The Political Spectrum When we were growing up, did the spectrum exist? I think if you had asked middle-school me that question I would have said, “Sure, there’s VIBYGOR, the spectrum of white light, right?” But now, I can’t seem to go a day without hearing about, talking about, reading about or extrapolating about the other spectrum. That would be the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that I recently wrote about. It is not so much…
The Eye of the Storm In Latin, it goes that Omne trium perfectum, which means either that good things come in threes or that things that come in threes are more likely to be perfect. So, I’ve decided to release a third story in the series of my hilltop’s history of coping with Hurricane Hilary. It’s Sunday and I have had occasion to hear from and communicate with countless family and friends who are using…
The Calm I just sent my kids a picture from the weather.com hurricane tracker that’s projecting the path of Hurricane Hilary as it works its way up the Baja, slightly faster than expected, it turns out. The picture I sent was the Midnight projection and the way the weather.com app works, it pegs your cell phone location on its maps. The hurricane path, in fuscia, is about 100 miles wide, just shy of the width…
Here Comes Hilary You just can’t make this stuff up. What are the odds that while the news cycle is filled with nothing but news of Trump’s turbulent criminal indictment predicament, something that is repeatedly said to be unprecedented, another unprecedented natural event should occur like a hurricane in the Pacific that decides to sweep up along the Baja to deposit itself on the doorstep of Southern California. There it is expected to batter the…
Going With the Flow As we all recognize, the world has changed on many levels. It has right along over the millennia and is doing so right before our eyes. The good news is that we are pretty adaptable creatures within a certain range of change and a certain pace of change, but there lies the issue on an increasingly common basis. The work of archeology has consistently pushed further back the origins of man…
Gray Divorce I read two articles this morning with very different and noteworthy perspectives. One was from CNN on the topic of the trend among Baby Boomers towards choosing to live alone in later life. The other was from The Economist about happiness and how they have determined that happiness continues to rise, on a very steady upward curve, as we age. Since happiness is closely connected to relationships and being around people as well…
A Walk Through the Uncanny Valley We cannot go a day without encountering artificial intelligence in some quadrant of our lives. I have explained already that as a university professor during the last academic year, the first year of the full appearance of ChatGPT and its use by my students in preparing and submitting their graded papers on ethics, I can honestly say that I have looked at the AI beast in the eye, and…
Hanging By a Thread I am sitting here doing what we have all done so much in the past seven or so years, I am watching a “Breaking News” chiron on MSNBC. I understand that many people think that MSNBC is a strongly liberal-biased cable news channel in the same way that they think that Fox News is a strongly conservatively-biased cable news channel. The viewership numbers favor Fox News based on Nielsen data with…
Disclaimer I am waiting for the arrival of a long-since seen old Bankers Trust buddy and his wife, who are coming to stay for a night. August is proving to be a busy visitor month for us out here on the hilltop. That’s wonderful for us. We had my daughter and her family with us for the bulk of July and will end up hosting four different sets of guests in August with the guest…
Resetting the Compass I’m sure that some of you are tired of hearing me talk about turning 70 in a few months, but to say that it is on my mind is an understatement. I have referenced a piece once done thirty years ago by Harry Reasoner of 60 Minutes fame, where he talked about turning 60 and why it was so profound for him because he finally felt that he had an ability to…