Stack & Roll When I was twelve years old we moved from Wisconsin to Maine. There were many things about that move that were milestones. My mother was going from being a graduate and post-graduate student to again being a gainfully employed professional, earning 7X the income that we had lived on for the past four years. We were moving from an enlightened urban center in the Midwest where we drank “pop” to the deep…
Trimming the Palm Tree The Mexican Fan Palm is a native palm tree that comes from Baja California and the Sonoran Desert. That means it is an indigenous plant more or less and not something that was imported from Madagascar or some such exotic place. Things grow so well in this 9-10-rated climate zone that it is not surprising that the Mexican Fan Palm thrives just a few miles north of its native habitat. It…
Fly Me To the Moon I must admit that I haven’t spent a lot of time focused on the space race since that was the race between Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson to be the first billionaire in space. So, I wasn’t so very aware that both Russia and India were rushing to beat one another to land an unmanned ship at the South Pole of the moon. I’m not sure that is…
Why Now? Getting enough exercise is a pretty universal challenge for everyone at every stage of life, but I think I would get broad agreement that it is especially important when you get to a certain age. This is not rocket science, everyone understands that you should moderate what and how much you eat and drink and how much physical activity you get. Naturally, this is a game that gets played less in the conception…
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…
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…
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…