What would Sam Adams think?

Something that has populated a few newscasts this week are stories about protesters or hecklers at various town hall meetings held by members of Congress. One story mentioned that many of the protesters had ties to the Tea Party Patriots movement. From what I can tell, and I haven't delved to deeply into these groups, they are tax protesters. One of there sites refers to "Tea Party 1776". Of course the tea party was in 1773 but who's counting. Also they must believe that the purpose of the Tea Party was to protest taxes, period. This is because they assume that the Bostonians that tossed the tea into the harbor were just like them, Americans. Well they weren't.

They were British subjects living in a remote colony, who felt ill treated by the government. So let's give them a scenario where they can be true "Tea Party Patriots". First off they have to move to Guam or one of the other U.S. Pacific island territories. Once their settled in there is some sort of trouble in that area and the U.S. Military has to expend time and resources to get it under control. The islanders provide personnel and supplies to assist in the operation. Now the Federal government is in a bind. It needs money to pay off the cost of the operation. So they decide to get the money from the islanders. A tax on beer sold to the island is put in place by Congress. The islanders protest to the Congress that the tax is unfair. They are only to be taxed by their local government. Congress replies, "Too bad, we need the money and you have it." Many of the islands send the beer back and don't pay the tax. The residents of Guam attempt to do the same thing but the Governor (local elected in this case but attempting to gain favor with Washington) refuses to allow this to happen. So our "Patriots" take to docks, find the ships with the beer and dump cases of Budweiser, Coors and Miller Light into the harbor. Then they would be like the Sons of Liberty who dumped the tea in the harbor.

I don't think Sam Adams or John Hancock would be members of the Tea Party Patriots. Just as I don't think the Tea Party patriots would not be members of the Sons of Liberty.

On the Money...

Sometimes you know you've made a good purchase. This week I had that feeling. We were at the Mall on Monday. Megan needed to go to Barnes and Noble for a few things. While we were there I went to the "Music and Video" department. I don't remember exactly what triggered the desire to get a Jim Croce collection but I went looking. In the rack I found Jim Croce:Bad Bad Leroy Brown-The Definitive Collection. The last couple of days have found me in the car a lot. With MPR doing "wall to wall" coverage of the Sotomayor hearings I've had a chance to check out the 2 CDs in the collection. I knew even before the first CD was finished that this was probably the best 15 bucks I'd spent on music in a long time.

aRWTL's Guide to Random Walking

The title of this blog was chosen to represent the fact that I didn't really know where it was going when I started. The frequency of posts shows that I haven't figured it out yet. But today we provide for you a guide to taking a random walk.

Its summer in Minnesota and we are more High Plains than Upper Great Lakes this year. (Think great grass desert and you'll get the idea.) But the lack of rainfall makes it a good time to take a walk. Its my belief that planning a route often leads to going the same way all the time. The result, nothings ever different. You never see the things you don't know are there. To encourage exploration here is a guide to randomizing your walk. (Note: that I tested this concept this morning while walking around the Mall of America.)

1. Get a Randomizer
In order to take a random walk you need a randomizer. The easiest is a coin. Coins are very good for making random binary decisions. If you are in a location where coin tossing might attract too much attention, like a mall, two coins of the same type that can easily be identified on site but not on touch make a good "pocket" randomizer. When you need to make a decision pull one out of your pocket and proceed.

Here's a simple electronic randomizer.

Once you have a randomizer...

2. Set decision rules
If you have a binary randomizer (the simplest) every decision will be one or more yes/no questions. Here is an example. You're out for a walk and you reach an intersection. There are three possibly options: Go straight, turn left, turn right. If you only have two answers on your randomizer how do you decide. It's really very simple. This decision requires two answers. The questions are:
A. Do I turn? Yes or No
B. If Yes, Left or Right. (or If Yes, so I turn right?)

You also have to decide if every opportunity for a decision requires one. If you are trying to get some where then you'll need to make sure your decisions don't push you to far out of the way. So in some cases you'll opt not to randomize the decision.

That's pretty much it. So next time you walk around your neighborhood, mix it up a little. You might discover things you didn't know were there.