The jelly bean jar theory

 For those of you that have not heard about the jelly bean jar, the theory goes as follows.  A couple puts a jelly bean in the jar each time they have sex the first year they are married.  After year one, they start removing a jelly bean each time they have sex.  The theory goes that most couples will never empty the jar, even if they remain married for the rest of their lives.

There are different versions of this theory, depending on the starting point, either first year of marriage or from when  the couple starts being intimate.  No matter what flavor you prefer, the conclusion is the same, frequency declines at a very steep rate very quickly.

Ray Romano has a completely enjoyable comedy skit about this.  Ray and his wife had twins and their lives got very busy very quickly.  Jump to 4:28 if you want to go directly to his monologue about sex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7od8pR0RvI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

In his comedy show, Ray will never empty the jar.  His comedic sexual life seems to play out along the lines of gender cliches, performance anxieties and other misconceptions. He is an endearing character.  Everyone loves Raymond, even though he always gets in trouble by not being direct and by trying to "manage" the people around him.

In real life, Ray has four kids with his wife. I saw them being interviewed. They were very direct and respectful with each other and they seemed to enjoy each other's company completely .  Ray and his wife would look at each other and you could tell they were exchanging impressions, there was a lot of non verbal communication going on between the two of them.  A very attuned couple.  You cannot underestimate  how much marriage is just an exercise in communication.  Life long direct, simple, non manipulative communication. These guys get it.

In his comedy show, Ray can moan about how full his jar is. In real life, I think these two are going to be fine, no matter how many jelly beans they still have left.

Stay hungry my friends.


 

Zero Dark Thirthy

My wife was eight months pregnant with my youngest son on 9/11.  That morning, I called her from work and told her not to turn on the TV.  My sister-in-law was in NYC that day for a training session, but we did not know exactly where.  We could not get through to her cell phone, but we learned from another family member that her training was twenty blocks away from ground zero.

9/11 defines the world we live in nowadays.  This senseless act of violence set off the global war on terror and more than a decade of tremendous human suffering.  It also was the starting point of the new, more unstable, financial dominoes world.  This single event changed the course of history for the whole world for the worse.

The movie Zero Dark Thirty depicts the investigation that led to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Maya, a very young CIA analyst is the main character, a slight built, redhead american woman.  She looks like someone that grew up in a nice little house in a pretty suburban neighborhood. From the perspective of someone like Osama bin Laden, that is the last person on earth to be afraid of.  A fragile female brought up in a self indulgent and corrupt culture could not possibly be a threat.

Maya, in my personal opinion, fits the profile of a nerd.  Nerds are peaceful people that would rather live in their own heads, pursuing the solution to intellectual problems.  Maya made finding Bin-Laden her sole goal in life.  She did this with the complete single mindlessness that nerds can display.  No significant other, no friends, all work no play. One goal in mind.  Not the healthiest approach to life, true.

Maya bravely went down the deepest, darkest rabbit hole anyone could imagine. She maintained an insane level of intensity for a decade. Her focus on the task generated a force-field around her that not even the toughest men in the CIA could resist. The Navy SEAL(s) respected her commitment and saw her as a fellow warrior. These guys did not judge the book by the cover.

Terrorists and other psychopaths hold binary views on the value of a human beings.  Their us vs. them is so intense that they think it is OK to dispose of  worthless "thems".  But it is as if the universe is playing a subtle practical joke on the bad guys. Hitler had to see black athletes win Olympic gold at the Berlin Games.  Bin Laden was brought down by a woman.  Poetic justice.