Failure is anathema in American culture. No one really wants to acknowledge when it happens to them; no one desires to explain the causes of failure; no one relishes the confrontation with a greater authority to explicate the post mortem causes for the disappointment. Even the word has a heavy ring to it with its hard first syllable that flattens out into the recognition of not having achieved its uplifting antonym: success. It is a culturally pregnant word, with a plethora of phrases surrounding it that have threaded their way into common parlance: “2nd Place is 1st Loser”; “Failure is not an option” by Gene Kranz, Flight Director for Gemini (made up for the Apollo 13 film with Tom Hanks); “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” by Winston Churchill. Perhaps the most famous citation of failure derives from Thomas Edison’s pursuit of a proper filament for the lightbulb. Time after time after time, he utilized different metals for the filament, but they continuously burnt up, exploding the bulb itself, or they simply failed to function at all. When asked about this, Edison responded, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”