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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
 "The Soundtrackers Group" 
"Blogging Circle of Friends "
"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
"JAFBG"
"Take up Your Cross"
Thanks for stopping by! 
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I saw an article earlier today about the Tour de France winner, Geraint Thomas, and didn't really care enough to read and write up a blog about it. The Tour de France just isn't my thing. But then I saw this article and, well, rooting for the underdog is kind of my jam, so I decided to take a look. Wow is this guy impressive.
The Tour de France is a 2,082-mile bicycle race, which includes traversing 26 mountains and 13.5 miles of rickety cobblestones. You have to qualify for 21 separate stages, during which something like 15-20% of all race competitors are ultimately culled by withdrawing or being sent home by race officials for falling too far outside each day's stage-winning time. At first, it might not seem like a notable event to have a guy finish dead last in 145th position... until you know the story of what happened to him at the very beginning of the race.
On the very first day of the competition, a skittering water bottle sent his bike tumbling and Lawson crashed out, fracturing his shoulder blade. He was determined to keep going and, after being medically cleared insisted on continuing with the race even though doctors warned it would be extremely painful to continue. And he proceeded to spend the next 21 days on his bike, riding up and down mountains, and over those 13.5 miles of rickety cobblestone streets. With a fractured shoulder blade. While continuing to qualify his time every. single. day. despite three stops a day for medical aid and chiropractic sessions.
His goal was to donate $100 for every stage he completed to the velodrome in Houston where he first got into cycling. His story caught on with so many people that strangers took to donating and well and helped him raise over $225,000 for the track. Because of his tenacity, he also became the first American to win the "Lanterne Rouge," the recognition given for being the rider in last place. He's also believed to have set a record for being the rider with the longest time in that position during the race.
Interestingly, Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas has a unique sense of sympathy for Craddock... in 2014, Thomas also crashed on the first day and fractured his pelvis... and also manged to finish the race.
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I could even finish a 2,000+ mile bike ride at all, let alone a timed one with a fractured bone aching the whole way. These guys are tough!
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First of all, I don't know what some people's problem is, but this recent string of stories about people reporting kids for trying to run home-based summer businesses to make extra money is atrocious. The sidewalk lemonade stand is literally an iconic staple of American entrepreneurship, and something that used to be lauded as an admirable use of a kid's time and energy during their summer break. This story about a thirteen-year-old Minneapolis kid having the cops called on him for trying to sell hot dogs follows on the heels of a story where a nearby county fair called the New York State Health Department to report a 7-year-old boy's lemonade stand in retaliation for "undercutting their prices." Pardon my language, but what the fuck is wrong with people who feel it's acceptable to report children who are trying to earn a few bucks by selling homemade goods? 
What I love about this story is, unlike the New York case where the Health Department upheld the decision to close the kid's lemonade stand for not having a permit, the community here actually rallied to help him. Jaequan Faulkner started his "Faulkner's Old Fashioned Hot Dogs" stand as a way to raise some extra money for school clothes. At some point, some asshole decided to report Jaequan to the Health Department for not being properly permitted. But rather than just show up and shut Jaequan's stand down, the Health Department (in conjunction with some local small business groups) actually helped Jaequan understand what all goes into a permit for selling food, and why having a permit is important. They helped him make adjustments to his setup (a tent for overhead protection, a hand-washing station, a thermometer to check the temperature of his product, etc.), and even sat down with him to also help him get a better understanding of business concepts like pricing, marketing, and how to research and plan for business expenses (like permits). The city's health department staff even chipped in and helped pay the $87 permit fee for him.
Because of all this support and being educated about the situation, Jaequan is considering saving up to upgrade to a food cart (with all requisite paperwork) next summer to expand his business. He's also quoted in the article as saying that this situation has helped him realize that city workers are there to help people and it's increased his pride in what he's doing. So ultimately, something really, really good came out of what was initially a shitty situation.
In closing, I'd like to humbly suggest that the dirtbags who are reporting these kids do one of two things: (1) leave them alone, because they're just kids, or (2) if public health and sanitation is really such an important issue for you that you cannot in good conscience allow a child to sell lemonade or hot dogs off a folding table in their front yard without the proper permits and authorization, then take a page out of the Minneapolis Health Department's playbook and treat it like an educational opportunity so you can actually teach the kid something about operating a proper business. Don't be a dick and just call the cops on them. These are just kids trying to make a little money by running a home-based business. You can't get much more American than that.
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I shouldn't take as much glee in this as I actually do, but the fact that Sean Spicer's book release isn't going quite according to plan is something that I'm following with a not insignificant amount of pleasure. Sean Spicer was, once upon a time, a respected communications director and chief strategist for the Republication National Committee turned White House Press Secretary and White House Communications Director for the Trump Administration. You may remember him from such memorable appearances at the lectern as when he defended Trump's demonstrably false claim that his Inauguration Day crowd size was the largest in history, and that time (during Passover, no less) where he asserted that the Assad regime in Syria is way worse than the Nazis because Hitler didn't use chemical weapons. You may have even seen Melissa McCarthy do a memorable impression of him on Saturday Night Live (more than once).
And here's the thing about Sean Spicer... he was one of the architects of - or at least a willing participant in - the early days of couching this administration's downright lies and falsehoods as "alternative facts" or "the President's opinions" even when they're contradicted by actual evidence. He was literally an active contributor to the current war on truth and positioning the administration so they're at war with the media whenever the media dares to question the lies they tell. So I'm not too keen on him getting off scot-free, trying to tear down norms and institutions for personal gain and then, say, making a guest appearance at the Emmys, doing the talk show circuit and teasing how much dirt he has on the administration that we'd all surely like to know... and now trying to profit off a book tour. The number of people who are trying to profit off their government service in this administration is really gross, and Spicer's one of the worst because he freakin' knows better, but chose to sell out in his own personal pursuit of money and power.
So it's with great satisfaction that I read Jonathan Karl's review of Spicer's book for the Wall Street Journal, which really isn't afraid to pull any punches and includes zingers like, "Mr. Spicer's book is much like his tenure as press secretary: short, littered with inaccuracies and offering up one consistent theme: Mr. Trump can do no wrong." It's also pointed out that Spicer frequently uses odd metaphors for Trump, including calling him a rock star, an inflatable ball in a swimming pool, the Energizer Bunny, and a unicorn on a high wire. (WTF?  )
But the most savage paragraph (and one that Spicer brought upon himself) is the one that points out just how poorly written and edited the book itself is, which I will quote for you here in its entirety because it is truly remarkable, coming from someone who so desperately wants to be seen as an intelligent, savvy Washington power player:
Mr. Spicer has not been well served by the book’s fact checkers and copy editors. He refers to the author of the infamous Trump dossier as "Michael Steele," who is in truth the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, not the British ex-spy Christopher Steele. He recounts a reporter asking Mr. Obama a question at a White House press conference in 1999, a decade before Mr. Obama was elected. There are also some omissions: He writes about working for Rep. Mark Foley (R., Fla.), who he says "knew how to manage the news cycle. And on top of all that, he was good to staff and fun to be around." He never gets around to mentioning that Mr. Foley later resigned in disgrace for sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys working as congressional pages.
Yikes. 
But then again, is it any surprise that, in an administration full of incompetent people shamelessly trying to profit off of their access to the presidency, some of them completely half-ass their attempts to do it? Then again, like Michael Wolff's book which was similarly sensationalist and slightly less poorly edited, I'm sure this will be a bestseller and make Spicer a bunch of money regardless of how pathetic it is. 
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But of course they did. Qatar is the same country that's been accused of bribing FIFA officials to win the bid for the 2022 World Cup in the first place, even amid rampant rumors of human rights abuses and exploitation of their labor force (both local Qatari and migrant workers), astronomically and suspiciously high costs ($220B USD, compared to the $3.5B USD spent by South Africa in 2010, $15B spent by Brazil in 2014, and $14B spent by Russia in 2018), and lack of infrastructure to support an event of this size (they are proposing literally building cities, airports, and roads around the stadiums from scratch), and inhospitable temperatures (summer in Qatar averages about 122 degrees Fahrenheit) which resulted in them actually changing the schedule of the tournament to take place in the winter rather than the summer (which causes potential scheduling conflicts with other soccer leagues who play during the winter). Ultimately, even Sepp Blatter, the disgraced FIFA executive who was removed from office following criminal corruption proceedings admitted that awarding the tournament to Qatar was a mistake.
So color me unsurprised that on top of all that, Qatar also apparently hired a specialty PR firm and ex-spies to smear its rivals.
I suppose this is what happens when a greedy, opportunistic, and very wealthy country meets a greedy, opportunistic, and historically corrupt professional sports organization. What's really sad to me, though, (other than the human rights problems, of course) is that data has repeatedly shown that investment in large scale sporting events like the World Cup, Olympics, etc. is a economic net negative rather than an economic net positive, particularly for countries that don't currently have the facilities to support the event. It's been shown that - time and time again - countries are better served by investing that money in wiser and more advantageous infrastructure projects. Case in point, just one year after the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, over half of the twelve new stadiums constructed specifically for the event aren't even in use anymore. One of them is a little more than a big parking lot for broken down buses and other vehicles!
Studies show that when a country already has the infrastructure in place (the 2026 World Cup is being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, for example, which have plenty of existing stadiums that can be used), large-scale sporting events can be an economic boon because they bring tourism to those areas and the investment that would otherwise be made in costly new construction can instead be made to revamp existing infrastructure. Instead of building a new city, for example, that money can go toward improving the existing airport, roads, etc.
So when I see a country like Qatar saying, "Hey, we're going to spend $220B to build new stadiums and cities and airports and whatnot!" I can't help but wonder what else Qatar could be spending $220B on. That could be a massive investment in other infrastructure projects or economic stimulus that would truly improve things in their country... and instead it's being spend on a one-time event that the Qatari government is hoping will spike tourism rates and pay for itself, even though history shows that's typically not true, especially at that price tag. South Africa got it right; tourism increased by something like 7% after their World Cup, and by only spending $3.5B on their event, the investment paid for itself quickly. Qatar is going to have to see a massive and sustained spike in tourism to pay off a $220B price tag.
Anyway, yeah, not surprised that Qatar tried to sabotage their rivals. Not surprised that FIFA let it happen. Not surprised that another developing country would rather drop $220B on a one-time sporting event than investing that cash more intelligently (albeit in a not as flashy way). I really hope that, in the future, FIFA takes the bidding process more seriously. There are just too many reasons why Qatar was a terrible idea for a World Cup host; they really should have put the wellbeing of the event and the country above their own greed, even if Qatar wasn't willing to do the same.
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I don't normally like to make grand sweeping statements, but here's one for your: Betsey DeVos is one of the absolute worst and most dangerous people Donald Trump has installed in cabinet-level positions. She's on par with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and (now-former) EPA chief Scott Pruitt in terms of the lasting damage she's causing by being so dogged about tearing down whatever Obama built. And while criminal justice reform and climate change are also very serious and very concerning issues, education has always been a priority of mine, in part because my wife is a special education teacher and I see the struggles first hand, and in part because without a better-educated population, how can we ever hope to avoid the mistakes of our past or improve the economic situations of those who are already struggling.
This article is about the latest DeVos lunacy, which is to gut the Borrower Defense to Repayment program. This program was designed to allow students to get relief from their student loans if they attended a school that misled you or misbehave. So, for example, if you attended a for-profit college that promised job training but you find out that job training isn't actually good enough to qualify you to get the job you thought you'd be getting, you can apply to have some of your student loan burden forgiven. If you attend a party school with a history of sweeping sex crimes under the rug and you get sexually assaulted and are so traumatized you have to drop out, you can apply to have some of your student loan burden forgiven.
Student loans are a real problem in this country. It's debt that you can't get discharged in bankruptcy, and college tuition has been increasing exponentially for years. Case in point, my last semester of undergrad studies at a state university in California cost me about $1,000 in tuition... and that was in 2004. By the time my wife graduated in 2006, that same semester of tuition was more than $1,400. Today, that same semester will cost you almost $3,000. College, even at a state school, is no longer an "everyone can afford to go and you can pay for it by working a minimum-wage job in addition to going to class" situation. Which means most students have to take out at least some financial aid in order to attend. And now we're making it harder for them to discharge that debt in the event that their school was negligent in protecting them or providing the services they promised? That's so gross.
But just in case you thought this might be a one-off case of poor judgment on the part of our education secretary, here are a list of actions DeVos has taken in her first year as Secretary of Education:
 Rescinded sexual assault guidelines, which in most cases now impose a higher burden of proof on victims.
Rescinded guidelines that allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
Rescinded guidelines about which rights students are entitled to as part of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.
Dramatically scaled back, and in many cases flat-out refused to further investigate, hundreds of civil rights complaints.
Refused to enforce protections for students against for-profit colleges that cannot show evidence of providing a curriculum that generally leads to gainful employment for its graduates.
Has provided leniency to predatory student loan lenders, which has allowed them to dramatically increase interest rates and payment obligations, making it harder for students to pay off their loans quickly. Oh, and her family assets include investments in some of these lending companies, BTW.
Let's also not forget that during her confirmation hearing, she couldn't answer basic questions about how public education works (probably because she's a billionaire and literally no one in her entire family has ever attended public school), she's on the record saying that public schools are a "dead end," thinks guns should be allowed in schools, called HBCs (Historically Black Colleges) "pioneers of school choice," which grossly misunderstands why HBCs were formed in the first place (because there was a time when black people weren't allowed to go to white people college!), refused to say whether the federal government should prevent private schools from receiving federal money if they're found guilty of discriminating against minority students, and has never even visited a lower-income or low-performing public school.
I'm so sick of this administration and it's policy of saving money by disadvantaging the most in-need communities in order to justify tax cuts and other giveaways to corporations. Trickle-down economics does not work. Just look at history; it's been proven over and over again. And the fact that our current education secretary is trying to ensure for-profit universities are protected and financially supported more than the students they're supposed to be educating just galls me.
If we continue to take advantage of students and rig the education system against them so that only the privileged have access, it's going to further exacerbate the income inequality that's already rampant in this country... and I worry that there will soon be an entire generation of keen minds that are capable of doing wonderful things for this country that aren't able to realize that opportunity because college is too expensive, too rigged against them, too inclined to put profits ahead of their actual mission of educating people. And, unfortunately, I don't think anything's going to turn around until we get a new administration and a new education secretary who's not hellbent on running public schools into the ground. 
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I'm not going to pretend like I'm any kind of an expert on physics and Einstein's theory of relativity... evidenced by the fact that the title of this article caught my interest and then my eyes immediately glazed over as I started reading about the details of what exactly they were studying and how it did or didn't apply to Einstein's general theory of blah blah blah. 
The reason this article caught my interest is because I think it's really cool when older science holds up. Science is a field where there are constantly new developments disproving old theories and practices. The earth is flat... oh wait, nope, no it's not! The earth is the center of the universe... hold up, no, we were wrong about that too! Lobotomies and electroshock therapy to treat mental illness... oops? With all the stuff out there being superseded by our better more advanced understanding of science years or decades later, I think it's fascinating when someone was so prescient in their own time that they were able to propose a theory or a process that still holds up after all this time.
My favorite part of this piece was the Ohio State University astrophysicist who said that they were hoping to find a crack in Einstein's theory, but that this latest event just reaffirming what he theorized "feels like [they're] beating a dead horse" trying to find a flaw in Einstein's work. It must be so frustrating to be a scientist who's all like, "Aha! I'm going to prove this old theory wrong!" and then later is like, "Uh, yeah, that old theory is pretty legit."
This article definitely gives me a newfound respect for Einstein. There are very few scientists who can claim theories that have endured for long periods of time. Einstein, in the span of human history, hasn't been around for all that long; his theory of relativity is only about a hundred years old. But a hundred years is also a very long time in terms of scientific discovery... so I wonder if his theory will eventually be disproven when we have the technology or other knowledge to better understand the universe, or if he'll join the ranks of Isaac Newton or Galileo Galilei who have had their theories proven correct for hundreds of years, to the point where they're accepted constants. I guess only time will tell whether Einstein continues to own all these young upstarts, or if one of them will unseat him at some point in the future with a better theory.
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What happened to that duck boat tour in Branson, Missouri was a tragedy. Losing seventeen people to an overturned boat is devastating, just as it was in 1999 when a duck boat in Arkansas capsized and killed thirteen individuals. What got me about this article, though, was that former NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) chairman Jim Hall immediately goes one extreme end of the spectrum and says there should be a public safety ban on them across the board.
To be fair, there are a lot about duck boats to be worried about. Since they're a hybrid between a watercraft and an automobile, they fall into a gray area between regulations for boats and regulations for automobiles. They were never, for example, built nor intended for extended use, but some duck boat tours use craft that were built as long ago as the 1940s. Additionally, some duck boat owners who provided guided tours will modify the duck boats to better accommodate passengers, including lengthening the boats to fit more people on board, and installing canopies and/or plastic/vinyl siding so they can conduct tours in inclement weather. Investigators attributed the 1999 incident to an improperly installed and maintained, which resulted in the craft taking on water. After taking on water and sinking, the death toll was much higher because tourists became trapped under the vehicle's canopy and couldn't escape to the surface. Following 1999 sinking, the NTSB issued a recommendation that all duck boat operators install additional floatation devices to ensure the craft would stay afloat even after the engines and bilge pumps stopped working. Many operators chose not follow that recommendation. While the investigation for the Branson incident last week is still ongoing, it's believed that the high death toll is the result of a similar circumstance, i.e., people couldn't escape the sinking craft due to a canopy that had been installed.
What gets me about articles like this are a couple of things. First, it's jumping to extremes. Whether we're talking about duck boat regulations, gun control, abortion, or anything other issue, people treat it like it's binary. As if the only viable options are either "unfettered access" or "nothing at all." And this article with the "duck boats should be banned" opinion is doing the exact same thing. It is actually possible to find a compromise, but people are just so inclined to reach for the extremes whenever something happens. It'd be nice if a compromise position were proposed every once in a while.
The second thing that bothers me is how rare tragic events lead people to go nuts. Case in point, the journalist who authored this piece had to go back to 1999 to find an event on par with what happened in Missouri. So that's two tragic accidents in... 20 years? Now, I certainly don't want to discount the tragedy of losing any human life, and I'm sure there have been cases of duck boat-related deaths in the years since (albeit maybe not on such a large scale). But we're talking about a moving vehicle. People die on planes, trains, and especially automobiles all the time and yet no one (well at least no one serious) is demanding a ban on air travel or cars.
And third, both of these tragedies were pretty clearly at least in part caused by human factors. It's not like the duck boat itself is inherently a death trap... but when you decrease the structural integrity by lengthening it, load it up with passengers, put a vinyl canopy over the boat that can't be removed in case of emergency... you see where there might be some problems. If I decided to modify my apartment by knocking down some walls to make it more "open concept," would it be the architect or construction foreman's fault if the house suddenly collapsed because I was an idiot and took out a load-bearing beam when I decided to remove the wall? At some point, I think we have to take some responsibility for the fact that the way we choose to act is a big part of the reason why bad things happen.
Which brings me to my argument, I suppose. This will probably out me as the regulation-loving personal-freedom liberal that I am (if that wasn't already obvious ), but it seems to me the best thing to do here is to better regulate the duck boat tour industry. Create laws (rather than optional guidelines) that restrict what operators can and cannot to do their boats so that we're sure there's a basic safety standard. If, after these two incidents, it's pretty clear that canopies exacerbate the problem, lengthening the boats cause structural problems, and the craft were not intended for long-term use, why isn't there a call for legislation that requires owners to (a) not modify their craft unless it's approved by some kind of structural design expert, and (b) replace existing duck boats with new ones at certain intervals, or at least maintain a rigorous safety inspection schedule for the older ones. Hell, you could even work in some sort of subsidy program for those duck boat owners who can't afford to bring their craft up to snuff on their own due to their financial situation. And to those that say, "But duck boats are neither car nor boat so they fall into a gray area!" my answer would be, "Yeah? So write legislation specifically about duck boats!" I don't know at what point things became so dysfunctional that legislatures stopped trying to actually, you know, legislate things.
When you try to ban something entirely, it just makes things worse. Look at what's happening with abortion and gun control. Proposed bans on these things aren't convincing people to just give up trying to get the thing they're determined to get... making it illegal or onerous just makes people more determined to get what they are determined to get in whatever way they can, even if it's against the law. Rather than tell these duck boat tour owners, who make their living with this stuff, that they now have to go out and find another job because they're banned from running their business, I think we need to find a way to implement a structure of rules and laws that will ensure public safety while allowing everyone to continue doing the thing they want to do with a judicious amount of oversight.
And we really need to stop this B.S. where every time something bad happens, we go out looking for people who embody the extreme positions and ask them what they think. So many of us are living between the extremes. How about asking for actual solutions from more centric people who believe there's a way to both protect the public AND allow individuals to exert their personal freedoms to a reasonable extent?
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There's so much in this article (and this situation with the LA Times newspaper) that fascinates me.
I had never even heard the name Patrick Soon-Shiong until the announcement that he had purchased the LA Times earlier this year. He has more money billionaires the likes of David Geffen, George Soros, Ralph Lauren, George Lucas, and Mark Cuban. Forbes even called him "the richest doctor in the history of the world" for a piece of reporting in 2014. So that's fascinating point #1.
Then the article talks about how he also purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune, Hoy (a Spanish-language publication), and a handful of small community papers and are combining them all under the larger branding of the "California Times." He's moving the LA Times out of its expensive downtown Los Angeles building and to a new state-of-the-art media center campus he's building closer to the beach in El Segundo, which will be technologically capable of meeting the current demands of media consumers (high-quality streaming, in-house broadcasting space, etc.). This guy isn't just buying a paper and saying, "Keep doing what you're doing." He's buying it and saying, "Let's move into a new era." Fascinating point #2.
Soon-Shiong also seems set on revitalizing old school quality journalism. He admits to hating the absence of what he calls "leisurely reading," where everyone is now trying to cram as much information and sensationalism into as small a space as possible, and resorting to tricks like clickbait headlines and dishonest reporting to attract readers. He said he's developed a "hundred-year plan" for making the company competitive and current. He hired an ex-Bloomberg, Time, and Wall Street Journal guy to be their editor in chief to assure people that it's a serious news organization and not just some billionaire's personal media/propaganda outlet. And he thinks the tactile sensation of reading actual ink on actual paper is going to make a comeback again, particularly with the younger generations who are already showing an inclination toward vintage products like records and second-hand clothing. Fascinating point #3.
Overall, I think this is an interesting new direction, and I'm excited to see it being led by someone who (at least publicly) seems to advocate for a return to quality journalism. After the debacle of the Tribune Company (Tronc) ownership that saw the LA Times hemorrhaging advertisers, readership, and staffers (the paper has lost approximately 900 employees since the late 1990s, most of them attributed to Tronc's profitability-over-public good approach), I think everyone in Los Angeles is hoping that Soon-Shiong will be the guy that turns the paper around again. He wants to turn the California Times into a powerhouse bastion of objective reporting on par with The New York Times and The Washington Post, and in this age of unprecedented levels of fake news, partisanship, and corporate agendas, I think we really do need another outlet that can provide quality journalism.
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Without getting into the politics of it all (or maybe just skirting them a little  ), I thought this article was remarkable for two reasons. Well, three... but one of them is related to other news mentioned in the article.
First, after a "tumultuous" summit in Helsinki (to say the least), followed by multiple days of additional Trump statements to walk-back the Helsinki remarks... and then walk-backs of the walk-back... who on Earth thought it would be a good idea to promote the idea of bringing these two world leaders together again? I mean, I have an idea who, but this seems like a remarkably short-sighted piece of news, considering the furor that's still going around about the last meet-up.
Second, our Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats - the Cabinet-level official responsible for overseeing our entire National Intelligence Program - has now, in the course of a week, been thrown under the bus in Helsinki when Trump called him out by name and then suggested that he's inclined to believe Putin's word as that of our intelligence community, and is now being blindsided by the announcement of a subsequent meeting with Putin. And I quote, "[This second meeting with Putin] came as news to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who was being interviewed onstage at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday when the announcement took place." I mean, honestly. I don't have a job that's even close to as important as the United States Director of National Intelligence... but if my boss one day decided to publicly announce that he was inclined to believe the CEO of a competing company over me an important issue related to the job he hired me to do... and then a few days later announced that he would be bringing that other CEO to a meeting that I didn't know was happening when it's my job to help arrange and advise on these meetings... I'd be looking for the door. How much abuse are Dan Coats and the other "adults in the room," as they're often referred, going to take before they've had enough of being embarrassed and contradicted on the world stage?
And third, this isn't really related to the meat of the article, but the story does make mention of the fact that, days later, the White House finally got around to ruling out the idea of making former U.S. diplomats and officials available to Russia for interrogation. And to think, it only took half a week and the Senate passing a resolution by a vote of 98-0 to get the White House to acknowledge that allowing Russia to interrogate American citizens who have dedicated their lives to government service is a bad idea. It's astounding to me that the notion was ever under consideration, let alone something Trump considered to be an "incredible offer" from Putin.
I really try not to wade into political commentary on the internet very often, but this week has really been too much. Between all of this and the horrendous European tour that preceded the Helsinki summit, it feels like this week in American diplomacy has been akin to watching a clown car crash into a raging dumpster fire. 
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I'll admit that the title (and the header image of a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream) are what initially drew my interest in this article. Whoever came up with that as a lead-in is a genius.
After reading through the article, I was frankly really surprised to find that the majority of respondents most often fantasized about their current partners in new or favorite sex acts, rather than ones that would be considered taboo or forbidden. And only 7% of respondents reported fantasizing regularly about celebrities. Honestly, if I were doing this study and needed to form a hypothesis before beginning, I would have guessed that most people's fantasies would be more along the lines of, say, a threesome with two celebrity crushes, rather than, for example, taking a page out of the kama sutra with one's spouse or significant other.
I have to say, I'm actually kind of relieved to have been wrong about it (at least to the extent that this limited study speaks for the entire population about a topic that's rife with inaccurate data due to its sensitive nature). With all of the awful stuff going on in the world, it's nice to know that most people, when given the opportunity to fantasize, get turned on by the idea of spicing things up with their current partner rather than someone else.
On the other hand, though, I'm not entirely sure these results jive with other statistics, like how many couples get divorced, and how prevalent adultery is in our society. Maybe there's a study to be done in there somewhere... if most of us fantasize about our current partner, why do so many of us seek (or are at least willing to entertain) other partners?
Also, one of my favorite parts of studies like this is when their related findings are commonly understood but still reported like they were just uncovered through the hard work of this study. "It is widely believed that the mainstreaming of the internet has contributed to an increase in porn-watching." Yeah, no shit. And that "One study, published in 2015 by the Journal of Sex Research, found a 'big jump' in pornography consumption when comparing adults born in the 1980s to adults born in the 1970s, and it chalked that difference up to the fact that 'Children born in the 1980s onward are the first to grow up in a world where they have access to the Internet beginning in their teenage years." Again, no shit. You mean there was an increase in porn consumption once it became something you can get for free in the privacy of your own home rather than having to go out and get in magazine form from a newsstand (or your dad's/buddy's stash)? What a game-changing study three years ago! 
And one last parting gift from this article. Sixteen percent of the study respondents reported that their favorite fantasies of all time are informed by something they saw in pornography. So if your significant other is into watching that kind of stuff, a quick perusal of his or her browsing history might just give you an idea of what would really spice up your love life. You know, so you can stop getting baited by those Cosmo articles.  And according to this study, those fantasies might just surprise you in how vanilla they really are.
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