A deer in headlights ...

Courtesy of CNN

A deer in headlights applies but what did you expect when Ron, an Aspergers guy further along the spectrum than yours truly,  had to respond to questions off script as seen by the clip below. The look says it all when Ron vapor locks when asked about Agent Orange's rise in the polls vs. Ron's. Delicious to a fault without question as this dude's not ready for prime time, especially when he unilaterlly decided to take on The Mouse along with his choice to limit a women's right to choose to a six week time frame, two faux pas Americans are not happy about in any way, shape or fashion.

 

"I'm not a candidate, so we'll see if and when that changes," Gov. DeSantis, who is in Japan right now, says when asked about polls that show him falling behind Trump.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida during a news conference about his new punitive measures against Disney.Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

Channeling the Battle of the Little Big Horn applies, right?

Or Cancun Ted ...

The comments came while the Florida governor has constantly been everywhere but Florida. While Fort Lauderdale was flooding under the weight of the rainiest day in its history, DeSantis was journeying around Ohio to sell his book. Over the past few weeks, he’s visited other states and even Washington, D.C., courting Republicans and gloating about his radical agenda in Florida. It’s gone incredibly poorly, as DeSantis has a meager handful of endorsements, while Trump has already secured the approval of an array of members of Congress and governors—including many members in DeSantis’s own state.

Digital with analog override/rev II

(Credit: OrangeDog and Szdori/Wikimedia Commons)

Thanks to Max Planck and Niels Bohr, we know energy's digital because whenever energy, in the form of the photon, is absorbed by an electron orbiting an atom's nucleus, the electron in question will jump to a more distant orbit in discrete fashion as seen by the graphic above. Conversely, when an electron emits a photon (aka light) due to a loss of energy, it drops in similar fashion to a lower orbit as needs warrant. This same either/or concept of digital also applies to electrons (aka fermion/lepton) as they must exist in different quantum states in order to share orbits with other electrons as expressed by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the indispensable reason as to how existence functions at grand scale. 

As you can see, the 1s and 2s subshells for beryllium atoms can hold only two electrons and when filled, the electrons must have opposite spins. Otherwise they will have the same four quantum numbers, in violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

But Bohr’s model was just that: a model that successfully described what was seen. What it didn’t do was explain why this set of rules would exist at all, or provide a set of axioms that allowed such rules to be derived.

That’s where the Pauli Exclusion Principle comes in. Simply by demanding that no two identical fermions in the same quantum system occupy the same quantum state, this complex structure emerges: for the behavior of electrons within atoms, as well as for all other composite systems containing multiple identical fermions.

If it weren’t for the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the matter we have in our Universe would behave in an extraordinarily different fashion. The electrons, you see, are examples of fermions. Every electron is fundamentally identical to every other electron in the Universe, with the same charge, mass, lepton number, lepton family number, and intrinsic angular momentum (or spin).

If there were no Pauli Exclusion Principle, there would be no limit to the number of electrons that could fill the ground (lowest-energy) state of an atom. Over time, and at cool enough temperatures, that’s the state that every single electron in the Universe would eventually sink to. The lowest energy orbital — the 1s orbital in each atom — would be the only orbital to contain electrons, and it would contain all of the electrons inherent to every atom.

In essence, existence as we know it would not exist ...

Pauli in 1945

Although, at a fundamental level, the Universe is made up of point-like quantum particles, they assemble together to create objects of finite sizes and masses, occupying specific amounts of volume. This artist’s illustration shows several electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus, where the electron is a fundamental particle but the nucleus can be broken up into still smaller, more fundamental constituents.

The rise of quantum ...

The central assumption behind his new derivation, presented to the DPG on 14 December 1900, was the supposition, now known as the Planck postulate, that electromagnetic energy could be emitted only in quantized form, in other words, the energy could only be a multiple of an elementary unit:

E=h\v  

where h is Planck's constant, also known as Planck's action quantum (introduced already in 1899), and ν is the frequency of the radiation. Note that the elementary units of energy discussed here are represented by hν and not simply by ν. Physicists now call these quanta photons, and a photon of frequency ν will have its own specific and unique energy. The total energy at that frequency is then equal to hν multiplied by the number of photons at that frequency.

German physicist Max Planck (c. 1930)

Digital also applies to ...

The uncertainty principle states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle's position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa.

In other words, if we could shrink a tortoise down to the size of an electron, we would only be able to precisely calculate its speed or its location, not both at the same time.

At its base level, reality is digital as per the subatomic zoo seen below.

Fermions form one of the two fundamental classes of subatomic particles, the other being bosons. All subatomic particles must be one or the other. A composite particle (hadron) is a fermion).

Bosons are particles that carry energy and forces throughout the universe. Think Photons :) 

An elementary particle (electron) is both a lepton & fermion.

Hadrons consist of quarks. Think protons and neutrons :)

I'm mad as hell ...

Prescient comes to mind when viewing Peter Finch's epic rant as Howard Beale in Network, one of the truly great films, not only as biting satire but also as an accurate prediction as to what society has become 47 years after this masterpiece was created. Watch the entire film as its take on business, society and the absurdity of the human condition is spot on to the max. 

Network

The Great Automatic Grammatizator

The plugboard of an Enigma machine, showing two pairs of letters swapped: S–O and A–J.
During World War II, ten plugboard connections were made.

Looking at Enigima, yours truly envisions Roald Dahl's incredible short story, The Great Automatic Grammatizator, written in 1954, detailing the rise of the AI precursor of ChatGPT and Bard, complete with the same sociological and existential issues already happening with the emergence of the  ChatGPT's of the world. 

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness! Given the words, and given the sense of what is to be said, then there is only one correct order in which those words can be arranged.

No, he thought, that isn’t quite accurate. In many sentences there are several alternative positions for words and phrases, all of which may be grammatically correct. But what the hell. The theory itself is basically true. 

“No, sir, honestly, it’s true what I say. Don’t you see that with volume alone we’ll completely overwhelm them! This machine can produce a five-thousand-word story, all typed and ready for dispatch, in thirty seconds. How can the writers compete with that? I ask you, Mr Bohlen, how?”

At that point, Adolph Knipe noticed a slight change in the man’s expression, an extra brightness in the eyes, the nostrils distending, the whole face becoming still, almost rigid. Quickly, he continued. “Nowadays, Mr Bohlen, the hand-made article hasn’t a hope. It can’t possibly compete with mass-production, especially in this country—you know that.

Carpets...chairs...shoes...bricks...crockery...anything you like to mention— they’re all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories—well—they’re just another product, like carpets and chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as you deliver the goods. We’ll sell them wholesale, Mr Bohlen! We’ll undercut every writer in the country! We’ll corner the market!” 

And lastly ...

Knipe grinned, lifting his lip and baring a long pale upper gum. “Simply because she saw the machine-made stuff was better than her own.

Roald Dahl

You are what you eat ...

 

You are what you eat ...

Faynman Diagrams

Quantum Mechanics is hard to understand as the subatomic world plays by different rules from the classical as particles are both wave and particle, the former existing when unobserved and the latter, when observed. Now that we know Alice in Wonderland lives, Richard Feynman's radical notion of using diagrams to graphically show how subatomic particles interact would not only change how man viewed quantum mechanics but also how mankind viewed the world.

Wave functions of the electron in a hydrogen atom at different energy levels. Quantum mechanics cannot predict the exact location of a particle in space, only the probability of finding it at different locations.[1] The brighter areas represent a higher probability of finding the electron.

Richard Feynman

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent
and original manner possible.”

Existence is digital with analog override ...

1801 and 1900, years forever changing how man views reality, were the start points of all things relating to the world of computation. The first was Thomas Young's double slit experiment showing light to be both a wave and particle and in 1900, the introduction of quantum mechanics showing, without question, that existence is digital with analog override. :)

It easily explains quantum, a key concept of quantum mechanics.

It explains the history of quantum theory. As the first step, it  examines  the origin and meaning of quantum.

The table of contents for this video is as follows:

1. The meaning of the era of quantum mechanics
2. Without quantum mechanics, there would be no computer - modern civilization is quantum civilization.
3. Why is quantum mechanics difficult- Even genius physicists such as Richard Feynman and Niels Bohr said it was difficult.
4. Quantum mechanics is difficult because it goes against common sense and intuition.
5. The first step in understanding quantum mechanics is to understand the quantum. Examine the origin of quantum and its physical meaning.
6. One of the backgrounds of the birth of quantum mechanics was the problem of blackbody radiation.
7. Examine Max Planck's quantum hypothesis, which established a quantum hypothesis and sowed the seeds of quantum mechanics.

Young's experiment was based on the hypothesis that if light were wave-like in nature, then it should behave in a manner similar to ripples or waves on a pond of water. Where two opposing water waves meet, they should react in a specific manner to either reinforce or destroy each other. If the two waves are in step (the crests meet), then they should combine to make a larger wave. In contrast, when two waves meet that are out of step (the crest of one meets the trough of another), the waves should cancel and produce a flat surface in that area.

In order to test his hypothesis, Young devised an ingenious experiment. Using sunlight diffracted through a small slit as a source of coherent illumination, he projected the light rays emanating from the slit onto another screen containing two slits placed side by side. Light passing through the slits was then allowed to fall onto a screen. Young observed that when the slits were large, spaced far apart and close to the screen, then two overlapping patches of light formed on the screen. However, when he reduced the size of the slits and brought them closer together, the light passing through the slits and onto the screen produced distinct bands of color separated by dark regions in a serial order. Young coined the term interference fringes to describe the bands and realized that these colored bands could only be produced if light were acting like a wave.

Again, existence is digital with analog override. :)

Comin' in on a wing & a prayer ...

Comin' in on a wing& a prayer, a quote from a WW II bomber pilot, points out, in a roundabout way, the hope AI will not become a danger to mankind because this is all man can do in praying we can control a tech we will never fully understand ... ever.

To whit:

Scott Pelley: Confounding, absolutely confounding.

Bard appeared to possess the sum of human knowledge...

...with microchips more than 100-thousand times faster than the human brain. We asked Bard to summarize the New Testament. It did, in five seconds and 17 words. We asked for it in Latin--that took another four seconds. Then, we played with a famous six word short story, often attributed to Hemingway. 

Scott Pelley: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.

The only prompt we gave was 'finish this story.' In five seconds…

Scott Pelley: Holy Cow! The shoes were a gift from my wife, but we never had a baby…

From the six-word prompt, Bard created a deeply human tale with characters it invented -- including a man whose wife could not conceive and a stranger, grieving after a miscarriage, and longing for closure.  

Scott Pelley: I am rarely speechless. I don't know what to make of this. Give me that story… 

We asked for the story in verse. In five seconds, there was a poem written by a machine with breathtaking insight into the mystery of faith, Bard wrote "she knew her baby's soul would always be alive." The humanity, at superhuman speed, was a shock. 

Scott Pelley: How is this possible?

Any questions?

On February 26, 1943, a B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber piloted by Hugh G. Ashcraft, Jr. of Charlotte, North Carolina was limping back from a bombing mission in Germany to an American base in England.

The plane, dubbed The Southern Comfort by its crew, had been riddled by flak and was damaged severely, “with a hole four feet square in the rudder, the nose shattered and the Number 3 engine spewing oil and flames.”

The stories about Ashcraft’s cool-headed bravery and his suggestion to pray inspired the songwriting team Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh to write a new patriotic song.

The catchy phrase that popped into the mind of Adamson, the lyricist, was “Comin’ in on a Wing and a Prayer.”

There is no certitude ...

There is no certitude ...

For the full interview with Geoffrey Hinton, a godfather of AI, click here. 

Roll your own ...

Roll your own. Just type in a few keywords and voila, you are a scientist, chef, architect, whatever as AI does the job for you and you don't have to do the time to become good at something but ... what happens if the power goes off or the AI in question vapor locks. Interesting questions to ask, is it not?

A student at Cardiff University has told the BBC that he used the ChatGPT artificial intelligence natural language processing tool to help him with his coursework and assignments for his degree. The student, whose real name was not disclosed, told the BBC he received first-class grades for essays written using the AI chatbot.

He explained that he averaged a 2:1 on most of his assignments but decided to find out how ChatGPT would compare to another 2,500-word essay of purely his work, both of which he submitted in January. The results were stark.

He received, as expected, a 2:1 for his, but the AI achieved a solid first for its essay. "I didn't copy everything word for word, but I would prompt it with questions that gave me access to information much quicker than usual," the student told the BBC.

The student also told the BBC that he intends to continue using the chatbot to help him research and perhaps plan or frame his essays. And this student is not the only one at it.

A 2.1's not too swift but hey, competency is no longer required. Just key it in and your done, right?

I am not a doctor ...

French physician and biochemist Etienne-Emile Baulieu, in 2008. Baulieu developed RU 486, the first safe, effective abortion pill. Photographer: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images/AFP

As said so many times, you can't fix stupid, a characteristic in full display for all to see when a Texas judge, without medical training, made a blanket judgment call on a safe drug adversely impacting the lives of millions of women living in the land of the brave and home of the free. But it's even worse than that as his ruling opens the floodgates to dubious challenges to other drugs by judges having issues when deciding upon cases based on questionable findings like the one made in Texas when Kacsmaryk issued an unqualified decision resembling, in indirect fashion, to how the inquisition operated in enhancing the powers of the church under the rubric of god.

Legal scholars say Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk could have rendered a decision that would have limited the impact to just mifepristone. That would have been a terrible blow to abortion access, but it would have left alone the question of FDA’s authority, and limited the potential impact on other medications. Instead, he rendered a 67-page opinion that cherry picks evidence regarding the safety of the drug — ignoring dozens of studies and over two decades of its safe use around the world — in order to overturn the approval, says I. Glen Cohen, faculty director at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics.

Think about that: a single judge without medical training decided his read on select data on a drug was more sound than the FDA’s vast expertise. That should make the drug industry — not to mention their patients — very nervous.

The breadth of the ruling and the judge’s clear willingness to second guess the FDA’s own expertise could breed similar lawsuits in jurisdictions with similarly sympathetic judges. “It really could become a roadmap for people seeking to challenge the approval of a wide range of other drugs, vaccines and healthcare products,” says Rachel Sachs, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in FDA and health law.

 The war on women continues unabated.

What happens when the power goes off?

Bill Bramhall | Copyright 2023 Tribune Content Agency

What happens when the power goes off?

Impeach the bastard.

Impeach the bastard.

The undiscovered country - Shakespeare/Hamlet

 

The painting at Leang Tedongnge in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Photograph: Maxime Aubert/Griffith University/AFP/Getty Images

Communication 101 ... Over 45,000 years ago, an inspired cave artist painted a life-size pig in Indonesia. What's interesting about the work is the fact it's possibly the first complete figurative art piece ever created while at the same time, a narrative is in play as the pig in the picture is watching two others involved in a serious altercation.

To whit ...

Measuring 136cm by 54cm (53in by 21in), the Sulawesi warty pig was painted using dark red ochre pigment and has a short crest of upright hair, as well as a pair of horn-like facial warts characteristic of adult males of the species.

There are two hand prints above the pig’s hindquarters, and it appears to be facing two other pigs that are only partially preserved, as part of a narrative scene.

“The pig appears to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs,” said co-author Adam Brumm.

In looking at humanity's endless endeavor to communicate, one indirectly sees how language shapes one's view of reality. Many animals have language but man is the only known species possessing the manual dexterity needed to enhance the power of language by creating work extending beyond the confines of the vocal, something readily seen by 8500-year-old written symbols like the ones depicted below.

Examples of the Jiahu symbols, markings found on tortoise shells, dated around 6000 BCE.
Most of the signs were separately inscribed on different shells.[28][29]

From symbols to pictograms
to abstract shapes, the move toward writing evolved ...

Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes,

in Mesopotamian Cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters

into this.

Six major historical writing systems
(left to right, top to bottom: Sumerian pictographs, Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Chinese syllabograms, Old Persian cuneiform, Roman alphabet, Indian Devanagari)

All the output seen above were created by individuals, content not designed for mass dissemination prior to the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, the machine that changed the world.

Printing Press: 1440

Movable type sorted in a letter case and loaded in a composing stick on top

Why are we talking about an act of creation culminating with the ability to communicate all things relating to civilization by putting ink on paper? Well, the existence of the printed word on paper expressing these very thoughts is beginning to be subtly replaced by the emergence of AI that enables one to create high-quality content with little effort by typing in a few keywords used by the aforementioned AI to generate a sophisticated college essay on Shakespeare or to produce a well-researched paper on new approaches to laser design as long as the original material needed to do the assignment in question resides on the web, able to be accessed and processed by the AI construct as needs warrant. 

In essence, it's becoming all too easy to rely on tech as powerful as this because low-hanging fruit of any kind, including AI, has never been refused by any life form residing on Earth since the beginning of time.

A child picking the low-hanging fruit

Gerard van Honthorst - 1632

The world of pretend has arrived with the inevitable question, who do you trust, as content generated by AI has become so nuanced, one cannot see the deception unless one has the right software and prerequisite knowledge needed to separate the real from the unreal. If this state of affairs continues unabated, unfettered AI has the potential to unravel the very foundations of society if we let it.

Staircase

Another question to ask is … what happens if the power goes off? Well, we still have print on paper, an incredibly safe way to present information to a reader as said media cannot be hacked once the printing’s done, something to consider in the age of endless data manipulation. The form factor also works as viewing print on paper is a holistic experience, especially when one drinks coffee and enjoys reading hardcopy like The Redding Sentinel without the need of logging on or checking to see if the battery’s charged on the smartphone, a form factor marginal at best when trying to view content properly designed to be read in a book or newspaper.

The Redding Sentinel

Of course there’s a cost. Storing print is cumbersome and putting out a newspaper in timely fashion is not a trivial task. This is why it’s key to vet the information carefully before committing to print, something absolutely essential if the publication is to be trusted. What’s reassuring about The Redding Sentinel is the fact past issues are available in Acrobat PDF, an uber-reliable and secure file format universally accepted as the digital equivalent of print by every leading law firm and government in the world.

A permit for Demolition

By 2025, 90% of all content on the web will be synthetic.

What's past is prologue - Shakespeare

Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world order.

But that order is now in upheaval amid a new, even more sweeping technological revolution whose consequences we have failed to fully reckon with, and whose culmination may be a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms.

How the Enlightenment Ends

Will history survive? No one knows as AI’s the quintessential Faustian bargain, where ease of use supersedes excellence, something readily seen in the abject loss of quality and its now broken connect to morals in all things related to marketing, social media and governance. 

In closing, the notion of AI being the consummate fake comes to mind as its take on reality is like a fabricated town in a western, all facade and no depth in its attempt to describe the vagaries of existence without the wealth of experience we all share as humans residing on a planet called Earth.

"And what is good, Phædrus,

And what is not good...

Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Robert Persig - Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

The Lisa

The descendent of Xerox Parc's Alto is largely unknown save for geeks like yours truly as Apple's commercially unsuccessful Lisa was the first computer to put together a viable GUI complete with a mouse, multitasking and network connectivity. :) Because the hardware was so expensive, it flopped but it paved the way to the Mackintosh, the machine that changed how man interacted with digital. 

A Macintosh 128K with peripherals

Toons yet again :)

Maintaining the house digital style.

Civility at the highest level.

A fashionista for the ages.

Jaws

Network 2023 ...

Betrayal at the highest level ...

 

Jean Hargadon Wehner speaks about the release of the redacted report on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore by the Maryland Attorney General's Office on Wednesday, April 6, 2023, in Baltimore. Standing next to her is Teresa Lancaster. (Kim Hairston/The Baltimore Sun via AP)

Betrayal at the highest level comes to mind as to what happened in Baltimore
under the aegis of the Catholic Church.

To whit.

BALTIMORE (AP) — More than 150 Catholic priests and others associated with the Archdiocese of Baltimore sexually abused over 600 children and often escaped accountability, according to a long-awaited state report released Wednesday that revealed the scope of abuse spanning 80 years and accused church leaders of decades of coverups.

The report paints a damning picture of the archdiocese, which is the oldest Roman Catholic diocese in the country and spans much of Maryland. Some parishes, schools and congregations had more than one abuser at the same time — including St. Mark Parish in Catonsville, which had 11 abusers living and working there between 1964 and 2004. One deacon admitted to molesting over 100 children. Another priest was allowed to feign hepatitis treatment and make other excuses to avoid facing abuse allegations.

“The staggering pervasiveness of the abuse itself underscores the culpability of the Church hierarchy,” the report said. “The sheer number of abusers and victims, the depravity of the abusers’ conduct, and the frequency with which known abusers were given the opportunity to continue preying upon children are astonishing.”

Words cannot describe ...