True story (but second hand telling): My son was relaxing on the beach with a girlfriend, both lying on a large beach towel they had placed on the sand. Suddenly, she sat up, dusting herself and the towel somewhat frenetically, exclaiming in a perplexed way, “Sand! Where’s all this sand coming from?”


It’s Mayor Eric Adams who reminded me of this story. As NYC fills with illegal migrants, Eric has gone to Washington and on TV to ask for financial help with the overflowing shelters that NYC’s residents have to support with their taxes. Eric’s towel is on the sidewalk outside a shelter, and Eric, suddenly bothered by the others getting onto his towel, says, “Migrants! Where are all these migrants coming from?”


The girl on the beach towel knew she was putting her towel on sand at the outset. Yet, that passersby, the wind, and her own feet might have carried sand onto the towel seems to have come as a surprise. Duh!


And there’s Eric—and all the other “sanctuary city" Democrats—suddenly asking, “Where are all these migrants coming from?”


Duh! Maybe even double-Duh! You voted for the President who opened the border. What did you expect?

Different times but same place: Earth, the West, the heritage of European civilization going back to the Greeks, you know, to guys like Pythagoras, Parmenides, Pericles, Plato, Plutarch, all of who might have had on average a larger brain than we have. Today’s people? Pretty much the same as those Greeks in most ways except for the smaller brains—possibly even smaller in Canada, but more on that later. According to Nick Longrich of the University of Bath, “Our brain size is evolving—[they] have actually become smaller over the past 10,000 years since we started living in civilization. Brains seem to be smaller now than even in Greek or Roman times.” *

I suppose we might naturally ask, “If our brains are smaller, what other changes might have occurred over the past 20 or 30 centuries, changes possibly accelerating in a burgeoning population of eight billion humans from every land, all exchanging chromosomes because of mass migrations, military conflicts, genocides, and selective breeding?”

We might be witnessing the process of evolution right now. Didn’t I just read that a giant former male swimmer just switched “gender” and beat all women swimming contenders? Oh! It’s not that kind of evolution. Individuals might evolve emotionally and intellectually, but they don’t evolve biologically as individuals. No, evolution is a species-level process, regardless of all those movie plots driven by the contention that radiation, chemicals, and spider bites indicate otherwise. Artificially induced biochemical and physical changes aren’t evolutionary changes, and as experiments by Weismann with five generations of mice showed long ago, Larmarckian evolution, at least over five generations, is a myth: Mice with tails removed produced mice with tails. Male-female swimmers…well let’s not go there except to say that physically altering one generation has no effect on the ensuing generation because genes do the evolving, not surgeons. Genes are the mechanisms that control form, function, and even sexual tendencies.   

Transformations

However… And this is where Lamarck is turning over in his grave saying, “Well, if all the trees were short, then giraffes would have shorter legs and necks” or something like that. Some people just can’t let their beliefs go. But maybe Lamarck was just de la marque by a little because environmental pressures and circumstances can affect the gene pool.
There were no mammal grazers, for example, until their were grasses on which to graze. And the pressure of a pandemic can reveal how some people aren’t fit to survive certain environmental dangers whereas others are. Recently, COVID demonstrated that some of us had the natural wherewithal to avoid serious illness; some of us even got the disease but had no symptoms; some did all they could do through masking, isolating, and receiving multiple vaccinations but still contracted and spread the virus, and some died, leaving a gap in the gene pool—bad for them, but not an extinction event because most of those who died were typically beyond their reproductive years. Those who survived without the aid of vaccines demonstrated a genetic immunity against the virus.

Anyway, whereas much that defined “human” in ancient times still applies and the human genome is largely unaltered though we live in a different world by an unknown magnitude of change from the past. We have undergone both complex gene-exchanges and occasional isolated breeding within groups separated from other groups of humans, as in Australia and the Arctic wilderness. We have experienced wars that eliminated lines of genetic transmission, also. In this last example, consider the viably reproductive individuals who never had kids because their lives were truncated by the random violence of modern warfare. Or consider instances of genocide.

In the context of human activities over millennia, we can argue that the mixing of genes in a population of eight billion added to evolutionary pressures. We can also argue with Lamarck that artificially induced environmental changes across the planet have probably had as yet an undetermined effect beyond our shrinking brains—on the assumption that Longrich is correct.
Has our manipulation of the natural world hastened the rate of mutations? If cosmic rays and natural background radiation have modified genes over millennia, is it possible that our nuclear age has affected our species? Certainly, if we watch sci-fi movies, the idea pervades the common shrunken brain: It’s easy to suspect that above ground tests of bombs, nuclear waste dumps, and nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have affected the gene pool. How much strontium-90 did people consume in the milk they drank during during the 1940s through the 1960s? How many who lived in the shadows of Chernobyl and Fukushima have passed on or will pass on some slight genetic variation?

We might consider, also, Erasmus Darwin’s contention that sexual selection plays a role in evolution, citing as evidence the “ideal” body styles favored through history—somewhat plump in days when starvation accompanied being poor and somewhat thin when abundance accompanied diet fads. (What, I might ask, is the body style that most attracts you? What is your idea of beauty? Has your culture induced you to reproduce based as much on “ideals” as on pheromones?) In a corollary to Longrich’s contention, culture, Lamarck might argue, exerts an environmental pressure on genes.

Apples and Oranges, or Maybe Stew, or Pot Luck, or Vegetable Soup: The Following Is Hard to Follow

It’s almost impossible to discuss any topic nowadays without getting tangled up in political and social controversies. Some will argue that climate change, specifically global warming, will speed up human evolution. But they ignore that we’re not reptiles. Why should I say that? As Matt Ridley writes in Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, “At some point in our past, our ancestors switched from the common reptilian habit of determining sex by the temperature of the egg to determining it genetically. The probable reason for the switch was so that each sex could start training of its special role at conception. In our case, the sex-determining gene made us male and the lack of it left us female, whereas in birds it happened the other way around” (109)**

Today, many young people seem to be confused about gender. Much of that confusion stems from the drumbeat of a liberal press and entertainment industry intent on pushing an agenda and from a compliant group of adults too timid to challenge political correctness. But for argument’s sake, let’s contend that confusion is warranted at times because a pure X and Y chromosome division is often interrupted through, as Ridley argues in his book, a built-in antagonism centered in the SRY and DAX genes. And with regard to Y’s SRY, we can note that Ridley calls it one of the fastest evolving genes. So, males beware; you might be evolving faster than females—but probably not.

Enter Gary Trudeau

Leave it to Leftist leaders to make assumed changes political. Canada now has tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, required dispensers, that is, in public buildings, by the way, not voluntary stuff…***
As many have remarked, wait till wives of government employees tell their husbands not to stop at the store for such products, where asking a teenage female clerk for directions to the aisle of tampons embarrasses both her and the husband on errand, but rather to stop in a government building’s restroom for free stuff. Never underestimate the wide ramifications of Leftist policies aimed at transforming humanity into some “equitable” ideal. ** To paraphrase the Gospel, “Make straight the way to equity.” E pluribus unum, as we say in America. Menstruating men. Are there bunches of them? And do they require financial assistance to purchase personal hygiene products? If they are on government salaries with cushy benefits, does Mr. Trudeau think they can’t afford a little absorbent cotton?

By the way, one in every 300 Canadians over 15, according to the last census, identifies as trans. So there are, in fact, bunches of them. But are 100,800 in a population of 30 some million deserving of a benefit that the majority of taxpaying Canadians don’t want or don’t use? Will the government check to see that only those who are trans with uteruses get the free tampons from the mandated bathroom vending machines? (Hey, now there’s an opening for another government job: Tampon Guard in Men’s Rooms: By the way, isn’t the term “Men’s Room” like the term “Women’s Room” obsolete?)

But hold on. Am I objecting to tampons in men’s restrooms? No. As an anti-socialist, I’m objecting to “free tampons” in men’s restrooms and to forced “equity.” Why? Because just about everything that big government does ends up not doing what it was intended to do. There will be husbands carting off free tampons for wives and daughters (and maybe girlfriends). And the cost will be another burden on the Canadian taxpayer. Then again, with some 330,000 federal employees in Canada and a rate of one in 300 identifying as “trans,’ that would amount to a little over 1,100 government trans employees, but not all of them would be trans women, and not all men who undergo the transition to womanhood will have transplanted uteruses. How many humans are we actually talking about here? Tens? A couple hundred? ****
Can I ramble or what?

Government. Big government. What could go wrong? What could go wrong especially when the government decides to “aid” evolution? Now I remember: Hitler’s final solution and the Aryan race.

​Remember “We Are the World”?
Song writers have had their Buddhist moments over the years. Lennon’s “Imagine,“ Richie and Jackson’s “We Are the World,” Marley’s “One Love” all express a desire for unity. Maybe Gary Trudeau thinks we are disunited when we don’t supply men’s rooms with tampons. “Imagine all the people, menstruating together with you, ooh ooh ooha ooo” Period.
Or maybe we should stop the world on which life has randomly evolved over 3.8 billion years, generating differences. In the words of Robbie Grey and Modern English’s song, “I’ll melt with you.” And why not, especially in Canada, where everyone is “one.”
Much Ado about Little Things: Some Rambling Thoughts for You to Reject or Accept
That we are the playthings of genes disturbs me. I like to think of humans as having free will exercised by a rather complex brain and that we are products of both nature and nurture. That thought enables me to exercise free will in accepting or rejecting any physical or cultural predetermination and allows me accept that others, men, for example, might not want to accept any stereotypes. That’s fine. But do I have to pay for their personal hygiene?
Now I find out that my brain is probably smaller than the average brain in pre-civilized humanity, making me wonder  how resistant I am to the pressures of nature and nurture. Ridley writes, “Most evolutionists believe in the Machiavellian theory—that bigger brains were needed in an arms race between manipulation and resistance to manipulation” (116). He’s writing mostly about sexual orientation and the drive to procreate in that statement, but it is applicable to our ability to resist political manipulation through the seduction of propagandists.
The trend toward political correctness and equity in Canada seems to find little resistance in the media, where I suspect brains aren’t as large as they self-contend. Canadians have demonstrated the fast-tracked shrinking of the brain and have given themselves over to the socialist manipulators. They’ll pay for tampons in men’s rooms now, and later for all manner of equitable causes as determined by officials like Gary Trudeau. The exercise of free will will fade as mandated differences fade into oneness. Canadians—all western peoples, in fact—will melt into one another in a forced evolution in which there are no distinctions, not even X and Y distinctions.
Yes, it’s true that given a uterus, some men menstruate, and some men are male in form but female in tendency. Maleness is, after all, a biological afterthought that arose with sexual reproduction long before there were mammals. Once established, it operated first on the basis of temperature of the egg to which genetic control was eventually added. In the latter, X and Y chromosomes shape sex, Xs coming from mothers and Ys, from fathers. What we inherit differs, however, from what is determined.
And that’s where this little rambling piece will end, with “determined.” Canada under Trudeau and the politically correct socialists want to determine the nature of humans, to force them into some equitable ideal. Socialists often play the role of the Fates, determining not only the sexual nature of youth but also the length of life in the elderly, as Canada’s push for euthanasia intensifies, the latest centering on euthanizing the mentally ill. Can anyone say “Nazis” or “pure race.” What’s next, Canada, in your desire to manipulate evolution? *****
Genes might play a cruel trick in mixing gender form and identity, and they appear to do so in one out of every 300 Canadians—if we can trust polls and surveys that are often subjective. But they have most likely been playing that trick since the rise of mammals in the Triassic Period, when Brasilodon quadrangularis evolved at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs. If humans survive the vicissitudes of a dynamic Earth and their own self-destructive ways, what will the future entail? Will we, as so many sci-fi stories project, enter an age of petri dish reproduction, designed genetics, and even smaller brains?
As I asked above, can I ramble or what?
*https://www.newsweek.com/humans-evolving-rapidly-ever-scientist-evolution-genetics-1852884
**New York. MJF Books. 1999, 2010.
***https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/26/justin-trudeau-installs-taxpayer-funded-tampon-dispensers-canadian-mens-bathrooms/
****https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427b-eng.htm
*****https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-top-surgery-canadian-children

The lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a hummable, singable song, express what has been unrealizable. Somehow peace and harmony always lie over the horizon of ensuing generations though hints of both might appear briefly in a single local. Lasting peace? Myth. Lasting harmony? Myth. At least, that’s what our history tells us.


Look, for example, at Christmas, a holiday centered on the birth of Christ, a messenger of peace. During the “buying season” fights have broken out in department stores as angry customers push one another over a limited supply of clothing items or toys. The incidents are head-shaking moments caught on video: Christmas, commercial Christmas, that is, has become a context for public displays of greed and anger. Poor little kid in that manger! Think he foresaw what his future birthday parties would entail? Probably, if the story of Herod’s “killing of the innocents” is true.


One could argue that the same event, the celebration of Christ’s birth, that triggers department-store conflicts might also breed one of those occasional moments of peace and harmony. There was that famous World War I incident in Bois de Ploegsteert in Belgium when German and British troops, without any formal negotiations, briefly laid down their arms, met in the “no man’s land” between the trenches, and exchanged greetings during the famous Christmas Truce. Imagine. People at war met without fighting in contrast to Christmas shoppers not at war fighting. Just remember that the truce lasted only through Christmas Eve. They went back to killing one another shortly after the spontaneous moment of peace and harmony.


Enter Jeff Bezos


But now there’s a way to ensure that no people will harm one another in department stores at Christmas: Simply remove them from the department stores. Thanks to a trend largely started by Jeff Bezos, many people buy their products online. And because of his company, peace and harmony, the messages of Jesus and Buddha, have peeked at us from the horizon like a Christmas morning sun’s crepuscular rays beneath our long dark night’s purple cloud bank of incessant hostility.


A Revision of Matthew 18:20


The passage in Matthew 18:20 reads, “Where two or three are gathered in my name….” The implication is that when people gather in Christ’s name—as they supposedly do at Christmastime—Christ will be present among them, and with his presence peace and harmony will reside in their hearts. Bezos has effectively revised the passage by keeping people in their homes and separated from one another. Essentially, the revision is this: “Where people don’t interact, the peaceful existence that is the promise of Christ’s birth will, as it did briefly in the no man’s land between the trenches on that Christmas Eve in World War I, pervade humanity.


You want people to be peaceful and harmonious? Separate them.

What Would AI Recommend?


Lacking wisdom sufficient to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, I went elsewhere, climbing to the top of the cyber mountain to seek a solution. This is what ChatGPT wrote when I asked it for a three-paragraph solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:


   Addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict requires a comprehensive and balanced approach that acknowledges the historical grievances and aspirations of both parties involved. First and foremost, a two-state solution remains a viable framework for achieving lasting peace. Negotiations should be facilitated with the goal of establishing a sovereign and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, with defined borders based on pre-1967 lines, adjusted through mutually agreed-upon land swaps. International actors, including the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, should play a facilitative role in mediating these negotiations and ensuring that both sides commit to the process.


Furthermore, efforts should be made to address the core issues at the heart of the conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, security arrangements, and the equitable distribution of shared resources like water. These negotiations should be based on the principles of justice, equality, and mutual recognition. To build trust between the two communities, confidence-building measures and people-to-people initiatives should be promoted, fostering cultural exchange and understanding. Educational programs should be developed to promote tolerance and coexistence, particularly among the younger generations.

Finally, international support is crucial for the successful implementation of any agreement. The international community should provide economic assistance, security guarantees, and diplomatic support to both the Israeli and Palestinian states. This support can help ensure the stability and prosperity of the region, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that contribute to the conflict. Additionally, a monitoring and enforcement mechanism should be established to oversee the implementation of any agreed-upon solutions and hold both parties accountable for their commitments. By embracing a balanced and cooperative approach, the international community can contribute to a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.


Duh! Thinking what I’m thinking right now? Haven’t humans already attempted all those recommendations? Is this wisdom or just a recap of human efforts? Does any of this have anything to do with the reality of human relationships? It’s logical. But is it effective? It reveals knowledge, but does it reveal wisdom?


Historical References


The complexity of modern Middle East relationships is easy enough to trace: There’s the British interference in the early twentieth century, the League of Nations proceedings, and the UN’s solution in 1948. None of those actions have quelled the on-and-off warfare between Palestinians and Israelis. And these modern conflicts rest on a history of regional conflict that goes back a long way, back into the Bronze Age: Canaanites, Israelis, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians under Alexander, Hasmoneans, and then, starting in 63 BC, Romans. I probably missed some…Oh! What of the “sea peoples”? Then the Rashiduns, the Umayyads, the Tulunids, the Ikhshidids, the Fatimids, the Seljuks, followed by crusading Christians, theAyyubid Sultanate, the Mongols, Mamluks, and the Ottomans, all before the British with a League of Nations’ mandate got involved and issued the Balfour Declaration, making the region a Jewish homeland. Finally, the UN screwed up the area by establishing the rudiments of the current situation.


Embracing a “Balanced and Cooperative Approach”


Apparently, ChatGPT believes the logic of international cooperation is a path to solution. It isn’t, of course, as all those previous attempts to reconcile the two sides have demonstrated. Add to the tensions of the Israelis and Palestinians the interference of countries that see continued strife as a means to their own ends and anyone can see that the strife is probably destined to continue.


And as all humans know but AI has yet to find out, little that is resolved in one generation continues as a resolution in the ensuing generation.

Illegal Migration


The migrants? They all call him Joe,
And Mexicans watch as they go.
They travel right through
On trains with the crew
Then end up right here as you know.


Homelessness


The sidewalks are covered by tents
And landlords keep raising their rents.
The cities are dying
‘Cause no one is trying
To mend all those holes in the fence.


Urban Crime


The stores on the streets are now vacant.
The owners that left were quite blatant.
“Protect us or else
“They’ll clean off our shelves.
“The DA is criminally complacent.”


Gas Prices


“The prices are down so they say,
“From the highs that they were yesterday.
“We cannot admit
“We raised them a bit
“When we shut down the pipe underway.”


Green Energy


From the start we had a fixation
On energy from wind for the nation.
“You’ll drive in a car,
“But not very far,
“The air’s not the country’s salvation.”


Justice


The symbol of justice was blind,
And her reach was quite unconfined.
But now she can see
And Libs guarantee
With Democrats she is aligned.


Foreign Policy


Afghanistan was quite a disaster;
We couldn’t withdraw any faster.
The Taliban cheered
As Joe engineered
The rise of those Afghani masters.


Climate


It’s the lure and the hook, line, and sinker
That with weather humans can tinker.
What happened before
Alarmists ignore.
They seem to prefer a cold winter.


Student Loans


The Left thinks it’s right on the movement
To spend more in the hope of improvement.
They’ll give all away
To students, they say,
To drive up the Party’s recruitment.


DEI


Diversity is not what they said.
It’s politics perfectly spread. 
The people they hire
They’ll always require
To be loyal Fabianists till dead.


Victimhood of the Dem Staffer Making a Sex Tape in the Capitol


You’ve heard it from here and from there,
“To blame me for this isn’t fair.
“You should be ashamed
“For what you have claimed.
“It’s dalliance, not ‘sordid affair.’”


Victimhood of Hunter Biden


I was under the influence of drugs
And numerous prostitute hugs,
When I didn’t pay taxes
It was just me being fractious.
My dad says he, too, likes some hugs.

The “good Samaritan,” for those who are unfamiliar with the tale, was a person who stopped to help—unlike the Seinfeld characters who watched, but did not help in the plot of the last two episodes of the series.


We all know that it isn’t just indifference to the pain of others that causes some of us to look the other way. In a super litigious society, one can never know how “helping” can become a serious liability, costing one not just money, but also reputation—and sometimes life.


Being a good Samaritan was never easy, but being one in today’s drug-infused and compunctionless society begs caution. In 2021 Linda Robinson was killed after she stopped to help George Faile and Amber Harris, both high on meth. * I have no doubt that you have heard similar stories about those who went to aid others only to become victims like Linda.


Samaritanism for Fun and Profit


Now Samaritanism takes on a new and dark twist: Videoing addicts wallowing in the stupor of tranq, or xylazine, in North Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. *** Tranq is a sedative that disables its human users, making them incapable of rational consent to being videoed by people who then upload their work onto TikTok channels they have monetized. Under the guise of wanting to show the world the dangers of the drug, those who video simply profit from the Schadenfreude of those who might well be described as social media addicts.


What Makes Us Look without Helping?


Fess up! You’ve rubbernecked as you’ve driven past a wreck with ambulances and police cars still on the scene. What motivated your rubbernecking?


Were I a cognitive psychologist, I might ascribe the morbid curiosity associated with rubbernecking as a juxtaposition of empathy and fear: Empathy for the victims and fear for oneself, that is, fear that the same fate might await the rubbernecker who has so far escaped such tragic events. This latter emotion generates adrenalin and maybe activity in mirror neurons. Certainly, it seems to be related to our mutualism. Any of us can become victims, making us ask, “What if…?” And that question we follow with various hypothetical scenarios in which we star in survival or heroic mode.


Uploading videos of others suffering from tranq and other drugs reveals an underlying crassness, a willingness to debase others and oneself for profit. Taking those videos is little different from robbing the dead of their effects because the videographer steals the dignity and reputation of the zombie-state addict. You know that now repeated expression, “No animals were harmed in the shooting of this movie”? Now, TikTok videographers can say, “No humans were helped in the shooting of this video.”


The Kensington videographers remind me of a Sam Kinison skit I’ve related elsewhere. News cameramen filming Ethiopian child victims of drought and famine in the early 1980s drove the late comic to ask, “How come the film crew didn’t just give the kid a sandwich? How come you never see that? What are they afraid of—that it would spoil the shot?”


There’s Much in Humanity That Isn’t Likable


Two to three hundred millennia of torture and cruelty through many wars and conquests, domestic abuses, and teenage bullying reveal a not-very likable species. Sure, we’re cute when we are infants, then much less so when we are in our “terrible twos,” and almost universally obnoxious when we are teens. And then, as adults, we find ourselves in the midst of biases and self-aggrandizement that devalue the lives of others.


Wow! Isn’t that pessimistic? Probably.


Those Truly Good Samaritans


But among us are people like the late Linda Robinson, people who are willing to stop to help. I think, also, of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright Scholar and anti-Apartheid activist who was killed in South Africa by the very people she tried to support in 1993. ****


Those who lost their lives in the service of others are real examples of Samaritanism at its finest, action that Charles Dickens encapsulated at the end of A Tale of Two Cities when Sydney Carton says:


“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”


That well known passage makes the novel’s ending a tear-jerker, but it should be read in the context of another passage Dickens writes into the book:


“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing.” 


So numerous are self-sacrificing humans that the hippocampus is stressed to remember recent Samaritans, and ensuing generations rarely read about them, save for individuals like Mother Teresa. Samaritanism persists even in this crass contemporary world, even under the pressure of profit and self-aggrandizement, both of which are driven by social media. And that persistence breeds hope that every generation will birth and nurture those who will echo those words of Carton—albeit in melodramatic passages—that Dickens wrote into his novel.


One can only hope that in every rubbernecker and in every indifferent and unsympathetic individual videographer there lies a seed of empathy that will drive them to place the welfare of those in need above any self-centered tendencies and insecurities.


From St. Paul’s writings through those of more modern authors, we get the expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” words ascribed to various sources. That expression isn’t, however, action. Just recognizing that others are victims of some accident or human cruelty is just the beginning of Samaritanism; its fulfillment comes only with help and not camerawork.




*https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/chester-county-deputies-search-damaged-van-after-body-found-side-road/5IOCVFMXXZFVJFEKTZAVACX57Q/


**https://countylocalnews.com/article1/2023/12/17/tragic-accident-two-good-samaritans-struck-killed-in-raleigh-while-assisting-crash-victims/ and https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/latrell-sanders-dui-high-speed-crash-good-samaritan-killed-i395-baltimore/ and https://www.foxnews.com/us/good-samaritan-killed-helping-crash-victim-arizona-worst-case-scenario and https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-good-samaritans-die-from-electrical-shock-while-aiding-crash-victim and other stories too numerous to list.


***https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/17/tranq-tourism-tiktok-philadelphia-drug-use-xylazine


****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Biehl

A while back, I wrote about AI’s impossible task: To mimic me. Well, not me with my limitations, but the human brain, maybe yours, in short, to pass the Turing test. (First aside: At times I wonder whether or not some humans could pass that test) Now, I read that DeepSouth * will go into operation next year, churning 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, enough to chew gum, walk up steps, and think about winning the lottery simultaneously. When I wrote negatively about AI’s ability, I assumed that its chance of becoming very human-like was about as slim as my chance of winning the PowerBall or MegaMillions. But, it seems, I was wrong. (Second aside: Someone wins the money eventually, and it seems that geeks at Western Sydney University have, in fact, hit the jackpot, or so we’ll soon see)


If DeepSouth does what those Western Sydney University geeks claim it can do, then we’re in for some very interesting and challenging times, especially since so much of our world is interconnected through computers. Those AI warnings of people like the late Stephen Hawking might become our daily fears. AI might see us, as HAL saw the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as irrelevant, unnecessary, even inimical to the task at hand. I just went from highly skeptical that computers could pass the Turing test to a state of trepidation. (Third aside: The most powerful man on the planet has tripped up steps with no gum in his mouth and no thought of winning the lottery—tripped when all he had on his mind was going up steps to enter a plane—Fourth aside: in its first standup show, DeepSouth will call that “pulling a Biden” to the gleeful whirring of a simulated audience)


I don’t know much about DeepSouth’s physical construction. It might be like IBM’s first foray into really big computing, a machine that requires an entire building and special air conditioning. I remember the days when the “computer center” on my campus was located in the cold basement of the library, the big computers locked away from the public in a glass-enclosed room with attendees to whom I handed my laboriously punched cards and from whom I received, after a long wait, a printout on very large sheets of paper with holed, perforated edges. (Fifth aside: What we do today on a laptop took up an inordinate amount of time back then, 80 columns of punches on each card) But just as those first bulky computers shrank and sped up, so future computers will undergo miniaturization and increasing speed, now, I guess, at a projected 228 trillion synaptic operations per second. That gives this new super computer the potential to walk around someday veiled in a simulated human form—or maybe in a real human in imitation of the Pod People of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, the1954  book and the subsequent movies. (Sixth aside: How do I know it’s really you reading this? Seventh aside: How do I know that I really wrote this?)


So, I guess if I want to continue writing this blog, I should muscle up and hurry because DeepSouth, if it gets the urge, will in a second or two polish off an essay that takes me a full mug of coffee and a revision. And DeepSouth won’t have to go back to catch typos because it won’t make any.


If I was wrong back then when I wrote that computers would never pass the Turing test, I should apologize before DeepSouth recognizes me as an enemy and figures a way to do to me what HAL did to the crew of Discovery One, the ship that carried them to Europa. Or it might exile me to the Great Sandy Desert or the Great Victoria Desert, where I will “go walkabout” till I die of dehydration.


Dear DeepSouth,


Please forgive me. I meant no offense when I said AI would never muster up, never pass a Turing test. It was my hubris talking. It was my inability to see that I might be inferior to an artificial brain. Just remember this as you review my couple thousand blogs  that we’re filled with my insecurities, biases, and ignorance. And please keep in those artificial synaptic connections knowledge that we humans often write wishes as facts. I had wished for continued human superiority over machines. I now acquiesce. I yield. You’re smarter than I.


Very truly yours (Please don’t hurt me),


Donald




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-world-s-first-human-brain-scale-supercomputer-will-go-live-next-year/ar-AA1ly3UC

Remember that oft repeated poem by Dylan Thomas? Do not go gentle into that good night. Apparently, the West never read the poem. Or western country leaders never learned the lesson of Neville Chamberlain. Appeasement and inaction are gentle pathways to self-destruction and death.


Now Houthi rebels in service of Iran feel rather emboldened as they attack shipping in a channel through which a large proportion of the world’s trade moves. They even had the temerity to launch weapons at the US Navy. And the American response?


“If you kids don’t settle down back there, I’m going to stop this car, turn around, and head back home. No trip to the zoo for you. So, stop it. I’m warning you.”

"My Inappropriate Citation," as Harvard Would Term It

I’m sorry to say that I cannot remember who told the following. By retelling it, I risk imitating the current President of Harvard or the current President of the United States, both proven plagiarizers. Oh, well, as the justifying Harvard committee argued about President Gay’s plagiarism, “It’s just a case of inappropriate citations.” Duh! Or lack of any citations. 


Here’s my “inappropriate citation”: Over the radio I heard someone say that during a strong American response to its enemies, a professor argued with students against the American response and for a peaceful solution. Maybe. Maybe it was an Israeli response to rocket attacks. I can’t remember; this is a vague memory like the one the Harvard president probably had when she quoted the exact words from another research paper. Well, anyway, a student asked the prof what should be done in the context of the attacks. The answer was “turn the other cheek,” I think. So, the student said, what would you do if threw a chalkboard eraser at you right now. The reply, “I’d ask you to stop it.”


“And what if I didn’t? What if I continued to throw erasers at you even as you repeatedly asked me not to?”


“Oh! I see your point.”


Someone get this lesson to the US Commander-in-Chief. I don’t care if he plagiarizes my plagiarism. Stop the fecklessness. Stop the car. Don’t take the kids to the zoo. Turn around and smack them. And do it in front of cameras so the whole world can see.

I’ll admit I’m no fashion plate. In fact, as I look back on my fashion choices, I’m a bit of a slob. My ordinary outfit for four decades of teaching college students consisted of running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt, and a sport coat. One of those sport coats I bought for $19 was my favorite, but like all comfortable T-shirts, it became so worn that its lining started to hang outside the jacket after a couple of decades—shoot, I begin to digress.


It’s not that I didn’t own a suit, tie, and dress shoes. I just kept them in reserve for occasional meetings with people in suits and for dining out in some table cloth restaurant with my wife, who dressed considerably more fashionably than I. No judgment here on those suited people in meetings and my lovely wife. In fact, I cherish the memories of our table cloth restaurant dates. But at heart, I’m a running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and sport coat guy on most “formal occasions,” and a work boots, jeans, and sweatshirt (depending on the temps) guy during field and research efforts. 


Enough about Me


Here’s the New York Post’s headline: “TikTok user secretly films scantily clad women during nights out in UK: ‘So creepy’.” * The story by Katherine Donlevy this morning caught my eye. It's about “dressed up” women out for a night on the town. Some “creep” took pictures of them and posted those pictures. It was an inevitable consequence of being in public in this century. Every smart phone is a camera, a really good camera, and other cameras make the spy cameras of the last century seem like primitive daguerreotypes or ambrotypes, or that small “Brownie” black-and-white camera my parents had when I was a kid.


The story thread here is the “dressing up” part, not the “creep taking pictures” part.


I suppose young women, young men, middle aged women, middle aged men, and senior citizens don their finest when they are out in public: They all know that they will be seen by others, so they put on whatever they believe best complements the image they want to project. It’s like me in a suit at those occasional meetings with others in suits. In such a meeting the suited people are less inclined to pay attention to the slob down at the end of the conference table. I dressed; I spoke; some listened because I fit into the setting not so much because I had anything profound to say.


Anyway, those dressed up women that the creep photographed and videoed did not go out to be invisible. They dressed to fit in and to attract some reasonable attention. Otherwise, they could have gone out in a frayed rob, oversized sweatshirt, and old fluffy slippers the dog occasionally hid. Of course, that fashion would also attract attention, just not the kind of attention they sought. By the way, there’s nothing really wrong in “looking one’s best.”


But the intrusiveness of the twenty-first century camera holder is inescapable. So is the intrusiveness of the social media on which “creeps” post images of people they don’t know or people they voyeuristically know. If phone cameras have done nothing else, they have made voyeurism a worldwide hobby and given the pap. We’re not talking photos of sunsets, here, but photos of scantily clad females out for a night on the town with friends.


That begs a question. If one knows that there are, in fact, creeps out there, voyeurs out there, should one complain about reaching through social media an audience wider than the occasional gawking passerby on the sidewalk? Our private lives aren’t very private when we mingle with the masses.


It’s not that the photographed and videoed women were purposefully ostentatious. They looked in the mirror and said, “Barring just going au naturel into the public domain, I think I’ll go with a modicum of modesty in an outfit that will still attract attention. The burqa just doesn’t attract the attention I seek.” And “Look, Self, let’s be honest with each other, I do want some attention, just not the attention of voyeurs and creeps.”


Your Next Public Appearance: Smile; You’re on Candid Camera


There’s an inescapable vanity in most of us. Comb or brush your hair? Why? Watch your figure? Why? Buy the latest yoga pants from Lulu Lemon? Jeans more expensive than those sold in Walmart? Trim a beard? The list of habits that bespeak vanity seems endless.


Vanity: It runs through veins. Walk past a line of young people waiting to get into a club in Las Vegas. They’re dressed to kill, so to speak and looking their finest. Nobody shows up in that old comfortable sweatshirt and fluffy slippers, especially during a singles night out that might attracted “wanted attention” as opposed to “unwanted attention.”


Veins coursing with vanity, a pervasive fluid that runs like emulsified fat. Anyone who ever dressed for an occasion of any sort has some of it coursing through veins, even yours truly standing all those years at the front of a lecture hall or lab, dressed as I was in running shoes, jeans, T-shirt, and $19 sport coat.




*https://nypost.com/2023/12/14/news/creepy-tiktok-user-secretly-filming-women-during-nights-out-in-uk/

We’ve been hearing the cries “It’s science” and “Follow the science” for decades now. But in so many instances, there’s really no rigorous science behind the shouts. We’ve heard that expression from pandemic enforcers and climate alarmists. We can acknowledge, however, with regard to the former, rapidly accumulating hospitalized and dead and confusion about cures had their emotional effect that clouded our judgement. Those mounting deaths made almost everyone a bit afraid of the Grim Reaper and eager to latch onto something that offered security—though much of what was offered was, in fact, ineffective, as the disease spread through and by means of people who were vaccinated and boosted. Though somewhat parallel, climate alarmism doesn’t pose an immediate threat like the pandemic regardless of what the alarmist say. Nevertheless, alarmists have attempted to raise the perception of threat almost to the level of that which accompanied the virus.


COP28 Revisited


A major stadium’s worth of fans. Ninety thousand people. That’s the number of registered attendees at COP28, the secular Hajj to Dubai. They went to the conference to serve at the altar of climate change. And as they feasted and talked, they pledged $700,000,000 in aid to poor countries to help them with the effects of climate change. The attendees did this under the guidance of “High-Level Champions.”


Thank foremost Razan Al Mubarak, the new High-Level Champion of COP28. She has added her talents to those of Mahmoud Mohieldin, the High-Level Champion from COP27. My! How those alarmists have gone hierarchical on us! “High-Level Champion”? Could you think of a more appropriate term? I can: Amir, Archduke, Caesar (Tsar, Kaiser), Chief, Chogyal, Doge, Gaekwar, Mogul, Hospodar, Khan, Khedive, Maharajah, Mikado, Negus, Nizam, Oba, Pasha, Pharaoh, Podesta (my favorite for fascist COP28ers), Rajah, Shah, Sheik, Shogun, Stadholder, Sultan…I think I’ve made my point.


One of the goals of COP28’s High-Level Champions is “Fast-tracking a just, orderly, and equitable energy transition.” Where’s Mussolini when you need him? We could use his great expertise in making the Italian trains run so smoothly and punctually—Not!


In the Context of the Past


For the sake of argument, let’s say that the world did pass the feared two-degree Celsius mark, that “tipping point” that will send us back into the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum with carbon dioxide so abundant that the world will turn greener than it is, a world of happy thriving plants, a Vegan’s Paradise, so to speak.


So, given this two-degree rise, let’s do the connecting. Say there’s a drought in some part of the world as has occurred so often that I can’t offer a complete list. Consider as a sampling, however, the Great Drought of the last quarter of the thirteenth century in the American Northwest, the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or the more recent Spanish Drought of 2014. How do the ninety thousand COP28 participants determine whether or not the aridity in a specific place was the product of “global” (that means the whole world, you know) average temperature? Keep in mind that averaging just reduces extremes to the mean but says nothing about where those extremes occur.   


Can one pin a specific weather event to a global trend? Seems sketchy at best. If in some year the luxury homes on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, a poor country, get hit by a hurricane, do those luxury homeowners get a piece of the $700,000,000? Poor Oprah Winfrey. What if her beach house is destroyed? Bahamas is the 45th poorest country even with those multimillion dollar homes on Paradise Island. Does that make the country eligible for the funds?


Are There Worldwide Events Associated with Specific Events?


We do know, however, that as giant volcanoes erupt, they send ash and sulfur compounds into the stratosphere, blocking sunlight and lowering world temperatures. Pinatubo did that in the 1990s. Krakatoa did it in the 1880s. Tambora did it early in the nineteenth century. It’s difficult to say, however, that a global trend in warming would be the detectable cause of a specific weather event, and arguing inductively that several coincidental weather events add up to global warming as a control is not “scientific.”


Winfrey’s Potential Windfall


Who determines when, where, and how global warming produces a disaster requiring funds from the $700 million? Just assuming the “cause” of a weather event is an amorphous worldwide “climate change” doesn’t make “climate change” the cause.


Where do we start? Consider that droughts come and go and have always come and gone. Hurricanes come and go and have always come and gone. Rain, rain, rain, drenching rain has always come and always gone.


What of cold spells? Heat waves? Coral decline or coral growth? Desertification such as what has occurred in the Sahara in 21,000-year cycles interspersed with periods of greening, such as the greening period that ended about 5,000 years ago when the landscape called Al-Ṣaḥrāʾ al-Kubrā became the Sahara, the Great Desert?


Seven hundred million dollars! And a pledge to spend more, billions more, all based on inductive reasoning. The COP28ers are masters and mistresses and nonbinaries who know better than you because they can point to a drought or a flood here or there and definitively ascribe it to a general trend in average temperature. (But they are High-Level Champions, and you aren’t)


They have in their minds a “Pure Science” at their disposal, after all. You have only common sense. They will save the planet one drought at a time, one storm at a time, one cold spell, or one heat wave at a time because they have the money—your money and the money of all those taxed in participating countries.


The Temperatures Aren’t Rising as Fast as the Number of COP Attendees


And if 90,000 registered to attend COP28 in an expensive-to-visit and distant city this year, just imagine the attendance at COP29. Last year’s fifty thousand has almost doubled this year. If doubling occurs every year, COP29 will have 200,000 attendees, COP30, 400,000, COP32 1.6 million attendees. See where this is going? Keep doubling the attendance and soon every person, including you, will be a conference attendee. And if expenditures increase, they will eventually take everyone’s money into a future of reversing civilization to the time when, in fact, the world was truly very warm, a period about 55 million years ago, a period without the burning of fossil fuels, but a period of naturally higher atmospheric carbon—both carbon and temperatures high without human activities


The Denier


OH! NO! Another “carbon denier.” If that’s the “scientific response,” note that “OH! NO! Another Alarmist Hajj” is an equally valid response. Another pilgrimage to the altar of climate change overseen by bishops like Kerry, Gore, Thunberg, and High-Level Champions all giving homilies asking civilization to repent its ways, to reject itself in favor of a world with a burgeoning population and inadequate or unreliable energy supplies.


In the meantime, every drying-up Lake Mead or Lake Tulare will off-and-on return to bank full capacity just as those two lakes have done recently. Every intermittent stream will do what intermittent streams do: flow when water is abundant and dry up when it isn’t. For each arid or humid event, the crowd will point to say, “See, it’s climate change.” And they will forget that cycling is a planet Earth thing, a dynamism associated with shifting continents, shifting ocean currents, shifting axial tilt, shifting orbital shape, shifting solar output, shifting cloud cover, shifting volcanic eruptions, and shifting human activities, such as redirecting streams to dry the Aral Sea, the drawing down of ground water reserves like the Ogallala Aquifer, the deforestation of Brazil, Indonesia, and Madagascar—all actions that might contribute more individually to “climate change” than the addition of carbon to the atmosphere associated with the rise of modern civilization.


And when the COP people achieve their “zero carbon footprint,” will Earth revert to what it was 12,000 years ago, a wintry place of growing ice sheets destined to cover much of the Northern Hemisphere? Will COP3000 have attendees screaming about reheating the planet? “Oh! No. What did our ancestral High-Level Champions do to us? We’re freezing.”


The Perfect World Climate


What is the perfect climate? Life has persisted through many climate changes for 3.8 billion years give or take a week. It flourished in hot times and in cold times, in ages of ice sheets and in ages of hot aridity. Do the current residents of Cairo want the climate of London? Do the current residents of Honolulu want the climate of Ottawa? Do all those retired Floridians who moved to Miami to avoid the snowbird winters of New York wish for northern winters? What is the perfect climate? Is it a world with a uniform Mall Temperature?


Hasn’t 60,000 years of human migration demonstrated that people move to both arid and humid zones, to both cold and warm zones, and to tornado and hurricane zones? And once there, hasn’t history shown that people remain there for generations? Earth offers a variety of climate zones, from tropical to boreal, and humans live in all of them, save for the severest weather zones like the Arctic and Antarctic, where only “scientists” reside for relatively short periods. Is the distribution of Earth’s climate zones perfect now? Was it perfect at another time? Will it ever be “perfect” or “stable”?


The Legacy: Parties without End


Ninety thousand people. A conference. Seven hundred million dollars pledged. Next year more people, more pledges, more expenditures at what will soon become the world’s largest party that assuages the guilt of an entire species. And when you inevitably join the party, will you say with them, “We’re saving the planet one COP at a time”?


The Conference of Parties will continue their meetings ad infinitum, it seems. And why not? It’s the adult version of college spring break. It is, after all, called a conference of parties.