Gratitude ~ a post mortem

 OK. 

Here goes: Yes yes yes, I’m thankful.  I’m so very thankful.  La la la la la la la.  Neener neener.  Yadda yadda yadda.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am extremely grateful for the many marvels in my life every flippin’ day.

Wait.  OK.  I seem to have a tone.  Let me start again.

How about this weather!?  On Thanksgiving!  We are so lucky! 

We really are very lucky not to be sitting in the airport in Paducah, Kentucky, staring at the string of cancelations on the departure board. 

Just like Sigourney Weaver in “Alien,” when she discovered that she and her cat Jonesy were trapped in the escape pod WITH the alien and nothing to wear but cotton bikinis and a space suit.  You remember her famous line:  “Lucky, lucky, lucky!”

All right, the context is different, but that was my mantra yesterday on Interstate 80 Eastbound to Sacramento.  While at a standstill.  For no evident reason.  For hours!

OK.  It was just a momentary pause.  Lucky.  I know! 

It just seemed like hours.  Not that difficult to deal with except that I had my husband in the car with me.  And an appetizer and a side dish. 

But in spite of our preparation and the anticipation of the yummy meal forthcoming, my husband, a lovely person in his own right, was not so thankful at that momentary pause in the action.  “Lucky, lucky, lucky” was not what I heard him say.


See, my husband has that shark DNA.  He has to keep moving.  He will take a 20 minute detour to avoid a 5 minute delay.  That makes sense to him and his Great White brain. 

But the thing is, I drive.  Since my delicate constitution won’t allow me to be a well passenger on any road other than a straight line through the Nevada desert, he has graciously surrendered the driver’s seat for lo these 23 years. 

In exchange for the steering wheel, I grant him the right to direct me in traffic, even though, along with his shark brain, he has that left/right affliction whereby he says “left” when he means “right” and then gets mad at me when I follow directions and turn left.

But I have a high tolerance for bulging veins and wild gesticulations and a pretty long fuse in traffic.  Oh, eventually gridlock will get to me; but he’s got a hair trigger on his frustration meter.

So that was the crux of the situation.  At the tiniest hint of a slowdown, we took the first available exit.  A side road.  The back way.  An “alternate route.” 

You can’t pin this boondoggle on me.  Or my GPS, which first displayed a jumpy screen, twitched out multiple multi-colored attempts to redirect us, then sighed and gave up. I just followed Jaws’s orders. 

We wound up somewhere south of Sac on a wash-boardy dirt road dodging potholes big enough to swallow us and our green beans in one gulp.  

“It goes through!” he claimed.  “I’ve taken this road before.” 

We began to pass heavy equipment and soon very tall chain-link fences rose up around us.  A warning sign not unlike the one posted down the way from Area 51 shouted, “Warning!  Restricted area!  Authorized vehicles only!  You’ll be really, really sorry if you keep going this way Dummy!  It’s a dead end anyway!” 

Or something like that.

So we hair pinned, found the levy road, and noodled our way through rural America.  Speed limit 45mph, but constant motion.  Bucolic beauty in every direction.  La la la la la!

We were only an hour late, nobody was mad and the turkey was delicious.

In situations like that, you have to ask yourself, “Do I feel lucky?”

And the answer is, “Yes, I do.” 


Lucky, lucky and thankful too.

Birthday Wishes for Dr. Frankenstein

In our ongoing efforts to keep you apprised of significant events that might otherwise elude your attention, we alert you to the 100^th celebration of the birth of Dr. Alan Turing, known in esoteric circles as the Father of Artificial Intelligence. 

A brilliant code cracker in World War II, Turing later addressed the problem of artificial intelligence.  As you well know if you’ve ever cursed your bank’s voicemail system or defied your GPS, artificial intelligence (AI), defined as the “intelligence of machines,” can be problematic.  

The problem with AI is that it’s stupid.   

But I’m getting ahead of myself.   

Of course, computers appear clever.  They can reason, deduce, problem solve, plan, learn, process natural language, perceive their environment, move and manipulate it, practice social interaction, even create.  But then so can an army of ants; and they have just as much personality. 

OK, ants can’t process natural language.  If only they could!  Instead of laying down a barrier of Agent Orange in the kitchen, we’d issue verbal threats to keep them out of the pantry.  “Be gone insects!” 

My first boyfriend was artificially intelligent.  At least that’s what my mom thought.  He was a twin and we often double-dated with his brother.  Since I lived closer than his brother’s girlfriend, they would pick me up first, and oddly, they’d both come to the door.   

When my mom saw them bounding up the sidewalk she’d announce their arrival by saying, “Here comes the wit.”  Took me a long time to get it. 

Dr. Turing proposed an experiment which became known as…wait for it…the Turing Test.  An attempt to define the standard for a machine to be called "intelligent," the Turing test declares that a computer can "think" when, through written conversation, a human interrogator cannot tell it apart from a human being.  Can a computer fool a person into thinking it’s a person too?  

So the Turing test boils down to texting.  And so far, the computer always loses apparently because it persists in distinguishing between ‘your’ and ‘you’re,’ a feat humans cannot master.  Incongruously, these results explain less about a computer’s ability to think than about human behavior, for instance all those robotic young people stalled in mid-step, staring at their Smartphones, zombie-like, their thumbs jumping around the screens mechanically.  

Yes, AI is unsettling all on its own.  But just stir in a dose of science fiction and it becomes sinister.  Visionary writers capitalize on our innate fears and distrust with some ridiculously scary scenarios that don’t seem that far from feasible.  In sci-fi horror flicks, machines don’t just want to be human; they succeed, at least by Turing’s test.  We’re fooled, we’re lulled, and then we’re in trouble.  Think Hal.  No!  Think Ash, the Science Officer onboard the commercial spaceship Nostromo.  His dispassionate machine self, housed in a human-seeming body chats up Sigourney Weaver and then allows the Alien through the airlock!    

Not to pass up a lucrative opportunity, I myself am working on a screenplay scarier still for its Spielbergian normalcy - think Pinocchio all grown up.  Sure, he’s a sweet little puppet.  He only wants to be a “real boy.”  What harm could there possibly be?  But next thing you know he moves back home, sleeps on the couch and eats all guacamole.  

Turing suggested that rather than building a program that simulates an adult mind, it would be better to simulate a child's mind and then subject it to a course of education.  Good luck with that.  Considering the mandates of No Child Left Behind coupled with abysmal educational funding, we can only expect a class of oversized automatons playing computer games all day and speaking in code.  LOL.  OMG!  Wait!  Stop! 

There you have it.  The trouble isn’t with the machines; it’s with us humans.  We always go too far.  We’re not satisfied with a robot that bumps around pretending to vacuum the floors.  No, we’ve got to have a perfect thing that will solve all our dysfunction.  An impeccable man.  A faultless woman.  Everyone else doing just what we want, cheerfully.  Next we’re shopping for our ideal mate in the eHarmony boutique at the Outer Limits Mall. 

Lovely concept.  Faulty execution every time. 

Happy Birthday to you, Dr. Turing.