We're past Labor Day, which means that the political campaign season is ramping up. By ramping up, I mean wall-to-wall political ads during news and other shows on local channels, and even bleeding into cable channels. I never thought I would miss the semi-constant home repair, lawyer, and auto ads.

The really sad part is that all the ads are for races that don't affect us. So we're watching all the third grade playground taunting and name-calling for no particular purpose.

Yesterday was the start of fall. It was just like all the other days before, except we had some rain. Still hot, still sticky. The gardenia in the front yard didn't get the message. Still putting out flowers. Life in the Tidewater.

Change.

Heraclitus is famous for (among other things) saying Everything changes and nothing stands still. Or he may have said, All is flux, nothing stays still. Or maybe he said There is nothing permanent except change. Or maybe Change is the only constant.

Quod erat demonstrandum, as the Romans liked to say. Or maybe not.

I mention all this because I got in one of those 'I-think-we're-agreeing-but-it-sure-doesn't-feel like-it' conversations with my friend Dawn the other day. She was saying that 'time' should get more respect and recognition as a dimension.

I can't say I disagree, but time has invisibility going against it. Plus, it's always on, inexorably marching forward (no rewind), and then at a certain predesignated moment, it starts all over again—new day, new week, new month, new year. We are able to adjust our relationship to the other three dimensions (how big is your world, really?). And unlike the other three dimensions, it's always speeding up (if you're youngish and haven't experienced this yet, trust me). And things within it are always changing, even if only slightly, affecting both the physical world as well as the temporal world.

The conundrum is, Even if I pay more attention to time, recognize its dimensionality, I don't know what would be different. Even if there are things I want to stay the same, they won't. And tomorrow is going to happen. Even if it looks at lot like today, something will change.

And that's alright. As long as I recognize it, I should be OK. I may not embrace it, but 'grin and bear it' should be an OK response too.

Worthy of recognition.

I was rereading Lucille Clifton's how to carry water when I bumped into a line in it: why some people be mad at me/sometimes

Normally, I would put the offending line into quotations, but then I realized that, while the second and third line could stand on their own, the fourth and fifth line added a super special punch dimension. So the whole poem:

they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep remembering
mine.

mea culpa.

(Latin for 'I may have screwed up.')

So there I was, minding my own business, reading one of my geeky friend's columns when he sprung a surprise on me: there are actually five kinds of artificial intelligence (A.S.)!

Hmn, I think, there's a lot of that going around—four kinds of introspection and extroversion, for example (which were both chronicled here in the Chair). So why not 5 kinds of A.S.?

Off I hie myself (a whole lot of hieing going on) to the internet, where artificial intelligence india details them for us.

Reactive machines: are designed to perform specific tasks based on predefined rules. Think of access gates: a driver scans a card. A gate opens. I don't think of intelligence here. There's no value add beyond what a key and lock provided.
Limited memory AI: use past experiences to improve their performance. Think of a toddler stacking blocks.
Theory of mind AI: systems that can understand and interpret human emotions, beliefs, and intentions. This is the stuff that tells us how to make a bomb, and that Bill Gates thinks will replace all teachers and doctors by 2030. This is also where we can start to get afraid. On the other hand if this is built on existing human interactions, like dating, and seeing the ease with which both men and women misunderstand their romantic partners, we're in for a new whole world of hurt.
Self-aware AI: possesses consciousness, self-awareness, and the ability to understand their own existence. I know people with natural intelligence who don't possess this, or only rarely swim upstream far enough to achieve self-awareness. I don't think this will happen in my lifetime, so I don't care.
Artificial superintelligence: will surpass human intelligence in all aspects, including creativity, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence. Well, aren't we full of ourselves! Think of the computer that Deep Thought built to posit the Ultimate Question (the answer was '42') in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. All together now–AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

Anyway, I apologize to reactive and limited memory machines for dissing them. Fortunately, they don't know that I did.

Identity crisis?

Every now and then, some young whippersnapper (yeah, I know, redundant, right?) comes along and tries to lay some truism on me about me & my peeps.

So it was the other morning when one of said y.w. dropped 4 Songs From 1967 That Every Baby Boomer Knows by Heart. Hey, I qualify. I was 17, so it's right in my sweet spot. Bring it on!

The songs? I got three out of four: Light My Fire, Respect, and All You Need I Love. But the fourth? I didn't even recognize the band name, much less the song. Now, 'Strawberry Alarm Clock' sounds like one of those cutesy names psychedelic bands gave themselves, but memorable? No.

And I don't have to tear up my 'OK Boomer' membership card because I didn't remember a one-trick pony band. Also, I don't remember where I put mine.