Today I read an article about the assault on higher education being perpetrated by Chat GPT and other AI bots. It was a disturbing article because it seemed far too relatable to my own experience. I was teaching a business ethics course at University of San Diego in November 2022 when Chat GPT was released. That semester was over, so the first semester that Chat GPT was in full swing with the student population was…
I am sitting here in my garden on my hilltop in the middle of summer of my 71st year. I can hear some distant traffic noises but mostly I’m in the quiet of the garden with all sorts of birds chirping and singing and generally going about their morning routines. I have come down to the lower garden with my vinegar sprayer to beat back the incessant arrival of weeds. It’s what I would call…
One way to tell old school people from new age people is to watch what they do at Starbucks when its time to pay. It used to be that we would roll our eyes when someone used a card to pay for a coffee. It felt like that person was skating on thin financial ice, putting something as small as a coffee on a credit card. Of course it could have been a debit card,…
The year I started working after business school, 1976, ABBA released their hit song, Money, Money, Money with the tag line, “It’s a rich man’s world.” I recently read that in the clamber to build out AI capabilities as quickly as possible, the expanding array of AI companies, ranging from the monster tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as the start-ups like Safe Superintelligence (SSI) that are popping up like mushrooms after…
One of my favorite summertime activities in the past few years involves trekking south for 45 minutes to Coronado Island for a Sunday night free concert in Spreckels Park on Orange Avenue, the main drag of this beach community. John Diedrich Spreckels (August 16, 1853 – June 7, 1926) was an American businessman who founded a transportation and real estate empire here in San Diego in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His legacy…
The start of this summer on the hilltop has been particularly pleasant. A few years ago I spent four full months, with a crew of three workmen, rebuilding our deck. It is a large deck of about 900 square feet that has folding glass doors that open the kitchen completely to it and two sliding doors from the living room out to it. It’s surface is a slip-resistant travertine tile and the railing is expensive…
A temper tantrum is an emotional outburst characterized by sudden, intense displays of anger, frustration, or distress. They’re most commonly associated with young children (typically ages 1-4) but can occur at any age. In young children, tantrums are a normal part of development. They happen because toddlers have big emotions but limited language skills and self-regulation abilities. Common triggers include tiredness, hunger, overstimulation, or not getting what they want. Managing tantrums typically involves staying calm…
We may occasionally try to pretend that the wisdom of age and perhaps the hurdles to attaining a ripe old age make the aged revered. Bullshit. The only honest comment along those lines is that growing old is better than the alternative. There is truth to the fact that wisdom and experience, which mostly only come with age, have value. If only I knew then what I know now is a very common thought that…
I am two days away from going to San Diego Airport to pick up my daughter Carolyn, her husband, John, and our two granddaughters, Charlotte and Evelyn. They will be with us out here on the hilltop for the month of July, as they have for the two prior summers. The trauma of my separation from my property on the edge of the Cornell campus (a tale of woe I have long since explained and…
When I was 9 years old and living in the middle of Midwestern America, taking a weekly bath and eating Swanson TV dinners while my mother toiled away in graduate school, the blockbuster movie of the year was It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This 1963 American comedy was produced and directed by Stanley Kramer and starred Spencer Tracy and the best known comedians of that era including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett,…