A twenty-five year fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’ve only recently come to appreciate one of director Stanley Kubrick’s themes: films are a way to enlighten audiences and can be a means to enlightenment. Don’t believe me? Check out the fascinating work that Rob Ager did to uncover the meaning of 2001’s most infamous…
Trump, the gaudy (fill in the blank*) marketer elected out of hate via a system most Americans cannot describe, came into and will leave the White House a (________), (________), (________) man in need of mental healthcare, one who even his supporters of vaguely sound mind will struggle to find a single inspiring quote from,…
To some, GPT-3 is a marvel. To others, it’s a faceplant. What’s the big deal? GPT-3 is an AI system that has ingested 45 terabytes of English text and, from that, “learned” to read and write. It’s the creation of OpenAI, an AI lab dedicated to making sure “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”.…
I recently read an essay by Namwali Serpell, author of a new and widely acclaimed novel The Old Drift, called The Banality of Empathy. Her main issue: art doesn’t promote empathy. And even if it did, why would that be good? Serpell asks this because to her empathy means to “be” or “inhabit” or “consume”…
I’m a little late to the hit sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem. I’d heard of it years ago, but before I recently started reading the book I didn’t realize Barrack Obama had given it a thumbs up, or that Amazon had planned to spend a fortune to bring what has become a trilogy to the…
It’s the “attention economy” someone somewhere told us. Silicon Valley sure got the message. But more and more the major technology mavericks-turned-behemoths are buying into and growing the “distraction economy”. Google is the latest. On Tuesday this week the company that once preached “Don’t be evil” embraced “Just chill” when it revealed its gaming platform…
This is not about fake news. That’s a separate realm. It’s where truth dies when the size and effort of the lie is enough to give it credence. This isn’t about relativism, though that’s very much alive. It’s thriving in Canada, where the governing party is tying itself in knots talking about my truth, his…
Free Solo is the name of the National Geographic documentary about Alex Honnold’s years long effort to climb El Capitan without any ropes. It’s an ironic name because the endeavor came at a steep emotional cost to both Honnold’s relationships and film crew. And, since El Capitan is 3,000 feet high, Honnold ran the risk…
I recently finished Love! Nature by conservation biologist Dr. Reese Halter. Here’s my review: read it. Love! Nature is a collection of more than 75 essays that provide a tour of the natural world. Reese’s eye and interest moves from oceans to mountaintops, desserts to rain forests, and covers the environments, bio-mechanics, evolution, habits, and…
So, right after scientists got their hands on the gene editing tool called CRISPR-cas9 in 2015, the moral gymnastics began. Scientists faced the challenge of how to use — or more importantly how not to use — a new, powerful, and (ethically speaking) little understood technology. Well, some faced it. Others ignored it, as we knew…
I don’t know Jeff Bezos. Never met him. Nevertheless, not long after his darling Amazon reached at $1 trillion valuation, I’m nominating one of his remarks for The Stupidest Thing Uttered by a Smart Guy. The list of candidates for this title is both endless and growing. But context helps Jeff’s case. Real earnings are…
I came across, I don’t remember how, an interesting interactive map quite a few months ago. I didn’t fiddle with it much, but its premise has sort of been lingering in the rearward reaches of my consciousness ever since. After recently writing about our “convenient realities“, the map demanded attention. When it comes to Western…
I’ve loved The Doors so long it never occurred to me that some people don’t. I was mesmerized by the opening sounds of The End as it played in Apocalypse Now when I first saw it as a ten-year old. (I was too young to “get” a lot of the movie, but not too young…
This week Roy Scranton — combat veteran, author, and Notre Dame professor — published what is in essence a manifesto explaining why, in the face of nearly-assured ecological doom, he chose life. It reminded me of Samuel Beckett’s closing to The Unnamable: “…where am I, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you…
I have no clue how typical my Twitter feed is. It pulls in tweets from a swath of viewpoints, some famous and some social-media famous. Last week it filled up with tweets about Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain: mourning their deaths, praising their talents, thanking them for their contributions, praising them for their grace during…
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