Category: Education

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Triumph Forsaken

Academic debates regarding revisionist history continues to rage across university lecture halls. Yet traditional (orthodox in those academic circles) views on Vietnam were challenged by revisionists including Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965.

triumph forsaken

America’s historical views of Vietnam are actually unique since the war’s bible The Pentagon Papers remained classified for just over forty years.

Moyar published Triumph Forsaken in 2006 and created academic controversy for over five years before the National Archives released the full 7,200 plus pages from the Department of Defense which also focus on Moyar’s timeframe.

Have just found my way last night into chapter three of Moyar’s book. Memories of actually reading the entire Pentagon Papers and the frustrations revealed has caused my eyebrows to be raised….just a bit. Moyar has been portrayed as attacking American journalists who were on the ground in Vietnam.

Moyar’s focus on Ho and Diem in this timeframe are core to his view on America’s early fatal flaws in the war. Time will tell as I continue to read, research and compare notes in the Pentagon Papers.  Moyar may be correct in his assumptions and points of view regarding these two leaders in Vietnam’s civil war.

Also on my bookshelf sits another revisionist view of Vietnam A Better War written by Lewis Sorley.  I will attempt to fully measure Moyar and Sorley against The Pentagon Papers and Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2013.

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Education Reading

Dave Duerson Triumph, Trauma and Tragedy in the NFL

Dave Duerson committed suicide on February 17, 2011.  He will always be remembered as a member of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl team.  He was a four time NFL Pro Bowl player and won a second Super Bowl with the New York Giants. He finished his career with the Phoenix Cardinals. Dave Duerson was the 1987 NFL Man of The Year award winner.

dave duerson

I remember watching Dave Duerson play at Notre Dame. He was a two time All American.  Dave also graduated with honors in Economics.

Early in his retirement Dave started his own food processing company. He turned into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

However Dave Duerson succumbed to the impact of chronic brain trauma. All for the glory of Sunday football. It was only after his family donated his brain to research did the tragic effects of his brain trauma reveal the type of punishment professional athletes in many sports accept as part of the game. The suicide of San Diego linebacker Junior Seau proved Dave Duerson’s death was not unique.

How much longer will we see former NFL players suffer long term brain injuries after their glory days are over.  More importantly will the NFL or fans realize the game has reached such a high level of contact that its literally killing their Sunday heros?

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Education Milwaukee Reading

Malcolm Gladwell evening in Milwaukee

Friday was a wonderful evening with Malcolm Gladwell. I was able to get a personalized copy of his book David and Goliath. As usual he was sharing a remarkable series of intertwined events. Tonight it was about the IRA collapse in Belfast, Alva Vanderbilt and the women’s suffrage movement in America. Malcolm is truly a great storyteller.
Malcolm Gladwell in Milwaukee

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Design Education Innovation Milwaukee Reading Technology

Tableau your data!

Dan Murray was the keynote speaker at the March Milwaukee Tableau User’s Group and discussed his new book Tableau Your Data! I was lucky enough to win a raffle for one of the books and Dan was kind enough to sign.
tableau your dataLook forward to diving into Tableau dashboards by tapping into an Oracle data warehouse and Google Analytics data.

Clearly this type of Business Intelligence tool has been gaining ground among data report writers, supervisors and even C-level executives.

Today the impact of interactive data visualizations cannot be overstated as a key driver of tablets that have become a key tool in business today. As the growth of Big Data continues to impact analysis across all organizations it is more important than ever before to establish data stories in dashboards.

As business embraces mobile devices even further into their enterprise the growth of Tableau will continue. They have a hot product that is growing rapidly and seems to have no ceiling.

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Education Reading

Latest read: Bobby Orr – My story

Bobby Orr was my favorite athlete in my childhood growing up in Toledo Ohio. My father watched CBC broadcasts of NHL games and they are some of my earliest recollections of sports. I kinda learned about Bobby and the Boston Bruins from my Dad.

Bobby Orr

His first year playing in Boston was also the year I was born. My knowledge of his skills as a player came later in his career. I recalled later in life learning that my father worked for Storer Broadcasting‘s WSPD-TV station in Toledo. In 1973 Storer purchased the Boston Bruins and the Boston Garden.

After Storer purchased the Bruins my parents went to Boston and my Dad returned home with an official Bruins press kit featuring black and white photos of the team and every player. It was like striking hockey gold for a kid who played hockey in the back yard and on the cement streets around my neighborhood.

Without the internet and cable television it was very rare for me to see the Boston Bruins play on television growing up less than an hour from Detroit, unless it was broadcast with Harry Neale and Ron MacLean.

My interest in hockey began to wain when Bobby left Boston for Chicago while I had just turned ten years old. I remain a Bruins fan but was sorry to see him retire after missing so many years with his bad left knee. By this time I was playing basketball, having never played organized ice hockey and was following Dr. J and the Sixers.  Funny how my Dad played high school basketball with Dr. J’s teammate Steve Mix. My hometown hockey team the Toledo Goaldiggers had a pretty good player for two years as well — Mike Eruzione, yea that Mike Eruzione.

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