February 2022: 19th Anniversary Letter - Part II

 

There was a Facebook post a few weeks ago.  It asked people to respond to a simple question:  An animal, besides a dog, that you’ve been chased by?  I am equally likely to pass up these kinds of posts as I am to comment on them.  This one intrigued me.

I started thinking if I have ever been chased by an animal other than a dog.  I couldn’t think of an instance.  Such is the consequence of urban and suburban living all my life.  Our house in Connecticut was the most rustic place I have ever lived.  In our time there I had seen deer, skunks, racoons, pheasants, rabbits, bats, wild turkeys, ground hogs, hawks, bats, coyotes, guinea hens, possums, copperhead snakes, and others.  My wife was once chased by a racoon there.  Though a chase was not involved, I did have a memorable encounter with an animal.  It was like the second time I visited the house after we bought.  I decided to walk around the house and survey the grounds.  I went into the backyard and came face-to-face with the most magnificent buck I have ever seen.  It was the only buck I had ever seen.  But it was magnificent.  It was big, fully antlered with a large swath of white fur on the front of its neck.  We surprised each other.  He snorted and with a quick startled shifting of all his hooves at once, set himself into an amazing stance, almost exactly like The Hartford logo. We stared at each other for a long second or six, and then he bolted quickly and effortlessly into the wood.  In the seventeen years we lived there, I would see many does and fawns but never saw another that buck again.

I was in a most philosophical mood having just lost a dear friend a week earlier.  When a close friend or family member passes on, we, or at least I, tend to get more philosophical about life than might be our norm.  An animal, besides a dog, that I’ve been chased by?  Well, as I never had been chased by anything but a dog, I left this comment:  The grizzled nasty wolverine of my own expectations.

Well clearly as a proud graduate and avid fan of the University of Michigan, the wolverine was the animal for this role.  They have a reputation of being ferocious and tenacious in both protecting themselves and bringing down their prey.  I am not sure why I chose the words “grizzled” and “nasty.”  They simply popped into my head as I was writing the post.  I think they were for effect.

Am I chased by my own expectations?  Sure I am.  I imagine many people are.  Some of us fulfill them while others are tortured by them.  Our own expectations can drive us, make us perfectionists, or any imaginable form of stressed out.  The relentless pursuit of perfection may be a great tagline for Lexus but only applies to a small number of us humans. 

We must have expectations.  We have to have dreams.  It is a wonderful part of life to have expectations, goals, dreams, and ambitions.  These move us to strive and to accomplish.  When sane, motivated, gifted, and well-intentioned people fulfill their expectations, our world is enriched and moves forward. 

So, is my being chased by own expectations a good or bad thing?

It is good.  The bar of my expectations moves up and down as time passes and my sense of self changes with the circumstances that happen in life.  In my previous post, I referred to the concept of Opportunist Randomness.  My expectations bend and otherwise adapt flexibly to the opportunities as they avail themselves in a seemingly random manner.  They bend and adapt to the impact of other random events and influences.

Sense of self?  Sure, I continue to learn what I like and don’t like.  I continue to realize what I am good at and may never be good at.  I continue to realize what the limitations of my skills.  Maybe most importantly, I continue to realize and understand the gap between my ego and my ambition… if this even makes

So, while my expectations have propelled me along, I must focus on the ground covered and the accomplishments rather than what remains unfinished.  Have I achieved everything I expected exactly as I envisioned?  Of course not, but good enough in most of the dimensions and there is more to do.

I will admit, the grizzled nasty wolverine image was for the Facebook post. I will stick with the wolverine for old alma mater.  As for the grizzled and nasty… not so much.

February 2022: 19th Anniversary Letter

 

This month marks the 19^th Anniversary since I started this writing project. 

Back in 2004, it began as a monthly e-letter.  I was inspired to do so by the monthly legal letters sent out by the well-known Philadelphia born and Paris based attorney, Aram J. Kevorkian.  He started a monthly letter in 1978.  He sent to clients and friends for 23 years until he passed away in December of 2003 at the age of 73.  A friend had sent me copies of a few of letters and his obituary. 

I had embarked on a daily writing project that I started in June of 2002 on my birthday with the intent to documenting my 50^th Year.  I envisioned a humorous and insightful book.  But that is not the way it turned out.  It is hard to be insightful.  It is harder to be humorous.  It is hardest of all to be both.  Learning about Aram Kevorkian’s monthly letter resonated with me and was an inspiration to start my own monthly letter. 

Kevorkian’s mailing list for his letter was up to 3,000 people before his passing.  It was something special.  From his obituary in the New York Times: 

Considered by many of his readers to be a sort of modern-day Montesquieu, Mr. Kevorkian filled his newsletter with observations like these: ''Many French laws never go into effect, whether because they require implementing decrees that are never issued, or because they are repealed or amended before they take effect, or simply because they are so silly that they are not applied.''

I remember my first e-letter made its way into the hands of a friend of Aram Kevorkian's who was an avid reader his newletter.  A mutual friend of ours forwarded it saying I was embarking on a similar project.  Kevorkian’s friend responded that he was doubtful I or anyone could match the depth and wit of The Kevorkian Newsletter.  I was not upset or offended.  In fact, I was in total agreement.  I was very impressed with Kevorkian’s writing and intellect.  I simply liked the idea of a monthly e-letter.  That was the good idea I took from The Kevorkian Newsletter.

As for the subject matter and style, there is no way it could be the same.  We are two different people.  Our writing styles are our own.  His letter was began as a legal letter but expanded to related topics.  My e-letter, which became a blog in 2009, is much more varied in subject matter, some might call mine unfocused.  I like the word eclectic myself.  My dear friend, Ara, refers to it a Seinfeld Blog… a blog about nothing.  I am actually proud of that moniker as well and refer to it as a “blog about nothing” myself in these very pages.  I am not about to rename it, however.  I am happy with This Side of Fifty and the subtitle, A Monthly Letters of Musings and Meanderings, which captures the “blog about nothing” notion quite nicely.

I opened up my February 2008:  Anniversary Letter with a notion that I believe I coined and had forgotten about until today:  Opportunistic Randomness.  It is an intriguing concept, to me, that has defined of my corporate career, my musical avocation, and this writing project as well.  I have never been good at planning and completing long term projects despite the fact that I now actually teach project management to others.  Instead, random opportunity followed me or rather opened doors in front of me as my career developed.  I was astute enough to realize when those doors were open and walk through them.

I never met Aram Kevorkian.  I have appreciated his writing over the years.  I wish I had had the pleasure of meeting him.  In my February 2007:  The Year Anniversary Letter, I wrote about Aram and a lovely afternoon I spent with his daughters Corinne and Anoush at Corinne’s Connecticut home.

More to follow.

More of a Crumble than a Ramble

 

The other day I arrived at school at 6:40 am.  The building where my 8 am class is not open until 7.  I tried my id card on the keypad to no avail.  I tried even though I already knew that I was not authorized to enter that building off-hours.  So, not having had my morning coffee, I walked a few blocks to the Starbucks to get a double espresso.  In a usual lack of willpower, I ordered something sweet to go with the coffee.  I opted for a piece of the coffee cake.  I sat in a corner of the shop and sipped the coffee and ate the coffee cake.

Growing up, my mother would get an Awrey’s coffee cake that had icing, raisons, and crumbles now and again.  I probably got the coffee cake because I was in a nostalgic mood that morning and I can’t remember the last time I had a piece of coffee cake.  As I sat there reminiscing, I noted that the Starbuck’s coffee cake was more of a cake then the bready Awrey’s version.  The Starbuck’s coffee cake had no raisons, no icing, and the top was all crumbs which were darker brown and finer grained compared to the Awrey’s.

I got to thinking about the crumbs, the crumble, on top of coffee cake.  Where do they come from?  Were there crumble trees? Crumble plants?  Are these crumbs a fruit?  A vegetable?  A nut?  How were they harvested?  How were they processed?  Are they native to the US or from some far off place like Mexico or Belize where vanilla beans come from?  Perhaps it was a sweet, rare fungus.  Maybe the crumble is mined like copper in Antifagasta or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The caffeine stimulation kicked in and I laughed at these silly theories.  I reaoned that I was in a nostalgic mood relieving the coffee cake part of my childhood and thus I came up with the kinds of theories I would have conjured up when I was six years old.  Bottom line?  I really had no clue what crumbles were or how they are made.

I did not give it another thought until my drive home after teaching my two morning classes.  I still had no idea how the crumbles were made.  And then a lightening bolt thought shot across my consciousness: “Duh, just do a Google it.”  That first thought was quickly followed by another thought in my maternal grandmother’s voice, “how stupid I could be?”  Not surprisingly, the tasty crumbs are a baked good.  Here is a recipe slightly edited from damneddelicious.net.

 

For the crumb topping

1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

 

Combine sugars, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk in melted butter. Add flour and stir using a rubber spatula just until moist. Spread out mixture on parchment paper to dry until ready to use.

 

After the cake batter is evenly poured into a baking dish, sprinkle with the dry crumble topping, using your fingertips to gently press the crumbs into the batter.  Bake the cake.

 

Sugar, brown sugar, and butter, no wonder the crumbs taste so good.  The mix these ingredients with flour until there were dry and then baked atop the cake.  No wonder they crumble so well.

Now that this mystery is cleared up, I am inspired to solve more.

Valentine's Advice

 

Amazon.com

There is an old Valentine’s Day story I wanted to relate today.  I thought I had already typed it up and shared it.  But I wasn’t sure.  As I get older, I do not want to be one of the geezers that tells young people the same stories over and over again.   The only redeeming value of doing that is to teach the young’uns to be tolerant and patient with the elderly.  I scoured my blog searching Valentine, Valentines, and Valentine’s all with and without the Day to see if I had written about it before.  I invested an hour doing this including several random distractions in this and have concluded that I have not posted this wee bit of personal Valentine’s Day personal history. 

This happened in the early 1980s when I was a graduate student at Wayne State University in Detroit.  I was working on a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.  Mostly, I took classes on campus in downtown Detroit, but I recall taking one class that was being offered in the suburbs at one of the first satellite campus centers.  I do not recall the class nor the location.  I do not recall it being one of the less analytic classes in my program.  Perhaps it was a class on Product Liability. 

As typical of the times, the class was all male and everyone except me had an engineering undergraduate degree.  All of us were working and still in shirt, ties, and even the ubiquitous pocket protectors having come to the night class directly from work.  Maybe there were fifteen students in the class and, again, if memory serves me correctly, at least ten of them were GM employees.  We were all early in our careers in our mid to late 20s.  We would chit-chat before class and during the one break in our three-hour class session.  After class, everyone was brain dead and just wanted to get home.

It was Valentine’s Day and we had class.  During the break, the conversation quickly gravitated to Valentine’s Day and what we bought our wives or girlfriends to celebrate the holiday of love.  I believe the vast majority of us were married which was, again, a sign of the times.  The gifts were as you might expect.  People talked about flowers, candy, and even jewelry.  A few bought candy and flowers.  Some talked about buying a bouquet of their wife’s favorite flower.  It was a pleasant conversation. 

One fellow, a tall athletic looking fellow who you would easily believe played basketball in high school, chimed in toward the tail end of the conversation.  He said that he and his wife were newlyweds.  They were saving to buy a house and said they had agreed NOT to buy each other Valentine’s Day Gifts.  Those of us that had a bit more experience were shaking our heads.  I blurted out, “Whatever you do, stop anyplace that is open on the way home, buy anything a candy bar, a flower, or whatever and a card.”  Everyone else chimed in affirming my advice and warning him that this agreement was folly, and his wife would be some combination of devastated and angry that he did not violate “the agreement.”  He insisted several times, “You don’t understand, we agreed to this.”  Everyone responded, “No, please trust us, you don’t understand.”  We all went back to class knowing he was probably not going to take our advice.  After class, some of us took another shot at helping out this fellow but he simply restated his “You don’t understand, we agreed…” rationale.

The next week in class, someone asked him how it went.  He said, “It was horrible.  You guys were right.  She was a crying and did not believe that I didn’t even buy a card.  When I brought up ‘But, we agreed not to get gifts this year,’ she cried even harder.”  He should have taken our advice… but sometimes there are lessons you can only fully appreciate and learn by experience.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

On Online Gambling

 

animationxpress.com

Is it just me or has there been a noticeable increase for online gambling site advertisements both on TV and social media?  It has been noticeable enough for me to blog about it.

Gambling and games of chance are a form of entertainment.  I have enjoyed it on rare occasions.  Most of my gambling was done in the Dominican Republic because there was both a casino and a fine cigar shop in the hotel in which I was staying in.  I would first buy a Montecristo #2 from the cigar shop and head to the casino.  There I would get a roll of quarters which was 40 quarters.  I would then go to a video poker machine, sit down, and light up my cigar.  (Yes, smoking was allowed in the casino, at least when I was infrequently frequenting the place).  I would play video poker, a quarter at a time, and enjoy the gaming and the cigar.  I would play until I ran out of quarters or won enough to buy another cigar for another evening.  That was it.  I gambled for small stakes, with set limits of gains or losses for when I would cease play.  The most I could lose was $10 the cost of a roll of quarters.  It was indeed relaxing and entertaining.

It should be noted that, now and then, I like to play video poker and blackjack on my phone.  I have apps that cost nothing and for which there is zero real wagering involved.  The are basically video games that emulate the odds of playing in a casino.  It is entertaining and costs nothing.  Sadly, unless I am doing this outside in nice weather, there are no cigars involved. 

Having a degree in mathematical statistics which includes courses in mathematical probabilities, I known the odds, which are the ratio of the probability of winning to the probability of losing, are in favor of the house.  The odds of casino games are never in the favor of the customer.  Casinos, brick and mortar or online, exist to make money not to give it away.  They have to give some of it away, that is have customers win, because otherwise people will think the games are all rigged and stop coming.  They are rigged but not so obviously to most of the players.

Per a 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal, “How Often Do Gamblers Really Win?:”

On any given day, the chances of emerging a winner aren't too bad—the gamblers won money on 30% of the days they wagered. But continuing to gamble is a bad bet. Just 11% of players ended up in the black over the full period, and most of those pocketed less than $150.

 

The skew was even more pronounced when it came to heavy gamblers. Of the top 10% of bettors—those placing the largest number of total wagers over the two years—about 95% ended up losing money, some dropping tens of thousands of dollars. Big losers of more than $5,000 among these heavy gamblers outnumbered big winners by a staggering 128 to 1.

My Dad more than once told me that “Gambling is more addictive than drugs.”  I have witnessed at least five acquaintances who became compulsive gamblers to the point of destroying their marriages, losing their homes, and their livelihoods.   Per the Mayo Clinic:

Gambling can stimulate the brain's reward system much like drugs or alcohol can, leading to addiction. If you have a problem with compulsive gambling, you may continually chase bets that lead to losses, hide your behavior, deplete savings, accumulate debt, or even resort to theft or fraud to support your addiction.

In the United States, gambling has seen periods and locales where it is lawful and and others where it is illegal.  In 1917, the same forces that drove prohibition at the same time strove to make gambling illegal.  In both cases they succeeded. The prohibition on alcohol end abruptly.  The relaxation of the prohibition on gambling has been more gradual and still ongoing.

In the case of both gambling and alcohol, the consequence of prohibition made both industries operate on the black market.  Gambling has been considered a form of entertainment and been classified as a vice.  When it was a vice (defined by Oxford Languages via a Google search as “criminal activities involving prostitution, pornography, or drugs”), it was prone to be run by organized crime.  A racket is an illegal business run organized crime for profits.  Rackets often profit off of the vices of their “customers.”  From a gambling perspective, rackets have included underground casinos, the numbers game, and sports betting. 

With the inception of state lotteries, the government essentially took over the numbers racket.  Some states have allowed sports gaming which have set the stage for sports books like FanDuel and others to make inroads on the bookies.  The creation of Las Vegas, presumably by the legit side of organized crime, opened the door for Atlantic City, Indian casinos, riverboat casinos, and finally casinos in major cities like Detroit and Chicago.  The rise of the online casinos and sport books is the latest manifestation of this trend.

So, now we are making it easier for people to gamble wherever they are.  It is certainly a growing industry per Statistica.  Worldwide sales for online gambling was $59.9 billion in 2019.  In 2020, it was $66.7 billion.  At an annual growth of 11.4% a year, the projection is $92.9 in 2023.  Total worldwide gambling revenues are projected to be $592.7 billion in 2023 per playtoday.co.  Which means, in 2023, online gambling could be 15.6% of the entire industry.  With this kind of growth potential, it is no wonder they are advertising a lot.

It is funny how we view and in which aspects we take actions to enhance social welfare.  What was a vice is no longer a vice?  Yet, the reasons they were vices still remain the ruin of individuals and their families.  Governments have wrested revenues from racketeers.  We freely allow gambling to grow almost freely knowing it will lead some percentage of society to ruin.  Where do we draw the line?  Should we even be worrying about drawing the line?

The whole oxycodone debacle was basically a legalized drug racket until it got out of hand because so many people died.  The company and family were prosecuted.  No one so far is going to jail.  Should we legalize oxycodone and sell it over the counter?  How about heroin?  Fentanyl?  Most would say no.  Destroying families with these kinds of drugs is bad and should be illegal while destroying families via gambling is OK.  Why? Is it just a numbers game?  Or is it just what Professor Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School called “orthodoxy of the present” in today’s New York Times.   

Of course, there is no easy answer.

Me?  I will continue to play video blackjack and poker as the mood occasionally strikes me without wagering a cent.

Math Woes

 

thecomicstrips.com

As an Associate Professor of Operations Management in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management, I teach a few courses that are analytic.  That means they require math.  One thing that I have come to learn and accept is that the students that I teach have a wide range of math skills or preparedness.  This situation at the university I currently teach at is not unique.  I have taught at three other colleges since 2010 and I experienced the same phenomenon. 

The easy thing would be to simply say “kids these days” can’t do math or can’t do arithmetic.  Many do jump to this conclusion and, basically, they blame the students. 

It is not that simple.  From my perspective there are two factors that should be considered.

First, the percentage of high school graduates that enroll in college has gone up 24 points since 1960.   Per admissionly.com, 69.1% of high school graduates enrolled colleges and universities in 2018 versus 45.1% in 1960.  We used to take the 45.1% of the students most prepared for college which made them, more or less, the 45.1% most math prepared students in the country.  Now, we take a much wider portion of the students and thus a much wider swath of math preparedness are entering colleges and universities.

Secondly, we have attempted to modernize our instruction of mathematics since I was in fifth grade.  Arithmetic was deemphasized and focused more on what they called “New Math” in the 1960s.  It is my contention that it was misguided effort, and we stumbled for a number of years until regaining our footing sometime in the 1980s.  Note that this is more my casual observation and impression than any kind of definitive study. 

Moving forward, we stratified our math education in schools via track.  In high school, took advanced placement testing out of calculus when entering college.  I believe the students in the advanced placement track are competitive with college students around the world in terms of math.  The other track or two did not prepare students well.  Too many stopped at Algebra I or II and come to college not having taken any math for one maybe two years. 

Put these two factors together and we have lesser math preparedness at institutions where I have been teaching. 

I taught in China for two summers before in 2016 and 2017.  The math preparedness of the students I taught there was much better.  All the students had taken calculus.  It allowed me to teach the same courses I teach here, like microeconomics or operations management where optimization is involved, more effectively.  I have maybe one or two students that know calculus in the classes I teach here.

This concern of mine should be a national priority.  We have been talking about it and trying a variety of solutions with no avail.  Clearly, our tactics do not work.  We should emulate other countries that do it better than us.  We need parents to push their kids and we need to use technology to enhance how we teach math.  We have been floundering for decades with this.

We need teachers that inspire students, entertain, and push them.  My model for this kind of teacher is Jaime Escalante featured in the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver.  I was certain we had to replicate and roll-out his method and approach thirty-four years ago.  We still have not figured out how to do this.

Ideas Abound

 

CNN    

In the past week or so, I read that this was to be the last season for the children’s animated series Arthur.  I didn’t even read the article, I just glanced at the headline.  I am vaguely aware of the show.  I remember thinking when I read the headline that it was about a mouse.

Just this morning I tuned in to CNN before starting my workday.  There was a segment on Marc Brown the creator of Arthur.  I was finishing up a cup of coffee and figured I would just watch the segment.   I was surprised that Arthur was actually an aardvark even though in the segments they ran during the interview I still think Arthur looked more like a mouse.

Marc Brown was born in 1946 in Erie, PA.  His grandmother would tell stories to Brown and his sisters.  She also encouraged Brown to take up and excel at drawing.  That encouragement took hold to the point that Brown went to the Cleveland Institute of Art where he studied graphic design.  He ended up at Houghton-Mifflin in Boston illustrating textbooks part time and take a variety of jobs.   He landed a job teaching art at a junior college which went bankrupt before he finished teaching one semester.

At this point, he decided to write and illustrate children’s books.  He was looking for an animal character that was unique, something that hadn’t been used before.  I guess he never made it past aardvark in his alphabetical search.

On the Marc Brown Studios website:

Arthur: the little aardvark with a big agenda. 

Arthur is in the business of trying to make children successful. We are always on the lookout for issues that are important to children and families and presenting them through books and television, in ways that are helpful, instructive, and entertaining.

Back in July on CNN, screenwriter Kathy Waugh of the Arthur TV series said, “Arthur is the longest-running kids animated series in history and is known for teaching kindness, empathy and inclusion through many groundbreaking moments to generations of viewers."  Brown penned 27 popular Arthur books between from 1976 and 2011.  The TV series has 251 episodes and ran for 25 years. 

I am truly mystified that I never read on the Arthur books to my children.  I have no clue if we even had any.  Judging from the popularity of books, we must have had a few.  It is less of surprise that I have never seen the TV show, my children were too old when it debuted, and my grandchildren were too young.

Learning about Arthur and the issues the books and TV series addressed has been eye opening.  The themes and sensitive handling of issues for young children is very similar to My Roger’s Neighborhood.

In his CNN interview this morning, the commentator asked Marc Brown where he got his ideas.  Brown said it was a very good question that a lot of children ask him as well.  He said that the ideas are everywhere, they are all around us.  One just has to be aware and be receptive them.  I loved it because it is the exact same thing I tell folks when they ask me how I come up with ideas and themes to write about.  Certainly, Marc Brown is infinitely more successful, both critically and financially, than my little blog will ever be.  But I was delighted to have this in common with him.  Keep your eyes and ears open, be receptive and the ideas and themes will come to you.  It is an amazing world to witness, figure out, and write about.

Steve Inskeep

 

New York Post

I listen to National Public Radio (NPR).  The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR’s Morning Edition are my primary source of news.  I have been a steady listener of Morning Edition since its inception on November 5, 1979.  I listen during my morning commutes.  Morning Edition is thus my longest running source of news.

Bob Edwards was the host of Morning Edition from the first day.  I was really used to his style.  To me he was the voice of Morning Edition.  In 2004, NPR wanted to “freshen up” the shop.  The let Edwards go.  He was replaced by Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne.  In researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that the change from Edwards to Inskeep took place that long ago.  In my mind, it was like three or four years ago, not eighteen! 

At first, I thought Steve Inskeep was just OK.  He was no Bob Edwards, but he dutifully read the news and adequately handled the hosting.  Fast forward a quick eighteen years and today I really appreciate Steve Inskeep

Why do I appreciate Inskeep?  Well, I used to him as I was used to Bob Edwards back in the day.  Furthermore, he has grown nicely in his years of hosting.  Inskeep, 53 years old, started with Morning Edition when he just 33.  Born in Carmel, Indiana and educated at Morehead State University in Kentucky, Steve Inskeep’s delivery, tone, and demeanor is very even keeled.  He seems like a pretty calm and patient fellow.  It is what you would expect from someone from Midwest.  Furthermore, he seems to me to be more of Heartland Midwesterner than a Rust Belt one.  He is unpretentious and seems easy-going.  There is something familiar about him, you know, the king of guy you could have a great conversation with over a cup of coffee. 

That is pretty close to how it is driving to work.  I have a cup of coffee in my de rigueur Yeti mug, driving to work, listening NPR.  Except it is a very one-sided conversation.  Steve is doing most of the talking.  He covers the news in a way that lets me come to my own conclusions.  I cannot say the same about the TV news networks:  MSNBC, Fox News, and even CNN.  Critics of NPR think they are very liberal.  I think the centrist to, maybe, slightly left of center. 

In the past few years, Inskeep has been a wee bit more edgy especially when it comes to interviews.  For the most part, his questions are straight forward and are served up in what I have laid out as his even-keeled and easy-going manner.  If the interviewee tries to avoid answering or pivots away from a sensitive or touchy question, Inskeep has gotten very deft at not letting them do that.  He is like a super smart, quick witted, agile, and impressively passive-aggressive.  When the subject pivots, Inskeep moves to block the move.  If they retreat, he is there to stop them. He does this in such a way that he very often gets a very thoughtful answer from the person he is interviewing.  He doesn’t corner them, it is more like he coaxes and nudges them, and gives them time, to formulate a thoughtful, if measured, answer to his question.  It is truly impressive. 

It doesn’t always work out this way.  On January 12 of this year, he was interviewing former President Trump.  About 7 minutes into the interview that was a bit of chess game between them, Inskeep was asking Trump if it were true that he won’t endorse candidates for the midterms unless they agree to push Trump’s case on the 2020 Presidential Election.  Trump gave a Trumpian answer and abruptly said bye and hung-up.  Steve was a little surprised.