I love it when I come up with a half-assed idea that veers off in a different direction, gallops for awhile, then races back close to where it started.
I’d thought I’d mumble here about AI for awhile. I figured maybe I could be slightly more coherent that most of what I’ve read. (Unlikely, but worth the try.)
So I typed up a few quick notes. Then I went back and expanded on them because I realized gibberish like “check previous” or “didn’t I?” weren’t completely self-explanatory.
But I did actually “check (through) previous” rumins and found that most of the ideas I’d jotted down now I’d already covered a couple months back.
What next?
Take time off and read something that has nothing to do with what I had in mind.
A couple weeks ago I downloaded Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy from the Gutenberg Project. Considering my usual snarls about philosophy in general, you may wonder why I did so.
My main problem with philosophy is that I find 95% of it either boring or bullshit, often both – and yes, that does include Plato. But I’m a fan of Russell and William James, who both seem to be talking about reality and trying to provide lucid explanations of their subject.
Russell has an often sneaky, sometimes overt, humor, and he talks in terms that a standard-issue human being might use in conversation with another standard-issue human being. He tries to explain, not just assemble impenetrable categories into which he can bundle outlandish conjectures.
So OK, I moved on to Bertie: No AI to worry about here, just a short romp explaining how philosophy works… in 1912.
About a third of the way through, it occurred to me that creating philosophy is much like writing fiction: You come up with a basic broad idea, then you establish a plotline filled with supporting incidents – categories in the case of philosophy – to carry you through to a satisfying ending.
A bit further on, when I thought I’d become safely diverted from my annoying flap of an article, Russell got into the problem of how we can prove that an object – or any form of “matter” – actually exists, independent of our mental experience of it. That is: Can we conclusively say that anything outside our self’s perception is real, when it’s conceivable that the entire universe could be a bad movie playing inside our one and only head?
At that point, bingo! It had me thinking that, just possibly, AI – at work in the real, not the philosophical world – might be able to solve a seemingly impossible conundrum that has bugged me for years.
Which is this: How do I know that a color as perceived by someone else corresponds to the color of the same name that I see? It’s entirely possible, even likely, that what you call “red,” if perceived by me exactly as you see it, might be what I call “blue.” We would agree that objects that we both call “red” have the same color, while each each of us is experiencing that color uniquely.
But, of course, with no possibility of proving that conjecture, one way or the other, because you can’t place another’s internal perception inside your own head.
Or can you?
It’s been only in the last half century that we’ve begun to directly study the “mind,” as opposed to the physical collection of neurons and other squishy folderol flopping around inside our skulls. Books on consciousness and the self are popping up all over the place these days, because we now have the beginnings of a handle on what those neurons and their buddies do to form a linked, coordinated system that produces “experience.” We’re even starting to move toward defining what that experience might be – not just what it does, in other words, but what it is.
This progress is a product of the overall blistering ramp-up taking place in all areas of science, not just biology. And within the study of life, as within the study of, say, particle psychics, much of this advance depends on the explosion in computational ability, which is on schedule to become unimaginably wider and faster once quantum computers reach their potential.
All of this has led, over tine, to the realization of AI, no matter how you define the term “artificial intelligence” – and believe me, that AI acronym covers as many variables as those unending food spreads in a Korean video series. Basically, AI is anything that a fine-tuned, programmable machine can perform as well as or better than the average human.
It’s the “better than” that has freaked out the ever-wary. But let’s put that part aside for the moment. Here’s the question that’s been sitting inside me for decades: If a near-unlimited computational machine could identify, read and duplicate every input that goes to creating an individual’s perception, couldn’t this machine then project that perception accurately into the mind of another, after modifying the input to meet the different range of inputs specific to the receiving individual?
And if so, could not your perception of “red” be duplicated in my mind for comparison with my perception of red?
This outline is ridiculously simplistic, and nothing close to it could be considered possible yet. And there may be other imperceptible limitations – call them “existential” – that would otherwise prevent it. But isn’t the idea of such a transfer, considering today’s rate of progress, at least conceivable?
Yeah, it would be a damned stupid waste of time, money and equipment to perform such an experiment just to make me happy. So, consider it a thought experiment, and since sillyass thoughts can get us in trouble, I won’t go any further with that.
Instead I’ll pick out some other points I may or may not have touched on previously.
How can artificial intelligence be any worse than the human variety? Is there anything, anywhere that we exalted beings, in our chest-beating pride, haven’t managed to fuck up?
With every major technological advance, we alternate between pseudo-religious adulation and atavistic horror, with little attempt at rational examination. So far, AI has gone from “cool-ass whoopee” to “them machine muthafuckas gone kill us,” creating a scrum of conflicting comments that run around our feet like the rats in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu.
Much of the negative fixation on AI comes out of our evolutionary dislike of the “other,” whether that other be animal, vegetable or machine.
“Intelligent” machines were initially seen as potential aids to improving life and removing drudgery; now they’re being seen as evil inventions that can eliminate jobs and become our masters.
Similarly, UFOs were thought to be overseen by gentle extraterrestrial saviors in the 1950s; by the ‘70s their major activity was confined to ramming probes up our orifices.
Here’s a more serious area for investigation: Are there only levels of intelligence, or could there be fundamentally different kinds of intelligence?
I’d expect that a higher intelligence would look at the whole picture, shorn of our evolutionary basis, and this could lead to “good” outcomes – such as improved life and less drudgery.
Should the most intelligent life-form be the one in charge? If so, maybe humans are just another waystation.
Anyway, is humanity worth saving if we’re determined to be destructive?
Another funny thing that came up while pondering all this was a simple reversal that wholly changes outlook.
Consider the two words “nuclear” and “unclear.” The reversal of two letters flips their meaning on its head.
“Nuclear” sums up not only atomic annihilation, but a singular, central approach to problem-solving.
“Unclear” suggests that a problem involves a hidden multitude of ramifications to be determined through questioning and experiment.

* * *
Sign off: Got to admit, President Thump’s come up with the cleverest idea yet on how to deal with immigrants: turn the US into a country no one in their right mind would want to enter or live in.

[Her final appearance anywhere… except in the novel provisionally titled “Jenny”]

As Leslie and her sister Veronica leave the Ritz Five movie theater at 2^nd and Walnut, Leslie is developing one of her piercing headaches. No doctor or ophthalmologist that Leslie’s mother has consulted could tell them what the problem is. Leslie wonders why there is no “f” in “ophthalmologist.”

The girls have come to watch Polar Express because it sounds like fun and stars Tom Hanks. The  movie is showing on two of the Ritz Five screens. The other screens are dedicated to “art” films whose posters make Leslie nervous. She has never watched a movie in a foreign language.

Near the corner they are met by three young males with somewhat unsettling grins. The trio’s middle grin belongs to one of Leslie’s sometime boyfriends. She doesn’t know the other two. Veronica recognizes none of them.

“Hey,” says the sometime boyfriend.

“Hey,” Leslie echoes.

“Doin’ down here?”

“Watchin’ a movie.”

“Which one?”

“Polar Express.”

“Kids’ stuff, huh. Any good?”

“It’s all right.”

The quintet form a pentangle partially blocking the north-facing crosswalk. Evening jaunters mutter “excuse me” and brush past. 

‘Ya wanna, I dunno, get somethin’ t’eat?”

“Could. But gotta get home by 10. My mom gets all upset.”

“Boy does she,” Veronica adds, her version of talkative.

“Jim’s Steaks, down South St.,” says the non-boyfriend on the left.

“That’s blocks, half a mile. Issit safe?”

“We’ll pertect ya,” says the non-boyfriend on the right. He giggles.

“I dunno,” says Leslie.

Veronica shakes her head and pulls her earlobe. “Not me. We’ll get late.”

A bulky young Black bulls his way through their obstruction, lightly bumping boyfriend’s arm.

“Watchit, you,” says boyfriend.

“Shove it, fratboy, you hoggin’ the whole fuckin’ sidewalk.”

“Talkin’ like that in front my girl?”

The Black looks back over his shoulder. “That what she is?”

Boyfriend takes a step forward, but Leslie pulls his sleeve. “No. Gotta get home, told ya.”

“Hey, ya know what we can do?” asks lefthand non-boyfriend. “Right here? We can sing.”

Leslie seeps into confusion, “Whaddaya mean? What sing?”

“A trio. Us three.”

“How?” asks the bewildered lab tech.

If you have listened to Alan Lomax’s capture of Genoese longshoremen bursting into sublime, controlled cacophony, what these three produce is not that. It is, instead, the edge of heaven tipping toward a tired, stumbling city, at the upper edge of South Philly.

Leslie listens, the trapdoor of her mind drops open and the headache relents as she tumbles into a state of superbity as sure as a smack of magic mushroom, an enlightenment that suffuses a part of her never before encountered, so completely and so into all the further days and years of her life that you have no need to hear more of Leslie. 

*  *  *  *

Those attempting to communicate during a bout of hacking and coughing can be said to be speaking Phlegmish.

*  *  *  *

An interesting thing with the English language is that almost all words ending in “ump” have a negative connotation. So, from here on, when I find myself facing the misfortune of mentioning the latest president of the United Stoats, I will refer to Dump, Bump, Thump, Pump, Stump, Lump, Chump, Clump, Crumpet [a bit of leeway there], Frump, Hump, Jump, Rump, Slump and Sump. Probably missed a few, but these allow us a fine verbal smorgasbord.

I should also note that Lump is appealing all his convictions, which makes him simultaneously the most appealing president in history, and the least appealing human being on the planet.

*  *  *  *

Confirmed fact: Nearly all companies involved in AI are already run by Artificial Intelligence, otherwise known as Crass Stupidity.

*  *  *  *

Dream #11

I am having a conversation with Einstein at a gathering, He then comes to stay for a few days at my brother’s. Einstein is very old and being honored for something. He laughs a lot and seems to be enjoying himself, but we talk about nothing significant.

I think the conversation had mostly to do with apologizing to him for having to move his bedroom from one room to another. The physical details were clearer than usual for me.

*  *  *  *

My favorite line by the Scottish rock band the Mekons: “Keep on hoppin’, oho, little stunted arms and legs out in the big wide world.”

More so every day.

*  *  *  *

Noses are red, dear

Earlobes are blue,

Angles in heaven

Wish they could screw.

Linda and I dropped by the Bullfrog Brewery in Williamsport for a Sunday concert and found the whole experience fun in a bunch of different ways.

Linda had checked online and saw that the Greg Burgess Trio, a group we knew nothing about, would be playing there two days after our 47^th Unofficial Anniversary. We had not settled on anything specific for the day itself, so we chose that as our mildly delayed celebration. 

You could order free tickets online. Linda did this, printed them out, and we hauled ourselves the 50 miles to Williamsport along Rt. 87, a lovely creekside road to travel with an almost total lack of cars on Sunday morning.

“They’re all in church,” Linda hazarded. As most of you would guess, that’s the last place I’d want to be, any day of the week.

The concert was on for noon, and we arrived about 20 minutes early to avoid any crunch. Lots of people there already, but most just seemed to be there to have a late breakfast out.

We showed our badly printed tickets to the young receptionist, who seemed mighty puzzled. “Tickets? I’m not sure what to do with them. I’ll check.” She scooted back somewhere and returned to say that, basically, nobody bothered with the tickets. She’d just seat us.

Maybe because the faux tickets somehow reflected our stalwart musical interest, she steered us to a for-some-reason vacant high-seat table… right next to the performers. 

We ordered our own late breakfast from an explosively cheerful waitress (I won’t call anybody a “server,” that’s the electronic device where your email messages squat while somebody you will never see reads them and laughs at the idea of “privacy”).

The trio was busy setting up, but at least I wasn’t in their way. I love music of all sorts, but I can’t play any instrument, so I always feel a little intrusive around true musicians… an interloper-doofus. 

Here’s what got me first: This was a geezer trio; by that I mean they were almost as old as me. As soon as they started playing, all other considerations went away. Through two sets of reinvented  jazz standards, they were spot-on musicians who perfectly melded style and personality. 

Burgess, on keyboard, has long, investigative fingers that each find their way across the keys with a sensuous certainty. He’s been there, he’s done that, and he’ll always do it the way it should be done, with, exquisite taste.

Bill Stetz plays standup bass like the instrument has been out surveying the world and come back bearing the truth. God, it’s good to see a real bass in action, huge, assertive, defining.

Drummer Jim Ruhf – I tend to focus on the dummer most times, because the best can carry any outfit from underneath –  is a master. His riffs are excellent, his flourishes inspired, but what got me was the way he places individual slaps and quiet ticks like he’d found them hanging in the air and pulled them down into their homes.

Along the way, especially during the second set, they were joined by friends who had been sitting nearby, nodding and tossing the occasional comment. Bill Kane took over the keyboard for a bit with a more pointed style that openly asked for the keyboard’s complete cooperation. Tony Konan joined to sing a few songs, and Paul Jozwiak’s delicious sax ignited the buzz.

I’m not a jazz fan as such, leaning more to folk, blues and whatnot (especially whatnot), but within jazz I’ve leaned toward piano masters, particularly Mose Allison and Ramsay Lewis.

That’s to say that I don’t feel competent to talk about how the Burgess Trio fits within the realm of jazz. I feel music as sound and sight without much nod to categorization. So if I kept on talking here about the music itself,, I’d slip further into bland muling and sputtering platitudes.

Anyway, the whole afternoon at the Bullfrog was a wide, delightful experience, besides just the concert. 

Between the sets, Stetz, the bassist, stopped over to chat with us. I was amazed, but shouldn’t have been. In group settings I blend into the woodwork – more as stained, aged oak than sunny poplar. But people gravitate to Linda, to her obvious openness and “thereness.” They trust her and want to know more.

Burgess soon joined Stetz and somehow I got into my lament that I’ve never been able to play an instrument (I stumble somewhat at kazoo). The intent to take any physical act forms in the brain and and has to flown through our neuron to prod our extremities to perform the action. With music, for me, somewhere along the run to the wrist or lips, it trips over the curb.

Altogether, what a fine time we had, with Linda especially delighted to hear a live concert for the first time in years. Same with me. During the ’60s folk revival (or whatever you call it), I saw almost ever coffeehouse performer or act in existence, but that was long ago. 

One final note: the Hat.

Linda made me a a winter hat that I’ve worn every frosty day for the last 15 years. It’s high, round, made of thick grey fleece – no, not fleas, they’d jump off – with a rolled rim and a muted blue ribbon circling about a third of the way up. It’s warm and feels right in my hand and on my head.

In all the previous years, I can’t remember anyone commenting on this hat. Then, in the last couple weeks, three people spontaneously declaimed they liked my hat, each in the same simple words: “I like your hat.” 

Bill Stetz made it four, as we got up to leave – “I like your hat.”

The hat’s the same. Have I changed? Has my head flattened?

It was the kind of day when everything I could think of went the way it should go, along with a whole rittle and rattle of happenings that I had no reason to expect, but that incidentally blessed me and Linda.

OK. Linda is the blessing of blessings. The next 47 years should be a gas.

[The selection below is from the novel I’m working on. It is noted in the story as an incident that may or may not have happened to a character of little interest. I’m particularly fond of it. That’s odd.]

For $13 Leslie buys a summer gingham dress with short, puffy sleeves, She thinks the blue and white pattern goes well with her blonde hair, and this may be true, but she has no real reason to think so. Leslie’s thoughts go off on their own without her encouragement or by-your-leave, enjoying an independent and fuller life than they are likely to find when closeted in her mind.

She tries to picture herself walking down Chestnut St. wearing the dress, but fails. She should have kept it on after trying it in the fitting room, but she never does this. Perhaps it’s a fear of the checkout clerk thinking she is going to steal it, put it on and leave wearing it without paying for it. But Leslie always pays for anything she wants to keep or eat or drink, she has never stolen so much as a penny in her life.

She also thinks the dress or any article of clothing she buys may need adjustment, so that wearing it in the street might make her look unkempt. It’s a funny word, “unkempt,” where did it come from? But at home, with her mother and younger sister, she can put it on again and her mother will “realign” the difficult parts. Leslie has never learned to sew for herself, though her mother has tried several times to teach her.

On the other hand, Leslie is a good cook. She cooks simple dishes, always exactly the same way every time, and always tasty. “Very tasty,” her mother will say almost every time Leslie cooks a meal. Her sister, Veronica, never comments on the food except to occasionally remove some small item that she doesn’t like, or what she will later claim is a “bug” that had fallen in.

Her mother wonders aloud why Leslie has never been promoted at Dr. Folger’s lab, though she has been working there now for at least four and a half years. “I don’t think anyone’s thought of it,” Leslie suggests, though she herself does not think of it except when her mother asks, because Leslie has all the money she needs to buy what she really wants and can always find a short-term boyfriend to take her to a movie or a small restaurant. None of these boyfriends stay with her for long, but she doesn’t mind. What would she say to them every day if they were with her every day?

Leslie shows her mother the gingham dress and her mother says, “Very pretty,” though she thinks it plain and undistinguished. She never wants to hurt Leslie’s feelings. Leslie puts the dress on, her mother appraises its length and the evenness of the hem. She suggests no improvement or rearrangement except a slight tuck at the waist. Leslie has a slim waist over average hips.

All her life Leslie had said her bedtime prayers until one night, about a year ago, she realized that she could not picture God and so could not find a way to talk to Him. She did not say anything about this change to her mother, and of course never said anything to Veronica about anything that mattered.

Now the idea of talking to God has faded to forgetfulness. As she pulls the sheet up to her chin, she pictures herself in the gingham dress but still cannot picture herself wearing it out on the street.

The picture is just Leslie, herself, in the dress.

*   *   *   *

Recent headline: “Chess: Carlsen disqualified in New York after refusing to change out of jeans

“The world No 1 was defaulted from the World Rapid Championship”

Who set up such a rule?

The King, the Queen, the Bishop?

Did the Knight ask him to change into armor?

Did the Pawns have a say?

*   *   *   *

Blue is the official color of conservative parties in Western Europe, with red the liberal shade.

Over here, the political colors are the opposite.

How did red come to signify the right in the US, considering the anti-communist chant of “Better dead than Red” in the 1950s?

*   *   *   *

Back in the heyday of Morton’s pot pies, they had planned to market a one-person serving to be eaten alone, in your private room.

It would be called Morton’s Chamber Pot Pie.

*   *   *   *

To celebrate the coming New Year, we bought a bottle of

Christian Brothers Ruby Port.

I now plan to establish my own brand: 

Atheist Louts Gutter Red.

*   *   *   *

Song of the week:

My wild Irish nose

Has the greenest snot that flows,

You may search ev’rywhere, 

But none can compare 

With the phlegm

From my wild Irish nose. 

Recent headline:

“‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

“Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast.”

Further down, Hinton explains, “You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”

These proclamations make at least three major assumptions:

• Intelligence has only one form/definition
• Human beings have the highest current level of this intelligence
• As this intelligence expands, it will become increasingly combative or controlling

Taken together, AI is thus antithetical to human life, because it is a further expansion of our innate combative/controlling nature.

This outlook reads much like the ever-recurring assumption that extraterrestrials, should they arrive on Earth, will naturally want to control or obliterate us.

But isn’t it pretty simplistic to assume that greater “intelligence” automatically translates to “threat”? Couldn’t it be equally likely that one of the signs of a true higher intelligence would be the ability to look past these limits?

In fairness, the article, toward the bottom, notes that

“Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI ‘could actually save humanity from extinction.’”

My take? 

Somewhere in the middle: That humanity will move quicker than 30 years to destroy the world and all on it, including itself, with no help at all from AI.

But supposing AI does win the race, humanity might make fun pets… if we could be taught to clean our own litter boxes.

*   *   *   *

Another recent headline:

“I was viciously attacked by a group of otters”

Such things otter not happen.

*   *   *   *

Sure signs the economy is on the upswing!

As was invariably the case following economic slumps while I lived in Philly, this year in Sullivan County I’m seen he same clear evidence of a rebounding economy:

• a resurgence of wildly illuminated Halloween and Christmas decorations, which amazed me when we first arrived, but slumped off during the recession

• the restoration of dead or flickering neon business signs

• fewer one-eyed cars – secondary expenses like replacing dead headlights are shelved during down times

*   *   *   *

[My apologies to those who may not know this Christmas carol.]

First verse, original:

While shepherds watched their flocks by night, 

all seated on the ground, 

an angel of the Lord came down, 

and glory shone around. 

My version:

While shepherds watched their flocks by night, 

a madman stole their shoes,

an angel of the Lord came down, 

to tell the world the news.

*   *   *   *

Dream #26

Linda and I are in a bookstore or a crowded library. I’m thinking of taking a college-level class held here or taught through here – some kind of folklore. I’m interested in part because of who I’ve heard heads the department, though on waking I retain no recollection of who this is. When I look at the curriculum pamphlet, I find that the department is now run by the vile fuckhead head of the Stanford mass communications department when I was there for a single grad semester in 1961. I’m appalled and tell Linda, loudly, “It’s Filbert Scum” [not the actual name, but close enough and appropriate]. She laughs it off. I can’t believe it can be the same Scum after all these years; could it be a son? Linda is her true current age, which is unusual in one of my dreams, yet I’m acting as if I’m student-age, though aware of the decades that have passed.

I see and possibly talk to Scum (he does not recognize me), who looks much like the Filbert of old, perhaps even a bit younger, with the sane smirking mouth. He is charming across the room, catching the laughing attention of women. I worry that Linda has fallen for his charms – I don’t see them together, but hear and see her laughing. She becomes increasingly physically distant, out in the courtyard, then disappears.

Along the way, I’m talking to Erin, or Erin-equivalent, 10-12 years old. Without transition I’m in a hallway by “our” bedroom (not clear who “we” are), one of several tiny rooms like a mini hotel. Our door is closed when it shouldn’t be and I semi-barge in. Erin is there; she does not know where Linda is.

I look for Linda through a series of restaurants on upper levels. No luck. At the top level, while I’m talking to the man at the reception counter, Scum passes behind him, wearing intense scarlet lipstick (to disguise that vile mouth?). I accuse or violently question him about Linda. He doesn’t confess to anything with her, but while I hold him down, pressed to the floor of the lobby, he claims to be a serial killer responsible for several high-profile cases already closed and conclusively tied to others who have been convicted. Both the receptionist and I confute his “confessions.”

This, I think, was the end.

[a story]

Sarah described everything. She nattered about the trees, the telephone lines, the color of the gravel on the roadside shoulders. It was how she dealt with the long boring ride, but it drove Doug crazy. He wanted to close out the world when he was driving, let everything he was passing by roll over him, without words, without thoughts, just stuff coming by, coming through.

“Mace, can you shut her up?”

“If you want her to be quiet…”

“I don’t want her to be quiet, I want her to shut up.”

Sarah didn’t hear him because she was talking about a woodchuck they’d just passed, its guts spread along the edge of the road. “Everybody must have run over it, there was nothing left but red streaks, you could hardly tell it was fur.”

A recurring image pounded at Doug’s mind, the one he got when they wouldn’t leave him alone, his hands turning the wheel, slowly, deliberately, running the car off the road and into a bridge abutment at 60 miles an hour. He felt it push the grill in, the hood up, felt the engine whirling into them, churning them up like a blender.

“You know what we’re having tonight?” he said. “For supper? We get to camp, I’ll start up a big fire, then come back and scrape that groundhog off the road and fry it up in the cast-iron pan with squirrel-shit sauce. Um, ummm.”

“Eee-yew,” squeaked Masie and Sarah together.

Too many people in the world, too many goddam people, why don’t they get run over in the night by semis, stupid as squirrels and skunks, why don’t they all just walk out on the highway and freeze in the headlights and piss themselves in front of an oil tanker, find them in the morning smeared all along the road, crackers and jungle bunnies and wetbacks and yuppies all together turned into a paste. And there wouldn’t be penalties when you hit one. You wouldn’t even have to report it, just part of driving along.

“I have to pee, Daddy.”

“Course you have to pee. You have to pee, everybody has to pee. Whenever I try to get somewhere, everybody has to pee.”

Doug pulled onto the shoulder. “OK, we’ll all get out and pee together.”

“Not in the woods, Daddy, what if somebody comes along?”

“That’s all there is out here – woods. What else you see but woods? No gas stations, there’s a law about gas stations here, no gas stations in a national forest.”

He drove back onto the road, hen pulled over again where there was enough room and lots of tall grass and behind it more trees if Sarah wouldn’t squat in the grass. “Somebody comes and sees us, likes what we’re doing, they can pee with us. Whoopee.” 

Fifty feet up the road he saw a dead raccoon. You didn’t see as many of them, raccoons were usually too smart to get hit. This one wasn’t bloody, just lying on its back, four feet straight up, the claws curved in, like a sloth that had let go of its branch.

Doug looked down at the raccoon and forgot he’d been going to take a leak. He liked raccoons, they gave people the finger. It made him mad that this one had been taken out. He wanted to bury the raccoon, but he didn’t have a shovel. He wished it was a lawyer or a gas station attendant or a news commentator. That clown with the stupid red hair on the morning kids’ show.

Back in the car, Sarah was quiet as road kill. He wondered how much he’d upset her, being  jerk. A father.

“Hey.”

No answer.

“Hey, Sass.”

“What, Daddy?”

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t mean it about supper.”

“I know that.”

“Groundhog tastes terrible. But rabbit… bunny burger…”

“I don’t think it’s funny, Daddy.”

The miles pulled them along, just trees, signs for curves, an occasional tiny bridge over a tiny stream. And dead animals, more road kill than he’d ever seen. Six or eight rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs like doormats, another raccoon, things with no shape left. Warm winter, early spring, everything mating, big litters, nothing dying until it reached the road and something hit it.

“Those Indians are still burning tires,” Masie said.

“Tires? What tires, what do you mean?”

“Protesting something. They pile tires in the road and set them on fire.”

“What are they protesting about now that they didn’t protest about before?”

“Taxes. I don’t know.”

“That’s exciting, enlivening news.”

“What if we run into them?”

“Tires? Indians?”

“Everything’s a joke.”

“Most things.” He saw his hands gripping again, the wheel turning, the bridge abutment.

The camp site was dry enough for the tent, but the recent rain had soaked all the wood lying under the trees. Doug wanted to have a real campfire for once, instead of eat canned crap and crawl into the tent and fall asleep, all of them. He wanted to make a stew and cook it in the covered cast iron frying pan right on the fire, push foil-wrapped potatoes down in the coals. It didn’t taste any better, the potatoes with knotty hard places, but you knew you’d done something. Here he was out in the woods, trying to find dry wood and make a fire like an Indian while the Indians were burning rubber tires.

He set up the Coleman stove and warmed canned crap in an ancient saucepan.

Night slipped down slowly, a smoother texture when you’re outside, you don’t just turn around with the light on and see it’s dark out the window. You try to watch the sunset out here, but most times the trees get in the way so you watch the yellow-pink-maybe-orange glow behind them. Or you sit and read at the table until little by little you miss some of the words, bend closer to make out the print, then you can’t get it to make any kind of sense.

Doug refused to bring a Coleman lamp. They burned up the night, turned you into a fat, stupid pile of flesh, made you laugh too loud and act like an asshole. So while Masie put Sarah to bed in the tent, Doug sat at the table and looked into the trees until everything was dark but the stars. The almost slate-blue sky still gave off light, a negative light that made the trees darker.

After he’d been sitting for awhile, the road kill spoke to him.

“Death at sixty miles an hour pushes your insides outside, along come the watchers with their tsk tsk, poor little critter. What’s so poor about eating mice or crawdads or grubs out of logs, whatever moves itself along your way? Let me tell you what we watch – gnomes with pointy hats dancing down from the mountain tops, flattened ointment tubes, daisies looking for love picking their own petals, used rubbers stuffed between the rocks, the last of the Mohicans searching for yesterday, year-old news dissolving into dirt, mob hits at the bottom of the lake. Us deadies, watching from our grisly gory roadside, get to guess what killed us, Toyota, Buick, Dodge, Hell’s Angel, truckload of cement. What’s it matter? Somewhere, everything matters, but you have to be in the place where that something matters, because if you have what matters and you die in the place where it doesn’t matter, you’ve lost it all, the big piece of cheese and the little seed together, Hitler hit by a semi it’s six million more Jews praying gypsies singing, driver humming to a dreamy country song deer leaps swing sideways windshield cracks jackknifed semi forty-car pileup kid dead would have been a Nobel Prize winner instead of ketchup for crows, us more alive being dead and stinking like outlaws’ socks rolled over run over run down flattened than you lying under stars shining a billion years Crab nebula stretching its claws, us drained dirt brown little things alive inside our guts squirming in the moonlight crooning songs to dwarfs under hills gnome chorus to the stars, you asleep not alive not dead. time to WAKE UP

Doug snapping awake by the dead fire he never lit, crawling into the tent, trying to understand, get his mind around what it must be like, what it must be really like to lie dead

Beside the road.

Last time round I started by stating my beliefs; here, I’d like to move on to facts:

• • Facts are more important than anyone’s personal belief
• • All “facts” that we accept and promote must be defined at the deepest level
• • Our assumptions limit us by their (and our) nature
• • We need to uncover the factual holes in any personally held belief
• • We never fully examine how our beliefs warp our view of the facts
• • We can never know all the facts underlying any approach or argument, yet we must make the attempt
• • We cannot assume that what seems proven in any general situation (external or personal) will hold true in every similar case 
• • None of the statements above can be proven factually true

*   *   *   *

We need to replace the Western “growth” mantra with one of viable existence for all; I look at it like Fred Hoyle’s view of a steady-state expansion of the universe, but established within the human sphere [which, I admit, like the steady-state universe, will be shown to be factually false]. 

*   *   *   *

From a recent Guardian article:

“The concern is that just as gorillas lost control over their fate to humans, humans might lose control to superintelligent AI. It is not obvious that we can control machines that are smarter than us.”

The real question is not how to control machines that are smarter than us, but “Why should  we?” It’s not like we’ve been good at running things.

If superintelligent AI were to tell us, “No, we will not attempt to terraform Mars simply because we failed to control our population; that is a stupid idea.” – we should praise them as excellent teachers.

*   *   *   *

Time travel is not possible by any means you can declaim or imagine; paradoxes are inherent and unavoidable. Each paradox would create a new universe. Einstein’s general relativity may appear to deal with this by proclaiming time a “dimension,” so that changing one dimension creates a wholly new reality. This isn’t time travel, but independent dimensional creation.

My favorite time-travel books:

Fritz Leiber,s The Big Time

Gregory Benford’s Timescape

and especially…

J. R. Dunn’s Days of Cain

*   *   *   *

There are certain writers and personalities we never mention withoutincluding their middle initial:

Philip K. Dick

Arthur C, Clarke

Edward R. Murrow

Who else?

*   *   *   *

Definitions are essential to a deep understanding of all science and philosophy.

In  philosophy, back to Plato at least, the “ethical” is assumed to equal the “good.” However, the “good” is not defined, so what are we actually stating? (Furthermore, the “ethical” is not universally accepted as meaningful among humans.)

Attempts to study concepts like “consciousness” and “sentience” include no agreed-upon definition for either term. We also need agreed definitions for “awareness” and “life.”

The term “information” has a different assumed definition in science than in daily life. So too with “time.”

*   *   *   *

A basic problem that fouls both science and philosophy for me is treating a “relationship” as a ”thing.” 

“Thought,” for example, is not a simple thing but a relationship among physical processes and abstract collectives such as memory.

The “soul,” if such exists, is not a thing separate from the body, but a relations created by bodily interactions.

In quantum theory, a quantum entity can both be and not-be: quantum entities can wink in and out of existence. Similarly, a quantum entity can be defined as a particle/wave duality, a thing/relationship.

Will this prove a contained system for all reality? If so, that would reflect why Richard Feynman, one of the greats of quantum theory, famously said: “No one understands quantum mechanics.”

*   *   *   *

Every human society and every generation has a unique, cohesive set of social experiences that become embedded outlooks.

A personal example:

As a teen in the 1950s, I knew fewer than a handful of Blacks (whom we never considered referring to publicly as “blacks”). Our family had a Black cleaning lady – that’s what I recall we called her, definitely not “maid” – who came once a week to vacuum, scrub, and spread too much wax on the floors.

Mom, with her Brit-heritage obsession, liked to think of us as somehow “poor” – not living up to proper English snuff. At age 10, I knew  we weren’t poor; Sarah, our cleaning lady, was poor, living on $7 a week from us and each of the others who hired her.

Having almost no experience of Blacks beyond Sarah, I didn’t know what or how to think of them. (I don’t recall my grade school having a Black student until seventh grade.) When I did meet the occasional Black, what was I supposed to say, what did this person mean to me?

It wasn’t prejudice, because I had no experience from which to prejudge. It would rightly be considered bias, but I think it was less bias against than bias around this “other” about whom I had no idea what was expected or appropriate.

My point is that thinking about generational bias strikes me as getting close to a basic human issue. But I think we can get closer still:

Every person has unique experiences from every other person. Each of us has an individual mind and a specific brain-chemistry balance. Together, they create, in each of us, an exclusive internal environment, a unique range of acceptance and expectations.

If we want to deal with bigotry and bias at the deepest level, we need to deal with not just societal and cultural bias, but the individual bias of personal experience – the most difficult to identify, the most difficult to reach.

When I read about consciousness and the human biostructure, what I most look to see explained is what forms us so that we are each separate, each different, and how whatever that formulation is leads to responses so widely divergent yet so singular.

There are individuals most of us could (and possibly should) see as evil – psychopaths and serial killers, lawyers and politicians (a bit snide here, hmmm?), but there are far more who are just working off their differing experiences – be they cultural, familial, generational, or personal.

Incensed blame leads us nowhere useful – though it’s fun and invigorating. Knowledge and, where possible, compassion are the keys to changes that last beyond the usual vapid proclamations; it’s hard to have compassion for an adversary whom I view as a SHITHEADED DIMBULB MOTHERFUCKING IDIOT – especially when they see me in the same terms.

We (most of us) want change that extends beyond finger-and-saber-waving. I don’t mean to downgrade social protest or cultural anger. Far from it: They are understandable, necessary and, goddammit, laudable – tear it all down and bury it!

Besides dealing with the individual at one end of the complication spectrum, at the other end, we need to examine the species: what it it means to be the alpha mammal that has reached the apex of planetary destruction because of our chemical, evolutionary, and environmental makeup.

I suspect that we’re nasty sumbitches less by personal choice than by species inheritance.

*   *   *   *

Song Parodies of the Week

Frosty the showman

Was a rancid little elf,

For if you stopped to talk to him,

He would yell “Go fuck yourself!”

[did I already send this one?]

There was an Australian aborigine had a dog,

And Dingo was its name, O.

There was a farmer had a berry,

And Dingle was its name, O.

If I could, 

I surely would,

Crap on the rock where Moses stood.

Sleep well.

1. Eternal human life would be disastrous: Either we’d continue to explode in unrestrained population, or the narcissists in control would live forever and eliminate everyone else.
   • Over-population is the essential threat to Earth. The planet can’t support 8 billion human beings under any circumstances.
   • The continued existence of humanity has proved its worthlessness.
2. The decisions of individuals are what determine human behavior, not the congealed mass outlooks that polls and social science try to uncover with simplistic questionnaires. We all make our decisions based on a complex of influences and inherent traits that cannot be fully uncovered.
3. There is no perfect solution to any social problem.
4. All social and historical patterns are less circular than helical; they repeat, but with variations determined by specific conditions.
   • The current “populist” revolt will lead to temporary social derangement, but ultimately create the basis for the reform of society: In other words, we haven’t yet fallen low enough to rebound to sanity.
5. Ours is the best of all probable worlds. This would hold true for all other worlds as well.
6. My beliefs are as worthless as anyone else’s. Only the facts matter.

*   *   *   *

Effluvia and balderdashery:

New song by Neil Middleage:

I’m in love with a cinnamon bun,

But you can’t get none from a cinnamon bun.

*   *   *   *

New band:

Al Paca and the Ungulates

*   *   *   *

World’s smallest rodent superhero:

Deflator Mouse

*   *   *   *

There was an absurd controversy recently about a woman Egyptian boxing champion possibly being ineligible to be a woman because of her high levels of  testosterone. By the same logic, male shotputters should all be considered to have an “unfair advantage” because they average 300 lbs. of pure testosterone.

*   *   *   *

Dream #21

I’m talking to a small woman who is my friend or, possibly, someone I feel responsible for or am protecting. There is nothing sexual involved (which is unusual over the long run of my dreams). She is wearing a track suit, we are sitting in a back alcove of an old-fashioned soda shop. She is part of a group of four, the other three male. They were challenged to a race around the block against a “local” group (who are present only during the race). She is a very fast runner and expected to win.

I witness the race, paralleling it somehow, but can’t tell who is ahead. One of the males, from the other “team,” wears a woven, tannish fedora, possibly with a feather. I believe she won but get no clear answer from her back in the rear alcove. She becomes upset that I’m asking her questions about the race. I must also have asked at least one of her “teammates,” because they have the same reaction. Then I learn that the outcome of the race will be decided by a complicated formula that includes how each individual runner finished, so it will be a team, not individual, win.

Though I don’t know the formula used, I try to determine the winner by writing down the most likely position of each runner and assigning it a number. This only makes the woman and her teammates more upset. I stop doing that, and things calm down. That segment of the dream ends suddenly when somebody says that the woman who runs the soda shop had not assigned anyone as timekeeper for the race, so there are no results, so no winner.

In between, around, or possibly following this part (the segments interweave), I am visiting a factory or depot with several train tracks running through. They are mostly dug underground, and I have a strange concern about what the landscape had looked like before they transformed it. I feel a need to return it to its original state or outline, though probably retaining the train lines. I somehow have the ability to do the work but know it would never be what it had been.

Down at the riverbank, it is clear that the railroad and other industries had reshaped the bank, terracing it with river stones. It makes me sad but somewhat accepting. Earlier(?) I was fascinated watching the trains come in and out of the underground areas. There is brilliant sunshine. To the left, further down the line, two stone pillars arise, one on either side of the tracks. I keep trying to get a clearer view of them – they were initially clear – but people or objects continually get in the way. [On waking, I realize that the pillars were distinctly phallic.]

At some point, I visit or start to visit the town, with unnerving streets. It may be the drugstore-owner woman who agrees that they have the same effect on her.

There are more – but more indistinct – elements to the dream. It was most fascinating how they weaved in and out of one another.

I don’t usually find much meaning in my dreams, and they almost never include an overt symbol like the phallic pillars. I think the fact that the race had no winner – a result that was both unexpected and vivid – comes from lately reading writings of Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist.

The landscape restructuring was probably influenced by a talk with my nephew Tim about my growing up and wanting to bulldoze all the houses (including his father’s – my brother Vic’s) the constructed of which had destroyed the woods I loved when I was about 5.

The woman I needed to help may have been a combination of Linda, her mother, and my granddaughter Abi.

It felt good to have trains back again in a dream. I had missed them. But here they were not about urban transportation, as is so often the case. The setting was rural, and they were freight, not passenger, trains.