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When in high school, some friends and I joined Junior Achievement (JA). Frankly, we did so to could get out with our buds one night a week. So far as I know, JA is still available to our kids. I learned a great deal there. Check it out.

Our counselor was a man named Gunnar Gabrielsen, who then was with Singer Sewing Machine in Cleveland. He had worked with Thomas Edison at his New Jersey lab and told several fascinating stories about the man.

My favorite was the day a group of mathematicians visited the lab. Picking up an empty glass envelope for
one of his light bulbs, he asked them to calculate the volume. After 20 minutes of measuring and doing
calculations, they gave Edison the number.

Edison said they were wrong. As they protested, Edison filled the envelope with water and dumped it into a lab graduate with etched volume levels and declared the correct answer to the group.

The moral? In a masterful example of Occam’s Razor, Edison demonstrated to this group of bright intellectuals
that the PRACTICAL, SIMPLE solution is almost always the best, most reliable and CORRECT one.

On the other hand and to be fair, as bright as he was, Edison was wrong about the practical commercial use of direct current.
It was the Serbian immigrant, Nicola Tesla, who despite having to fight Edison and his backers, ultimately won the contest with the alternating current now making all our lives better.

The sad part of that story is that Edison went on to fame and riches. Though there has been renewed interest in him and his work, Tesla is less well known and died alone in a New York hotel room.

As I was writing this, I discovered an unexpected connection to a fellow now much in the news. Thought I’d share in with you. (From Wikipedia)
Two days later the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered the Alien Property Custodian to seize Tesla’s belongings,[29] even though Tesla was an American citizen.[171] Tesla’s entire estate from the Hotel New Yorker and other New York City hotels was transported to the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Company under the Office of Alien Property (OAP) seal.

John G. Trump, a professor at M.I.T. and a well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items in OAP custody.[29] After a three-day investigation, Trump’s report concluded that there was nothing which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands, stating:
“[Tesla’s] thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.[172]”
Returning to the above “Occam’s Razor” theme, while the academics and theoretical thinkers among us have made and continue to make great contributions to this world, there are times when folks having PRACTICAL and REAL WORLD experience and skills are needed.
We have just emerged from 8 years of a presidency dominated by folks who lived in some far off theoretical realm and paid scant attention to human nature and the world as it IS, but who attempted to force the world to become some sort of Utopia where, because of their superior intellect, THEY would run OUR lives.
Fortunately, enough of us understood the fallacy and impracticality of that and have replaced them with some folks who grasp that the world and we humans are not sufficiently PERFECTIBLE to live in some command and control Utopia but will, Lord willing, somehow muddle through if left largely alone and free.
We have swapped the complex and incorrect academic view of the idea of America for a simpler, freer, PRACTICAL and CORRECT view of the idea of America the Founders sought to achieve here.
If you believe I’m wrong, you apparently have never explored the thoughts of one Thomas Jefferson on the subject. If you’re curious, you can find them in this 6 minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI