Friday, December 30, 2016

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Breakfast at Tiffany's



Well, not really! I just thought the title might be eye-catching. It is about breakfast however. The other day I made my way to the ante meridian institutional repast feeling mild trepidation as usual. We are seated more or less at random so we never know who our table companions might be turn out to be. I’m an adventurous sort and am nearly always willing to take a chance in the hope of meeting up with someone who might have a few curious comments. As one approaches the portal on a particular day it is always somewhat daunting to imagine how it might work out on that morning.

I should note at this point that this account may or may not be fictitious--or at least parts of it may or may not be true. This protects both the innocent and the guilty.

On this day I had a very pleasant lady seated at my right, one whom we will call Alice. During the course of conversation Alice said, “I hate California.”

“Oh,” I said, “Did you live there?” 

“No,” she said.

I asked, “Have you visited there?”

“Yes,” she said. 

“Where?”  I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said. “It was freezing cold with the wind blowing in off the ocean.”

“Was it San Francisco?” 

“No,” she replied. “I think it was San Diego. It was roasting hot away from the ocean and freezing cold near the ocean.”

“Were there other things you didn’t like about the place?”

“Yes,” she said, “They have earthquakes and things.”

“Did they have an earthquake while you were there?”

“---(no reply)---.”  

“Usually earthquakes are fairly local. Most people never experience them. I don’t recall any notable events in San Diego in the last half century or so,” I commented.

"Also, when I walked down the street I heard all these different languages. People ought to speak English," she remarked somewhat tangentially.

I strongly resisted the urge to launch  into a history lesson on father Junipero Serra who came to California in 1770, recently made a saint by Pope Francis. I have learned somewhat painfully as a teacher that persons in their 90s are not particularly susceptible to lessons or new information, specially on history, religion, geography, or politics.
 
 Our conversation ended pleasantly without further comment.

This episode reminded me of a very entertaining Englishman. His name was Sydney Smith. Smith was the funny man of England in the first half of the 19th Century.  His letters and bon mots were legion and hilarious.  Among his host of correspondents were Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and hundreds of others.  He was a Minister in the Church of England, but I must say, he had some highly irreverent things to say about bishops and other like creatures.

The quote that particularly applied in the above situation was  - "Don't mind poor Sir Jeffrey, Only last week he was heard to make insulting remarks about the equator"



Monday, November 14, 2016

Fall of Rome, Brexit, and USA Election



Why do I keep coming back to the The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire while ruminating on current events? I don’t know how many of you readers have actually read Gibbon – it’s actually very lively reading – but I have, part at least. It is tough to get through all six volumes. There are an awful lot of side journeys. When it was first published people actually lined up to buy the next volume as it made its appearance at the book sellers. The work is best known for its readability, its reliance on original sources, and its frank (at that time) criticism of Christianity. In light of today’s news it is just a little ironic that the first portion of this landmark work appeared in 1776.

In the classical era things tended to happen a bit more slowly than they do now. It is said that Rome did not fall over night. Well, tell that to the members of the six Roman legions settled in England for the past 425 years when the word came in AD 410 from Emperor Honorius to pack up and get your asses back here to Rome, we’ve got a problem with a fellow named Alaric, a regular barbarian. That departure of the Roman army and much of the sophistication, technology, and culture that went with them started little old England on a downward slide that lasted a thousand years.

Honorius holds the dubious distinction of being the worst emperor in all of Rome’s 800 year history. That might be due to the fact that being appointed emperor at the age of two might not have been the best of ideas. At the outset he had the very able help of his mentor, guardian, and father-in-law, General Stilicho, but he managed to spoil that eventually by having him executed. Nothing however would have affected the grand course of the changes that were in the works. The rot had set in with the death of Marcus Aurelius over two hundred years earlier, the last of the five good emperors (the Antonines), and the accession of Commodus.
           
Many of us have differing views about Rome. It did after all last for 800 years and a major effort was made by Justinian long after their departure from England to put it all back together. Justinian’s efforts were cut short by the Black Plague and for the Western world the knowledge, administrative expertise, and technology slipped away. Rome’s history is long and complex. There was a lot that was amazing, good, and horribly evil about it but one would expect that from such a long lived culture. Much of classical knowledge was rescued by the Arab world. Eastern Europe and the Middle East became the cradle of civilized human culture. The British Isles and Western Europe descended into small fiefdoms populated by minor kings and medieval overlords holed up in their castles and living primitive lives far far different from those enjoyed by the average Roman citizen a thousand years earlier. One might say “yes, but what about slaves? The Romans had slaves.” Yes they did, but so did everyone else. Serfs in Russia and Peasants everywhere were nothing more than slaves, but in Rome there was often a path to freedom and even substantial property ownership. Cicero’s secretary, a slave, eventually owned a large estate and died in luxury at the age of 99.

If Seneca had practiced what he preached, the stoic way, instead of working hard to accumulate a fortune estimated at 300,000,000 sesterces maybe Nero would have listened to him. If Stoicism had succeeded and prevailed with its egalitarian philosophical principles which extended to slaves Christianity may not have gained a foothold. The death of Marcus Aurelius, a good emperor and the most famous of the exponents of the stoic philosophy, was a catastrophe, a major turning point in the history of the world.

What does that have to do with now? I experienced my first shock with the brexit vote in England. I had a whole string of arguments as to why this was a really bad idea, and still think so, but upon reflection I understand the reasons better now as to why it happened. At the time I thought: the European Union, 510 million souls, bigger than the United States, highly industrialized, capable of becoming the world’s major power if they could overhaul a lot of their laws and administrative procedures, a very worthy product and result of the horrific sacrifice of World War II. I even rationalized it in a comparison with the United States of America; forged from very disparate colonies; disparate in size and fundamental interests and culture. I still believe there are fewer differences between the countries of Europe than between many of the states of the USA. The EU could have become a credible balance against the economic power of Asia, India and Russia; could have fostered a more stable world and one maybe a bit more acceptable to Americans. That will not happen. We may slip back into isolationism and xenophobia. I hope not but it looks possible.

Mary Ellen wrote a piece for the New York Times that explained very credibly in a single short page what happened here on November the 8th. The Civil War is not over (I never thought it was. Barbara and I were married in Charleston, South Carolina). I saw and listened to a man who referred to his role in founding Fox on PBS yesterday complaining that our news sources did not have representatives of the silent majority on their staffs. He was visibly very very angry and filled with hate. It boiled out of the TV screen. He said these newspapers and TV networks needed right-to-lifers, climate change deniers, fundamentalist Christians and the like on their staffs. Most of us may think the expression “don’t confuse me with facts” is a sort of joke. It is not. One editorialist wrote, “A party that can put Palin on the ballot as candidate for vice president and elect Donald Trump is at war with reason.”

Members of both parties have to admit that the Electoral College is a strange creation and makes little sense. One very serious TV correspondent remarked that when a foreigner asks him for an explanation of the system he is at a complete loss as to how to explain it. It is odd that one vote in Wyoming is approximately equal to 100 votes in California, Texas, or New York. A little party puzzle is possible. Take the populations and the electoral votes for each state and rearrange and juggle them and you can show the election of a president with 30% of the votes – 70% to the loser.

Although the world in AD 600 may have been mean and uncomfortable it did eventually survive all the backsliding. The blossoming of art and science in the last few centuries has been a wonder to behold. There is a darker side today. Denying climate change can actually destroy the planet. Have a look at Venus. Our planet is a rare example and is in what I like to call a ‘delicate balance.’ Most planets that we have managed to see close up or even around other stars are not as lucky as ours. Just the immediate effects of our meddling are grim. Read the recent news from Delhi or Beijing where wise people stay indoors and nearly everyone has ‘air purifiers’ (if they can afford them). There are now 7,500,000,000 people in the world, 35 times as many as in 410 AD, and nearly all of them have access to and the ability to burn tons of fossil fuels each year. Although the new international agreement on climate change mitigation has been ratified by over 100 nations including the USA we now have learned that the new administration intends to withdraw our signature.

Alaric and his cohorts were after all people too, and those rich Romans were pretty corrupt and deserved what they got. They no doubt didn’t think in exactly these terms but they must have decided then that it is time that we Goths, Vandals, and Visigoths get a shot at the good climate of southern Europe and some of that stuff they’ve got stashed away. They weren’t terribly interested in plays, poetry, books, and the like and partying for them was surely a more raucous affair.

It has been said that comparisons are odious so maybe we shouldn’t carry this too far, but we should remember that there is an outside probability that the fate of the planet is in the balance, completely aside from all the political and social considerations.
           

Saturday, June 11, 2016

We, Robot and I



We, Robot and I

The whole issue of AI, Artificial Intelligence, Strong Artificial Intelligence, and its possible emotional relationship to humans seems to be gathering steam. A recent BBC news article http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36387734 has provided some great new insights into just what is going on today in the field. A lot of different opinions have begun to surface. If you choose to look into this report please follow the various links, especially the one that talks about the 15 important landmarks in the field since 1943.

Those who don’t read Sci-Fi or have not watched Star Trek, The Next Generation, may have missed out on a lot of this 70 year odyssey. This long running TV series starring Patrick Stewart dealt with very serious scientific topics every few episodes. It all began with Alan Turing and his cohorts in 1943. They knew full well that literally anything was possible via the process of computing given the right machinery. Included in that understanding were ‘Black Box’ programs, programs that were self-teaching and self-evolving. Such programs have already been put to use. The curious thing about such programs is that the programmers who write them don’t know how they work or what is really inside them. The idea that computers can only do what they are programmed to do is simply not true.

People are now seriously thinking about such things as: Should robots be given the vote? Could one love a robot? Does one have the right to switch off a robot? Is that murder? Ask a serious computer game player how he or she feels about the characters. With VR, virtual reality, now here and available at a reasonable price, the line between the external world and the virtual world is becoming blurred. So too is the line between the natural creature and the artificial creature.

I have many friends who believe these questions and ideas are the height of silliness, preposterous in the extreme, and are unwilling to even talk about them. However, how about the following: your dog—where did he come from? How do you feel about him? Occasionally we do have to ‘switch’ them off, and it is a very traumatic and highly emotional experience. I have a friend who fruitlessly spent $5000 he could ill afford to cure his dog of cancer. The dog may be made of flesh and bone just like us but he is just as surely made by us from wolves as robots are made from metal, plastic, and silicon. We have never been confronted with the voting question for dogs for the simple reason that the dogs have never brought up the subject, and probably won’t, given their nature. But the same may not be true of sufficiently intelligent robots. And oh, by the way, who said that robots have to be made of metal and silicon?

Not to belabor the relationship between humans and non-humans too much but I must mention elephants. We all know that we did not modify them in some way or other for our convenience and use but it turns out that their intelligence has been a blessing for us and a mixed blessing for them. My wife and I met a very charming elephant and his companion in Thailand in the 90s. We were taken for a long ride in the jungle and through the river. The animal and his companion, Jumba and Mumba, were introduced to each other as very young children. They grew up together and are inseparable. Each day the elephant and his human companion spend their six to eight hours together working, eating, bathing, and playing. At age forty or so the elephant is retired to a life of ease but his lifelong companion will stay with him to the end.

Another elephant at that same compound near Ching Mai makes his or her living painting pictures. The pictures are quite good—most depict elephant themes—and they sell for quite high prices. This animal was not taught—it had a natural talent—and is not instructed in any way.

The movie, Ex Machina, is a powerful look at this whole question. This simple Indy film won an academy award this year (2016). I have watched it five times and find something new in it each time. It is basically a dramatization of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s sandbox experiment which sought to determine if powerful AI could be confined until made safe. Spoiler alert: It could not!

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Dying



Dying—Dying is no fun. It’s not particularly easy, but everybody does it. It’s the one time in your life when the people around you ought to do what you ask of them. In the midst of serious illness our loved ones and our medical helpers are concentrating on keeping us going, making us well, if possible, and often subjecting us to treatments we know are not appropriate. When we know full well that we are dying it’s time to get our help from the practitioners of palliative care, a recognized medical specialty.

What follows is a very personal statement and maybe ought not to be on a public bulletin board but it deals with a subject that we all begin to think a lot about as we grow older. I’m 90 plus and most of my friends are of an age too. I fly model airplanes with a group of about twelve or fifteen pals who call themselves the ROMEO club (Retired Old Men Eating Out). Lately we’ve been losing an average of about two a year to the fellow with the scythe. It keeps us on our mettle to recruit replacements who are only in their seventies, will hang around for a few years and have the energy and strength to chase out into the brush to retrieve our occasionally crashed aircraft.

I could go on at length with personal anecdotes connected with so many of my dear friends who are gone now but I really want this testament to be about the dearest person in my life, my wife, Barbara. Her death was an enduring and indelible lesson and reminder to all who knew her on how to live a full and rewarding life and how to leave it with unspeakably beautiful grace.

Barbara had been ill with breast cancer and osteoporosis for several years before 2012. This had not slowed her down much and we had some wonderful times in those last years in spite of the medical episodes she had had to endure—operations and hospitalizations. We even took a Holland America cruise about seven months prior to her death in 2012 and enjoyed partying and associating with our university and church friends during that year. In fact, she insisted I attend an astronomy conference in Hawaii in early June of 2012 during which time our son came out from Ohio for a week to look after her. They had a great time going out for meals and socializing, as did I 2300 miles to the west.

I am not too fit myself and we had some hilarious adventures in those final months that we managed to laugh at. I remember one night she fell in the bathroom and couldn’t get up even though she was uninjured. The two of us managed to get her near the bed and then we struggled mightily to try to get her up onto the bed. Our positions were so ridiculous and we got to laughing so hard that we thought we might have to call 911 for assistance just to get to bed. We finally made it.

The cancer had been in remission for nearly ten years but on a routine visit to the oncologist in January of 2012 we discovered from the blood work that the markers, which had been near zero, were on the rise. The doctor offered the option of resuming radiation and chemo treatment but Barbara said, “No.”  She pointed out that she had had a wonderful and full life and was ready for the last chapter. He agreed of course and gave her all the support she needed.

The clock ticked on and we continued to enjoy life and one another’s company, then on June the 18th, 2012, she awoke in great pain. She said we had better call the doctor. It was just before 7 a.m. I sent him an email and he called back by phone within a few minutes and asked if he should send an ambulance. Barbara said “No,” we could make it in the car just fine. She put on an old nightgown and a well-worn robe and walked out to the car with the aid of a cane. She never looked back. I knew that she knew she would never see the home again that she loved so much and that had nurtured our relationship for 44 years. Barbara knew how to move on. It was just like when we were married in Charleston, South Carolina in1946. She was 19, living in Chicago where she was born and had lived every day of her life to that point, and I was 20 and in the Navy. I called her from a phone on our ship in dry dock and said “Come on down we’re going to get married.” She came and never looked back.

There was a wheel chair at the door of Mercy Hospital to greet us.

She spent three days in the hospital. Tests and x-rays revealed widespread bone cancer. On about the second day while I was present in the room she was assisted by a nurse into the bathroom. After a few minutes I heard an audible snap and she cried out “I’ve broken my arm.” She had indeed while holding on to the bar next to the toilet. X-rays were taken and the orthopedic surgeon offered to operate and set the break. She declined the treatment and her arm was placed in a sling. The next day with all of us sitting in her room (the oncologist, her G.P, and I), the doctor asked if she would like to go to hospice. She said “Yes,” and he made a call on his cell phone. Fortunately a room was available at San Diego Hospice, one of the finest institutions I’ve ever seen, and she was moved that very afternoon.

Barbara spent ten days at the hospice before dying at 1:50 p.m. on June 29, 2012. During that stay she had many welcome visitors, including a lovely lady who played the Irish harp. When the aroma therapist stopped by and asked if she would like try that Barbara said “Sure, if it’s free. It can’t hurt.” I recall that the eight year old twin daughters of a cousin of mine made a couple of visits and brought her pictures they had painted. I know they had fun playing on the lawn just outside the door of Barbara’s room.
Barbara on her way to Hawaii aboard the QM II

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes; …
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!”

Lord Byron