Tomato Plants in Autumn

      Nothing sadder than tomato plants in Autumn, even on a warm sunny day. Our garden this year had plenty of cherry tomatoes but the other, larger varieties were less productive. The herbs and flowers as usual were the most spectacular. The mulberry trees even with a pruning gave the birds and people walking by a consistent snack for the better part of three weeks.

     Now I have to compost the dying plants and turn over the soil. These jobs I like and they take my mind off the knuckleheads not wearing masks in my borough of NYC. A second wave of infections is coming and we are prepared to stay inside until Spring. Then I'll be able to plant some tomatoes and the whole process will begin again.

 

Critical Self-Reflection

    After being an advocate for technology, beginning in the early 1990s,  I now ask myself, "Is this technology really of any use?" The Smart Phone is a great invention. It is the fictional device used for voice communication from the television series Star Trek brought to life. But what about all the people now who stare at it incessantly while walking through traffic or on our pre-Covid-19 crowded streets? This use of the phone is annoying to say the least and dangerous a fair part of the time as people must move aside to make way for these distracted people.

 

     Another technology which I'll be holding my judgement on involves Artificial Intelligence (AI). I say involves because AI is a means a lot of things from chess-playing computers to self-driving cars. If you want to begin to understand AI go back and re-learn your junior high school and high school math because the basis of AI is Machine Learning. The study of the math behind AI answers that long ago questions often posed to Math teachers, "What is all this Math good for?" Take a look at the Introduction to Machine Learning from the Online school Udemy and you'll quickly find out!

     Back to my rant. I'm worried about Deep Fakes. These are videos and pictures created to give the impression of an individual saying something they never have said before. These are Fakes but created with the latest editing techniques available. They can make self-reflection look stunning---so that we believe our politicians have our best interests in mind. Deep Fakes can move people to action so they they make room for others in their lives, so they believe it is the highest form of humanity to have a publicly funded safety net for those unlucky enough to not carefully choose their parents.

      Deep Fakes can also be used to create phony evidence which might land people in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Or make people believe that certain politicians appear drunk in public. The list is staggering and a bit frightening. 

     We all need to understand that Deep Fakes are a part of our current reality and to make allowances for them by being less quick to anger or to judge. It is truly the challenge of our technological age.

 

  

Air Quality Index

       Here's something to check out if you are noticing all the clouds on the East Coast. The AQI or Air Quality Index is a service of the EPA Environmental Protection Agency. Our tax dollars at work and a good reason to support the idea of government programs. Knowing if the air outside is unhealthy is to state the obvious a good thing.

https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-basics/

     Your friends and family in Los Angeles are currently breathing unhealthy air from all the forest fires.

     I am way past trying to figure out who is to blame. One side says it's because the forest floors need to be swept of dry debris. The other side says that the Federal Government owns 55% percent of these forests. I don't care who is most correct. I just want some institution to put the fires out! It doesn't appear to be a good case for market incentives but it does scream out for a coordinated government effort. We are all in this together. Where are you going to go if the smoke is drifting 3000 miles from the west coast?

     I learned today that the national parks in LA begin directly against the outer rings of the city. This means you go from Urban to forest very fast and is the reason why homes are being destroyed so easily.

The Man or Woman In the Arena

      Teddy Roosevelt was a man of 19th ideals. They hunted, they fished and thought nothing of making trophies out of their conquests. Teddy also collected nature. "His lifelong passion for the natural world set the stage for America’s wildlife conservation movement and  determined his legacy as a founding father of today’s museum naturalism."

     Teddy was also a Trustbuster. We don't even know the term anymore and nobody claims the mantle which TR established. Today's Trusts or companies with monopoly power include

Amazon, FaceBook, Google, Microsoft, Comcast, National Football League to name a few.

 

     On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career. I read this in high school and copied it to a piece of paper so I could carry it around for inspiration. I later traded it for sources of inspiration which I instead committed to memory, especially poets like Yeats,  and Keats.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Mr Harmon

      We cannot talk too much about this saint of a man who taught at GW for over 30 years. Here is an article from the student newspaper circa 1974.

Broadband For All

      As children we all pretty much had the same choices of TV channels. There were the big three networks ABC, NBC, CBS. A PBS station and if you lived in a big market like the NYC area there were local stations like WOR, WPIX, WNEW. There was only antenna-based reception and if your antenna wasn't tuned right or there was a huge storm you reception could b pretty lousy.

     With the coming of the 21st century the idea of everyone having similar TV experiences and opportunities is incomprehensible. What was once a highly regulated (think Phone and Electric companies) has become a free-for-all.

     People talk about Broadband For All and how it would increase economic opportunities by giving high-speed Internet access to everyone. There is no doubt in my mind this is true. It is also a certainty that the Cable companies are very happy with the current arrangement where they can charge what they like. Cable is not a regulated government monopoly like the electric and water companies. It ought to be because Internet access is a necessity. If this pandemic has taught us anything it is that we are all in this together and we will co-exist much more peacefully if everyone can obtain inexpensive access to Tele-Health, Bill Paying, and Government services. And yes, Voting.

     Until we come to our senses and realize that everyone needs Internet access we will continue to see the damaging effects of income inequality, distrust of institutions, and an ever debilitating public health crisis. 

     All we need is some stop gap measures like running coaxial cable to homes where it is feasible, using Cellular signals and WiFi where it is not. This is the kind of public works projects our country used to undertake, like when we created the National Highway System. Broadband, in all its different forms, is simply the much ballyhooed "Information Superhighway."  Our Federal government is capable of constructing it, but currently lacks the will. Time will only tell when we will wise up and do the right thing.

Labor Day 2020

      Labor Day was always the last holiday weekend before we went back to school. More and more lately I have felt a sense of outrage whenever I saw a school district or college opening their doors in August. I can't believe someone would think it a good idea to take a holiday away that we all once understood. 

    Labor Day meant the summer vacation was truly over. It meant we were resuming a well honed routine where we began the education year for younger generations. Starting school in August and then taking a long Labor Day weekend makes no sense. Summer is an all or nothing proposition. It can't be stopped and started easily.

     Today in our Covid-19 world the stopping and starting is much easier because most students, if they are lucky, are being educated online. It is certainly not an ideal situation. The students are missing the valuable lessons they can learn only in the company of others, be they teachers or fellow classmates.      

     Labor Day has less significance this year. It seems all we hear about the students going back to school is the number of them contracting Covid. The pictures of parties with no social distancing or masks are disturbing. common sense appears to be on holiday, not just the usual party goers. 

     There is no vaccine. These matters take time, unless we are very fortunate and the first trials are overwhelmingly successful. I hold out hope for this to happen. It will mean we can start again to develop ordinary, unremarkable habits, instead of living in fear of one another. Labor Day could resume being the last summer holiday. A holiday where we might reflect upon our lives and attempt to think about ourselves in a more positive manner. 

 

First Day Of School

      Glad to see the folks in Ridgewood are ready. (The temperature check is a long overdue idea.) 

     We never needed a reason to be nervous on the first day of school so I guess being greeting by someone wearing a mask and wanting to take your temperature isn't any worse than usual.