A message to Maryland and Iowa investors about 747's and Paradigm Shifts

This shouldn't be a long blog.

As a matter of fact it may be the shortest blog I have ever written.

I need you, each investor in GBT-C, to imagine the guys who built the first 747 Boeing airplane.

Yea, there had been a lot of smaller, neat airplanes, that preceded the 747, but suddenly or maybe over time someone, some group, decided to build the biggest, baddest, most capable, workhorse of an airplane ever attempted. 

They studied, they planned, they engineered, and they realized they could do it. 

They could build this incredible plane that could carry more people, further, faster, and more efficiently, than any other plane in history.

Then guess what, it hit them.

OK, we can build the plane but we need to now design the building, the tools, the infrastructure, to build the plane in.

Why? Because it was aviation as it had never been attempted at that level before. 

Aviation wasn't new, but the overwhelming audacity of producing an airplane like a 747 was unheard of.

Well guess what, that is what GBT is doing. 

No, that is what we have done.

We know how to build the 747. 

Hell, we had figured out by 2011 what had been missing in South Africa, what we had not gotten right in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1999 through 2002, but by 2012 we had the plane down perfectly. 

We knew how to build the biggest, baddest, aquaculture system in the world, sustainable, green, re-circulating, efficient, better, cleaner, healthier, than anyone or any system in the world. 

No joke, no hyperbole.

But now we had to figure out how to build the structures to put it in. 

So, since May 2013, we have battled the system to build the housing of the most advanced aquaculture system in the world. 

And we now have it.

Despite despicable manufacturers, despite greedy and self serving contractors, despite redesigns, and revisions we are there.

Texas is up and the two modules, juvenile rearing facility, the bio-filter and all the supporting infrastructures in place.

Is it perfect, hell no.  But it is damn good. 

And it is better than any other commercial system  in the world. 

I suspect the first Boeing 747 cost more, was the least efficient, the most difficult, and the most frustrating plane ever built.

But it became the envy and the standard for the world and everything that came after.

That is where GBT is today. 

We have done the impossible. Is it perfect? Again, no. 

Is it the cheapest, most efficient, best way to go forward, no. 

But what we have today is better (by a factor of 100%) than anything else in the world. 

And we will get better. 

We will get better in Texas. 

We will become more efficient, more profitable, more productive, more integrated, in short, better at every level, but to get there, we had to go through this. 

Someone once wrote that Mozart wanted to create the perfect symphony. He spent his life trying to do so. But at the end he failed.

But in his attempts to write the perfect symphony and failing he did something unique. 

He wrote the best, perhaps the greatest symphonies ever written. 

Perfect, no. Great, yes.

An old acquaintance once remarked "don't let "perfect" get in the way of being damn good".

We are on the first true footsteps of changing the world. 

I cannot write each of you who has gambled, believed, taken a chance, risked your money, and in short, taken a leap of faith. 

But I want to take this night to thank each and every one of you from the 1 million dollar investor to the $25,000 player, for backing this effort.

The world needs us. 

I suspect by now you no longer need me or others to tell you how much trouble the oceans are in and how the world is short of food and particularly marine protein. 

75% of the fisheries of the world are over fished too almost biological extinction.

65% of the world's population depends on seafood, and despite what you may read or hear nothing and no one is out there that has an answer except maybe, GBT.

Last week the hero of the "new on land aquaculture for fish" who I thought was an idiot 9 years ago, but he was featured in Time Magazine, he was on National Public Radio, he was the, and I quote, "the future for fish farming" well guess what, he went bankrupt. 

His damn system was flawed, but he was to egocentric to listen. 

I wish we had done it faster, better, quicker, but we have done it. 

And we have done it in America, with American dollars, and no government hand outs. 

And we have done it in a country, where celebrities, and entertainment, and silliness, seem to be our greatest accomplishments. 

Think about that.

I have nothing against LeBron James, but his skill at dunking a basketball cannot, will not, feed the planet. 

GBT has the potential to feed the planet and do it the right, the ethical, the natural, way.

The challenges ahead will not be easy and any farmer can tell you that the vagaries of farming leave nothing certain. 

Hell, everyday Eduardo, our VP of production, reminds me of the challenges ahead. 

But we are here. 

I am not a socialist, I am a capitalist, but there is making money and then there is being obscene.

My grandfather, God love him, always said "pigs get fed, hogs get butchered". I did not understand him then, now I do.

God bless you all. 

Without each and everyone of you this could not, would not have happened. 

You all know my personal situation. I have held nothing back, I have been totally transparent. I have no secrets.

I truly believe we are on the verge of changing and helping the world in a huge overwhelming way, and I want to thank each of you for trusting, believing, and caring.

Whatever happens as we go forward, and we will go forward, in a big way, I promise each and every one of you will benefit from every aspect of what we have and will accomplish. 

I am so proud of all of you. 

You have no idea. 

I am so proud to be an American. 

I am so proud of you, our investors.

And please, keep praying for my wife.

Two Thoughts on a 4th of July Weekend

On this 4th of July weekend as it is slowly winding down and we get ready to face the second half of 2014, and whatever it may bring, I have two thoughts I want to share.

The first is on opportunity. 

Teddy Roosevelt, by far my favorite American President, was supposedly approached one time by some one and asked "if you were given the opportunity to build a boat, even though you have never built a boat in your life, how would you answer?"

To which Teddy supposedly replied "why, my good man, I would seize the opportunity and build the boat."

To which the other party replied, "but you do not know how to build a boat."

And Roosevelt put his head back and laughed, and said, " my dear friend, I can always learn to build a boat, I can learn most any skill, but the "opportunity" ah, to be given the "opportunity" to build a boat, why that may never happen again in my lifetime."

So one thought I want to share today is to never underestimate the value and the luck involved in getting an "opportunity." 

Like inventing a cell phone or winning the Super Bowl, skill and talent can sometimes take you far.

But getting the opportunity to "build that phone or play in that game", and indeed, having the chance to improve oneself or change one's life, well, that opportunity can be rare and it can never happen, or if it ever happens, it may only happen once in a lifetime.

I have heard countless individuals bemoan their station or position in life blaming "this or that" for their not achieving the position or rewards they felt they deserved. 

However, after hearing the details of dozens or more such stories I have come to realize that almost all of them had been afforded an "opportunity" to change their life for the better but for various reasons, fear, immaturity, lack of recognition, whatever the reason, they had simply let that opportunity pass by.

My second thought of the day came this morning while driving to Starbucks, there suddenly popped into my head an old line attributed to John Lennon.

Lennon once said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."

The tragedy of his murder and the impact of his talent will never be forgotten by those of us who grew up during the era of the Beatles.

That said, the message that "life happens despite your plans" may be perhaps one of the most profound things Lennon ever wrote about or remarked upon.

I have always tried to plan what I will do and how I will get there and I have been very fortunate to have succeeded financially and in enjoying (for the most part) the experiences of my life. 

Ironically in hindsight not one adventure, not one project, not even one small strategic plan I developed, ever went as I had planned, despite my best (or worst) efforts.

I guess the second thought I want to share today is try and enjoy living and just doing the best you can with what God hands you. 

Because all the planning in the world will not change the events that life will throw at you. The only thing that you can control or change is how you will react to them or handle them.

Or as my Grandmother always said, "given a choice between a life of good luck or a life where you can have a high degree of skill (or talent), choose the life of perpetual good luck. 

Good luck can over come a lack of skill, but a life of bad luck, can not be altered or improved by all the skill in the world."

Happy 4th of July weekend. 

Here's to a second half of 2014 filled with "Good Luck" and multiple "opportunities" for all of us.

Fighting Back

In the past 24 hours I have watched my wife and friend of 20 years go into a comatose state brought on by pure fear and hopelessness. 

Yes, the chemical explanation is the return of her metastatic activity in her brain terrified her and she produced so much of a cortisol over load in her brain that it literally shut down her brain's ability to the extent that her bodily functions began to fail.

In short her fear of dying almost killed her.

We have battled through this and it appears she is now coming out of this almost coma like state and is beginning to eat and smile and almost enjoy the mere fact that she is alive, again.

It is too early too say, and the next few weeks will be very critical, but for the moment she is fighting back.

During this period of time, though obviously not to the same degree of severity and certainly not to the same degree of finality, we held very ugly meetings with representatives from a supplier with whom we are very dissatisfied.

Yesterday, a good friend and investor and very important part of our company and I spent two hours dealing with the representatives from a major manufacturer of an important piece of the mechanical design of our system for our company battling over whether they "did or did not" provide to us (based on the design and functionality of what we felt we had purchased and believed we had agreed upon contractually for them to provide) and deliver to us what we in fact felt we had paid and agreed too.

I won't name names or trash the actual company and its representatives (that would probably get me in trouble even on my own blog, given the litigious nature of the world in which we live today) but long story short, they were liars and "bull shitters". 

Even given the fact that there is always pretty much two sides to every story this two hour discussion defied belief.

In short, despite an embarrassingly long list of documented design, manufacturing and installation, deficiencies they absolutely, without shame, argued that not a single problem was their fault. 

Now sitting aside the fact that it is statistically impossible for any of us, let alone a company or conglomerate, to be perfect in any given situation and that in any disagreement there are always mistakes made by both sides, the attempts at intimidation and the overweening arrogance of their position bordered on the pathological.

No resolution has been ratified though there is some hope that this pathology was simply a posturing game and that we will be able to move forward without metaphorical bloodshed, (read litigation or arbitration with counter claims and only the lawyers getting richer) yet, the combination of Lori's condition juxtaposed against the absurdity of the posturing of this supplier yielded in a very unexpected way an "epiphany".

The world has gotten to the point where we don't fight back, even when we know we are right. 

Maybe it is we are too comfortable and scared to lose that level of comfortable existence, maybe we are too scared of death and despair to let it have an opportunity to over take us, maybe we are embarrassed or afraid to be embarrassed or embarrass those whom we care for, maybe we are just cowards, but the truth is we don't fight back. 

I am not talking about bull shit political wars and regional conflicts, I am talking how as individuals we have lost our nerve. 

My epiphany is that we have lost our ability to stand up in the world of twitter and texting and Face book, and other social media and say,"that is bull shit" and I did not do that or this, or whatever the hell it is of which I or we are being accused of, by whomever for whatever.

We are afraid of being accused of anything and everything because the world has evolved where "accusation equals guilt" and for some stupid reason we give a damn about how the great impersonal body of "them" judges us.

I read the most tragic article I have read in a long time about a human being today. 

Usually it is stories about animals that tear my heart apart but today, I think on Yahoo, (I may be wrong about the source), I read a story about a young girl who was denied attending her prom and she killed herself. 

How fucked up have we become?

First of all who in the hell has the right or authority on some damn school board to tell a young girl she cannot attend her own damn prom. 

And the fact that she had absolutely no support group around her strong enough to help her through this trauma, to the extent that she felt her only choice was suicide, is a condemnation on all of us.

None of us are perfect, no one is without sin, I believe in a God and in my case, I believe Jesus was God made physical on this earth to enable us to have some chance to live beyond this stupid material-spirit realm.

But neither Jesus nor God nor belief in both or any other deity makes us perfect. 

We are imperfect, we mess up, we sin, "God forbid", we even have bad thoughts, and we do bad things, but not every sin, not every wicked thought, not every failing, is deserving of societal judgement, let alone condemnation and punishment. 

Any body ever hear of "Judge not least ye be judged".

Nor should it have to go to court or be adjudicated by the "system", that nebulous, unreal, false, and flawed concept of "them" who be in power. 

No one should be in power. 

No government, no body of imperfect assholes, should decide and pass judgment on and for other imperfect assholes. 

Dammit, I hate to sound like Ronald Reagan but given that aside from certain things that are just wrong, like "boiling babies in bath water" or enslaving 5 year olds to work in mines, damn near everything else is cultural and relativistic. 

You kill someone, then " Lex talionis" (probably spelled that wrong) or an "eye for an eye", but truthfully short of that, people need to start fighting back.

One size does not fit all and by "God", there are two sides to every story and nothing is as simple as we all want it to be.

We put up dome 2 today. 

A friend sent me an article from the New York Times touting the fact that some guy (and I give this guy great credit) is now producing 40,000 pounds of shrimp a year in a warehouse somewhere up north. 

If GBT hits half of our production figures two of our domes will produce 1 million plus pounds of shrimp a year.

This is what our farm looks like as of today. 

We have a ways to go and we have some challenges but we are making progress toward finding a sustainable, ethical, way of feeding large amounts of people with copious amounts of healthy and natural marine protein that does not endanger the oceans. 

One of the most moving cartoons of the American Revolution, I think done by Franklin but perhaps some other patriot, was the one where they had a snake cut into thirteen colonies with the caption, "either we hang together or surely they will hang us separately".

We need to quit aiding and abetting "them", we need to start giving our fellow citizens the "the benefit of the doubt", we need to go back to "innocent until proven guilty", not guilty unless you can prove you are innocent".

In short, we need to start "fighting back". 

We to cry "bull shit" on the fake solutions, the false promises, the failed initiatives, and fix the earth ourselves and not let "them" tell us or dictate to us how we have to do it. 

"They" are not fixing anything. 

They are just judging and punishing and taxing us while "they" enrich and empower themselves. 

Fight back, we really do not have anything to lose.

Mad As Hell

This is not going to be a positive blog so if you are looking for any kind of uplifting message stop reading now.

Remember the movie "Network" where the  main character a disillusioned news reporter shouted out the famous line, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore". 

Well, that was a movie and that is a very bold and courageous line but the truth is being mad as hell does not lead to the ability to "not have to take it any more". 

Lori got her MRI back yesterday. Her progression, her metastatic activity in her brain is back with a vengeance. I won't bore you with the medical terminology but suffice to say, there is generalized progression of metastatic disease and it is wide spread. In short, the aggressive cancer is back. 

We had hoped, prayed, wished, imagined, we had a few more months before this would occur which might buy us time for an immunological trial to emerge. 

That does not look like it is going to happen. 

So, we are not giving up. 

We are not stopping our prayers for a miracle but we are in a very tough spot. The progression is starting to cause severe neurological symptoms, memory loss, speech disorder, lack of  muscle control, in short everything you would not wish on your worse enemy.

I have no brilliant insights, our options are becoming very limited. We are trying to develop a new experimental chemo cocktail but the truth is that as of today it has been 40 months since Lori developed "tnbc" and over 30 months since it went metastatic to her brain and liver and we are simply running out of option sand miracles. 

So having no positive way to use this blog for a cathartic purpose I am going to rant and list a few things I am "mad as hell about". I may still have to take them but that does not mean I am not mad as hell and if I can, I will do something about them, when and if I gain the ability to do so.

I am mad as hell about cancer. This disease sucks and with all of the millions even billions being poured into finding a cure, we damn well should be smart enough to find a cure or an answer or something.

I am tired of government, all governments. Even ours. 

There is no government, there are just a bunch of selfish assholes setting and enforcing  rules that make our lives more miserable while they protect and enrich themselves. 

Sorry to admit to this, but my grandfather was right, ultimately governments become the enemy of the citizenry and they judge, punish, tax, and coerce, us to obey. 

I am not stupid. I know that without order chaos reigns and that is not a good thing. 

That said, from Putin to Obama, from North Korea to Thailand, from congressmen or persons to police and law enforcement when you allow the "system" to hold dominion over your life at any level your basic slide from free person to slave has begun.

I do not agree with the violence of gangs and thugs, but oppression from the "elected"or the "anointed" is just as harmful and in many ways more pervasive.

I mentioned to a friend of mine I had finally become an anarchist.

That friend pointed out when I remarked about how I was feeling about government, that quite to the contrary I was becoming "Thomas Jefferson". 

And democracy or a republic can be as deadly or damaging as a dictatorship or a monarchy. I think it was John Stuart Mills who wrote, " the tyranny of the majority" is more terrifying than rebellion".  

I am sick of false friendships. You help people, you take chances, you make their lives better and they betray you. 

There is no wonder Judas in the Bible is reviled. 

There is nothing worse in the world than betrayal.  

True friendship is a rare and perhaps the most beautiful thing on earth. The trust you place in a friend should never be violated and if it is, then you should do everything in your power to fight back.

Almost 20 years ago I was betrayed by two friends who I trusted beyond reason and I have paid for it every day since. 

I was younger and dumber and I slunk away, embarrassed and hurt by the public beating I took, knowing the whole time I was innocent. And worse, I knew they knew I was innocent.

I will never let that happen again.

Real friends I will do anything for and more. 

Those that pretend to be my friends and then betray me I shall no longer resist or defend myself from, I will now try and destroy them.

When you take risks and make sacrifices to help someone the very least they can do is appreciate it and try and respect what you tried to do.

I am sick and mad and tired of bull shit in business. 

In the past three years I have tried to build a green, sustainable, profitable, and socially equitable, business in the USA. 

I have been screwed, lied too, over charged, and basically bullied. 

This shit ends now. I am serious. I am no longer going to look to the "system" to fix my problems. 

The system is too large a part of the problem.

Years ago in Detroit I listened to major automobile executives lecture about what was wrong with the US car industry. 

They mentioned lower overseas wages, much too tough emission standards, unfair tariff laws, too high of a minimum wage, the power of unions, and so forth and so on. 

At the end of that series of presentations a small East Indian from a major university stood up and was supposed to give a closing statement. He had a sheath of notes that looked like a 30 minute speech he had prepared.

He looked at the audience and put down his notes and said, "I have been asked to close the evening by giving a summation of what is wrong with the US automobile industry. It is simple, you make a "shit" product, you charge too much for it, and when people complain you use your lawyers to intimidate them and shut them up. Thank you very much". 

I am mad as hell about cruelty to animals. There is simply no room in the 21st century for people who do not appreciate that a goat, a chicken, a dog, a whale, a dolphin, and even a mouse, has sentience and suffers. 

I am sick of people that "love their dog" but can kill a deer for sport.

"Good Lord", Jeremy Bentham knew in the 18th and 19th century, the question of moral considerability was not "can an animal talk or reason, but can an animal suffer?" The answer is "yes" dumbasses. 

Frankly, deliberate cruelty to a sentient creature should bring with it a "death sentence" both for deontological and utilitarian grounds.

We lock up people who smoke marijuana and we give fines to people who burn baby kittens. How fucked up is that?

Finally, I am mad as hell about all the religious bullshit and debates and conflicts. 

I had a friend once tell me, "never let religion get in the way of God". Damn good advice.

People need only a few essentials, food, water, health care, shelter, and an equal opportunity to succeed. 

Governments clearly do not provide that. 

Non-Governmental organizations do not provide that. 

The press and the media do not provide that. 

Maybe in the end only a business or company or vocation can provide that, but if so that business must be ethical, it must strive to do more than be profitable, it must be socially equitable, it must be environmentally sustainable, it must be "ethical". 

Maybe "ethical capitalism" is not a dream, maybe it is the only hope for the future. 

A pipe dream, maybe, but I am mad as hell and I am trying to do something about this and everything I have discussed above. And maybe so should you.