Going from mongo-big numbers, down to teentsy-weentsy numbers is always hard to fathom, for such as the Bloggard. But they say a picture is worth a thousand rodeos, so without adoing further, let’s visit some real big and real small pictures …

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida.

After that, move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA, and the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

It’s here: The Universe from big to teentsy.

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

If You Persist, You’ll Win.

That’s it.

In almost every situation, we humans have this one Freedom which we often overlook. It is this: We can try again.

This might not sound like much, but if you think about it, it’s clear this means you have the freedom to keep trying until you succeed.

In other words, when trying something new, it’s common to fail, perhaps repeatedly; that’s how we learn what doesn’t work, and what does.

Probably the commonest cause of “failure” is that the guy stops attempting, and so never gets past the errors and into the winning actions.

This doesn’t mean that you should always keep trying. Sometimes you gotta know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, know when to run. The law of persistance doesn’t say you should persist; it just says that if you do persist, you’ll win.

It raises the question: What does “winning” mean?

The best definition I’ve heard is that if you do what you intend to do, you’ve won. If you intend to walk to the bank, and you walk there, you won. If you intend to not eat chocolate cake, and you don’t eat any, you won.

But once you’ve decided upon your strategy, decided upon what you intend to do, the most powerful mantram you can have, to rekindle your intent, to keep your spirits high, to keep you working through the failures, is this: “If you persist, you’ll win. If you persist, you’ll win. If you persist. you’ll win.”

For these words I thank Ron Cook of St. Louis, in 1967.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Dallas, Texas, 1985: J.B. (who shall remain nameless) was a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, which is a real big dominant daily newspaper, highly profitable because Neiman Marcus (‘Needless Markup’) advertises things such as diamond-studded his and hers gold bathtubs and other things which every home ought to have.

J.B. wrote a regular column, perhaps on food or travel, I don’t remember. But for fun, he began running a weekly column under the pen name Joe Bob Briggs, in which he reviewed Drive-In movies, mostly horror and B-Grade flicks. His Drive-In column was right-wing and red-neck, and insulted any ethnic group faster than Archie Bunker, and he posted orbituaries for every Drive-In closing in America, labled “Communist Alert”, on the theory that the Communists were wiping out the drive-ins.

Needless to say, he was a big hit in Dallas.

This went on, to everybody’s great and mutual satisfaction, for several years. Everybody in Dallas understood that it was all tongue-in-cheek; there is a kind of Texas humor in which you state the most ridiculous things, but completely serious. Any Texan comprehends this kind of humor.

It doesn’t always play other places. I knew the manager of a Sausalito Fine Art gallery, a wiry and know-it-all New Yorker who wrote in anger to Joe Bob, complaining of some disrespectful reference to Italians. Joe Bob published the letter, and answered, “Michael, my reference to lazy dagos was not meant to be offensive to hard-working persons of Italian heritage such as yoursef, but after all, it’s not like I lumped you in with the kikes and wops and greasers.”

Back in Dallas, about that time, Michael Jackson came out with a song called We Are the World. This inspiring song had many famous singers, and the lyric sung of how all men are brothers.

Joe Bob’s column that week, entitled “We Are the Wierd”, managed to insult every ethnic group and minority in the world, one after another, just like the verses of the song, and of course parodied the song and all these popular singers at the same time.

Well, that was the way it was interpreted. (As Joe Bob told me later: “I didn’t insult anybody in the lyrics to the song, but it was perceived that I was making fun of starvin’ African chilluns.”)

An ultimatum was rushed to the newspaper by John Wiley Price, a Dallas County Commissioner, and about 200 of his supporters. And while Joe Bob was in College Station (home of the Aggies), giving a speech for National Library Week, he was fired.

Now in Dallas, there is an alternative weekly called the Dallas Observer. It’s like the San Francisco Guardian or the San Jose Metro; that is, a 3/4-sized left-wing paper, slanted toward entertainment, personals, service journalism, and young folks.

The Dallas Observer immediately offered Joe Bob column space.

That afternoon, Joe Bob walked into the Times-Herald advertising office and purchased a small display ad, which said, “Joe Bob Briggs column can now be found in the Dallas Observer, a weekly, Non-Communist newspaper.”

The prepaid ad ran for one day before being angrily cancelled by Times-Herald management, on the grounds that Joe Bob was calling them Communists. As Joe Bob pointed out in his Dallas Observer column, he’d done no such thing, and then he lambasted them for violations of Freedom of the Press, Truth in Advertising, and the Mann Act.

All of which was funny as hell.

Like so many true stories, this one had a happy ending. The Dallas Observer’s circulation soared. The Dallas Times-Herald — forever referred to as the “Crimes-Herald” and the “High Sherriffs” by Joe Bob — returned to business as usual, slanting the news and peddling advertising.

And Joe Bob went on to bigger things, hosting a show on cable where he presented B-Grade movies with commentary. He’s written books and made videos, and as of this week he appeared to be selling some stuff on Ebay. But he says no.

“It’s not me selling that stuff on eBay,” he explains. “It’s my legions of fans.”

There you have it. Straight from the horse’s mouth. So remember: Communist Alert! Don’t get complacent! As Joe Bob says, “Eternal Vigilence is the Prize of Freedom.” Don’t say it can’t happen here!

I used to tell this identical story to Adrienne twice every year, to her eternal disgust, and so it’s natural to want to share it with you, too.

But since we’ve got hyperlinks on this website, I’ll just refer you to the Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time story.

Lyon Street, San Francisco, 1990: I liked the picture of a camel-colored cashmere sweater. It seemed reasonably-priced in the Lands End catalog, and cashmere does feel so wonderful, so I sent off, and eagerly awaited the mail.

Soon the package arrived. It looked as pictured, and felt soft as expected. But there was a surprise.

Near the bottom hem, on the inside, they’d affixed a couple of replacement buttons, in case I ever pulled one off. And there was a tiny cardboard with a bit of the camel-colored thread wound around it, to fasten that button with matching thread.

I suppose the value of those buttons and thread was perhaps three cents to the Lands End company. But I’d got something more than expected.

I thought, Those Lands End people are great!

Oh happy day. I had a new sweater. It was beautiful. It was cashmere, fancy. It felt soft.

And besides, I’d got free thread. I was lucky!

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

A Human feels Satisfied in proportion to What Was Received, divided by What Was Expected.

That’s it.

In other words, if you order a tall latte drink expecting a certain taste, and you get a tall latte drink that tastes as expected, generally you’ll feel satisfied.

But what if the latte drink is larger or better-tasting than you expected? Since you got more than expected, you’ll be greatly satisfied.

But what if the latte drink is perhaps OK, but it’s smaller or less tasty than you expected? Now the satisfaction is divided by your expectation level, and you’ll likely feel disatisfied.

But what if the lattes are generally small and poor in this particular place, and that’s what you expect?

In this case, since your expectation is met, you’ll still generally feel satisfied.

So whether or not a human feels satisfied in a given transaction depends not only upon what is received, but in comparison to what was expected.

Now, if you react this way, wouldn’t your customer also generally feel that way? For example, suppose you sell apples and you walk through the park calling out, “Apples! Guaranteed to be the most mouth-watering and unbelievably delicious fruit you have ever experienced! Fifty cents each!”

So some guy buys an apple, and feeling curious he bites it. Now he complains that it tastes the same as the apples from Safeway, right?

But suppose that you’d walked along calling out, “Apples! Pretty good for this time of year! Tasty apples! Only fifty cents!” And now a similar guy buys and bites a similar apple. The difference here is: he’s satisfied.

Because you gave him an expectation that could be satisfied by the apple he received. By managing his expectation, you arranged to provide him with satisfaction. Good idea. And of course, it’s not just for your customers. What about your professor, your boss, your girlfriend?

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Near Phnom Penh, Viet Nam, 1969: My friend Gregg L. was a writing buddy at Midwestern University. He was a short, loud, burly guy who wrote short-stories meant to be both gritty and insightful, but he once confided that he actually made some money writing … throbbing-bosom Romance novels under a flowery Nom de Plumeria.

An ex-soldier, he’d modified a small and mild-mannered orange Honda motorcycle into a arched-handlebars hog, or perhaps a piglet. He had a very fancy medal for bravery in the Viet Nam war. It happened like this …

After high-school, Gregg needed Uncle Sam’s pocketbook to attend college, and signed up for some program involving the ROTC. I was in it, too, at Midwestern University, because it was a required course. I got a khaki uniform and learned how to shine a belt buckle with Brasso. We had to march, and stand there, and hold a rifle in a certain way. For me, it was little more than that, sort of a mild PE class.

For Gregg, due to timing, it became much more, when Viet Nam erupted and he found himself a lieutenant, in a trench, in a jungle, between two Vietnamese machine guns.

“All around me,” he said. “guys were getting wasted. My men were shot up; we were scattered, crawling and scrambling to get out of the fire.

“The din was incredible. Huge bombs were blowing up nearby, and the air was thick with smoke. The machine guns blared away, the wounded were screaming. You couldn’t see a thing, and we couldn’t tell where the fire was coming from.

“And I freaked out.

“All of a sudden, I thought What the hell am I doing here? and I threw down my rifle and made a run for it. I left my men, wherever the hell they were, and ran like hell to get away.

“Bullets were flying around me. I heard them buzz past and heard them ping into the leaves and branches. I zigged and zagged, and got quite turned around, and suddenly rounded a tree and found myself running into the machine-gun nest from the side.

“They saw me, and there was no time to stop. One guy was reaching for his sidearm, and the other began to rotate the machine gun, so I just ran right between them as fast as I could.

“I had no rifle, but I pulled a grenade from my vest and dropped it as I ran past.

“They recovered from surprise, and began to swing the machine gun toward me, and I saw the bullets stiching in from the side, but I guess they didn’t notice the grenade because it went off and killed them.

“I kept running until I fell down, and just lay there, gasping for breath, scared as a ghost in hell. I was kind of thinking about how deserters are shot by firing squads, when the sargent found me, and he’d brought the company Commander.”

Here’s what happened:

“Soldier,” said the Commander, “That’s the bravest thing I ever saw in my life.”