 I'm Dan Bigleaf, think so, Nick Dane. And I am the host of Figments on Reality. This is a new show. And let me tell you, I'm a little nervous about this because it's different than Figments, the power of imagination in that I'll offer commentary on topics of the day. I intend my observations to be apolitical. I'll explain that a little more. And really what I want to do is provide not my views for you to adopt, but some perspective that may inform your views. I really want to stay away from politics even though that's kind of impossible. In fact, when I use the word apolitical, my journalist wife said, there's no such thing. Actually, she said, there is a school of thought that says everything has politics and you can't have apolitical views. If they're views, there's a political component. And of course, she's right. But the real key is I have an aversion to politics because these days they tend to lead to vitriol, to harsh, caustic language or criticism to all the discord that is so present in our world today. And I want to stay away from that. I just want to share what I think I've learned and talk to you about my observations and then take them or leave them. And if you take them or leave them, please let me know what you take and what you leave at infoatphase-one.com. That's infoatphase-one.com. You'll see it on the screen many times, but I really would like to eventually evolve pigments on reality into a direct exchange with viewers, maybe a call in, zoom in sort of the thing. I don't know if I'll be able to do that, but I really want to hear your views. And guess what? I know I'm not completely right. In some cases, I may not be that right at all. And you can tell me that and I'll take it well. Why listen to me talk about the events of today because I'm smarter than everybody else? No, that's not it. In fact, it's quite the contrary. I have to study things and think about stuff to figure out what I believe and what my real view is. Extensively, you saw those two definitions on the screen before. Several times a day, I'll actually Google the online dictionary to get the definition of some pretty common words, just to make sure I'm using them correctly. It takes me a while to figure it out. And I'll share some of the things I think I've figured out later in the show. I do have a background that's been blessed with rich experience and broad travels that served in the Air Force for a long time, 33 years, got to fly fighters and other planes and had a variety of jobs. I do have some combat experience so I've seen the ugliness of war. Then I worked in the defense industry as a business executive and ran a US Executive Education Institute here in Hawaii. And I think all of that along with traveling to over 70 countries gave me some stuff to talk about. And I hope you'll agree. Part of that experience led to an epiphany in reason and planning. And that was when I was the deputy commander of the US Pacific Command, I think ordered here in Hawaii now known as Indo-Pacific Command. As the deputy, I was a three star general in the Air Force and part of the matriculation was to get a briefing on our operational contingency plans. So the planners brought me the latest update to one of these very thick documents of the operational plan to tell me what they changed and what they'd updated it. And planners, and I say this with tremendous respect in the military are some of our smartest guys, Engel. They're strategists, they're deep thinkers. They capture what they think and recommend in great volume and they're very important points of departure for when those plans are put in to action because generally something bad has happened. Our planning construct in the US military looks like this. So as you can see, it's planning for worst case. It begins in a status quo that's so dangerous. We have to try to control that status quo. And as things get a little hotter, deter an enemy from taking aggressive action. But when things do hit the fan, we have to seize the initiative and then win in war. That's the worst case. We're going in the wrong direction here. And then after the war, you have to clean up your mess and if Iraq has shown us anything, it's how difficult that is. So I looked at this plan and listened to these brilliant planners, try to educate the not so brilliant fighter pilot and was struck by the single direction, being the direction we didn't want to go to, to Gilean. So I asked them, dude, where's the phase minus one plan? Cause we go phase zero, phase one, et cetera, all in the wrong direction. And they looked at me like I had two heads because there is no phase minus one plan. I thought, well, there should be. Because even though in the normal planning structure, you have speed bumps and off ramps and other ways that you're trying to keep from getting too far down that chain, there's no conscious planning for fundamentally changing the status quo that exists that makes the plan necessary. So it seemed to me that if you didn't plan for something better, you'd only get to a better place accidentally. I think there are some examples of phase minus one thinking in history. I'm going to give one, not a political endorsement but having read and listened to most of what President Reagan wrote and said, I believe that the demise, the end of the Soviet Union without war was phase minus one oriented. You wanted to change the status quo and we can debate how much he did and how much events did and how much it collapsed inward. But the thinking was there. This is an unacceptable status quo where we're facing each other with concepts like mutually assured destruction, holy moly. And we've got to do better than that. We've got to have a better case. So phase minus one is the name of my little company, phase minus one LLC. I'd like to call it an unintentional nonprofit. I meant to make money, but maybe someday, probably not. And by the way, Think Tech Hawaii host this show is a nonprofit, a real intentional nonprofit and they do great work. At the end of the show, I'll ask you to support them because they put on a variety of very diverse hosts and shows. They have a small paid staff but everybody else including me is unpaid and we do it because we're trying to make the world and the community better. So I hope you'll support them. So phase minus one is how I look at things. How can you make things better? You've got to add status quo. How do you improve it and not just control that status quo? And that feeds my obsession with North Korea. I am obsessed with North Korea. I think about it all the time. I speak about it. I recently published an article on Asia Global Online, I'll share a link to that in a bit because I spent four years in Korea and I saw the potential of South Korea in those four years and it's remarkable. And when you look across the border at the stark contrast and the tragedy of the human condition in North Korea, how can I not be obsessed about that? The obsession was fueled by a book that I highly encourage you to read and I've mentioned this in many papers and other interviews. It's called Nothing to End the Ordinary Life in North Korea by Barbara Demick. Nothing to End the Ordinary Life in North Korea. And it haunts me. So I'd like to do something. Back to my deputy time at US Pacific and in 2007, there was massive flooding in the southeastern part of North Korea, the militarily least significant part of the country in the very impoverished but with population there, lots of people and because of this flooding, most of them were isolated already, some degrees starving and certainly suffering, now nature was doing its best to deny them any access to food. And I propose that the United States offered in North Korea to drop humanitarian rations to them as we had to people suffering in Afghanistan and Pakistan after earthquake interact during the war. And it got somewhere in the US government, eventually by the time the bureaucracy could deal with it, it didn't happen. But I wanted to change the dialogue between US and North Korea and the paradigm and maybe get to a more peaceful place while doing the right thing. So as many of you may know, last Friday, President Moon and Biden met in Washington, DC and talked about, among other things, North Korea. And I wish them well. I know they're both interested in it. They have kind of diverging views and perspectives. The President Biden appointed a new US envoy, a special representative on North Korea matters and came to be the lead for North Korea matters. He's had that job before and here's my wish for this administration's policy, not from a political perspective again, is that I hope you'll consider things that haven't been tried before because conventional wisdom has failed. And we have to take some risks and not just think but act outside the box. And it's the right thing to do. We'll make the region safer, America safer and more importantly, someday we have to alleviate unnecessary suffering of the common North Korean citizens. Understand that I am not giving Kim Jong-un or their regime a pass, but the suffering has gone on too long and is too bad and we should do something about it. If you wanna learn more about that and think you can tolerate 54 minutes of me talking on this, you can find Asia Global Online. I did an interview after writing this paper with Alejandro Reyes, a guy who had been online talking about issues like this before. My article that appeared in Asia Global Online recommended vaccines, the US provide vaccines to enough to inoculate the entire North Korean population definitely outside the box. And the idea is they needed the populations at risk and once again, you have a chance to reset that. That didn't come up in their talk, but maybe it will get somebody's attention a little more on that in a bit. So the next topic I'd like to talk about is science and I of course have a definition of science because I do definition. The state of knowing, knowledge, who you know. It's a journey, it's not just, it's not a tweet. One doesn't get real knowledge from reading a short blurb on it or reading one side of an issue. And it's very difficult to read anything or listen to anything about COVID-19 in particular. Without somebody saying follow the science, not that easy. Well, maybe it is for you, but it's certainly not easy for me because when I look at the myriad of statistics relevant to COVID-19, I can't sort out science and get beyond the fact that they're just a lot of numbers and those numbers are not equal, not just numerically but in terms of how they're discovered. So we can look at the number of positive cases but how is the population tested? Are they testing the same way in Illinois as they are in Hawaii or Bangladesh as the Bhutan or how are they, how do you relate these? And if you're asking what percentage of people test positive, how do you know what part of the population is tested? So if one locale is testing people who've only demonstrated symptoms or have a contact tracing reason for testing and another is testing far more broadly, well, the positivity rates, pardon me, don't correlate. You can't, aren't a strong basis for comparison. Now, a number that's relevant but still not science is cases that require intensive care. Take an ICU hospital bed and that's relevant because if you exceed the number of beds you have you can't care for your people but it's still not science, it's just a number. And only numbers that I think are getting scientific proof for the effectivity of most vaccines and they are effective and they are safe and the numbers say that and we stop and put any numbers of side effects or post vaccine infection in comparison vaccines work. So please get a vaccine, I'm vaccinated, my family's vaccinated and we've got to get past this. So I hope you'll do that too. Again, not a political view but going up down the trail of COVID vaccines or COVID numbers tells me just how difficult it is to get to a real understanding of the topic and follow the supposed science. And it reminds me of a trip I once took to Bhutan and what you see there is the Bhutan Parotaktsan Temple it's called the Tiger's Nest. First of all, if you can ever get to Bhutan, go there. It's phenomenally beautiful, quite remote between India and China, next to Nepal, but not adjacent. The people are fascinating and wonderful like they are most places if you give them a chance. The food is really spicy, hottest peppers in the world says me, I don't have any science to back that up but I think I still have scars on the roof of my mouth to prove it. A beautiful place, but this temple is like the journey to knowledge. It's a hike of a couple hours, I guess. And it's not particularly grueling but you start out down in a valley and you can see in the distance the Tiger's Nest. And you know that other people are getting there so you can make this hike. But it's a whining hike like looking for and looking at knowledge. You only get glimpses of the temple every so often and like seeking a real answer and really understanding the problem. And I remember it so well because you'd go around a corner and you'd see the temple and boy, I didn't even seem any closer and you'd go further and feel like you must be making progress in there. The temple was still far off in the distance and it just seemed very elusive. And then finally you come over a hill turning to the right on this dirt path and you see the temple and the view that you saw in that picture. And it's right there and you're there, you're going to achieve your goal. Get knowledge, if you will. And no, you're not. Because hidden from you is a valley, a really deep steep valley and you've got to go down a long steep set of stairs and back up the final set of stairs to get to this knowledge. And every time I'm trying to figure something out, I think of that temple and realize that somewhere I've got to go through another valley to make sure that I understand what I think I understand. And that's certainly true on the next topic, figuring out the origins of the COVID-19 virus. And all I'll say is that we're only partway up the hill and we've got to, we, the world community have to make the full journey without excluding any possibility. Human to human, transmission, bats, whatever, from the laboratory, still possible. And there are stories of news today if you check your local online, I guess local is not online, but check your online news source. You'll see that there is new evidence of earlier cases in China that may point to the lab or may point to a cave. We need to know how this started to learn for the future, not necessarily to ascribe blame, but to fully understand so that we're better prepared next time. And we need to do that with a vitriol so prevalent in our world today. And it doesn't help anything. And so I try to stay away from it. And that's part of why I try to stay away from politics, me because it's not me. You'll see a lot of debate in the public forum about people like me, retired generals and admirals, getting into political discussions. Some are political commentators on major news networks, some run for office and some actively support and advocate the views of this candidate or that candidate, this party or that party. And they write letters on certain topics and you won't see me do that. I'm not against them doing that. These are folks who have had remarkable, diverse experiences and by and large are smart and thought and well-intended or they wouldn't have served in their branch of service for so long. But that's not me. I want to know and inform myself first and then try to inform you and then not hold it in that way. It just works better for me. I sleep better at night. And so maybe my last topic, depending on the time available is to talk about learning and grandchildren because I watched my granddaughter Stella go through a nominal learning exercise, that taught her science and perspective at the same time. And I could tell from the video that her parent share was a lot of fun. So Stella, the magnificent of hilarious young four-year-old was studying the solar system and her dad, my son-in-law, fellow fighter pilot, which proves that my daughter didn't really hate me since she married a fighter pilot but also a test pilot and engineer was going to teach her about the solar system. And I'm not sure where they got this idea but they made scale models of the sun and all of the planets. And then to scale, they put them on little sticks or poles out in several people's yards where they must have very accommodating neighbors. And the distances were to scale. So the sun was a lot bigger than everything else but the remarkable thing was, as Stella talked about each planet all the way up to Neptune, she walked a proportional distance between the planets, one to another another. And what I learned is it's a long way to Neptune. What I think she learned is how to relate to science and issues and put them in perspective. And that's what I hope to help you do here on pigments. We won't do Stella's solar system exercise. I'm not sure how you can do that on screen but we'll come back to other issues. Some of the topics I think I want to talk about with you. One is China, Taiwan. I'm concerned and yes, my focus is largely on the Indo-Asia Pacific and I'm concerned about where China is going with regard to Taiwan and I'd like to share why. Again, not to take sides but to say this is a real danger and something that not just Americans but the world should be concerned about. I'd also like to talk about some of my travels and I'm certain as a matter of perspective, one of those that I'll talk about is a visit to Jellyfish Lake in Palau. Gives you a whole new perspective on jellyfish and numbers. I welcome any other ideas that you have. Like I said, it's info at phase-one.com. Info at phase-one.com. This is my first offering. I think it's gone okay but this will be a lot more interesting for both of us if you tell me what we should talk about and then join the conversation. That's what I'd like to have happen eventually. So before I close, it is the fundraising time for this wonderful nonprofit, Think Tech Hawaii. And they bring you both pigments, the power of imagination on alternate Mondays and then starting today on reality. We're not the best shows but there are some great shows on Think Tech Hawaii, go to their website and you'll find them but it can't happen without your support. So I hope you'll make a donation. If you go to thinktechway.com, you'll find a link to donate. And I promise you they'll make good, informative use of your donation. The wonderful organization, please support it. So that's just about a wrap on the first edition of Figments on Reality. I hope you'll join me next week for Figments, The Power of Imagination when Dick Karth, a high school classmate and friend, will tell us how he broke the news to his wife that he bought a race car and what it's like to race on America's great tracks. This will be on the 2nd of June because Memorial Day is a holiday but it's timely because of the Indianapolis 500 race this Memorial Day weekend. So please have a great Memorial Day wherever you are. Let me know what we should talk about. And remember the Memorial Day is when we honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of freedom. And it should be great weekend but also a solemn holiday. So I'll see you next week on Figments on Reality and in two weeks or in Figments, The Power of Imagination and Beck, two weeks from today with the next edition of Figments on Reality. Mahalo, aloha.