SeniorJunior

 OK, ok, Meta ... ...MAYBE  (So far it's an aspiration) As an established superfan of A.I., I see the UT (universal translator) as a PA (providential application) of mankind's new supertool.  Emancipating, it would be for us mono-linguistic types.  I see me in, say, Costa Rica talking to my great new dentist, perfect Costa Rican Spanish going into his earbuds and perfect English translation into mine as we discuss implants and crowns.  Then I would chat with his Ukrainian tech. Be still my heart. A.I. is getting better by the minute -- on its way to S.I., superintelligence -- and I really have no doubt the Universal Translator is coming soon.  Meta has the bucks and the motivation to make it happen, so for once I am cheering for Mark Zuckerberg. I will cheer even louder when I can download the App. BTW, notice Zuck's new hairdo? What next, a hat? Read the piece on Babelfish. - - - - - - - - - CLICK HERE for   My newest Sci-Fi Novel. Guess what... it's on Superintelligen

              Poland to buy 250 M1 Abrams tanks from US             General Dynamics Gets the Biz Heavy, I am. 62 metric tons And mean? Man, I'm mean. The State Department just approved the $6 billion sale, because of the "deteriorating situation" in Poland's neighbor Ukraine. No wonder the stock market is ambivalent about the costs of war. A long read on the Abrams ON THE "PRODUCTIVITY" OF MILITARY GEAR PURCHASES.

...WORKforce, That Is   The American workforce is our mightiest infrastructure element!  Whether a member thereof is a nurse, a truck driver, a Python coder, an agriculture stoop laborer, a cop, a teacher.... on an on... they are part of the vast human asset we call The Workforce.   For top productivity, inventiveness, diligence at work, i.e. world competitive , our Workforce should be a great one:   Healthy, educated, motivated, confident, honest, dedicated, and patriotic. It has high morale. It works hard and is productive.  It is creative and great at solving problems. It works together effectively as teams, large and small, and as individuals. Show me a national workforce that meets those definitions, and I will show you a nation enjoying success, progress, and prosperity. Now look at the American workforce. Some of it fits that "great" definition; much does not. Truth is, it MUST to be great for the huge competition facing us with China. We can compete with China or go t

  Talk about accurate futurism! Thumbing through the Sept 1934 issue of Popular Science (don't ask), I found this: "Television May Add to the Power of Telescope." Without ever hearing about "pixel count" the inventive professor suggested the  light gathering power might reach that of a "2000 inch reflector," when the largest telescope on earth had a 100 inch mirror! The futurist foresaw pixel count saying, "a mosaic of tiny photoelectric cells at the focus of the telescope." 88 years ago! Wow. The James Webb has 8 million "tiny photoelectric cells!" ... and they see Infra-red! I'm sure even the far-seeing Dr. Francois Henroteau* (Canadian, dontcha know) would have been blown away.  I sure am, both by his prescience and by the JWST itself.   THAT FUTURE JUST KEEPS THUNDERING DOWN THE TIME TRACK. * A NYTime piece on Francois

I’m not saying “Build Back Better” is a slogan I originated...  ...It just struck me that I said it loud and clear in July of 2008 in my endless blog. That was just after the vicious floods in the spring of 2008. They made  a huge mess of Iowa and so many other places.  The phrase was (first?) used big time in 2009 by former President Bill Clinton while referring to Haiti after the political upheaval and storms of 2008.  The U.N. picked it up in 2015. It’s a good, common sense slogan. Luckily (Luck, HA!) Most of what I was talking about then was “hard infrastructure" and the passed and signed Infrastructure Bill addresses that and more. Thank You Lord. But that’s only two of the legs on the three legged American stool, the other part of the infrastructure is the WorkForce, and ours is as worn out, over-used and neglected as the creaky old bridges. That stool is rickety, and it makes no sense to just fix part of it. So the fact that the contemporary Build Back Better puts

 ... On Most things. Andrew Sullivan "Gave 'em hell" on Sixty Minutes Sunday night 11/14/2011.   He's a conservative author, editor and blogger. As a British-American, his style combines the perception of an outsider with the devotion of a native son. "Too many Americans  are no longer the citizens that the founders were counting on."    [On our current hyper-polarization]: "You wait and hope that will pass. So that we can get back to the pragmatic process of governing reality. And that's not what we're engaged in now. We're flying from reality. We're inventing abstractions and ideologies. We're fighting each other. We're demonizing each other. The system can still work. It's we who are broken." His whole interview strikes me as so important that everyone, on both sides of our Great Divide should give it a listen. He's a gay man and an AIDS survivor, which makes his commentary poignant on the subject of gay marria

The Good News (updated) I got my Moderna booster jab Nov 9th. Now I feel less "old fart vulnerability," but how much less?  I had not seen stats on how the “boosted” crowd is doing. Are we now bullet proof?  Slightly, somewhat, very? Googling the question, I found this New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) piece which is a thorough analysis of Israeli data on their experience with the Delta variant in their highly, and early, vaccinated population. Delta knocked the straw out of Israel. August 2021 So they went full barrel with Pfizer booster shots, with their over-65s first. Then they did an excellent job of tracking booster effectiveness. The study has this exciting headline: Protection of BNT162b2 (Pfizer) Vaccine Booster against Covid-19 in Israel (Link to the study) Bottom line of the research? Boosters do super.  Twelve days after your jab, you are  eleven times less likely  to get infected compared to a fully vaccinated peer, and  19.5 times less likely  to get a ser

  We Will Meet Our Betters Avi Loeb in Scientific American : "If the  Perseverance rover  finds evidence for microbes on Mars, our self-esteem will not be affected since it is obvious that we are more intelligent than they are. But if the rover bumps into the wreckage of a spacecraft far more advanced than we ever produced, our ego will be challenged." We WILL find evidence of life with science and tech incomprehensibly ahead of where we are now. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next decades, or the next centuries. (Too bad we don't live long enough to catch more of these rare events.) But it is inevitable. They may be so far superior to us they will seem like giant gods. Hey, Fellas. Look at this little blue one. Probably a giant metal mind, probabilities be told. Biological creatures, at least on oxygen planets, are vulnerable to death and decay, even with great technology. Artificial intelligence will  inevitably  evolve into superintelligence. At that juncture SI will preva

Look Into an Author's Mind and Find His Books. Look into his books and find his soul. I am NOT Scooter's soul, whatever you think Ok, Ok, maybe just his typos. Consider this a marketing move and we'll be square. Bigger pictures HERE Look into this sci-fi quartet and find new worlds (a bunch)  and new times -- both future and past.  

"Work" has become a dirty word for many These days people are uncertain about what to do with their work life. We read all the time that the Covid lockdown caused many people to reconsider whether to go back to the job(s) they had, or something like them. Maybe they were working for minimum wage, maybe working two or more jobs to make ends meet, putting in 80 hours in conditions that weren't all that great, getting few or no benefits. This situation has made "work"a terrible thing for some.  There is even a subReddit called "antiwork," with a half million members. ( The graffiti above is from that sub.)  Judging from their comments and votes, most of their work experience has been really rotten.  It is fundamentally a sad subReddit.  They are looking desperately for an alternative way to survive - and enjoy life in the process.  ...Short of that, how about a decent job? With a while to think about their personal rat race, some have thought it over and

  THE WATER PROJECT for AMERICA (WPA!) Solving the looming fresh water shortage* while Taking a big step in “Adaptation” to the climate crisis This new WPA will be limited to a very tightly defined mission. (Good for focus and bad for distractions.**) [Much like the Apollo Project was tightly defined as “landing men on the moon.” Period.] The Mission:   Solve the Fresh Water Problem in the USA The direct benefits are huge.  (“Game Changer” is an understatement.) It will address a severe problem pending for people of all economic, political and cultural stripes. It has the potential to be supported by even diametrically opposed subsets of the population. The offshoot benefits are unpredictable but, based on history, will be extraordinary. (It will turn on the creative spigot like the Apollo Project did.) Click one version of this gigantic project: No More Floods; No More Droughts *How bad is the water crisis? ** Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalis

 So Just How Infectious IS chicken pox? Can you catch chicken pox just by looking someone in the eye?* Will chicken pox seek you out and hunt you down like a dog?** Will chicken pox infect you if you are downwind half a mile?*** Whatever, it must be BAD. BECAUSE THE DELTA VARIANT IS "AS INFECTIOUS AS CHICKEN POX!!" Not to make light of the damn Delta variant... it's apparently terribly infectious. But to assume everybody knows how infectious chicken pox is -- then make that comparison hundreds of times without explaining just what it means -- seems berserk to me as a communication device. I'm an old guy with lots of memories about chicken pox pre-vaccine (1995, U.S. approval), but I really didn't know how infectious it is. So I Googled my brains out, and found this: (In english) The Delta variant is more   transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox, according to