A Look at Trump’s Inaugural Speech

Dissension and hatred descended upon us. With profound distress millions of the best men and women from all walks of life have seen the unity of the nation vanishing away, dissolving in a confusion of political and personal opinions, economic interests, and ideological differences.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

For when our nation lost its political place in the world, it soon lost its unity of spirit and will….

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

The misery of our people is horrible to behold! Millions of the industrial proletariat are unemployed and starving; the whole of the middle class and the small artisans have been impoverished.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

And as leaders of the nation and Government we vow to God, to our conscience, and to our people that we will faithfully and resolutely fulfill the task conferred upon us.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

The task with which we are faced is the hardest which has fallen to statesmen within the memory of man. But we are all filled with unbounded confidence for we believe in our people and their imperishable virtues. Every class and every individual must help us to found the new Reich.

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day.

The Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and co-operation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

A concerted and all-embracing attack must be made on unemployment in order that the working class may be saved from ruin…

The ruling parties have ruined the working class in fourteen years.

In fourteen years they have created an army of millions of unemployed.

Within four years the working class must be rescued from the quagmire into which it has fallen.

Within four years unemployment must be finally overcome. At the same time the conditions necessary for a revival in trade and commerce are provided.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

As regards its foreign policy the Government considers its highest mission to be the securing of the right to live and the restoration of freedom to our nation. Its determination to bring to an end the chaotic state of affairs in Germany will assist in restoring to the community of nations a State of equal value and, above all, a State which must have equal rights. It is impressed with the importance of its duty to use this nation of equal rights as an instrument for the securing and maintenance of that peace which the world requires today more than ever before.

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future. We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

Since the prior government is incapable of lending support to this work, we ask the people whom we represent to perform the task themselves.

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.

We are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

But the Government cannot make the work of reconstruction dependent upon the approval of those who wrought destruction.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for our country.

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.

And yes, together, we will make America great again. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

In case you didn’t realize it, the blockquotes are from Hitler’s Proclamation to the German Nation, February 1, 1933, with some minor edits so that it didn’t explicitly refer to Germany. The regular text comes from Trump’s Inaugural Address.  

This was inspired by a tweet by Dr. Krypt3ia.

 

Bad Stats in the QER

I often notice people, even educated people, with a poor understanding of numbers and statistics. Our example today is going to come from the second installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review, released by the Department of Energy. One of the QER’s Key Findings was:

Electricity outages disproportionately stem from disruptions on the distribution system (over 90 percent of electric power interruptions), both in terms of the duration and frequency of outages; this is largely due to weather-related events. Damage to the transmission system, while infrequent, can result in more widespread major power outages that affect large numbers of customers with significant economic consequences.”

Over 90% sounds like a lot. But, the frequency of outages is really not that surprising. In 2014, there was450,000 miles of high-voltage lines and 6,000,000 miles of distribution lines in the United States. This means that 92.5% of lines (measured in miles) are in the distribution system. That means that “over 90%” of disruptions is NOT disproportionate. Actually, it sounds like the frequency of power outages stemming from disruptions on the distribution system is just about what you would expect.

The QER also claims that the duration of the outages on the distribution system is more than the duration of outages on the transmission system. While it’s not as simple as looking at the total miles of power lines to verify if that claim makes sense, it should also not be very surprising if you think about it for a little bit.

I used to live in a house that was at the end of a dead-end. We were the second-to-last house on the road. The start of the dead-end was about 4-5 miles from my house, and the road only had about a dozen houses. Behind our house was BLM forest land. In other words, it was quite rural. We had a power outage one time when a tree fell and took out a powerline during a storm. It happened between our house and the last house on the road, and we were the only two houses which lost power. Since there were only two houses affected, we were lower on the priority list for the power company in responding to that storm. If they have two places where they need to send a crew and one of them affects an entire neighborhood while they other only affects two houses, the two people are out of luck. They’ll have to wait a bit longer before they get their power back.

This can help explain why distribution outages last longer than transmission outages. By definition, an outage to a transmission line is going to affect more people than an outage on a distribution line. So it makes sense that responding to the outage on the transmission line is going to have a higher priority than responding to an outage on a distribution line.

 

Coaching Kindergarten Basketball

I coached my kindergartener’s basketball team this fall, but I’m not able to coach his team this winter because I’m starting OSCP training this weekend, and so I won’t have any extra free time. I wanted to collect a lot of what I did as a coach, though. It’s difficult to let somebody else coach my kids. I’m pretty good at hiding my critique from their coaches, but since I know quite a bit about basketball and coaching, I quite often catch myself thinking about how I would have done things different (read: better) than their other coaches.

This post will be a collection of ideas and games and “drills” I used for the kindergarten team earlier this year. My plan is to share it with his coach and tell her that she can use it or not, but since she hasn’t coached basketball before, it may give some good ideas. These ideas will be more heavily weighted toward ballhandling and passing than shooting for a couple reasons. The first is that the fall league was for kids 4-5 years old, and some of the kids (especially the four-year-olds) couldn’t get the ball to the hoop no matter how hard they tried. The other reason is that I always emphasize ballhandling. I’ve seen too many kids who couldn’t get on the court as they got older because they couldn’t handle the basketball. On the other hand, if kids are good ballhandlers, then they can handle more aggressive and athletic defenders and play above their athletic level.

A lot of the things listed under “Drills” are also games, but I put them under whatever skill it was if the game was specifically targeting that one skill, such as how Dribble Tag is focused on dribbling. One of the things I always say in the parent meeting for youth teams is that my goal is to have fun. I want my kid to be a good basketball player, so I’m going to teach them solid basketball skills. But, if a kid in youth basketball doesn’t have fun, then he’ll stop playing. As long as he has fun and wants to play again the next season, then he can continue to develop his skills. If he quits because it wasn’t fun, then he’ll never develop those basketball skills. Along that same idea, a lot of these games could have a winner and a loser, but I wouldn’t even talk about that for most of them. Especially at the kindergarten level, they aren’t going to remember who won what at practice anyway, and if you don’t talk about it, then every kid will likely walk away thinking they “won.”

Dribbling Drills

Dribble Tag – Everybody has a ball. One person is “It” and they try to tag others.

Circle Dribbling – Get in a half-circle around the coach and dribble with one hand. Talk to the kids about how to dribble with their finger pads, not slapping the ball with their palm. Call out “Left hand,” “Right hand,” or “Alternating (change) hands,” so that the kids practice with both hands.

Numbers – Same as Circle Dribbling, except hold up some number of fingers. Kids need to call out the number shown. Change the number every few seconds. This forces kids to dribble with their eyes up.

Red Light, Green Light – Same as the regular game, except they need to dribble as they go down the court. Make them do a jump stop when they stop for the red light. They need to catch the ball and stop, not catch and keep running.

Follow the Leader – I would start as the leader. Get creative here, you can do anything like dribble in circles, do air dribbles, dribble with a certain hand, etc.

Dribble Relay – A relay race where teams run down and back while dribbling. Change up how they dribble. Dribble right-handed, then left-handed, then alternating hands. Make them go backwards or make them go sideways. Going backwards will make them not look at the ball as much, because they’ll be looking backwards over their shoulder. Dribbling sideways (feet moving like a defensive slide) is basically doing a power dribble, which is used by players at all levels up to professional.

Dribble Relay with Pivots – Same as a dribble relay, except instead of going fullcourt, they dribble to the near free throw line, jump stop, pivot, and throw the ball back to the next person. This is obviously done closer to the end of the season when they’ve already been exposed to things like “What’s a pivot?”

Passing Drills

Partner passing – Partners on opposite sides of the lane. Talk about passing mechanics (two hands on ball, step towards partner, extend arms, thumbs point down at finish). Talk about “strong passes,” no rainbows or bounce passes. Try to make the pass in a straight line. Add bounce passes after a while (or even the next practice), which uses the same form but they want the ball to bounce one time, about 2/3 of the way to their partner.

Defense Drills

1-on-1 Mirror Drill – Kids get in pairs. One is the “offense” and one is the “defense,” and they get on a line, with one kid on either side of the line. For example, the offensive player will be on the inbounds side of the baseline and the defensive player will be on the out-of-bounds side of the baseline, or the offensive player will be on one side of the halfcourt line and the defensive player will be on the other side of the halfcourt line. The offensive player tries to stay away from the defensive player, while the defensive player tries to stay in front of them (like a mirror). This is a great way to practice change-of-direction, too. When I did this with HS/MS players, I made the defensive player be in a defensive stance. With the younger kids, I didn’t do that.

Shooting Drills

Hit the Money Spot – Tape a dollar bill to the top corner of the square on the backboard. This is the “Money Spot.” Practice layups, telling kids to try to hit the Money Spot. I also like to not have the kids dribble when they are focusing on learning layup form, so they can focus on their shooting form and not trying to dribble without losing the ball.

2-line Shooting – Basically the two-line layups many teams do during pre-game warmups. I would sometimes have the first player dribble in and shoot, and sometimes have them do a give-and-go with the other line. I also like to do this as a pre-game warmup because if you just let the kids shoot around, somebody’s going to get hit with a ball and start crying at this age. Also, if they’re just shooting around then the less aggressive, less skilled kids won’t get as many rebounds and won’t get as many shots as the more aggressive, more skilled kids.

Line Shooting – I did a little bit on form shooting with the kids, mainly just trying to get them to push the ball with one hand instead of two, and nothing more complicated than that. When we did that, though, we did a drill where instead of shooting for a hoop, they started on a line and tried to shoot it up and make it land on the line about 10 feet away. This forces them to try to shoot straight, which is the first thing most shooting coaches focus on with older kids, too.

Games

No Dribble Scrimmage – My favorite game for basketball practice. I’ve used this with high school and college players, too, but even five-year-olds can figure this one out. It’ll take them a couple tries before they start getting  the idea of moving without the ball and looking to pass to move down the court, but they can do it if it’s emphasized. We did this game probably every other practice with my kidnergartener.

Scrimmage – The kids love to scrimmage. I think we did it every practice, even if it’s only for 2-3 minutes. I emphasize dribbling and matching up with their opponent (as opposed to just chasing  the ball). I also use the whistle to make them stop, since they need to get used to doing that for the games.

3-on-3 Fullcourt – I like this even more than a regular scrimmage, because with smaller sides the kids will get more time with the ball, and with playing fullcourt they will get a lot of practice dribbling and passing.

Coach Says – The same as Simon Says, except my name isn’t Simon. Commands  I would use would be “pivot,” “triple threat,” “[right|left] dribble,” (where they dribble once and then pick it up back into triple threat), and “shot.”

Race to the Spot- Call a spot out and the kids race to it while dribbling. You can also call “left hand,” “backwards,” or anything else like that. I might say something like, “That door over there,” or, “The volleyball stand.” After a few rounds, have the kids take turns calling out the spot. I made this game up one practice because I had extra time and needed something to do. I’m sure somebody else had come up with it before me, but I don’t remember seeing it. It sounds kind of dumb, but the kids seemed to like it.

Monkey-in-the-Middle – Keepaway. We’d usually do it with two offensive players and one defender. The offense has to stand still, and they can’t pass it until the defender is on them. So, if you’re on offense and you receive the ball, then you need to wait for the defender to get over to you. Any deflection would get the defender out of the middle. We’d also have a “no rainbows” rule: the pass couldn’t just be a lob over the top of the defender.

I Can ___, Can You? – Call out what you can do, and then the kids do it. After a few rounds, have kids take turns being the caller. Some examples are to skip and dribble, run backwards and dribble, hop on one foot and dribble, shoot a layup, etc.

Scarecrow Tiggy – A variation of tag.  The taggers don’t have a basketball. If a person is tagged, they stand with the ball over their head and their legs spread out. Other dribblers get them back in the game by rolling a ball throught the legs of the tagged person.

War – There are two teams, each lined up on either sideline. Each player has a number, but you need to ensure that they are matched up appropriately so that player 2 on one team isn’t the best player while player 2 on the other team is the worst player. Call a number and throw the ball out towards midcourt. The players whose number was called go and play 1-on-1 fullcourt. If you call out two numbers, then they’d play 2-on-2, or so on.

Players Choice – This is always our last “drill” of the season. I ask the kids what they want to do. I think every team I’ve ever coached has chosen a scrimmage, so it’s basically the same as ending the last practice with a scrimmage, but the kids get to feel like it was their choice.

Squirrels Are Not the Issue

Every once in a while, usually after Ukraine has had a power outage caused by a cyber attack, there’s articles like this one from Ars Technica. I understand, and agree with, Cris Thomas’s [SpaceRogue] main complaint: there have been a lot of false claims of “Cyber Atttacks!!!” and most of the time they are false alarms or people looking to sell a book, plus squirrels have caused more power outages than cyber attacks, by a long shot. SpaceRogue runs the CyberSquirrel1 twitter account and website, which tracks power outages caused by animals, mainly squirrels.

What articles like this recent Ars story don’t get, though, is that responding to a squirrel causing out a power outage and responding to a cyber attack causing a power outage are two different things. There are literally tens of thousands of linemen in the U.S., and they can all respond to something like a squirrel causing a power line to short out or even causing a pole to fall down. That kind of work is even so standardized that when a storm comes through an area, such as when Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast, crews are able to come from all over the country to help with the restoration. That’s because jobs like stringing a power pole, while requiring skill, are also reproducible and one lineman can step in to work with another trained lineman if they need to.

A cyber attack is very different, though. There are not tens of thousands of people in the world who will be able to investigate and restore power if a utility is affected by a remote cyber attack. And just as importantly, there is not a standard way of responding to a cyber attack on a power utility, like there is with a squirrel attack or storm recovery. For storm recovery, there is a long history of mutual assistance, where a utility not affected by a storm will send employees to an area with storm damage in order to make recovery time faster. There are some beginning efforts by the electric industry to create a similar program for cyber incidents, but there are several barriers to success. For one, if a cyber incident affects a group of utilities, other utilities, even if they have expertise on staff, are likely to be hesitant to send that expertise out, since they would not have a guarantee that they may not also be targeted. There also is the problem of a learning curve if somebody from one utility is not familiar with the hardware and software at a second utility, although this problem can likely be mitigated, as shown by the IR efforts of the ICS-CERT and private consultants.

The idea that “squirrels are worse” also downplays another problem. If a small electric distribution company is affected by a cyber attack, there won’t be a large problem for customers. Some customers may lose power, but the people operating the electric grid would be able to recover relatively quickly, becuas the power grid is resilient, and electric utilities have spent decades working to build that resiliency. The concern, though, is that multiple utilities will all be affected. The 2015 Ukraine incident involved multiple distribution companies being affected, and the campaign also targeted other utilities which didn’t have power outages. The 2016 Ukraine incident, though, targeted a transmission company. What happens if those tactics are combined, and multiple transmission operators are affected? Or what happens if instead of 6-8 months of preparation, like in Ukraine, there is 18-24 months of preparation? Maybe then, the attacker is able to affect even more. It’s not inconceivable to imagine targeted attacks against widespread targets.

The bottom line is, not everybody who’s talking about the vulnerabilities of the electric grid are chicken littles (coughTedKoppelcough) running around saying that the sky is falling. There are some tough problems which still need to be addressed, and being dismissive of those problems is not any more helpful than using FUD to try to sell a security product.