I’m in Love with Rocks Consciousness is one of those perennial hardy topics, it just won’t go away but we simply don’t know what it means and how it arises. I’ve even had a little peck at it myself but it’s way above my pay scale (“Shouldn’t AI Apps be Just a Little Bit Conscious?” 20 January, 2021). But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t even mor...
Who Cares About Home Care? How things change! A lot of Americans don’t want immigrants, especially the undocumented ones. But now we have a humongous labor shortage. So much for restricting immigration. Nowhere is the problem more acute than in home care. These days the only home care workers, other than spouses and close family are foreign. Thes...
Who Knew? This is the very week that Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos went into space (or near as) and Elon Musk has booked a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic for a time yet to be announced. Yet the press coverage has been at best muted and occasionally disparaging. As in, they didn’t actually go into real space, just a 3-minute taste of minima...
SCOTUS Goes Trans? I guess you saw that the Supreme Court just ruled in favor of a transgender student, siding with him in the use of the bathroom of the gender he identifies with? There’s those who will see this as a victory for human rights. There are others who will roll their eyes that it’s come to this. For many people LGBTQ+ is already...
Mexican Burritos Drugged Too? So, the Japan Olympics start soon on July 23. But there’s already a casualty, namely the American runner, Shelby Houlihan, who has been banned from participating due to doping. Her story is that it was a burrito that did it hmmm. Zero tolerance, right? The World Antidoping Agency has, after years of investigative w...
One Million Cryptos? Cryptocurrencies are hot. Many of the companies are public so they are attracting a lot of attention. I published a blog recently in which I pointed out that there are about 4,000 crypto companies but there could be more than a million eventually since its relatively simple to set one up these days because the templates have ...
UFOs are Officially Official So now UFOs are hitting the big time with a report from the US government on the topic. The report is now out but actually we’re none the wiser as to what these UFOs actually are. So, here’s my ha’penny’s worth. You know all those pesky drones out there buzzing overhead and invading your privacy? It’s probably them. But...
We’ve had our little crypto correction. Now. prices are down a bit. Should we be worried? Despite what you might think about the cryptos, they’re meeting a lot of needs for a lot of people. So, they’re going to stick around, even if China bans them. Their price is just a sideshow. The real issue now is not the prices of the cryptos but their market...
Can You Trust Shoeless CEOs? So, the truth is out, from no less than the oracle of Omaha. What’s the skinny? The biggest problem we face in investing in companies are the CEOs themselves. You knew that didn’t you? According to the Oracle, “You get a guy or a woman in charge of it—they’re personable, the directors like ’em—they don’t know what the...
Prove it! Let’s not get into politics but I don’t have to tell you that election fraud has been occupying a lot of minds, whether or not it is occurring. And, clearly not just in the US. How about in every country with a voting system, democratic, quasi or not? Even if you don’t have any fraud, how do you prove it? Technology to the rescue, this ti...
Uncontainable? So, the “Ever Given” was refloated and the Suez Canal cleared. But isn’t that particular ship just too big for the canal? What happens if two container ships sink one at each end? Or are sunk by terrorists? Isn’t the canal just too narrow for the ever-growing mass of containers being squeezed through it? And note that the Ever Given ...
Not Another Digital Currency! I’m sure you’re aware of all the buzz around what are referred to as Nonfungible Tokens (NFTs). These are basically a digital token that inherently attests to the fact of the existence of something, let’s call it an Object of Value (OOV) for the sake of convenience. The NFT provides an audit trail to support the attest...
Just for Trekkies If you loved Star Trek the bad news is that it looks like Star Trek 4 will never see the light of day. The good news is that a practical warp drive might be on the way, well kind of. So, you won’t need to watch a movie to see the planet Vulcan in the star system 40 Eridani in the flesh. You will be able to go there and see it for ...
Mars as Destiny I guess you saw those pictures of the Perseverance rover on Mars, truly amazing feat of engineering. But what I also registered was seeing the desert that is Mars. Maybe there was intelligent life there that reduced it to a wasteland a billion years ago, or maybe not. But it looks like what Earth will probably look like in a while, ...
Why We Need Harvard I’m sure you’ve heard all the news about asteroid Oumuamua (rhymes with onomatopoeia, kind of) that paid our inconsequential little solar system a visit in 2017. At the time it just looked peculiar, like nothing we’ve ever seen. That’s because it was cigar-shaped, not spherical. Since when were asteroids not spherical? Since th...
AI is So Passé I suppose you’ve seen that Google is having problems with it’s AI folks. Maybe it needs some AI to fix them? The cobbler’s shoes perhaps? It seems that everyone is using AI in their apps these days. Voice assistants like Alexa are touted for them and who can claim they aren’t getting smarter? If you have an app these days, it might b...
Catching a Dream? I guess you followed the rise and fall of Quibi? Remember, the hot startup that was going to rocket to fame with short-form video streaming? Naturally, it was a gold-plated tech-icon. How couldn’t it be with the dream team of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman at the helm? And naturally they had a team of up-and-coming executive...
China Again… You might have noticed that a city in China (Suzhou) is conducting a trial of digital money. They have given this money (but note, not Bitcoins) to regular people for free and are letting them spend them online and even in person. Its aimed at exploring the extent to which digital money can be introduced as a regular means of payment a...
I guess you’ve heard the US contention that Huawei chips have a back door that allows the Chinese government to sniff any and all communications through them. Maybe yes, maybe no. But no doubt its possible. I wonder if we are doing it too with the chips that American companies sell to companies overseas? Hmmm, interesting. Getting Deep into the Sub...
I don’t have to tell you that we now have a vaccine out there for covid-19 There is widespread jubilation and a feeling that we have it beaten. How the **** could that ever be construed as bad news? Too Tough to Croak? Well here’s one for starters. “Measles Deaths Soared Worldwide Last Year, as Vaccine Rates Stalled” People aren’t getting their kid...
