Political Conversations

 Sometimes  Seeking Peace and Joy requires conversations about hard human topics like Religion  and Politics.  Change  can come but we need to watch the small signs like a nod, a lump in the throat, or a simple pause… the  “jump” doesn’t always happen when two people are face to face.   This 8-line rhyme is about that.    

As you sit there on a stump

Calmly chatting with a grump

Who presumes you are a chump

Don’t allow your soul to slump

Prime  your brain give it a pump

Give his false myths a sharp bump

In his throat  you’ll see a lump

As his logic just won’t jump

Bipartisan committee?

Letting a Little AIr Out of the AI Balloon

 sorry AI.we’re popping your balloon

Writer’s Note:

It’s been a little bit since the last entry and as I have stated before. There are reasons but no excuses, I am sorry.  I’ve been inspired  but not in a way that produced appropriate subject matter for this media or for this time period in the life of my friendships or family… but alas that is passing slowly so I appreciate those who have checked back and those who have read or reread past postings.  we are once again hearing the clicking and clacking of the chain and the wheels pulling  that long line of cars to the top of the first hill and peeking over the very top the track falls away and then strectches out before us…here we go!

Popping the AI Balloon

So we are sitting in this “Wings” restaurant  in Winston-Salem and seeing some children at our table a perfectly nice  young man pulls a pre-blown balloon from a stash around his belt and bends and twists it into the shape of a “dog” in a matter of seconds and it, of course, is pretty impressive.  However, the guy says something snarky  and well not being able to resist a response  flows from my mouth.  

“sure that’s impressive…you can blow  into a balloon  and make it into a dog…..but can you blow into a dog and make it into a balloon?”

And here is where  the Seeking Peace and Joy Universe makes it’s stand on AI and Chat GPT99.3 or whatever…

Humans have created code that devours data and spits out predictive language, sounds, and pictures that humans layer human qualities upon.   there’s a fancy term for when we put human characteristics on things that are not human it is anthro …morphine  ask your AI to give you the correct word and tell you why AI isn’t just another case of that….good luck AI.  

You see… have you ever heard your AI break into a giggle in church?  Has your AI ever had just enough to drink to break into a long hilarious story about the time when…. ?  Did you ever hear AI trying to hold back a tear when you were parting for a long time?  Did AI ever bet you that he/she could spit or urinate higher, farther, or longer than you?… Now take a close look at the next balloon animal or flower, or sword, or whatever… isn’t it your human brain that is granting it a reality?   It is your imagination and your wanting it to be something that makes it so….. 

In short you are giving it meaning it simply doesn’t have the ability to create on it’s own…. It is just a balloon full of hot air that we choose to treasure  for a bit.  AI has substance and utility for certain yet it is one human’s creation borrowing the data supplied by anotheir’s set of data known as experiences.  What would happen if the experiences weren’t had, verbalized, and shared?  Well the air would go out of the AI balloon pretty quickly I would suspect…. If you don’t think so… ask your phone to tell you a joke and see how long it takes for you to get bored or to hear the same joke twice….. not long.   

so…. Has this been an editorial….yep… and an encouraging one …yep.   You see we are not the balloon we are the breath that makes the balloon into whatever shape AI will be. We determine it’s shape  and we suggest the shape to others.   

Now until AI can blow into a person and make us into a balloon (with the possible exception of politicians)  let’s all chill and keep being thankful for our actual intelligence and our emotionally wonderful existence. More soon…. Peace

Balloon Dog Philosophy

 

Life’s a gunfight at high noon

Might not get a silver spoon

Could start howling at the moon

Choose retreat to your cocoon

Shrivel up like an old prune

Or make a dog from that balloon

Sing out loud the happy tune

And know that good things will be soon

BRIGHTER THOUGHTS

AI It’s “Human” and What We Do

 Why This Image?   Because We are Human

Why artificial Intelligence is So Very Human

So… Chongo and his Sister Elizabeth (even in 22,000 B.C.E. females had out-evolved  their male counterparts jk) are out hunting for some ingredients for elephant soup which of course requires some elephant because fast food restaurants and SPAM had not yet shown the world you could use “meat-like stuff and get away with it.  Anyway our distant ancestors were trying to bag an elephant and as one might imagine a couple people tossing a few rocks and a sharp stick just didn’t quite make the grade.  However, sitting around the cave later eating some tasty blueberries Chungo and Lizzy pondered “what if we could throw rocks farther and faster?”  Fast forward a few years and presto Bambi is running scared when hearing the retort of Uncle Steve’s AR15.  After all what is a gun?  It is the human expression of wanting to throw a rock faster and farther.

Oh let’s look at Galileo  for a second now he learned how to use a telescope and why?  Because he had this idea that maybe the physical universe didn’t quite match what those noted scientists in Rome (the Pope and his boys) were putting out.  So this telescope was just a device that made his eyes stronger and able to see better right?  Well you can read the Galileo story in many places, but the bottom line is he stood up and said I sort of agree with Copernicus  on the whole “the Earth is not the center deal”. Well the Pope says “Dude  we can have a stake fry and you can be the main course or we can charge you with crimes against the cross and lock you up for the rest of your life…   Well since there wasn’t Door Dash, Netflix, Amazon, XBox or even Nintendo 64 Galileo lived out his incredibly unfulfilled life knowing he had only done what humans have always done evolved through using a human invented device.  

Oh and who among you has a cell phone?  Or who among you uses a computer?  Phones were all invented because AG Bell was working on something to help his hearing-impaired mom.  Yep he made this thing called a telephone as a disability accommodation so the next time someone suggests that an accommodation might be made… think hell that’s a good idea..how can we help?    Anyway this phone idea spread like  the need for someone to remind you that you can extend your car warranty and also now you can talk to friends and family across town, the country, and around the world.  

We invented keyboards, dictation software and laser printers because there was never going to be enough feather quills to go around and monks like chanting  far better than walking around with candles in dreary rooms and eating with inky fingers.  Even “fast-fingers Father Phil couldn’t crank out the 23rd Psalm as quickly as most 2nd graders can build cities with Mindcraft.  

And that brings us to the “Seeking Peace and Joy” portion of this entry.

You see… we might be freaked out about what AI can do, yet don’t you think we have been freaked out about what we can do with a gun, what we can see with a microscope or telescope, or how many scam calls we still get?  

If you want to gain peace with regard to this….understand AI is just what humans do… 

If you want to seek some joy even in the AI world invite your neighbors to a picnic sit down and talk with them about their lives, sing a few songs, raise a toast or two…. Set your cell phones and iPads on the picnic table and every 20 minutes or so make sure the phone is off because if you shut it off it won’t be talking with the group, making dinging or other noises and that silly android just won’t have any fun at all.  Then the next day while you are out planting a tree set your phone  on the porch and try to figure out how it helped the planet that day.  You see finding some peace and joy in what your spirit housed in a human body can do in ways that a series of codes housed in a machine cannot.  Oh and possibly STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHER PEOPLE AND MACHINES.  

I bet you wish this was written by chatGPT  lol no chance. 

Peace 

The Most Important Question to Answer About AI

 So.. generally the 8 Line Rhymes stand alone, however, this one merits  a little Side Order of Curiosity.  

perhaps instead of wondering  if we should be afraid  of how much machines can become like and replace  humans—

MAYBE WE SHOULD ASK 

HOW HAVE WE ALLOWED PEOPLE  OR CONSTRICTED PEOPLE  TO BECOME SO MUCH LIKE MACHINES THAT WE NOW BELIEVE A MACHINE  COULD EVER REPLACE ONE PERSON LET ALONE A WHOLE BUNCH?    In short, why are we growing human machines?

And now we fear machines

Used by businesses and teens

Forging themes and rural scenes

writing books and magazines

Congress folks and college deans

Set aside your counting beans

Will these chips replace our genes?

Can you tell us what life means?

Artificial Intelligence

The Real Reasons We Fear AI a Three-Part Mini Drama The opening Salvo

 Should Congress Try to Regulate AI?

Well .. asking folks who likely hire others to use and understand  technology any more recent than a touchstone. Phone  to become educated and to make decisions. About an industry that is now trying to figure out how to recapture it’s money making potential… is going to be a fool’s circus.  

The horses are not only already out of the barn they have rounded the far turn and are lumbering down the backstretch…  oh well let’s move on.. Shining a Little Light On the subject

So in the AI world what does one do while waiting for their friends to trickle charge?  Maybe we take a minute or two to reflect on a few facts that come across our very quixotic and nimble neuron-synaptic processor **sometimes called  a mind or brain**.  

In reflection on some of the facts it would seem a small yet growing tsunami of fear is rolling toward most of us and that is the fear of AI. 

Yep in the seeking peace and joy universe it seems reasonable to examine all fears including this one so let’s do so shall we? 

Yep it sure seems like new AI products and processes  are showing up everywhere and are probably chugging away in places we don’t even know.   Hence, as the function of bots increases and completes “once human “tasks  some folks wonder if their employment /job will disappear.  Well of course it will just ask any blacksmith, typesetter, keypunch operator, or Blockbuster store assistant manager.   If these folks aren’t available track down a chariot builder, a coal truck delivery worker, TV repair person —well you get the picture… entire classes of employees in industry after industry has come and gone and has it changed how much we like chocolate, sex, or hotdogs (Americans eat about 20 billion with a B or 70 apiece each year)?  

One might say…wait a minute this is different… well maybe—maybe not?  It was not so long ago when many of us heard math teachers and many other educators crying out that these handheld  4-function calculators needed to be kept out of schools and if they weren’t the world was doomed… Well it seems like the math and science needed to fuel advanced tech and communications survived  those pesky little nerds flashing their Texas Instrument marvels.   

(Side note) I am the first person to argue that we need to teach children computational concepts and enlarge  our memories with math “facts” because it is the mental exercises we do  in problem solving  when doing math in our heads is incredibly valuable in finding options in solving other challenges and humans are genius  at creating and discovering new and unique situational issues that need evaluation and actions followed bye review and reworking… doing math in your head builds the tools for doing that…. No matter how much we hated those story problems.  

Back to AI… you see those calculators were/are math AI….and many of them are solar-powered now…. Oh wait they solve that problem too?  

The challenge it seems is not what AI can or cannot do or who will have their jobs replaced…. After all jobs are rarely done for jobs sake are are done to give people a sense of earning esteem or security and when 44% of all jobs in both the industrial and professional realms are repetitive….why isn’t a given robots will have them?  

Anyway  why do I jump around in these posts?  No rational system like a computer can or would follow this runaway train of emotions and thoughts and it is my responsibility to be a creating and unique contributor to life among and between us… ask an AI to seek peace and joy why don’t you and see what happens?  …In short …grow you.

This was not created by “chatgpt”

Spacing out the darker side of the moon

 The “Darker” Side of the Moon

So… those among you who are real music history  experts will find mistakes here.  Some of them are probably  important, yet read for the spirit of this okay?  

Today, or someday that looked a lot like today except it was 50 years ago—holy crap  this entry is featuring something that. Was  a half century  ago which is like  a high school senior writing about something that happened before the depression, the invention of television, smart phones, YouTube, the internet, and yes even before shopping malls remember them?  So if there are some slippery inaccuracies  put them in the same category  as things we don’t know about dinosaurs and get over it.

anyway about fifty year  ago today more or less the Dark Side of the Moon climbed  up the billboard chart and well it kind of stayed there not for a week or three but for  930 some weeks it has appeared  in the top 200.  Now these were non-consecutive, but this still merits a ‘stop and think about it” moment.  That’s 18 years… so if Dark Side hit the charts when your child’s was born in 2006 it would still be there.  

also Dark Side. Has sold  over 45 million copies and some of the money it made was used to finance Monty Python’s classic  “Holy Grail.”   Some other things most people don’t know… it was recorded  at Abby road.. yep that place where some quartet  from Liverpool was known to do some fooling around.  Also  unlike  a lot of efforts today the entire content of the work was performed live on the road before the studio albums  was pressed.   

However… this entry. Isn’t really about the music…it’s about the moon.  

The moon  and the things we use to put things into space have  been in the news in recent days due to the fact that Japanese  mission to deliver stuff to the moon crashed  instead of landed there and a privateers test rocket experienced a malfunction  and blew apart  in the sky.   Now … here’s what has. To make folks wonder … why are we giving so much attention to the rockets that blew up instead of the new pile of trash  we just put on the moon?   Well maybe there’s an answer..

There’s already  a all kinds of stuff  we have left up there.  

Okay we left a flag or two.  There are some golf balls up there.. We have of course left some moon cars up there because they don’t have a place in the trunk for a big subwoofer  and no cup holders  or heated seats.  

We needed to reduce the weight of lunar landers in order to relaunch and meet the mother ships so astronauts  tossed  all kinds of stuff  some of which had meaning..like a  bible left on the dash of one of the moon cars, however some of the stuff I’m not sure  we should be very proud of.  

Like… 96 sealed bags of astronaught crap.. Yes there is moon poop and we left it there.  Now in order to  see this in context we pick oup  our own pet dog crap and dispose of it  in a civilized way… So how do we justify leaving  bags of stuff all over the night sky?  Well NASA  actually has claimed they might go pick up these bags at some later date in order to study  it.    Don’t you want to hear that conversation?    “No Eugene, you stay  here for second….…Thomas and Claire are going to study the geologic samples and Harmony is looking at the atmospheric data… we’ve got 96 bags of 100 year old diarrhea  sitting on the table  in your lab and the world needs to know  how space impacts the digestion of Tang and freeze-dried burritos.” 

Okay.. with the crash of the Japanese  hauler there is  about 400,000 tons of stuff  that mankind has left on the moon.  Are we really ever going to go back and are we going to clean up this stuff?  Will we wreck our own planet enough  so that we absolutely have to use the moon and if we really think that maybe we should send some things up there worth going back to get.   Here are some suggestions..

Let’s send  a hundred hundred new and classic cars  (they weigh about 4 tons). So guys would stare up there and Elise ways to get  a 68 Charger or a 73 Corvette.  

How about we send 165,000 cases of beer … some folks will go to almost any limit to get beer.  

or maybe before we send anything.. we should stop and think about why… 

Did we plant that flag up there to say ….. we own the moon or did we do it to say… we let our curiosity drive our science and our human need to  seek new knowledge?    If we can be proud of seeking new knowledge and wisdom can we take a bit  of time everyday to seek that right here  on earth?  And while we’re. Doing that  can we help each other seek some peace and joy too?  … or are resigned to have a bad moon risin’?  (With a bag of crap to stare  at tonight?  

It’s draft day and it’s important

 The “NFL” Draft: Why is it so Important?

Forward by Captain Obvious

When it comes to sports in these here United States football is king.   No not the kind where parents bring orange slices and water or juice boxes and stand looking at each other while a hive of kids chase a black and white ball around for 45 minutes on Saturday morning.   We are talking about “American” Football where 300 pound freaks of nature put on various pieces of plastic and then charge at one another in a brutal attempt to place an oblong ball across a thick chalk line.  

Oh… does it sound like I’m not giving this sport respect?   Oh that is so not true… and here’s why.

You see today is draft day and later today and then in the next couple days our favorite gridiron groups will be selecting new eligible players in an effort to win more games or remain the champs.  So is the draft so important because it might mean winning?  No no NO you see the draft is important because it is all about believing in hope.  It is a group of people pointing to some youth and saying…”we think you can help us do something better”  It is about a team saying we need some new tools—we need somebody who isn’t quite like the people already here”- we will invest in you up front and we will expect you to be your best and to keep learning.  

Isn’t it important to have hope?  Isn’t it important to believe in the youth  who will enter the “professional” workplace?  Isn’t it important that entire communities can care enough to say “here…wear a shirt that we are all proud of?”  

On draft day we often see stories about  how different players got to the point where they might be chosen.  We see happy families because these families have sacrificed time and energy and their lives will now change forever (in some cases).  Now… let’s stop  and breathe… and imagine..

What if we treated the local schools like our football teams?  What if we had a “kindergarten draft?”   How many parents would have sacrificed and cheered their kids on in getting ready to enter school?  Can you hear the announcer?  “ In the second round st. John’s Elementary selects Maria Thomas Math Teacher prospect.  Maria  can count to 7 4, add and subtract all numbers between 1 and 6, and can identify  5 different regular polygons in 9 seconds.”  

No on the clock is Houston Texas Public School 119 rumor has it they are debating between Jacob Finley and Marcus Watson.  Finley reads Dr. Seuss with almost no assistance while Watson asks questions rapidly and politely and then listens to the answers.  This choice is made more difficult as both children have demonstrated the ability to create  and modify numerous LEGO structures and help their little brothers find clean socks in the morning….

You see… the draft represents  something pretty cool and instead of decrying the attention paid to a few people who will now be rich for playing a game… maybe we could expand  some of the concepts like hope, community support, and belief in the youth and the future?  Just as these athletes have used resources to be ready for the selections to come… maybe we can value the process of preparing  all people for a chance to take on an important role in life….. Just a thought….

We are on the clock.