Hanging with Rich

Movies for Your Memorial Day Weekend..... Memorial Day has arrived. It's the holiday where we honor the soldiers that have made the ultimate sacrifice to our country. I'm getting to the age where I feel more and more thankful for these people, and all veterans. We live in a great country, warts and all. Most of the people we honor didn't get a chance to enjoy it into their later years.It's also the first holiday with nice weather of the year. So you're probably not looking for things to do inside. But if it's raining, there are usually plenty of war movies on TV. War seems to be easy money for movie producers. The characters are interesting and there's plenty of action. There's also no shortage of wars to choose from. My personal definition of a good movie is that no matter how many times I've seen it, I always flip to that channel and get drawn to it again. So here are a few of my favorite war movies. Interestingly enough, they are all from d...

Congrats to the Grads - Now the Hard Part..... This is graduation season. I am writing from Buffalo, NY, where I am attending my daughter's graduate school commencement. She will be receiving her Masters in Biotechnology. Luckily, she already has a job in the field. Her company even reimbursed her for grad school. Unfortunately, many recent graduates are not so fortunate. When it's time to find a "big boy" or "big girl" job, a surprise can be lurking. Ohio State graduates 11,000 at a time. now go find a job. A few friends and relatives of mine are also graduating. But that diploma doesn't guarantee much. It does say that you can write papers. answer multiple choice questions, and put up with sometimes egocentric college professors. But it does not necessarily prepare you to enter the job market. In my opinion, the college institution themselves are at least partially to blame. Make no mistake - they are all for profit institutions . The...

Songs That Take Me To A Specific Time and Place..... Songs are amazing things. Some songs can take you back to a time and place years ago when you first heard them. I might not be able to tell you what I had for breakfast yesterday, but I can tell you about listening to a song forty years ago. Isn't that crazy? Here a few songs to show you what I mean. Warning: most of these songs are from a long time ago. 1972 I Saw The Light - Todd Rundgren - My old family home.      It was late last night      I was feeling something wasn't right      There was not another soul in sight      Only you, only you Todd Rundgren was a popular guy back in the day. He recorded a great album called Something / Anything. I remember listening to it at home on our huge stereo in the living room. My Mom was nearby. I told her, "Mom isn't this great? Todd recorded these songs all by himself. He played all the instruments and recorded it track ...

The GOAT..... Sometimes you watch an athlete perform, but you can't believe what you see. It's come to the point with Lebron James that not only do you believe it, you come to expect it. He is The GOAT. T he G reatest O f A ll T ime. Last night was another playoff game against the Toronto Raptors. The Cavaliers had a lead, but in the 4th quarter, Toronto came back to tie. Eight seconds left. The Cavs had to go 94 feet and make a bucket to win the game. Everybody in Quicken Loans Arena knew what was going to happen. Everyone in the worldwide television audience knew what would happen. Lebron would get the ball and take the last second shot. That's exactly what happened. Lebron drove the floor, went to his left, and put up about a 12 foot floater off the glass for the win. Buzzer. Game over. Cavs win. He did it again! He does that all the time. Regularly. You just come to expect it. How hard is it to make a buzzer beating shot? How hard is it to do when your oppone...

Not In Our House..... Game 7 . It has sort of a doomsday feeling to it. In the NBA playoffs, game 7 means win or go home. But today seemed to have a little more on the line. Game 7 My team, the Cleveland Cavaliers have had a very strange season. They started the season with what on paper looked like a very formidable team. It had All-Stars, future Hall of Famers, former NBA MVP's, and Lebron James. The problem is - games aren't played on paper. They are played by human beings built with flesh, blood, and muscle. Things just didn't mesh at all. Some personalities just don't fit. There were team meetings that caused more harm than good. Then there were the injuries. Not standard injuries. Kevin Love had anxiety. Head Coach Lue couldn't even finish some games and had to take a month off. JR thew soup at an assistant coach. Strange stuff. So at the trade deadline General Manager Koby Altman totally remade the team. Bodies were traded everywhere. But there...

You and the Singularity..... So I'm killing time in a restaurant by checking my smartphone when I come across an interesting headline. "Kurzweil predicts the Singularity is near". I had no idea what the Singularity was. I thought maybe it was some religious warning. But no. It is however about a time when human life on this planet will be changed by technology, forever. Maybe for the better. Maybe not. Is Alexa the Eve for Artificial Intelligence? It tuns out that the technological Singularity is about a time when technology, and particularly Artificial Intelligence, will advance to the point where technology will surpass human ability. That sounds crazy. That means a computer writing a best-selling book. That means if you need an operation, you would prefer it done by a robotic doctor. That sounds like just another science fiction movie. In fact, it sounds just like that Will Smith movie, "I Robot." Well, hold on to your pants, Alexa. There's mor...

Jackie Robinson: American Hero Sometimes I think American history is just a collection of bad news. Wars and slavery dominate the story of America. I'm a big fan of the founding fathers, but even that led to the Revolutionary War. But today is the anniversary of something very good that happened in America. Something revolutionary and ahead of it's time. My giant Robinson baseball card. Very cool. 71 years ago today, Jackie Robinson played his first Major League Baseball game. Integrating what had been an all-white sport until then. The baseball historian in me wants to tell you Robinson wasn't the first African American in the major leagues. That was Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884. But it was a long wait for Robinson to be the next. All history should be looked at in the context of its time. African Americans fought and died for America in World War II. But even the American military was segregated. This was the prime of Jim Crow laws in the south. Separate rest...