Must See TV?

If you, as I, grew up as a Beatles fan, there is a fabulous interview of Paul McCartney on Hulu. It is called “McCartney: 3, 2, 1” (cute, counting in the interview)

There are tidbits galore, mostly about McCartney’s creative process and the Beatles process as well. You can learn what “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” actually referred to (Hint: it wasn’t lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD).

I found Paul McCartney forthcoming, even singing a bit of the first song he ever wrote (at age 14). He shared his fears, his loves, and all in between but mostly he shared his love for music. Numerous songs were played on a multi-track editing machine and using master tapes (copies, I hope) they were able to dissect various parts of the songs they attended to. I was, at first puzzled by strips of tape laid across this deck but finally realized that those tapes, when laid across the bottom row of “buttons” labeled what each track was on each particular recording.

It is clear that PM still loves music, loves his music and never reached the “I am so sick of this song” stage so clearly accessible to other artists. His enthusiasm and honestly were on clear display.

If you are a Beatles fan or just interested in the process of creativity you will love this extended interview of a musical icon.

Experiences, Near-Death Experiences . . . Shaken, Not Stirred

I was reading an article posted by The Guardian entitled “The New Science of Death” with the subtitle “New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought.”

It was the subtitle that drew my attention. Most readers will read into it that something they always thought to be the case is being found by science, whereas I read into it that “than previously thought” was based upon almost no factual evidence, so our thinking has been flawed all along, rather than the science.

Most people assume dying occurs like a light switch functions: on and off. You are alive and then: Boom! you are dead. Unless some barbarian has chopped off your head, normal dying I suggest is a process that takes time. Because it takes time, our brain continues to function. Which gives us experiences, near-death experiences.

The surprising thing is that people think their NDEs as they are called are “real experiences.” To me, they are no more real than dreams. I do not actively try to remember my dreams, but I did keep a dream log alongside my bed for a few months, so I do recall some of my dreams. One involved me taking flight on the walk home from my high school. Initially my flights were very low altitude, but I did make it up above the trees at one point. In another, I learned to fly airplanes and managed to acquire a old beat up plane and fly it around (without anyone noticing it!). So, were these real experiences? Hardly. If anything in a dream appears to have been a real experience, it is probably because it incorporates a memory of a real experience of yours.

So, if dreams do not represent real experiences, why would anybody expect NDEs to represent “real” occurrences, e.g. “I went to Heaven and talked to Jesus. And then he sent me back! It was so real!”

A clever nurse placed a placard on top of a cabinet in an operating room, clearly visible from above but not at all from below. She queried all of those people who reported a near-death experience about a written sign and none saw what she had placed up there, which was unmistakable if viewed from above. So, what about the NDE of viewing themselves on the operating table from above? Gosh, do you think it could be imagination? Is it possible they had heard of such a thing before? Could the people who saw a “bright light” or “Jesus” expect to see such things? Since religious interpretations seem to be taught to people by the religion of the parents indoctrinating their children, this is a much simpler answer than “God did it, it is a miracle.”

So, what happens when we die? (This is of interest as I am more than a little long of tooth.) Here is what the authors of this piece stated:

“In a medical setting, “clinical death” is said to occur at the moment the heart stops pumping blood, and the pulse stops. This is widely known as cardiac arrest. (It is different from a heart attack, in which there is a blockage in a heart that’s still pumping.) Loss of oxygen to the brain and other organs generally follows within seconds or minutes, although the complete cessation of activity in the heart and brain – which is often called “flatlining” or, in the case of the latter, “brain death” – may not occur for many minutes or even hours.”

Brain death may not occur for many minutes or even hours. So, the brain keeps chugging along, doing what brains do when we are unconscious . . . dreams, maybe, because they are so practiced. They point out that “It is no longer unheard of for people to be revived even six hours after being declared clinically dead.”

The thing I object to is the pandering to the supernatural crowd. The full title of this piece was “The New Science of Death: ‘There’s Something Happening in the Brain that Makes No Sense.’ (emphasis mine)”

Gosh, what do you think happens when you study a new phenomenon? (Death isn’t new, placing dying people under brain scanners is.) Initially, you do not have all of the data, not even close to enough data to make out a clear interpretation, so “it doesn’t make sense” is the normal state during something new and promising being studied. Think of a jigsaw puzzle as an example. If three pieces were to be in their correct positions, could you figure out what the picture is? Let’s see, the blue could be sky . . . or water . . . or sky reflecting off of water, or a fancy gown, . . . so, no. How about when eleven pieces have been placed? Still no. But over time as pieces are placed parts of the image become known: “Look, it is boat!” And you need a goodly number of placed pieces to winkle out the true image. And pieces placed incorrectly muddy the waters. This is the way science progresses. Those convinced of their interpretation will look at the first placed piece of the puzzle and say “See, I told you,” or when a researcher expresses puzzlement, they pounce, too, but they are not doing anything by thinking wishfully.

They Can Kiss My Ass

I received a message from the makers of WinZip software. This is software is for “zipping files” together and compressing them to make them easier to transmit, etc.)

Their message was “Your WinZip software is out of date!”

Oh, no, I thought, not that! So, I looked at their special offer. Here it is:

WinZip Pro Suite
The World’s #1 Compression and File Sharing Software Suite

$16.48 $54.95

Discount: 70% off
Delivery: Electronic Download
Operating system(s):Windows 11, 10 / Mac OS X v10.10.X +
This is a yearly subscription product. After 12 month(s), a yearly fee of $54.95 is due starting with the next billing cycle. You may cancel your subscription at any time.

Did you read the fine print at the bottom? The actual charge is $55 per year! And, please also consider the fact that my “outdated” version was not a subscription version. I paid once for it and it worked quite well and, it still works!

So, after careful consideration of their generous offer (generous to them, not me) they can kiss my ass.

Another Crisis I Don’t Get

I saw this morning yet another article on the “crisis” of disappearing languages. There seem to be about 7000 languages in use around the world at this point and many are sliding into disuse and into history.

I don’t see how this is a “crisis,” no more than the fact that artifacts from the past are no longer made, like buggy whips and push mowers for your lawn and remember men’s hats and the universal wrist watch? You can still find these things but it is much harder to find them and they are way more expensive due to their markets being so small.

In the Bible it holds that we all used to speak one language but God confounded us with many languages because we got too uppity. So, the Bible says . . . (look, I played the Bible Card!).

Languages are an important element of culture, and in warfare, conquerors often tried to eliminate languages to subdue the conquered (Hello, Normans!), but this is not some enforced language obliteration, this is death by natural causes.

If languages dying at a fairly fast pace is a crisis, what about the cultures that are being ground into dust by modernity? Should we not be bemoaning the demise of various cultures, too?

It seems that much of the demise of languages has natural causes. Imagine a culture which still had a hieroglyphic written language trying to use a computer. Do, you think Chinese computer trolls are using keyboards suitable for the Chinese language?

It seems that the homogenization of cultures and languages is based upon a desire to communicate, through words, through songs, through visual images with global audiences. Comedians now tour foreign countries, as do rock stars (Taylor Swift in Japan!).

All languages are man-made. All languages have strengths and weakness. No one language is perfect for all modes of communication, but two people can communicate far, far better when they share a language that when they do not. Europeans are often proud that they can communicate in multiple languages (I was served in Switzerland by a young lady who was fluent in both British English and American English!) but what if all that mental effort learning multiple languages was put into making politics or medicine better?

I understand old people bemoaning the demise of their language but it seems that the language dying is just a manifestation of the people using it dying.

I believe the operative proverb is “use it or lose it.”

Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Book Based Upon Its Cover (or Title)

I buy books. I buy lots of books and I have noted that many books have changed covers over time. These are not just repackaged books, books created on publish-on-demand sites from text files in the public domain, these are done by actual publishers.

I first noticed this at supermarket cashier lines. All of the racks nearby were stuffed with things that might result in impulse purchases. One such rack had copies of a recent bestseller, recently issued as a paperback book. But there were different colored covers (same text, just different colored backgrounds) and I found that strange. Were they going to have a “collect the whole set” campaign?

Swapping covers is now a common technique, adopted by publishers, I have to believe, to get people to buy another copy of a book they already bought, and to get new purchasers to think that this is a “new” book, just published as they haven’t seen it on bookshelves before.

I have a professional goal to read all books in the English language that would help coaches teach archers how to shoot (what I write books about). It is now rare that I run across a book I have not already read, the number of which is in the hundreds. And I have bought the same book a number of times because many, if not most, of these books are OOP, out-of-print. Many of those also have expired copyrights, which means they can be republished by anyone willing to do the work. That work isn’t as onerous as it was in the past. In the past, the text would have to be re-typed, the photos scanned, etc. But Google’s and others efforts to digitize all of our libraries have made digital images available that can be subjected to optical character recognition and other software.

The first book we republished, we had the original artwork provided by the author (who had given his permission and was to receive royalties). A copy of the OOP book was cut up to be able to scan the text, but extensive proofreading was required because of scanning artifacts, OCR errors, etc.

Lazier “publishers” take the page images and just cut and paste them into a new file and publish that. This results in a book with fuzzy text and images that is not easy to read.

I occasionally run across the laziest of all, people who buy a copy of an eBook, and then using fairly simple software, convert it into a file that they can submit to a publisher of print-on-demand softbound books. I threatened one such “publisher” who had done this with one of my still-in-print books with legal action and that version of my book disappeared.

I also had the unique experience of flipping through a German archery magazine and finding an article in it written by me. My German is not strong, but I could piece together fairly well what the text was and it was from a blog post I had written some time ago. I contact the magazine, which settled the affair nicely, but the fake “Steve Ruis” got US$400 for his efforts (translating and submitting).

Narcissistic Selfies

I am old and old school and admit to never having taken a “selfie” with my phone’s camera. Back in the day, I was a photography buff and did use built-in shutter timers to take photos of groups of which I was a part, which can be considered “self portraits,” I guess. But are all of these modern “selfies” narcissistic? I wonder.

When this question popped into my head (yet again after witnessing selfies being taken that were definitely narcissistic) I recalled my one and only trip to Europe. It was so long ago that the Louvre didn’t have the glass pyramid somebody thought was appropriate at the entrance. The entrance involved a grand staircase (it even has a name “the Daru staircase”) with the statue “Winged Victory” at the mid point.

I remember clearly that trailing down the staircase from the famous statue was a line of tourists, all of who seemed to be Japanese. At the top, a couple was handing their camera to the next in line asking them to take their picture. When they were done, the next in line did the same thing, on and on down the line. This peaked my interest, so I paid attention to the other tourists and it seemed an epidemic. People were having others assist them in taking pictures of them standing in front of this or that feature of the museum, or the grounds. This wasn’t confined to just France, we observed this all over the countries we traveled in.

I called it the “Here we are in front of . . . Syndrome.” That came from my imagining them showing their photos to others back home and describing what was in each photo. (We actually took slides and projected them for our captives, er, guests.) I was wondering whether they needed to prove to their audiences that they were actually there.

Now, I know I am not normal (who wants to be normal, really), being a scientist I am more interested in things than people. Of the myriad frames I shot on that nine week trip, only a small percentage had any people in them. I was more interested in the art, architecture, curiosities, etc.

But as far as “selfies” go, they weren’t invented by smartphone users as the examples above indicate (portable phones not having been invented at the time of that trip), the smartphone just simplified the taking of photos of oneself, which one can do narcissistically or not.

Postscript—I was temped to take a selfie of me sitting at my computer typing this up, with a caption of “Here I am in front of my computer typing up this post.” but I didn’t want to break my record of never having taken a smartphone selfie, so you didn’t get one.

College at Your Own Pace!

I am seeing more and more adverts for college degree programs you can “take at your own pace,” or “on your own terms,” or whatever.

I have argued for a very long time that an education is a social process, one in which we learn how to think and work together. So, these programs are touting that they do not include any of those messy classroom attendances, group study sessions, laboratories, face-to-face interactions with classmates/professors, etc. No parking lots, commutes, and so on. You do not have to go anywhere and meet with anyone, you can do all of that online!

This is to a real education like online sex is to real sex, a mere shadow of the real thing.

Back in my day there was a great deal of interest in “self-paced learning.” There were approaches, societies, movements, etc. promoting this approach. Two colleagues and I got a grant and restructured an entry-level course along those lines and my main takeaway was that “self-paced” equals “slow.” Of course, it wasn’t a fair test as this course was immersed in a sea of other courses which made time demands. Obviously the course that did not would suffer for a lack of attention.

But this is the main point. The “educational system” is set up to provide the structural supports, temporal, intellectual, and physical, to allow folks to get educations that are recognizable to society. I was part of that support system: a room was provided, at particular times (otherwise it would be chaotic), a teacher (me), etc. Inside that I provided textbook recommendations, course objectives, supporting documentation, and then timelines to get things done. The timelines are important, because without them, little gets done.

To ask students to get an education without the social and temporal structural supports is asking the impossible. (I just recalled that the Encyclopedia Britannica (back then in book form) claimed to include a bachelor’s degree worth of chemical knowledge inside of it. I never heard, however, of anyone getting a BS degree through that route.)

Now, I am sure these “online universities” do their best to supply the needed time pressures, interactions with others (teachers, fellow classmates, etc.) but these are, in my humble opinion, poor substitutes. College educations were originally for a very small number of people: mainly the children of the rich, and the gifted who were grindingly poor. We have extended that experience to a much, much larger audience, some of whom can neither afford the time, nor the mental space to participate. Rather than say “it is not for everyone,” we make it a requirement for most jobs (many of which didn’t require college degrees in the past, including chemists, people!) and so people between a rock and a hard place need a new paradigm.

In my studies of alternative delivery systems for higher education, the completion rates were abysmal. I have no data regarding whether these online universities are doing any better, but I am skeptical.

I am convinced there are people who pull this off, that is get a college degree online. There are always people who can pull off the improbable. I just wonder at how many.

Postscript I am reminded of an experiment in which children were allowed free choice as to what to eat from a cafeteria. They could take as much or as little of anything available as they wanted. By and large, the kids chose balanced meals. Then something was added to the menu: chocolate. All of a sudden a large number of kids went off the rails.

Now, imagine an education system in which kids learned what they wanted to learn, as much or as little as they desired. Then add smartphones. Then try to get their attention. All people, not just youths, require structural assistance to stay on tasks. Most often these supports involve other people. I think that is a good thing, not something making a barrier to success.

Oh, Yeah, AIs are Going to Change Everything

So, AIs apparently are the shiny new toy for people to play with (closer to a laser pointer used to torment cats). The GOP must love AIs, because they are major distractions from real issues, and they hold the promise of replacing many workers. In any case, some enterprising person decided to ask an AI how it sees us. So, an avatar for every US state, if it were a person, was pumped out according to the AI asked.

Immediately one can see that this AI, and many others by implication, is a bullshit monger because the 50 state portraits showed mostly quite attractive people, a minority of homely people, and no truly ugly people. My estimation is that most people are homely looking, a substantial number are ugly, and very, very few are quite attractive.

Maybe the persons asking for these “portraits” were the State’s Chambers of Commerce or Bureaus of Travel and Leisure.

Then I got to the end of the list and . . . Whoa! Jesus is alive and well, hiding in Utah apparently.

Utah’s avatar, aka Jesus!

His second coming just couldn’t push Trump off of the front pages of the nation’s news organs.

The AIs are Coming for Us!

I went onto Amazon.com to see if I could get a pair of huarache sandals, inexpensively. I didn’t see what I wanted so I went off site to other things. In the past couple of days, I have received from Amazon, three (count’em three!) follow-up emails offering deals on huarache sandals . . . for women.

Now I have been doing business with Amazon since when they only sold books. If they do not yet know that I am a man, then they are incredibly stupid.

They seem to have brilliant software allowing them to follow me around the Internet, popping up ads for things I might want, but they make stupid, stupid mistakes. As another example, I bought a wall light fixture for my bathroom, and then got follow-up emails stating basically “Well, if you liked that wall fixture for your bathroom, you might also like this one!” How many light fixtures do people buy for their bathrooms? Sheesh.

I have had them offer shoes and suits to me, in the styles I was looking for but sizes I couldn’t possibly wear . . . “If you liked those EEE shoes, you will just love these B-width shoes!”

Keep in mind that Amazon is a company built upon greed as a fundamental characteristic (theirs, not yours and mine . . . well, maybe not). And they keep missing the boat this far? It looks like they are using spammer tactics . . . send out offers, zillions of them, one will want to do business with a Nigerian prince.

The danger we face from the indiscriminate use of AIs, is not from the AIs, it is from the users, the mostly incompetent users.

Real and Imagined Fears of AI

There seems to be a small but growing cottage industry writing articles about the fears associated with artificial intelligence (AI). Along side of that is another, smaller, cottage industry pumping out works extolling the virtues of AI and how it will make us all better off.

I, myself, wonder what natural intelligence is, as do many others, and wonder how it is we could even recognize the existence of artificial intelligence if it came up and bit us on the ass.

Most of this seems to be fueled by “content creators” who desperately want to capture our attention, for “likes,” “hearts,” or cups of coffee.

Let us assume that such a beast as an AI actually exists (which I doubt, but I will play along). Are there things to fear?

Yes, capitalism.

Capitalism will use AIs to improve profits, whether they improve anyone’s life or not. I envision health insurance companies using AIS in the following manner:

Insurer: AI, write a letter denying the claim for insurance coverage of this claimant using the facts in their file (here).

AI: Done! (Dear sir: . . . )

Think of the money the insurer will save. They do not need doctors to evaluate the validity of such a claim, nor do they need their lawyers or bean counters to do the same. They just deny all claims and only actually look into those who persist by refiling repeatedly.

Now, you may think that this is a harsh practice to ascribe to insurance companies, do realize they have already done this! Back during the Obamacare hearings it was exposed that several health insurance executives had their pay based upon how many claims they could deny and that they had created structures like the above to deny claims based upon a desire to please the boss, rather than the facts of the case, etc.

Also, I had a dentist who submitted claims for me to my insurer who insisted that the insurer denied almost all claims to see how serious the situations were, so he submitted and then resubmitted and even submitted a third time to get approval for procedures which seemed obvious to me (he showed me the x-rays and explained what was needed).

I am not so afraid of AI, although I have seen the Terminator movies; I am more afraid of what rapacious, conscience-less capitalists will do with them.