You&rsquo;re down in the dumps, sad about your boyfriend leaving you for a prettier, more confident girl who has a job and knows how to floss. One of your friends tries to set you up on a blind date. Luckily, it&rsquo;s with me, the King of Smooth.
I call you up and tell you that, no pressure, I want to take you out to dinner and fall in love with you. You say you&rsquo;re free tomorrow, but I&rsquo;m already outside on the back seat of a tandem bicycle. The front seat is taken by a violinist I&rsquo;ve hired to play my theme song. You walk alongside us as we bike to your favorite restaurant.
Halfway into dinner, you&rsquo;re head over heels. You&rsquo;ve got a bad case of Smooth, and you&rsquo;re ready to settle down. I&rsquo;ve been to the bathroom six times. I&rsquo;m leaning in, talking real breathy, dropping hints that I&rsquo;m about to propose. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m about to propose,&rdquo; I say as I get up to go the bathroom again. I don&rsquo;t even have to go.
I come back with only a little bit of pee on my shoes, not mine, and tell you to look down. You do and smile. There&rsquo;s some on your dress, too. You look up and I&rsquo;m on one knee. This is it, you think. But I&rsquo;m actually re-Velcroing my shoes. I don&rsquo;t know how to tie shoes normally, but then again there are a lot of things you don&rsquo;t know about me.
When you just can&rsquo;t take the waiting any more, you ask me to marry you. Maybe, I say. If you close your eyes and let me propose the right way. After a few minutes, you open them. I&rsquo;m gone, along with your wallet and a used tissue from your purse. The waiter brings over the phone: someone&rsquo;s calling from the bathroom. The King of Smooth has struck again.

You’re down in the dumps, sad about your boyfriend leaving you for a prettier, more confident girl w...

King of Smooth

Robert Oppenheimer: Well, gentlemen, there we have it. The first nuclear bomb: &ldquo;Little Boy.&rdquo; And the second: &ldquo;Fat Man.&rdquo;
(The janitor, Edgar, looks up from a box of a dozen donuts; he has already eaten half by himself. He has another donut in his mouth.)
Edgar: Hrmf?
Oppenheimer: I&rsquo;m sorry: The nuclear bomb will be called &ldquo;Fat Man.&rdquo;
(Edgar swallows.)
Edgar: This bomb, why does it look so much like me?
Oppenheimer: Simple geometry. It&rsquo;s the ideal shape for a maximally reactive nuclear core.
Edgar: My cheeks are not that round.
Oppenheimer: They have to be that round, for the extra plutonium reserves.
Edgar: Okay.
Oppenheimer: Would you prefer we call the bomb &ldquo;Edgar&rdquo;?
Edgar: No. That feels worse.

Robert Oppenheimer: Well, gentlemen, there we have it. The first nuclear bomb: “Little Boy.” And the...

The First Nuclear Bomb

Make Your Own Ad

&ldquo;The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art&rdquo; &ndash; so wrote John Foster Dulles unprompted on the wall of a highway overpass. Years later, his twin brother of the same name would become Secretary of State and plagiarize this quotation to stabilize the flailing Eisenhower administration.
Brinkmanship is defined as the strategy of forcing the relation between two entities to the point of confrontation. As an educational exercise, consider an instance of brinkmanship between two young children.
&nbsp;
&ndash; I&rsquo;m gonna tell mom on you.
&ndash; Nuh-uh.
&ndash; Uh-huh.
&ndash; (with pistol grip visible above diaper waistline) Nuh-uh.
&nbsp;
Richard Nixon was a master of the art of brinkmanship. He would routinely call Soviet premiers to ask whether their refrigerators were running. The premiers, disturbed at the strength of Nixon&rsquo;s intelligence operations, would spontaneously disassemble their nuclear weapons.
Another successful practitioner of brinkmanship was Henry Kissinger, who would mutter insights about Richelieu very quietly. His adversaries would lean in until they were at the &ldquo;brink&rdquo; of falling in love with him, at which point Kissinger would lean in and neck with his adversaries until they felt an overwhelming urge to surrender.
Every strategy has its limits, however, and brinkmanship is no exception. The tactic can falter when an adversary&rsquo;s threats are no longer believed, or when the threats are issued credibly but the issuer has a voice that sounds a little like Kermit the Frog, which makes everyone laugh.
Discussion Questions
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Johnny tells his parents he will kill himself: is that brinkmanship? What if he does it, but they don&rsquo;t cry?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Imagine you are trying to defuse a brinkmanship situation that has gone too far&hellip; whoa!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">List three pros and cons of brinkmanship immediately, or else I will list four pros and cons.</li>
</ol>

“The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art” – so wrote John ...

Brinkmanship

&ndash; And the last thing is that the Build-A-Bear is closed Sundays, so you&rsquo;ll want to plan around that.
&ndash; Mmhmm.
&ndash; Are you doing alright? You look tense.
&ndash; A little.
&ndash; Most people are pretty excited to be shown heaven.
&ndash; Yeah, no, it&rsquo;s pretty cool. It&rsquo;s just that there are a lot of &ndash;
&ndash; Dogs? Well, you&rsquo;ve heard the saying.
&ndash; &ldquo;All dogs go to heaven,&rdquo; I know. I guess I just assumed the dogs would be alive.

– And the last thing is that the Build-A-Bear is closed Sundays, so you’ll want to plan around that....

Heaven

(Lights up. Camera pans over a grayscale suburb.)
VOICEOVER: The modern mom is secure.
(Flash: a perfect suburban house.)
VOICEOVER: The modern mom is loving.
(Flash: a child playing alone with toys in a sandbox.)
VOICEOVER: The modern mom is perfect.
(Flash: a mother crying over her son&rsquo;s corpse. Cut to black. We hear police sirens as lights come up on an abandoned street.)
MODERN STEPDAD: These streets used to be safe.
MODERN MOM: Things change.
MODERN STEPDAD: They do. Faster than you think.
(MODERN MUGGER runs up to the two with a computer. A dangerous-looking one.)
MODERN MUGGER: Bitcoin wallet. Now.
(Cut to black. Then to a darker black. Then to normal black. Lights up on an infant.)
(&ldquo;Rock-A-Bye-Baby&rdquo; plays in a minor key.)
MODERN TODDLER: Ma-ma?
(MODERN MOM fights back tears. She is pointing a gun at MODERN TODDLER.)
MODERN TODDLER: The modern mom is master of her feelings.
(Cut to black. Gunshot. &ldquo;Modern Mom&rdquo; comes up in white text. Very loud slide whistle.)

(Lights up. Camera pans over a grayscale suburb.)
VOICEOVER: The modern mom is secure.
(Flash: a p...

Christian Carson.css-1xlpnei{margin:0px -15px 0px 6px;width:11px;vertical-align:-14px;}

Christian Carson