella had never met Dr. Park before, and her appearance—young, mostly—didn’t inspire confidence. Sabella sat next to her mother, who held her hand and a clipboard full of potential complications. Ais crossed her fingers in her lap, sat with a nervous child’s version of polite interest. Time seemed not to blur, but to stutter, everything happening whenever. “Dr. Park,” Sabella’s mother said, “do you have any experience operating on vampires?” Dr. Park grinned and her whole mouth seemed to open up in her face, her gums pale pink as a Jolly Rancher and her left fang chipped. “Usually trauma or obstetrics,” she admitted. “Although this is nearly the same thing.” “I’m serious,” Sabella’s mom said, and Sabella interrupted. “I like her,” she said. And then—it wasn’t really a question except in the sense that there was no way anyone could be sure—“You’re not going to realize halfway through the surgery that it’s too much for you?” Dr. Park laughed. “I turned my husband when we were both eighteen,” she said as testament to her cruelty. Sabella’s mom jumped. “Jesus Christ, why?” She shrugged, languid. Ais and Dr. Young were completely calm; Ais might have had no frame of reference for what it was like to watch someone turn, and Dr. Young had probably heard this story before. “His parents didn’t like that he was dating a vampire. You’ll do crazy things for love.” Sabella could see her mother blanch even as she steadied. It wasn’t unheard of for a vampire to turn their spouse—less common now that it was easier to live as a vampire, and humans were able to date freely but not really commit. But she could remember being turned, young as she had been: the gnawing ache, the hallucinations, the thirst that had only sometimes eclipsed the pain. It was still the worst thing that she’d ever experienced, and she was sure her mother couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to do it to someone they loved. “Good,” she said. “You won’t turn back if we scream.” Dr. Young frowned. “I want you to know you have a choice,” she said. She was speaking to Ais; Sabella had a choice, too, but it was only between one death and another. “There will be a point when you can’t change your mind, but by then it’ll be almost over.” Ais swore. It made Dr. Park smile and Sabella’s mom frown. Sabella wondered if she was in love with her, or if it was impossible to be in love with someone who was growing a body for them to share. “Don’t say that,” Ais said. “I don’t want to have that choice.”     The morning of the surgery, Aisling gave Sabella a rosary to wear with her pizza necklace, and when they kicked Sabella’s mom out to the waiting room, she kissed them both as she went. “I like your mom,” Ais said shyly. They lay in cots beside each other, just close enough that they could reach out and hold hands across the gap. “I bet she’d get along with mine.” Sabella laughed, her eyes stinging, threw herself across the space between them and kissed each of Ais’s knuckles while Ais said, “Aw, c’mon, save it ‘til we get home.” “Isn’t that a lot of commitment for you?” Sabella asked. “Yeah, well,” Ais said, caught, and gave her a cheesy smile. “You’re already taking my liver, at least my heart won’t hurt so much.” They drank themselves to gorging while nurses wrapped and padded them in warm blankets. Ais was first, for whatever measure of mercy that was, and while they were wheeled down the dizzying white hallway, she grinned at Sabella, wild, some stranger’s blood staining her throat to her nose. “You’re a real looker,” she said, and Sabella laughed over her tears. “Thank you,” Sabella said. “I mean, really, for everything.” Ais winked at her; Sabella wanted to run away from all of this and drink her in until they died. “It’s all in a day’s work, ma’am,” she said. It wasn’t, it couldn’t have been, and Sabella loved her for pretending. Ais hissed, she cried, she asked intervention of every saint learned in K-12 at a Catholic school. A horrible gelatinous noise came as Dr. Young’s gloves touched her innards, and Ais moaned and Sabella said, “You have to stop, this is awful,” and the woman assigned to supervise her held her down and said hush, honey, you need to be quiet. And the doctors’ voices, neither gentle nor unkind: We’re almost done now, Aisling, you’re being so brave. And: It’s a pity she’s too strong to pass out. Sabella went easier, hands she couldn’t see wiping her down and slicing her open while Dr. Park pulled Ais’s insides back together. She’d been scared for so long that the pain didn’t frighten her; she kept asking “Is she okay? What’s happening?” until the woman at her head brushed back her hair and said shh, she’s in the recovery room, you can worry about yourself now. It felt right, fixing her missteps with pieces of Ais, and when Dr. Young said, “There we go, just another minute and you can go take care of her yourself,” Sabella thought about meromictic lakes, about stepping into a body so deep its past never touched its present. END     "Dionysus in London" is copyright Tristan Beiter 2018. "You Inside Me" is copyright Tori Curtis 2018. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back soon with a reprint of "The City of Kites and Crows" by Megan Arkenberg.  

When I first meet with a retailer, I ask them why they opened their store. And of course, the reasons vary dramatically. Bu what generally comes up are these 5 things To have more freedom to spend time with my family To not have to work as many hours  andTo not have to work in a rigid corporate environment To make more money Because I love this thing I sell and wanted to share it with others. Sound familiar? And to tell you the truth, MOS of those things are the reasons that small business retailers ended up closing shop within the first 3 years. So why are those the wrong reasons to open a retail store, and how do you turn them into the right reasons? For more click here

A Tear and A Smile 眼泪和微笑 by Khalil Gibran 纪伯伦著 长风译I would not exchange the sorrows of my heartFor the joys of the multitude.And I would not have the tears that sadness makesTo flow from my every part turn into laughter.I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.我不愿用世俗的欢娱来换取内心的悲戚；也不愿让我忧伤的眼泪变成浅薄的嬉笑。我宁愿生活里有眼泪也有微笑。A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding.Of life's secrets and hidden things.A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind andTo be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.眼泪纯净内心，让我明白生活的奥秘；微笑带来良友，是我荣耀上帝的印记。A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.眼泪使我体会心碎之人的忧伤；微笑是我快乐生活的模样。I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.与其在绝望和挣扎中苟活，不如在希翼和盼望中死亡。I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in theDepths of my spirit, for I have seen those who areSatisfied the most wretched of people.I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.我渴慕爱情，崇尚完美，因为邪恶使人肮脏污秽。我听过充满渴望的轻唱，它胜过世上最美的乐章。With evening's coming the flower folds her petalsAnd sleeps, embracing her longing.At morning's approach she opens her lips to meetThe sun's kiss.The life of a flower is longing and fulfillment.A tear and a smile.夜幕降临，花儿紧锁心房，拥抱着盼望进入梦乡。晨曦初露，花儿轻启香唇，接受太阳的亲吻。在花儿渴望和满足的生命里，有眼泪和微笑的哲理。The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and comeTogether and area cloud.And the cloud floats above the hills and valleysUntil it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weepingTo the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.A tear and a smile.大海的水汽蒸发，汇集成云彩。它飘过丘陵和山谷，在和风吹拂下滋生雨露，雨露飘落大地，汇成小溪和河流，奔回大海，它自己的家乡。云彩离别和重逢的经历，有眼泪和微笑的哲理。And so does the spirit become separated fromThe greater spirit to move in the world of matterAnd pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrowAnd the plains of joy to meet the breeze of deathAnd return whence it came.To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.人的灵魂如同云彩，他告别自己的居所来到大千世界，飘过忧伤的高山，和喜乐的平原。面对死亡的微风，他坦然回乡，那是充满爱和美的海洋，那是上帝的胸膛。