Rescue Randy: Where are You?

Looks like we have a meme working here.

This would be funny if it were not a felony for Grand Theft (≈$2K).

I can think of a host of gags that will continue

“Get what you want without compromise”

That’s the call of our times.

Run a marathon without getting tired.

Lose weight without dieting.

Get ahead without working hard.

Earn big money without risk…

When you expose it this clearly, it’s obviously nonsense. Compromise is precisely what’s called for.

You can’t have everything you want. But, if you care enough and trade enough and work hard enough, you might be able to get some things that matter.

The real question might not be, “what do you want,” it might be, “what do you care enough to compromise for?”

From Seth Godin’s daily email; I thought that you would relate.

BOLO: Rescue Randy is Missing

Upon packing up, it appeared that Rescue Randy wandered away while wearing a red Nomex suit.

This is a first; a brand-new Rescue Randy disappeared sometime after the event on Saturday and was discovered missing Sunday morning.

He was staged between the Registration trailer and the tower.

Please keep your eyes and ears peeled for any leads.

Worked for Me; How About You?

How Exercise Lowers the Risk of Alzheimer’s by Changing Your Brain

By Alice Park • Time Magazine August 9, 2019

More and more studies are showing how regular exercise benefits the brain, and in particular, the aging brain. What’s less clear is how exactly exercise counters the cognitive decline that comes with aging and diseases like Alzheimer’s.


Just 10 Minutes of Exercise a Week May Be Enough to Extend Your Life, Study Says
Exercising for just 10 minutes a week is linked to a longer life, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.


To find out, for nearly a decade, Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and his colleagues have studied a unique group of middle-aged people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Through a series of studies, the team has been building knowledge about which biological processes seem to change with exercise. Okonkwo’s latest findings show that improvements in aerobic fitness mitigated one of the physiological brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s: the slowing down of how neurons breakdown glucose. The research, which has not been published yet, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association on Aug. 9.


Okonkwo works with the 1,500 people on the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP)—all of whom are cognitively normal, but have genes that put them at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s, or have one or two parents who have been diagnosed with the disease, or both. In the latest study, Okonkwo recruited 23 people from the WRAP population who were not physically active. Eleven were asked to participate in an exercise regimen to improve their aerobic fitness for six months, and 12 served as the control. All had their brains scanned to track Alzheimer’s-related brain changes including differences in how neurons metabolized glucose, since in people with Alzheimer’s glucose breakdown slows. At the end of the study period, the group that exercised more showed higher levels of glucose metabolism and performed better on cognitive-function tests compared to the controls.

“We are carrying our research full circle and beginning to demonstrate some causality,” says Okonkwo about the significance of his findings.


In their previous work, he and his team identified a series of Alzheimer’s-related biological changes that seemed to be affected by exercise by comparing, retrospectively, people who were more physically active to those who were not. In this study, they showed that intervening with an exercise regimen could actually affect these processes. Taken together, his body of research is establishing exactly how physical activity contributes to significant changes in the biological processes that drive Alzheimer’s, and may even reduce the effect of strong risk factors such as age and genes linked to higher risk of neurodegenerative disease.


For example, in their earlier work his group confirmed that as people age, the presence of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes increases—including the buildup of amyloid, slower breakdown of glucose by brain cells, shrinking of the volume of the hippocampus (central to memory), and declines in cognitive function measured in standard recall and recognition tests.

But they found that in people who reported exercising at moderate intensity at least 150 minutes a week, as public health experts recommend, brain scans showed that these changes were significantly reduced and in some cases non-existent compared to people who were not active. “The association between age and Alzheimer’s brain changes was blunted,” says Okonkwo, “Even if [Alzheimer’s] got worse, it didn’t get worse at the same speed or rate among those who are physically active as in those who are inactive.”

In another previous study, they found the benefits of exercise in controlling Alzheimer’s processes even among those with genetic predisposition for the disease. When they divided the participants by fitness levels, based on a treadmill test and their ability to efficiently take in oxygen, they found that being fit nearly negated the effect of the deleterious gene ApoE4. “It’s a remarkable finding because it’s not something that was predicted,” says Okonkwo.


In yet another previous study, Okonkwo and his team also found that people with higher aerobic fitness showed lower amounts of white matter hyperintensities, brain changes that are signs of neuron degeneration and show up as brighter spots on MRI images (hence the name). White matter hyperintensities tend to increase in the brain with age, and are more common in people with dementia or cognitive impairment. They form as neurons degrade and the myelin that surrounds their long-reaching arms—which helps nerves communicate with each other effectively—starts to deteriorate. In people with dementia, that process happens faster than normal, leading to an increase in white matter hyperintensities. Okonwko found that people who were more aerobically fit showed lower amounts of these hyperintensities than people who were less fit.

Given the encouraging results from his latest study of 23 people that showed intervening with exercise can change some of the Alzheimer’s-related brain changes of the disease, he plans to expand his small study to confirm the positive effect that exercise and better fitness can have in slowing the signs of Alzheimer’s. Already, his work has inspired a study launched earlier this year and funded by the National Institutes of Health that includes brain scans to track how physical activity affects biological factors like amyloid and glucose in people at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The cumulative results show that “there may be certain things we are born with, and certain things that we can’t change [when it comes to Alzheimer’s risk], but a behavior like physical exercise might help us to modify that,” says Heather Snyder, vice president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association.

The Origins of the Firefighter Combat Challenge

From time to time, the question comes to me, be it in a TV interview, or just a new Competitor: “Where did this (meaning the Firefighter Combat Challenge®) come from?” 

Short answer: “This is the only federally funded, University-based, occupational physiology research study that became an international touring and televised sport.”

The Sports Medicine Center of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health was the recipient of a grant from the predecessor of FEMA.  

In cooperation with the Fire Training Officer’s sub-committee of the Greater Washington DC Council of Governments (GOG) I conducted a JTA (job task analysis). This is the process whereby essential functions of the position (firefighter) are identified and quantified. Our criteria were a search for arduous, frequently performed or critical tasks. Critical means that failure could result in injury or death. 

The validity of the five linked tasks is evident with the world-wide acceptance and promulgation of the Challenge. There are professional and legal standards that must be met to withstand the rigor of publication in peer-reviewed journals. The results of our study were published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise).  But beyond a competition, the higher standard is being able to defend against legal challenges when the arduous nature of the profession has a disparate impact on “protected classes.” 

And then there’s a lot of steps from a research study to the development of a copyrighted, trademarked competition and all of the intricacies associated with over 60,000 participants spanning nearly three decades. 

While imitation is the highest form of flattery, it is disconcerting when your intellectual property is hijacked and represented to be the creation of their own. Simply stated, there is no form of firefighter testing or competition involving a tower, forcible entry, hose advance and a victim rescue that is not a derivative of the Firefighter Combat Challenge®. 

My vision for the Challenge is that there is only one right way to run this event. When people start to change the fundamentals, we lose respect for the objectivity of the event. There’s only one 440 yard dash and the performance time has universal credibility.

Augustine’s Laws

Augustine's laws were a series of tongue in cheek aphorisms put forth by Norman Ralph Augustine, an American aerospace businessman who served as Under Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977. In 1984 he published his laws.

I enjoyed the humor, and thought that you might as well...

Law Number I: The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.

Law Number II: If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would probably be twice as good as yesterday was.

Law Number III: There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.

Law Number IV: If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.

Law Number V: One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output.

Law Number VI: A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better.

Law Number VII: Decreased business base increases overhead. So does increased business base.

Law Number VIII: The most unsuccessful four years in the education of a cost-estimator is fifth-grade arithmetic.

Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound...Q.E.D.

Law Number X: Bulls do not win bullfights; people do. People do not win people fights; lawyers do.

Law Number XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off.

Law Number XII: It costs a lot to build bad products.

Law Number XIII: There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two.

Law Number XIV: After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent of every airplane's weight.

Law Number XV: The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the problems.

Law Number XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.

Law Number XVII: Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases.

Law Number XVIII: It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished.

Law Number XIX: Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them.

Law Number XX: In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the administration requests, minus 4-percent tax.

Law Number XXI: It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.

Law Number XXII: If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.

Law Number XXIII: Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is currently estimated.

Law Number XXIV: The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man.

Law Number XXV: A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete or a new canvas to an artist.

Law Number XXVI: If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.

Law Number XXVII: Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.

Law Number XXVIII: It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.

Law Number XXIX: Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results hang on about half a decade.

Law Number XXX: By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.

Law Number XXXI: The optimum committee has no members.

Law Number XXXII: Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.

Law Number XXXIII: Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.

Law Number XXXIV: The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed randomly.

Law Number XXXV: The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity.

Law Number XXXVI: The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.

Law Number XXXVII: Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.

Law Number XXXVIII: The early bird gets the worm. The early worm...gets eaten.

Law Number XXXIX: Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year, in either direction.

Law Number XL: Most projects start out slowly, and then sort of taper off.

Law Number XLI: The more one produces, the less one gets.

Law Number XLII: Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing.

Law Number XLIII: Hardware works best when it matters the least.

Law Number XLIV: Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a westerly direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones to provide the additional hours needed to fix the broken electronics.

Law Number XLV: One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected.

Law Number XLVI: A billion saved is a billion earned.

Law Number XLVII: Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters.

Law Number XLVIII: The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing.

Law Number XLIX: Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.

Law Number L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's, but four times as long as the official's who created it.

Law Number LI: By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more government workers than there are workers.

Law Number LII: People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.