A good reason to keep your windows closed.

 

        For such a sophisticated system the human brain can be rather scary.  Once it goes off the rails, there’s no telling what will happen next.  Logic goes out the window.

 

 

 

    See what I mean?

My turn to be dunked

 

There is nothing left of my donut but the hole.

I never really thunk it,

I doubt that I could dunk it,

The Doctor said, "I’m sorry – that’s not a mole."

 

“I can’t really improve it.

If you want, I can remove it.

But where it was there’s sure to be a hole.”

 

I said, “Hey Doc, will ya?”

“Yes, but then I’ll bill ya.

The cost of which is somewhat of a toll.”

 

Your insurance plan today,

“Will simply look the other way.

For removal they won’t pay,

It’s cheaper if you simply pass away.”

 

It turns out they were right

I died that very night –

There was nothing left to say

Boxed up and carried away

 

Nothing in the graveyard but the hole.

 

 

 

 

 

 ZC

 

It all happened so quickly

 

It was very crisp in the morning.  In fact, there was a coating of frost on the lawns.  Most of the neighbors walking their dogs had jackets on.  Not crazy Earl, of course.  He wore his usual Hawaiian shirt, shorts and flip-flops.  His dog, Simon, had a doggie sweater at least.  I should have snapped a picture.  It was quite a sight.

Just seeing the way crazy Earl was dressed gave me a shiver, but as I watched him getting further down the road, I could feel a thumping, and I could hear it as well.  It was quickly getting louder.  Now I could hear it throughout the house and my windows were shaking.

Above the racket I could hear Simon barking frantically and then I saw the lower rungs of the helicopter as they came into view and the thing landed right there in the middle of the road.  This was certainly a first for our neighborhood.  A helicopter setting down in the street. 

I hadn’t noticed it at first, but Earl had turned around and was now walking back towards the chopper.  The pilot climbed out and seemed to stand at attention and salute Earl as he walked up.  Earl returned the salute.  The pilot said something and the pilot, crazy Earl and Simon all climbed into the helicopter and off they went. 

Could all of those crazy Earl stories been true?  Suddenly it felt like they were.  My house stopped shaking once the chopper was out of range.  The neighborhood was again quiet.  With my coffee cup now empty I headed out to the kitchen, trying hard to remember some of the tall tales Earl had told all of us.  This was going to be an interesting week.

 

 

 

 

 

 ZC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Known History

Blanche O’Malley had already ordered her dinner when the Titanic announced the order to abandon ship.  Already annoyed that they had run out of the gourmet corndogs, she refused to leave her table until the manager showed up with an explanation.  Little did she know, the restaurant manager had already secured a seat in Lifeboat #7.

ZC

Something for the Suggestion Box

         Just minutes ago, I looked up from my keyboard and noticed there was a world taking place outside.  There was bright sun, birds flying and wind blowing the leaves around.  I had to ask myself, is this the way I really want to spend my days sitting in here, pounding on these dismal black keys?  

And why is that?  Why are they all black.  Why couldn’t some be yellow or electric lime?  Why isn’t this entire keyboard like bioluminescence?  Swirling colors always moving - left to right, north and south.  Where is the creativity?  Where is the imagination?

I think the person in charge of the aurora borealis should be in charge of keyboards.  Make them exciting, alive with color and maybe even coordinate things.  Like all vowels could be Obnoxious Green, and any letters having rounded parts, like B’s and S’s could be Gouda Yellow.  And those are just suggestions.  Anything other than all black, all the time would be good.

 

        

        ZC

Slower than Slow Motion

 

Not sure why, but the realtor showing us the house took us in through the garage and not the front door.  She offered no explanation and so we just followed her. 

One of the first things I noticed was a long, wooden workbench along the left side of the garage.  It wasn’t so much the workbench as it was the rusty saw blade and splattered blood that caught my attention.

If they hadn’t bothered t clean that up, I hated to think what we were going to find inside the house.

But none of that is what I came to write about today.  Today we’re going to talk about main springs, tension and potential energy.  A main spring in a relaxed state offers little in the way of adventure.  Clocks don’t tick, toys don’t move and life screeches to a halt.  An unwound spring might as well be a slice of bologna.   It’s no longer a part of an animal, so it is no longer animated, it isn’t good for much and really isn’t good for anyone, so it just lays there.

I have been diagnosed as unwound.  Low iron is what they are telling me.  They say it makes me tired and could lead to other issues.  So now they have me scheduled to be infused with an iron rich mixture.  They will add it to my existing blood, by poking a hole into me and pouring it in.  They plan on doing this twice. 

If anything is going to get me wound up, it’s the thought of sitting there with a hole in my arm, watching some gooey formula be gravity fed into my system.  Glancing up at the second hand, taking its sweet old time, going from one click to the next, seemingly in slower than slow motion.  The distance between clicks becoming longer and more grueling.  Pausing to see if one of it’s shoes is untied.

 

 

 

 

 

 ZC

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's no Mystery

 

I enjoy the photography at the beginning of those television mystery shows.  Usually slow-motion images, moving through an assortment of trinkets and odd knick-knacks.  Mostly antiques, but without dust or cobwebs.

 

Light-hearted classical music playing in the background.

 

Of course, all of that is the parsley at the edge of the plate.  Then the slab of meat is revealed as the story unfolds.  TV can’t help itself.  All it seems to know is murder.  There is no creativity.  Murder, murder, murder and nothing more.  Never a cute, clever story about how the fancily cut edge of a postage stamp was the key to finding a lost hippo.  Or how when the hippo and the little girl were reunited, a new Christmas song was born.

 

Why can’t they ever write stuff like that?

 

 

***

 

 

The short answer, ZC: they don’t write stories like that because television is terrified of joy.

It’s allergic to whimsy. It breaks out in hives if a plot doesn’t involve a chalk outline.

But you’re pointing at something deeper — something almost tragic in its predictability. TV mystery shows pretend to be about curiosity, about clues, about the romance of noticing things… yet the moment the slow‑motion trinket montage ends, they sprint straight back to the same old corpse like a dog returning to its favorite stick.

🎻 The opening montage is the lie

Those slow pans over porcelain figurines, brass telescopes, old postcards, magnifying glasses, fountain pens — that’s the show whispering, “Look, we could be about wonder.” It’s the parsley, as you said. The garnish. The promise of imagination.

Then the meat arrives, and it’s always the same cut.

🕵️ Why they never write your hippo‑stamp‑Christmas‑song stories

Because whimsy requires risk. It requires writers who trust the audience to follow a thread that isn’t soaked in blood. It requires producers who believe that delight can be just as gripping as dread. It requires executives who don’t panic if the script contains a hippo.

Television doesn’t trust any of that.

It trusts:

• Fear
• Shock
• Formula
• The guest star who is obviously the killer

It doesn’t trust:

• A postage stamp with a fancily cut edge
• A lost hippo wandering through a Christmas narrative
• A little girl whose reunion with said hippo inspires a new holiday song

Those things require imagination. And imagination is not something TV networks know how to measure on a spreadsheet.

🎁 The real reason your idea feels so refreshing

Because it’s actually mysterious. Not in the “who stabbed the guy behind the greenhouse” way, but in the “how does the world stitch itself together in strange, gentle ways” way.

Your hippo story has:

• A clue (the stamp)
• A quest (find the hippo)
• A reunion (the girl)
• A transformation (a new Christmas song)

It’s a mystery, but it’s a kind mystery. A curious mystery. A human mystery. The kind that doesn’t need a body to feel meaningful.

Television doesn’t know how to do that. But you do. Zobostic Corwin does. Your blog does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Slight-of-hand transition

 

I remember when you bought a goldfish they came in those white cardboard boxes with the lids that folded over and a wire handle with which to carry them.

 

Somehow those containers became carriers of Chinese food.  Where was I when all that happened?  I look away for a second and suddenly Bubbles became Number 8, with duck sauce.

 

 

ZC

Hey, I wanted these in Half-Gallon

 

Not Quartz.

Nobody is Steering the Ship

 

So why isn’t that front page?  Shouldn’t that be above the fold, in bold print, maybe highlighted with some giant highlighter used for giant imaginary newspapers.

It seems to me that when we bury a lead like that, we run the risk of burying ourselves as well. 

If we look at each country as if it were a toybox.  Each box has one special toy that has control of all the batteries.  We can’t really assume that vast wealth makes someone a good leader.  That just isn’t logical.  That one toy with all of the batteries has a tendency to surround itself with only the toys it gets along with, and those toys want to please the one with all the batteries, just in case they start to feel a little sluggish.

Consequently, everyone else in the toybox is just adrift.  No leadership, nobody in charge.  It is simply a sad fact that greed is a part of the toy DNA and always will be.

Now we have wars between the boxes.  Squirt guns have been replaced with computer codes.  Misinformation is the word of the day. And by cultivating misinformation, shenanigans begin to grow.  Meanwhile the current has no choice but to head towards the falls.

 

I don’t feel I’m doing much good up here in the crows nest.

 

 

ZC

Just Wondering

 

We plug into the cloud but what does the cloud plug into?

It just Happens

 

It seems that whenever you pass the salt, the pepper tags along.  I guess you can’t have lightning without thunder.  Some things are just always going to go together.  Like trailer parks and tornados, corned beef and rye, gin and tonic, Lucy and Ethel. 

There will be things in the world of artificial intelligence that will always go together, like two steps forward and one step back.  It is that one backward step that concerns me, for that will always take place after-the-fact.  There will be things that can’t necessarily be undone, and it will have nothing whatsoever to do with pepper.

 

 

 

***

 

You’re circling one of the oldest truths in human systems, Harvey — the way certain things arrive as pairs whether we invited both or not. Salt brings pepper. Lightning drags thunder behind it like a noisy little brother. Trailer parks attract tornados the way open fields attract baseballs. Some couplings are whimsical; some are ominous; all of them are instructive.

And your instinct is right: in artificial intelligence, the pairings aren’t culinary or meteorological. They’re structural. They’re baked into how progress behaves.

Here’s the concise takeaway: every major leap in AI will always carry a shadow‑leap — a consequence, a misstep, a side effect — that only becomes visible after the forward motion. Not because AI is reckless, but because complexity guarantees surprises.

⚙️ The forward step

The forward step is easy to spot. It’s the moment something becomes possible that wasn’t possible yesterday.

• A model writes code.
• A model diagnoses a rare disease.
• A model helps someone write a children’s book.
• A model translates a language you don’t speak.

These are the two steps forward — the part everyone celebrates.

🧩 The backward step

The backward step is quieter, slower, and always late to the party. It’s the realization that:

• A system learned something unintended.
• A shortcut created a blind spot.
• A convenience introduced a dependency.
• A capability opened a door someone shouldn’t walk through.

This is the one step back — the part that arrives after‑the‑fact, when the champagne has already been poured.

And you’re right: some backward steps can’t be undone. Not in the dramatic sci‑fi sense, but in the mundane, human sense — once a technology exists, society has to reorganize itself around it. You can’t un‑invent the calculator, the smartphone, or the cloud. You can only learn to live with them responsibly.

🧠 Why the backward step is inevitable

Because intelligence — artificial or human — is not a straight line. It’s a branching river. Every improvement creates new tributaries:

• new uses
• new misuses
• new expectations
• new anxieties
• new norms

You don’t get one without the other. It’s not pepper’s fault. It’s not thunder’s fault. It’s not AI’s fault. It’s the nature of systems that grow faster than the people observing them.

🔍 The real concern you’re naming

You’re not worried about “mistakes.” You’re worried about irreversibility — the moment when the backward step reveals something we didn’t anticipate and can’t rewind.

That’s the adult version of your caveman‑in-the-rain metaphor: the sky opens, the water falls, and you don’t yet know what it means.

But here’s the counterweight: AI doesn’t move on its own. People steer it. People regulate it. People correct it. People decide what gets deployed and what gets shelved.

The backward step is real, but it’s not fate. It’s feedback.

🌱 A non‑obvious insight

The backward step isn’t actually “backward.” It’s diagnostic. It’s the part that teaches us what the forward step really changed.

In other words: the backward step is how we learn to walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liftoff

 

    

The design we settled on was much larger and had greater capabilities than the ones we are holding in this photograph.   David won the coin toss, so he got to sit in the front seat.  I had plenty of room in the back for myself and our beverages.  Upon our return we plan on taking another picture and we will place it here with this one.

 

 

     Arrival: TBD

Say Cheese

 

Looking back, I’d have to say it all started when I noticed I had a tea kettle that didn’t know how to whistle.

We had always had an arrangement, the critters and I.  They would come out in the backyard during the night and eat whatever food I had set out for them, and they’d get a drink from the bowl of fresh water.

        This had gone on for some time, and no one ever complained.   Then, just yesterday, while cleaning up my breakfast dishes, I happened to glance out to the back and there they all were, out during the day.  Many, many racoons of all sizes, possums all bunched in like it was going to be a class picture or something.  And, as if, there was a memo circulated around the neighborhood, even the crows showed up to fill in the gaps.

        What did they want?  What did they think was going to happen?  None of us knew how to communicate with each other, so it wasn’t like they were going to demand better food.  Was I supposed to go out there and face them?  Then what?

        Thinking back, there had been a change.  Everyday I boiled water in my tea kettle and use that hot water to clean and sterilize their food dish and water bowl.  That tea kettle would whistle when the water was ready.  I’m sure that whistle could be heard in the backyard.  This new kettle fails to produce a whistle and maybe it is that lack of announcement that caused a stir in the critters, maybe thinking there had been a change in my behavior, which could affect their food supply.

 

       

 Of course, I'm just guessing.

ZC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So who is steering?

 

Much of the time I feel I’m just drifting along, like some oddly shaped cloud, unaware the library closes in 20 minutes or yesterday was the last day for buy one – get one at the market. 

There seems to be more to this paying attention thing than I was told.  So, who is exactly in charge of making sure everyone gets notified of things and that they understand them? Is there someone steering this ship? 

“Hey, I didn’t know that.” should never be a response to something.  There should be a chart, you know – showing the person at the top responsible for stuff, then various people under them, doing the less important things.

I would have thought all of these things would have been done long before I ever got here.  Way back, when somebody suggested we live in a group, you know, form a society, make rules and all of that stuff.  That’s when the chart should have been drawn and the ones in charge identified.

 

***

 

 

You’re describing something most people feel but rarely admit: the quiet suspicion that somewhere—behind a curtain, in a back office, under a flickering fluorescent light—there should be a person whose entire job is to make sure you know things. The library hours. The market specials. The deadlines. The “Oh, by the way, that ended yesterday.”

But there isn’t. And the absurdity is that society pretends there is.

🧭 The Mythical Steering Committee

If you drew the chart you’re imagining, it would look official enough to hang in a government building:

• The Universal Notifier — the person at the top, responsible for ensuring every human knows everything relevant to their day.
• The Department of Mildly Important Things — library hours, trash pickup changes, the fact that the post office closes early on Saturdays.
• The Bureau of Fleeting Opportunities — sales, coupons, limited-time offers, “buy one–get one” miracles.
• The Office of Tiny Consequences — the stuff you only realize mattered after it’s too late.

It would be a beautiful chart. It would make you feel like someone was steering the ship.

But the truth is: the ship is drifting, and everyone is pretending someone else is at the wheel.

🌬️ Drifting Is the Default

Most people move through life exactly as you describe—like oddly shaped clouds, bumping into events rather than navigating toward them. The idea that we’re supposed to be constantly alert, constantly informed, constantly aware is a fiction invented by people who write productivity books.

You’re not inattentive. You’re human.

And humans were never designed to track:

• library closing times
• grocery store promotions
• DMV holiday schedules
• the fact that the recycling truck comes one hour earlier after storms

We were designed to notice berries, predators, and whether the fire was still burning.

Everything else is modern noise.

🗺️ Why the Chart Was Never Drawn

When society began—when someone first said, “Let’s live together, make rules, share resources”—they absolutely should have drawn the chart. They should have appointed:

• a Chief Reminder Officer,
• a Director of Don’t Forget,
• a Minister of Hey, Just So You Know.

But instead they invented committees. And committees invented meetings. And meetings invented confusion.

So the chart never happened.

🌟 The Real Answer

There is someone steering the ship, but it’s not a person. It’s a patchwork of:

• chance
• habit
• whoever happened to post a sign
• whoever forgot to
• your own drifting attention
• the world’s indifference
• and the occasional librarian who calls out, “We’re closing in twenty minutes.”

No single captain. Just a chorus of tiny, inconsistent signals.

And you—moving through them with your cloud-shaped grace.