Random Thoughts

Just for fun, I randomly selected 5 items from my Blog-preparation file.  I will try to comment on each of them, so that someday in the future, my Great Great Grandsons will be able to read them and figure out what strange thoughts occupied my mind, back there in the Dark Ages.

1.  A  Sting:  The Week reported that a Canadian motorist was ticketed for removing his seat belt so that he could reach for his wallet in order to give money to a homeless person on the side of the road. Unfortunately for the motorist, that "homeless person" was really an undercover cop and gave him a $175 fine!

Boo!  Boo!  Dirty pool!  In Canada too?  I hope that the motorist fought the fine in court and that the judge gave the fine to the nasty cop instead. IMHO.

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2. Neanderthals:  Abigail Tucker writes that "Humans tend to dismiss Neanderthals as  dimwits, yet the brains of our doomed cousins were actually larger than our own."

"... humans have barrel-shaped chests and narrow pelvises, Neanderthals had bell-shaped torsos with wide pelvises."

Miki Ben-Dor, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist thinks that the difference between the two types was caused by the food they ate.   In the colder places where Neanderthals lived, there was not much fruit and vegetable matter to be eaten, so they consumed mainly animal meat, made of fat and protein.  These foods may have caused their livers and kidneys to enlarge, and cause their chests and pelvises to widen to accommodate for their increased size.  The skinnier, fruit eating humans were able to run rings around those fat guys.

I wonder about belly fat in women.  Women usually do not have big bellies; however, in some families that is not the case.  Some female French Canadian family ancestors had paunches; and some  female Yankee family ancestors had paunches.  Sad for my progeny who  have relatives from both families.  Could there be some Neanderthal blood in the family tree?

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3. Book to Write:  I have a strong urge to write a book.  I think of plots all the time.  Here is one of my possible creative endeavors: 

Fangs for the Memory

A hopeless romantic recalls his days in a snake-infected jungle.

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4.  Talking to the Dead:   Muhammad A. Ahmad wrote an interesting piece in the Saturday Evening Post.  He suggested that with our current tech knowledge, we could create a simulation of a deceased person that we  could converse with.

Not so far fetched:  Way back in the 1970's, I wrote a computer program version of Eliza.  The original Eliza was made to fool people into thinking "she" was really talking to you.  I tried to get my Eliza to do the same.  I programmed "her" to respond to questions typed on a console.. but the responses were tricky.  For instance, if someone typed: "What will the weather be tomorrow?"  My Eliza would respond: "What would you like the weather to be tomorrow?"

If someone typed "Who was George Washington?"  My Eliza would respond:  "Who do you think George Washington was?"   

Get the picture?

I also had stock answers to some questions.  If someone typed: "What day is it?"  Eliza would refer to a built in "date app" (although computer routines were not called "apps" then) and print: "Today's date is.....(whatever it was)"  So.. it's all tricks.. however, lots of people believe that simulated responses are real  and their computer has passed the Turing test.

(This reminds me of the time that I was running a large scale computer test on one of the many gigantic systems at the Social Security Administration.  My secretary knew where I was and called me there to  let my know that analyst Cobb Addabo wanted to talk to me.  I told her to send Cobb down and we could talk while my test ran.

Prior to Mr. Addabo appearing, I programmed a little routine into the console, and when he showed up I asked him if he thought that computers could think.  He said that was silly.  I told him that this computer was able to communicate with him... all he had to do was type in "Hello, Computer"..

Saying again that it was silly, he nonetheless typed in "Hello, Computer." I told him to then press a button, and when he did so, the computer roared for a second and a message typed out on the console:  "Hi, Cobb!"  Cobb almost had a heart attack.)

OK.. I'm convinced that with recorded videos of the deceased, voice recordings of the deceased, and with some tricky programming, a person may end up with simulations of the deceased.  Perhaps a good sculptor could even make a nice soft robot copy of the deceased to encase that simulated material.

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5.  A Sweet Mystery.  The New York Post (not always the most reliable newspaper) recently reported that a large amount of Skittles candies fell out of  a truck en route to a cattle feed station in Dodge County, Wisconsin.  Skittles manufacturer, Mars Inc says they don't know anything at all about the spill or where the candy came from, and why it was going to be fed to cattle. (Does your steak taste sweeter lately?)

Perhaps the candy actually came from the planet Mars.  I've always thought that humans were allowed to evolve so that at some time in the future, Martians could come down and help themselves to plenty of high protein creatures.  Their planet seems rather barren.  Martians are obviously living underground and eating mushrooms, so a nice supply of humans might be their means to resume getting enough nutrition to come out of the depths.

(Speaking of steak, I love filet mignon and order it at least twice a week from our dining venue.  However, in honor of the Year of the Pig, instead of filet, they are substituting duck.  I've never tasted duck, but one billion Chinese folks can't be wrong.  They like it.)

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Enough of this nonsense!
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