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Proved my point
Somebody on substack wrote a good (and old) hint for authors: Don’t spend the first part of the book establishing motives and background info. Get down to action first, then the reader will be INTERESTED in the reasons for the action. I agreed and added that classical music worked like this until the modernists spoiled…
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Altman’s little suckers
People are asking whether AI systems will be able to design themselves by next year. Will that be The Singularity? Should we head for the bunkers? No. Programs have been writing other programs since 1960. Creating a function to do a job, running the function, then deleting it from memory. Object-oriented programming like C++ is…
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Advantage of Windows 11!
After sludging through this miserable molasses for several months I finally found ONE THING that works better on Win11 than it did on Win7. I have a couple of old USB sticks containing some versions of courseware that weren’t backed up elsewhere. They degraded with time and Win 7 would only read small bits from…
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Same bird everywhere
I only hear one type of bird around my house lately. On this morning’s store walk I noticed the same call and response everywhere. One bird asks a question and another answers it. The answer seems to have more variation than the question, sometimes adding a couple of low notes at the end. The two…
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Were they amortizing?
I enjoy this guy’s car history videos. He’s just being himself, not using an AI narrator. Most of the material is familiar to me after 70 years of reading about cars. Occasionally he comes up with a new finding. In this case he doesn’t seem to realize his own discovery! He shows clearly that the…
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Typically stupid
Richard Dawkins is abysmally stupid and abysmally ignorant. He’s always been that way. Now he’s written a book “demonstrating” “logically” that AI is conscious because it sounds conscious. Joseph Weizenbaum developed Eliza, the first chatbot, in 1964. He was horrified to see people treating it as alive. Even his own secretary, who keypunched the code,…
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Atypically good!
Running contrary to all expectations, a “state” judge has reached the right decision in an important case. The so-called “legislature”, in its infinitesimal wisdom, decided that sheriffs were too sane. The “legislature” added a number of restrictions to the office of sheriff, including age, training, and MOST IMPORTANTLY approval by a “state” “commission” devoted to…
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Hammers
Catholics have been pulling some really dumb tricks in recent centuries, worshipping billionaires and Share Value by favoring Gaia and immigration. I’m pretty sure old JC wouldn’t advise popes and priests to worship bankers and moneychangers. Here’s a worthy countercurrent. The college of St Joseph the Worker is a trade school with strong religious overtones.…
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More “communism” from China
A LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago I got tired of “Red China” and “Communist China”. Most Repooflicans still use those nonsensical phrases. China is VASTLY more capitalist than we are. Chinese industry wants profit and products, not Share Value. They recognize, as Henry Ford did, that profit comes from treating workers and customers decently. Share Value comes…
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Deepstatized
Last month I heard, with great relief, that the ADA mandate was suddenly being extended for a year. I heard about the reprieve from the coauthor who had heard it on NPR. Last year I heard about the clampdown indirectly and MANY MONTHS LATE, when one professor asked the publisher if her books were going…
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Three differences
Riddle posted by a Brit: Q: What do you call a group of men waiting for a haircut? A: A barbercue. This doesn’t work in American English for THREE reasons, not just one. 1. We call a waiting group a line, not a queue. 2. We pronounce the last r in barber. 3. We pronounce…
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Tyndale 500th
This spring is the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale’s bible. Working in and around language I often heard that Tyndale published the first vernacular English bible, but I never bothered to look up the whole story. The latest print edition of History Today tells the story with appropriate drama. He studied and wrote for ten…
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Not disappointed, disappointed
Keeping up with developments in the world of bitcoin fraud. = = = = = = (1) Not disappointed in Judge Kaplan: Via Arstechnica, Sammy Bankman filed an appeal for a new trial, and Judge Kaplan sternly refused. Before he was busted, Sammy was feeding both political pigs, following the standard billionaire script at the…
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What’s missing in blockball
A new thought about the nasty social media algorithms. If you’re paying attention you know most of them are NOT echo chambers. Most of them give you less of what you like and more of what you hate. (There are exceptions.) I’ve noticed that blocking and reporting the DULL REPETITIVE CRAP is sort of satisfying,…
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Missing the main point as always
Via RealClear, a sane and sensible article on school homework in math classes. Education is all about fads and fashions. Trends come and go, but parents consistently hate homework and cheer when a school abandons it. The article says it’s hard to quantify whether homework helps. Naturally mathy types get good grades without spending time…
Polistra's Mill
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Polistra's Mill 