Tony Schwartz - American Writer

Tony Schwartz is the ghostwriter of the Art of the Deal, Donald Trump's autobiography. In the book Trump talks about his ability to "adjust" truth.  “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”

The book, turned out to be a windfall for Schwartz and a source of power for Trump.

According to the New Yorker. "More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.”

Fast forward to September 19, he is hardly a fan, this is a post on twitter

Tony Schwartz

Verified account

‏@tonyschwartz Sep 18

What Trump is most missing is any conscience at all.  He can lie, distort and spew hate with a straight face. He cares about none of us.

The Wrap, posts his advice for the upcoming Clinton/Trump debate" “You break down his persona by showing how he’s really not nearly as intelligent as he says he is and would like to be,” Schwartz told the New York Times’ podcast “The Run-Up” on Friday. “He can’t avoid repeating himself. He can’t stay focused on a subject for very long.”

“I’d be very calm, direct, and unflappable but relentless  — and I mean relentless — over 90 minutes in calling out every time a line came out of his mouth,” Schwartz went on to say. “I’d call out his repetitions calmly, unflappably but confidently.”

Since his ghostwriting success, he has proven himself not to be a one trick wonder writing several successful books, His energy project BIO says, Tony's most recent book, The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His previous book, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time, co-authored with Jim Loehr, spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 28 languages. In 2013, Tony launched a biweekly column for the New York Times titled “Life@Work.” Tony is a contributor to numerous publications including The Huffington Post and Harvard Business Review, and for three years, he wrote the most popular blog on HBR.org.

Tony would love SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 where the students and faculty are all in to study and share cybersecurity. Stephen Northcutt is Director, Academic Advising for SANS.EDU. 

Emma Gatewood - Appalachian Trail thru-hiker

(By way of Suzy Northcutt) In 1955, at the age of 67, an Ohio farm wife named Emma Gatewood became the first woman to solo thru-hike all 2,026 miles, approximately 5,000,000 steps, of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. This mother of 11, grandmother of 23, trekked in canvas Keds; she had no backpack, no tent, no sleeping bag, no campstove, no GPS, no cell phone… 

And then she did it again, straight through. And a third time, in sections.

She didn’t set  out to make history, she only told her children that she was going ‘out for a walk.’ She didn’t even know that reporters had begun following her progress soon after commencing her walk. When asked why she did it, she offered simply, “Because I wanted to.”

In the 1950’s only 14 thru-hikes were recorded. This decade alone there have been more than 4,000. http://www.appalachiantrail.org/home/community/2000-milers

Emma’s walk brought attention to the Trail, and to hiking, and to dogged determination to complete what is started. Many a hiker has since noted, “I was ready to give up but if Grandma Gatewood could do it…”

We just never know how we might inspire others with what we do. No matter how crude, or pedestrian, our early attempts should be we might be laying a foundation for others to build on. Someone has to start, and keep moving forward, and not give up.

Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ben Montgomery tells Emma’s story in his book, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.”  It’s an easy read, and rather inspiring. 

Emma Gatewood would have loved the pace at SANS Rocky Mountain 2017, June 12, Denver where aspiring energizer bunnies just keep going and going for six or more days. Stephen Northcutt is Academic Advisor for SANS.EDU.

Booker T Washington - Negro Statesman

History.com sums up his achievement as an American Character, "Born a slave on a Virginia farm, Washington (1856-1915) rose to become one of the most influential African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute, a black school in Alabama devoted to training teachers. Washington was also behind the formation of the National Negro Business League 20 years later, and he served as an adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft."

PBS says, In September 1895, Washington became a national hero. Invited to speak at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Washington publicly accepted disfranchisement and social segregation as long as whites would allow black economic progress, educational opportunity, and justice in the courts. "The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house."

This is the analogy he used in his famous speech, "A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressed vessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourth signal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River."

Booker T would have love to visit SANS Rocky Mountain 2017, June 12, Denver, were faculty and students alike are focused on casting down their buckets where they are so the SANS promise, what you learn at Rocky Mountain, can be used the day you get back to work.

Stephen Northcutt is director, Academic Advising at SANS.EDU.

D. Mark Hegsted - Hero or sugar pusher?

According to his NY Times Obit, Hegsted was a serious proponent of nutrition:

In the early 1960s, Dr. Hegsted experimented with dietary changes and their effects on levels of harmful cholesterol in the bloodstream. He and others investigated the role of saturated fats derived from meat, eggs and other sources, polyunsaturated fats, monounsaturated fats and dietary cholesterol. The researchers developed a mathematical model, known as the Hegsted equation, to predict the effect of fats consumed in food on an individual’s serum cholesterol.

Nutrition.org highlights his stint in government:

In a second career, Hegsted went to Washington, DC, in 1978 to serve in the newly created post of Administrator of Human Nutrition in the US Department of Agriculture. During his tenure, the US Department of Agriculture issued the Dietary Goals for Americans. This basic dietary guidance, which was intended to educate the general public, ignited a firestorm of protests from friends and foes alike, revealing the intense tension between the scientific community, industry, and politicians. Interestingly, despite the remarkable controversy the document created and its eventual retraction, the Dietary Goals for Americans was the forerunner of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and although the wording changed over the years the basic concepts remain relatively intact to this day.

However, a report released today by ars Technica says that, at least in the early years at Harvard he was in the pocket of the sugar industry:

According the documents, the SRF enlisted Fredrick Stare, then chair of Harvard’s Nutrition Department, as a member of the trade group’s advisory board. Stare then put the SRF in touch with D. Mark Hegsted and Robert McGandy, members of Stare’s department. Hegsted would later go on to be the head of nutrition at the USDA. (All three researchers as well as Hickson are no longer alive.)

By 1965, the SRF funded “Project 226,” which would have Hegsted and McGandy—supervised by Stare—write a literature review that downplayed sugars’ role in heart disease and shifted blame solely to saturated fat. In return the researchers received a total of $6,500—the 2016 equivalent of $48,900.

During the write-up, which wasn’t published until 1967, the SRF’s Hickson was in frequent contact with the researchers, asking to review drafts and reminding them of the SRF’s interests. In one response to Hickson, Harvard’s Hegsted wrote, “We are well aware of your particular interest in carbohydrate and will cover this as well as we can.” After several delays in the writing, Hegsted reported to Hickson that they had to “rework a section in rebuttal” every time a new study came out supporting a link between sugar and elevated cholesterol levels.

In her editorial, Nestle concluded that “the documents leave little doubt that the intent of the industry-funded review was to reach a foregone conclusion.”

Hero, scoundrel or both, he certainly left his mark on America and American nutrition. In fact, the Hegsted equation is still in use today.

I serve as the chair person for SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 on June 12 in Denver. I think D. Mark Hegsted would appreciate the way the security researchers that make up the faculty tirelessly search for root cause. And several of our equations such as risk = threat x vulnerability are still in use today as well.

14 George Broussard and Duke Nukem Forever

I was grading a paper written by Jon Mark Allen for the SANS Technology Institute, an accredited cybersecurity graduate school, when I came across this section:

A good illustration of the consequences of clinging to a failing strategy is the fiasco of Duke Nukem Forever. After the perfect timing and exceptional performance of the original Duke Nukem 3D, George Broussard led the sequel project for its full duration of 12 years. Development in 1997 and progressed quickly enough and to such rave reviews that everyone believed it would be released in late 1998. But "Broussard was clearly obsessed with making his product as aesthetically appealing as possible", to the degree that the project switched gaming engines twice during development – essentially restarting from scratch each time. (Thompson, 2009) 

Mike Wilson, a former games marketer with id Software and 15-year veteran of the industry, suspects that Broussard was paralyzed by the massive success of Duke Nukem 3D. "When Duke came out, they were kings of the world for a minute," Wilson says. "And how often does that happen? How often does someone have the best thing in their field, absolutely? They basically got frozen in that moment." (ibid.)

Eight years into the project, the staff began to leave for fear that their careers would be completely spent on one game that would never ship. One developer said he left because he "was burned out after working on the same project for five years without any end in sight." Rafael Van Lierop, a creative director hired in 2007, when he saw what was happening, said "Wow, how many times have you been here, near the finish line, and you thought you were way out?" Broussard and company burned through their funding and were eventually forced to shut doors in 2009 without ever delivering arguably the most anticipated game ever (not) produced. (ibid.)

Well, everyone fails at some point, but nobody can deny that Mr. Broussard and Duke Nukem left their mark on America. This summary was based on a fantastic Wired magazine article by Clive Thompson. I really had to smile, sixteen years ago, I was working on a network data reduction project and we needed a visualization system for the analyst. When asked what I recommended, I replied, "Hire the Duke Nukem coding team."

I serve as the chair person for SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 on June 12 in Denver. I think George Broussard would appreciate the attention to detail and the efforts the staff and faculty go through to execute as close to flawlessly as one can get.

Bernhard Goetz

January 1981, Bernhard Goetz was attacked by three teenagers at a subway station.  Two of the three assailants managed to escape. The third spent just a few hours at a police station. Goetz was furious and, before the year was out, he applied for a gun permit.

According to Biography, "On December 22, 1984, Goetz entered an empty Manhattan train, carrying an unlicensed .38 caliber revolver. Also on the car were four teenagers: Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey and James Ramseur. As witness testimony later stated, Goetz had barely taken his seat when the young men approached Goetz for $5. When Goetz refused, Canty responded, "Give me your money."

Suspecting he was being set up for another mugging, Goetz stood up and said, "You all can have it." Goetz started firing his revolver, wounding all four teens. When the train came to a stop, a startled Goetz ran out of the car and eventually fled the city, making his way to Concord, New Hampshire. Eight days after the shooting, Goetz finally turned himself into police."

Goetz was acquitted! The trial as told by Law2, "Attorney Barry Slotnick followed with the opening statement for the defense.  Slotnick painted his client as "neither Rambo nor a vicious predator," but rather as someone surrounded by threatening youths intent on robbing him and who, in response, took "proper and appropriate action."  He warned the jury to be skeptical of evidence presented by the two testifying witnesses, Canty and Ramseur because they had a motive to lie to further their pending multi-million dollars civil suits against Goetz.  He variously referred to Goetz's shooting victims as "hoodlums," "criminals," "savages," "punks," "low-lifes," and "thugs."  He told jurors that the four youths "assumed the risk that a citizen like Bernhard Goetz would lawfully, justifiably, fire a weapon in protection of his property." 

"Jurors voted to acquit Goetz on the four attempted murder charges on the theory that, while he wanted to end the real or imagined threat posed by the teenagers, he lacked the motivation to kill them.  In the words of one juror, Goetz might have been reasonable or unreasonable in his feeling that he was trapped, "but he didn't go out hunting." The most difficult deliberations concerned charge 11, assault in the first degree against Darrell Cabey.  The fifth bullet fired by Goetz, the one that paralyzed (a most likely seated) Darrell Cabey, was hard to excuse.  The jury debated whether Goetz had time to conclude that whatever threat the youths presented were effectively ended by the time he went over to Cabey and, according to his own confession, said, "You seem to be doing all right; here's another," before firing his final shot.  Some jurors noted that Goetz's account contradicted several other witnesses who described the shots as coming in rapid succession.  The "rapid succession" theory allowed jurors to accept the defense argument that Goetz effectively went on "automatic pilot" after he fired the first shot; the five shots were all really one event."

"In a 2004 interview, CNN's Nancy Grace asked Goetz, "Do you ever wish you had just given them $5?" Goetz replied, "I think it would have been the better thing for me, in my life, if I had just given them all my money, even though they might have pushed me around and beat me up for a second."  But Goetz then added, "But I think it was good for New York City.  What happened was very good for New York City because it forced them to address crime."

Goetz certainly left his mark on America, Wikipedia remarks, "After reaching an all-time peak in 1990, crime in New York City dropped dramatically through the rest of the 1990s. As of 2006, New York City had statistically become one of the safest large cities in the U.S., with its crime rate being ranked 194th of the 210 American cities with populations over 100,000. New York City crime rates as of 2014 were comparable to those of the early 1960s.

Goetz and others have interpreted the significance of his actions in the subway incident as a contributing factor precipitating the groundswell movement against crime in subsequent years. While that claim is impossible to verify, Goetz achieved celebrity status as a popular cultural symbol of a public disgusted with urban crime and disorder." 

Goetz would love to visit SANS Rocky Mountain 2017, as an engineer focused on the details of security, he would be amazed at how much the defensive cybersecurity community has accomplished without the use of a .38.

I. M. Pei - Famous architect

Ieoh Ming Pei was born in Guangzhou, China in 1917, the son of a prominent banker. He moved to New York to study architecture and established his first architectural firm in 1955.

Pei became famous for designing the Bank of China Building in Hong Kong and the Pyramid at the Louvre in Paris. Many of his best buildings may be found in the United States, including the Four Seasons Hotel on 57th Street in New York, the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the National Gallery of Art's East Building in Washington, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. These light-flooded structures are powerful and impress with exceptional clarity.

Students attending SANS Rocky Mountain will be able to visit one of his wonders. Historic Denver, "The idea to create a mall on 16th street in Denver began as early as 1959, but was not given serious consideration until 1971. Following years of planning and construction, the 16th Street Mall, designed by the internationally renowned architectural firm I.M. Pei & Partners of New York, opened on October 4, 1982 to a crowd of over 200,000 people. The main features of I.M. Pei’s design include poly-chromatic granite pavers, wide sidewalks, and a central tree lined corridor flanked by iconic lighting fixtures. Now, decades later, the 16th Street Mall has evolved into the veritable “heart and soul” of downtown Denver and a top visitor attraction in the metropolitan area. Its free shuttles serve an average of 55,000 commuters and tourists per day, creating significant wear and tear that jeopardize the original design and materials. However, in May 2008 a panel of experts from the Urban Land Institute declared the 16th Street Mall to be “public art of the highest international quality,” and strongly urged Denver to fix, not physically modify, the Mall."

Sadly, despite all of his incredible achievements, most news stories seem to be about the attack he suffered, According to the NY Daily News, "Eter Nikolaishvil, 28, “forcefully twisted” the 98-year-old icon's arm at his Manhattan townhouse on Dec. 13, 2015, according to court papers. Nikolaishvil agreed to complete eight anger management sessions. Prosecutors said Pei and his family were consulted on the plea offer that was made to the former employee."

Picture of Eter Nikolaishvili from NY Daily News story

He is also famous for the Centurion Condominium at 33 West 56th Street in the heart of Manhattan. PRNNEWS says, "Pei, now the world's most celebrated living architect, looks back at 70 years of groundbreaking architectural work across the globe. "Still, New York is the most exciting city in the world. It is pulsating with life - and architecture is the mirror of life," says Pei.

I.M. Pei would love to visit SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 where the courseware and instruction has the light and clarity he always sought for and a peek at the mall wouldn't hurt. And all those beaming projectors would certainly remind him of his greatest work, Pyramide du Louvre.