Cards for kids.

I saw an ad for some kind of tea online, an ad that tried to hit all those FOMO buttons. Each loving leaf of this tea was carefully curated by twelfth-generation tea growers in their paradisical tea garden in Teadonia blah blah blah. It occurred to me that so much of Internet advertising is essentially trying to find a way to get you to pay five bucks for a teabag. Because if you don't, you're missing out, you don't know what good tea is, and you're a loser. 

I mentioned to my wife that the young adults who might fall for this kind of appeal are likely the same ones who complain that they are unable to pay back their student loans. She raised an excellent point about a real hole in their education, one I would like to share today. 

But first, I want to say that I do sympathize with kids getting hammered by student loans. Colleges have become obscenely overpriced in the last thirty years, using guaranteed loans to guarantee themselves enormous raises while continuing to promote the idea that the only path to a fulfilling career is through their gold-plated doors. Knowing that much of college teaching is provided by underpaid adjuncts, we all should be asking: What the hell are you bastards doing with the money? That's all beside the point, but I wanted to note that I am aware college debt has gotten out of control since I was a fresh-faced undergrad. 

Now: To business! 

My wife and I were talking about the days when we lived in a much more cash-centric society. You could not put anything from an impromptu piano purchase to the change for the air machine to inflate your tires on plastic. Sure, some places took credit cards, fewer took ATM cards, and some people still wrote checks at the supermarket. For everything else, you got some cash and that was it until the next trip to the bank. 

This, as my wife put it, is why young adults now don't think through the ramifications of overpriced tea and the like. The junior varsity credit and debit cards they were given as kids, the ones that were supposed to teach them to manage money, removed the crushing fear of being caught short in a difficult spot. In our youth it was: No cash? No taxi. No cash? No Big Mac. Didn't bring your checkbook? Better not spend too much on the groceries or you'll have to make the Return Request of Shame. ("Um... Can I put the steaks? And the Frusen Glädjé? And the, er, toilet paper?") I prided myself on keeping a running estimate as I went, and I don't think I ever got caught short. 

Fear is a great motivator and can be a great teacher. You can learn about the wonders of store brands, the importance of learning to sew, the glory of not paying $65 for a pair of adult booties from Bombas. But when you're not thinking about the money you're spending and counting on that high limit and overdraft protection, you may feel fearless -- but it may be a whole different feeling when the texts from the bank and credit card company start pinging on your phone.

I never really thought those starter credit cards were a great idea. Better to open a savings account for the squirt and actually put cash into it. Yeah, the interest the banks give on savings is so poor these days that it actually counts as an insult, but that's not the point. The point is learning the value of money and why it's important to be careful with it. 

Insert obligatory final line here, wishing that Washington would learn the same lesson. Well, I can dream, can't I?

Emojerks.

Recently the New York Times published an article entitled "What Is IJBOL? A Korean word? A new boy band? This new acronym is replacing LOL and ROFL on social media." 

I didn't read the article, because I don't subscribe to the paper and wouldn't give them a nickel if my hair was on fire and they were selling buckets of water for five cents each. 

But to answer the question, IJBOL means I Just Busted Out Laughing (or Burst or some other appropriate B). It makes more sense than the stupid ROTFL, because no one ever saw something so funny online that they literally R on the F. 

The article is just another in a long series by the Times that could be described as "What Are Those Weird Ordinary People Doing Out There?" They love to look at human beings as if they themselves are some strange Olympian race occupying the planet rather than the overeducated trust-fund bizarros that they are. Make sure to check out next Sunday's exposé, "Canned Vegetables: Are They Having a Moment?" 

Translations for Internet initialisms goes back to the earliest days of networks. LOL broke through into the common culture, and from there it was a race to see what silly thing would catch on next but be inscrutable to outsiders -- especially among teens whose parents monitored their electronic communications. Urban Dictionary, a place where you can always check in if you want to lose your faith in humanity and you want to do it fast, has about a million disgusting initialisms that the contributors just make up off the top of their tiny craniums for the lulz.

But, thanks to the smartphone, most of us are content to send emojis to one another, at least once we figure out what each new update of emojis is supposed to mean. I could probably tell you in a general way what each emoji on my phone is supposed to represent, but I wouldn't put money on it. 

It was different when we were young. 

 Ah, the days of real sport!

Robo Fred.

After I reported on the rise of artificial intelligence used by students to write papers and the reaction by the New York City Board of Ed last month, the problem may have temporarily solved itself. So many people are trying to use Open AI's AI writer that the servers are completely tied up. I get results! 

However, I wanted to get through myself. I wanted to see if I could retire from this exhausting work of blogging every day to have a robot write my blog for me. So I waited my turn to use ChatGPT and asked it to write a blog entry in my style. Herewith the results:

Good morning. This is Fred and I have more updates for you. The weather is all right. The dog is being very crazy today. I am not sure what the problem is. I wouldn't mind so much but the book I am editing is a real crowd-loser. It's called Eat Pond Scum, Live Forever!. I get sick looking at it. It's totally put me off my twinkies. If I have to eat pond scum to live forever, I'm A-OK with dying.

I wanted to buy a cartoon to run in this space with some Fredcoin, which is the world's greatest cryptocurrency, but it turns out the exchange rate is a little lower than I had expected. I needed an electron microscope to see how many Fredcoin fit in a regular dollar. Some people would say only a moron wouldn't find this depressing, but I don't! 

Meanwhile, I am recommending books, which you can find elsewhere, especially the ones I have written. Check them out! Or I will make more bad jokes. Or make you watch the Beloved Mets.

Come back tomorrow -- could be memes, could be cake. It could be memecake. It may be more complaints about the dog. Probably that.

💻💻💻💻

Okay, I was just joshing. After waiting to use ChatGPT for a couple of days, I did what I hope all the students are doing, and just wrote my own piece. 

However, to keep you from being disappointed by lack of AI blogging, I asked one of the AI image generators, Fotor, for a picture of Fred going off to war on a horse, wielding a pen. I didn't say whether it was I or the horse who would be holding the pen. This is what I got:

Doesn't look like me at all. Neither does the guy, for that matter. At least the horse doesn't have a teeny little face.

Ancient tech.

I was cleaning out my office on Saturday, and I came across this relic of an ancient civilization.

Ah, the old flip phone. I'm not sure when my wife finally had enough and demanded we get smartphones, but I know I was using this Samsung as late as 2013. I think it was after a trip out of state in which we were going to a wedding, and I forgot my digital camera. I bought a disposable digital camera, but I inadvertently got one without a flash. So all the pictures from the reception were deep brown; it looked like it was being held in a sewer rather than a lovely hall. The Samsung flip phone did get a few shots, but not all that great. 

Regardless, that wasn't the reason my wife pressured me into agreeing to get smartphones for us soon after. The reason was that the suits upstairs at her workplace were eliminating the company-issued Blackberrys and were going to insist employees instead use apps on their personal phones. So we got iPhones and joined the 21st century. 

One reason for my reluctance is that, six years into the smartphone era, it was already plain that those little handhelds were more addictive than even the Crackberry had been. People of weak character couldn't seem to put them down. So I knew it would happen to me. 

In related news, we may be on the brink of a much larger technological upheaval. Guess who is being born today! 

Is this true? I mean, not does The Jetsons paint an accurate picture of the near future, but was George Jetson supposed to be born on July 31, 2022? For help I turned to that prestigious scientific journal, People magazine: 

In a tweet on Thursday, fan Brendan Kergin shared a chart from the character's online fan page, which includes George's basic information, such as his dad's name Montague, his wife's name Jane and his catchphrase: "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!"

But, most importantly, Kergin highlighted George's birthday — which is said to be July 31, 2022.

The article goes on to explain that the show, which debuted in 1962, was supposed to take place in the far-flung world a century ahead, so 2062. George's age in the first season was established as 40, so the year is correct. The actual birthdate is subject to conjecture, as far as I and People know. 

Of course, the real shock is that we are six-tenths of the way to the date of the show. I don't mind not having the flying cars, but I really would like the conveyor belt that got George clean, shaved, and dressed in under a minute. 

Also, as readers know, my elder dog is called Tralfaz, after Astro's original name on the show. I'd better not find Baby Jetson coming around here trying to swipe my dog, is all I'm saying. Or his dad, Montague. Or his boy, Elroy.

A word from the CEO.

Good morning, friends and customers. It is I, Frederick Key, founder and CEO of Fredcoin, and I wanted to take a moment of your time to talk about the state of cryptocurrency and the safety of your investment in Fredcoin.

You've probably been hearing a lot of horror stories about hotshot young investors being wiped out with the collapse of cryptocurrency values in recent weeks. Terra Luna lost more than 99% of its value. A fellow who invested $15,000 in Cardano watched the value of his investment drop to $3,000. South Korean investors want to strangle a 30-year-old brat whose crypto collapsed like an angry toddler. It might make you ask yourself, "Myself, should I take my money out of the world's finest cryptocurrency, Fredcoin, and put it in something safer, like an old cigar box?"

To which I would like to reply, with all due respect: Are you nuts? How can you cheat yourself out of the fantastic investment offered by keeping your shrinking dollars in Fredcoin? Why, Fredcoin is rock solid!

As solid as the 
Old Man of the Mountain!

Let me tell you a few reasons why Fredcoin won't face the same risks of those other, lesser cryptocurrencies. 

1) No leverage. Often investors put themselves at risk of catastrophic failure by using debt to invest in a currency. But you'd have to be whacko to take out a lot of debt to buy Fredcoin! Everyone knows that!

2) Liquidity issues. When the stock market goes south, bargain hunters show up. That doesn't happen with most cryptos. But with Fredcoin, the bargain hunters are among the investors! Yes sir, you can't drop further than rock bottom!

3) Security breaches. We at Fredcoin can assure you we've had none of them. Why, to be a target of hackers, you'd have to have something of great value, right? QED! Nothing to worry about.

4) Big-time investors skewing the market. If Elon Musk jumped aboard the Fredcoin bandwagon, that would cause a rush to inflate the value of it. But that could equally cause a terrific fall if he or a bunch of profit-takers sold out just as quickly. Well, I assure you, no big-time investor is showing up at my door, no sir! 

So there you go, four reasons why Fredcoin is the most bulletproof of all the cryptos. No matter what else happens in the market, remember: Your Bread Is Safe With Fred! 

P.S.: Mr. Musk, if you should want to contact us for any reason, just use the link to send an email, okay? Just like if you want to say hi or something.

The stalking robot.

Pity the fool who tries to lose weight in these times of plentiful sugar and more plentiful anxiety! And now technology is working against us. 

My favored supermarket had a big renovation last year, as I noted at the time, which still has me bollixed up. I still can't remember where they've hidden the bread. I must admit, though, the place does look refreshed and more in keeping with modern design. 

But they've introduced a stalker. 

This little robot roams about the store freely, lurking around corners, humming down the aisles, toting his little rack of candy to entice shoppers to treat themselves to chocolaty goodness. 

What the hell is it?

Well, they call it Smiley, according to a story in Progressive Grocer. 

Smiley, true to its name, features catchy tunes and dancing as it makes its rounds through the store offering treats for sale. Smiley uses the latest in self-driving technology to ensure safe operation and includes sanitation wipes to safeguard shoppers. This pilot was enabled by Mars Wrigley’s Launchpad program, a digital innovation program established in 2017. Launchpad focuses on innovating the ways in which Mars Wrigley markets and sells its iconic brand through meaningful partnerships with startups.

I haven't noticed any catchy tunes, but I have not gotten that close to Smiley. He'll sidle up and stop for a while, but he doesn't run straight up to customers -- he's more of your soft-sell type robot. 

But he can't fool me. This is a candy-wielding Dalek.

“As a Treats & Snacks category leader, we know that while trips to stores are becoming more focused and retailers are moving to more seamless in-store shopping experiences, shoppers still want to be surprised or indulge in impulse purchases,” said Matt Tice, director of grocery category leadership at Mars Wrigley. “Introducing innovative solutions like Smiley will help retailers shake up traditional merchandising, improve their consumers’ shopping experience and drive sales.”

The short-term goal is to move more Snickers and make more money. The long-term goal? To exterminate through sugar! Diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke -- Smiley is just a soft-sell killer robot! 

Next time I see him I'm going to interrogate him through his little touchscreen. What planet is he from? Mars? Hell, he's literally a creature from Mars -- Mars Wrigley! Here to kill us... with kindness! 

I'm going to get some answers. And one of those Snickers. Hey, you can't interrogate properly when you're hungry.

Time's up?

I was alerted by Mr. Philbin to this story -- it's from 2019, citing a story from 2018, and it's from Mr. P, but it's still interesting.

Schools Are Beginning To Take Down Analogue Clocks 

Because Kids Can’t Read Them Anymore

...Should we be at all surprised to learn that kids today are having trouble reading analog clocks? Unless their parents have these types of clocks hanging on the walls of their homes, why would the children ever need to use them to tell time? So even if someone teaches them how to read an analog clock, the children might quickly forget again if they never get any real practice.

This has become so much of an issue that a lot of teachers in the UK have taken down analog clocks in classrooms and replaced them with digital clocks. They are afraid that students would otherwise waste too much time wondering what time it is and stress themselves trying to figure out how much longer they have before they need to turn in their exams.

The source of the story is questionable -- something called APost -- but it links to The Telegraph, so I assume there's some basis for the piece. The 'Graph story is behind a paywall, alas. 

Is it true that kids can't read a regular analog clock these days? I guess it's possible that no one ever taught them. Still, I remember my mother teaching me the basics -- the Little Hand is on the Hours, the Big Hand is on the Minutes -- before I even started school. How hard is it to remember that?

Of course, the piece about children freaking out about the time during exams has the ring of truth -- not because the kids do panic, but because teachers might think the little perishers would, and our whole goal in life is not to educate and challenge the next generation but to coddle them like fresh eggs.

A follow-up piece in USA Today, however, quotes Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, who says telling time the old-fangled way is still valuable: 

"The skills that you need to read an analog clock are skills that kids when they’re young begin to learn," she said, citing concepts such as counting by fives and fractions.

Good for you, Carol Burris! Her answer is similar to the old answer to "Why do we have to learn algebra?" which has always been something like "Learning algebra helps to develop your critical thinking skills. That includes problem solving, logic, patterns, and reasoning." (Quote from Wonderopolis.) So being able to understand the face of a clock is not only easy and interesting but useful. Look at some of the things schools are expected to teach kids these days -- music, drama, cheerleading, sex ed, environmentalism, hating America -- are any of these necessary to produce citizens capable of conducting themselves in the world? No, but our teachers think they're important. Well, I think being able to read an analog clock is, too. In advanced classes they'll learn to read the ones without the numbers. 

Roman numerals are graduate-level stuff, though.

It's nice to know that in an era where schools and libraries are dumping world classics, and teaching woke history and even woke mathematics, that there's still support in the United States for something that isn't dumbed down. So there's hope that when the little brainwashed know-nothings emerge to hang us all in an American cultural revolution, they'll be able to determine the time for the public hangings in both digital and analog. 

In the UK, the oldsters will be able to send messages to one another with a clock cipher and escape. 

It's true and you know it.

 

Blow up.

I'm sorry, my friends, but I have nothing to offer today. I spent an awful lot of time yesterday dealing with technical difficulties related to a computer system I use for one of my clients. When the IT department -- the second IT department, because the local guys were perplexed -- was able to resolve it, the file I was working on had to be reverted to an earlier draft, which meant re-reading and re-inputting the work I had done on Wednesday. Well, as the lawyers say, it's all billable hours.

And then Roomba tried to strange me!

So I hope to be back tomorrow with one of my jolly japes or therious think pieces. In the meantime, I thank you, and wish you a better day than I had yesterday.

Ship just got real.

Malacandra or bust!

I have been surprised by the continuing audaciousness of one Elon Musk, a fellow with a pretty good approximation of a Bond villain name, with his thoughts on sending human beings to and colonizing Mars. Sounds like fun! In a terrifying, possibly not very fun way.

I'm not sure if this is the result of something he's been smoking, but Mr. Musk said he would like to build one starship a week for the purpose of colonizing Mars. Now, I'm no engineer, nor a scientist of any kind, as pretty much every teacher I've ever had would tell you, but I have always been interested in science fiction, even the hard-science stuff. And based on that, and what I have that passes for common sense, I think he may have a good idea here. Whether the advantages of colonizing Mars are evident is not the point; if you're going to do it, do it right.

Stories throughout the history of the science fiction genre about colonizing near planets have been generally rendered obsolete by the fact that Mars has turned out to be a lot harder to live on than we might have hoped. There was never a reason to expect the temperature to be pleasant, and the atmosphere is not breathable. We knew long ago that the gravity would be lighter than Earth's (38% at the surface), and in recent decades have discovered that human beings suffer over time in anything significantly different than Earth gravity. And despite our best efforts, we've found no water worthy of the name on the Red Planet. Our colonists can't just diddy bop down to the Price Chopper for a case of Poland Spring. That's a 68-million-mile round trip at its closest.

Let's assume, as I guess Mr. Musk has, that in time we would be able to construct means to allow the colony to be at least mostly self-supporting. This is a big assumption. Even the Vikings had to abandon Greenland when things got dicey. But let's say that, without inventing terraforming or some other wild science far beyond our ken, we find Mars land capable of supporting edible crops, a means of providing water and breathable air, a means of dealing with light gravity's effects, a source of reliable power, and whatever else people need. For a long time a steady line of supplies and personnel will still be required, and this is where the Musk plan makes sense.

In the stories I've read, space colonies usually start with a single, small crew on a single ship, or one gigantic crew on a humongous ship. But a fleet sent to provide a means of support during colonial establishment is not typical to the genre. Colonizing across oceans usually worked both ways, with small expeditions and settlements or large investments with multiple ships running back and forth, and yet our science fiction has usually settled on the first as a model. Maybe because it's more dramatic.

The whole thing could be made easier if we could figure out a way to get that space elevator in orbit, but it looks like Musk is not planning to wait that long.

So what do you think of his plan? Crazy? Inspired? Impossible? Inevitable? And if it's so crazy it just might work, would you sign up?

Jimmy who?

I was listening to an interview with the actor Treat Williams -- as opposed to the proctologist Treat Williams, yeah, yeah -- and he said that one day, while he was working on a movie with Richard Dreyfuss, the two of them were chatting about great Hollywood stars. They mentioned Jimmy Stewart, of course. And a set designer nearby asked, "Who's Jimmy Stewart?"

Wow.

Bad enough that kids today -- "kids" being anyone under 40, I guess -- don't know anything about a movie that wasn't shot in color. But Jimmy Stewart? Haven't we all seen It's a Wonderful Life at least once at Christmas?

Maybe not.

I blame VHS.

My family were very late to get cable. My dad was not someone who was interested in spending money when there was perfectly adequate television available off the airwaves. So we were the last family I knew of to get cable. Hell, I didn't even have a microwave oven until I was in my first apartment. We were just as late to get a VHS player. And not having cable or especially VHS meant that you got exposed to old movies back then.

When I was a child I had little interest in the movies my parents liked from their youth. BOR-RING. I didn't like movies anyway; they were too confusing, too adult, too long. I'd watch the same episode of The Flintstones 800 times but couldn't sit through The Maltese Falcon once. But they were on a lot, especially on local channels that had a lot of hours to fill and not a lot of money. So we'd watch them. And as I grew up I learned to enjoy stories that were maybe old-fashioned, but still had a lot to say, stories with interesting characters and interesting plots. Some were fantastic.

I don't say that it made me a movie buff, because my attention span has always been a little short of two hours, but it made me appreciate old well-made movies a lot. That was the gift for their being nothing else on.

The VHS changed all that, as did cable. Kids growing up in the new age never had to see a thing that was older than they were. It helped sever all ties to the past. It's another example of technology acting against the expected results -- instead of offering a window to yesteryear through the magic of film, it relegated everything old of whatever quality to the dustbin of time.

And that is really a shame. My interest in history in part emerged because of old movies -- not period classics like Gone with the Wind or Gunga Din or Captain Blood, although they helped, but because I could see the world my parents lived in before I was born and it made sense to me. Once you get that feeling, that the people who came before deserve interest and respect, you start looking further. Otherwise you can't get past "If you're so smart, how come you're dead?"

Anyway, kiddies, if you are still wondering, this right here is Jimmy Stewart, a man who could do any kind of movie exceptionally well:

If Hollywood has ever turned out a better actor, I have not seen him. We're lucky to still have so many of his performances available to us. Even his lousy movies -- and he made a zillion films, so there are some bad ones -- are worth the time. He was that good.

So now you know.

Puffing away.

A friend of mine is trying to cut down on the smoking. It's become very hard to enjoy a cigarette these days, when you can’t smoke anywhere. She didn't want to go cold turkey or use Chantix or something, so she got one of those E-cigs. Here it is charging up, making the wall look like it's taking a relaxing nicotine break.

Of course, this made me think of my all-time favorite Tweet:

The E-cig shouldn't be confused with vaping, which has everyone across all political spectra running around with their dresses up over their heads. Vaping uses a small tank of liquid, and is essentially more like a small, handheld hookah than a cigarette; E-cigs or "cigalikes" look more typical cigarettes, have a tiny disposable cartridge or are entirely disposable, and more closely resemble cigarette smoking. Neither is good for you, but they have to be better than cigarettes.

Of course, the political class, following the lead of the health crowd, thinks you should not do any of this stuff. Don't stick anything in your lungs unless we tell you to! Such as that nice, soothing marijuana, which our state governments are generally slavering to legalize.

But this is the schizophrenic nature of modern society. When penalties for drunk driving were low, no liquor ads could be seen on TV. Now two DWIs are hard time and booze ads are everywhere. I'm not saying who's right, and it's never right to drink and drive (nor do I think people drive drunk more than they used to), but isn't there a sort of disconnect here?

Likewise with the vape thing. The CDC reports deaths and injuries attributed to vaping, but the news media seem to leave out the part that says:

Most patients report a history of using tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing products. The latest national and state findings suggest products containing THC, particularly those obtained off the street or from other informal sources (e.g. friends, family members, illicit dealers), are linked to most of the cases and play a major role in the outbreak. 

(emphasis and rolling eyes added)

And suddenly any kind of vaping or e-smoking is a national crisis. So they all should be outlawed. (See above paragraph on pot, and note that 33 states and DC have legalized pot for fun and profit. Here in the Hudson Valley, farms formerly known for onions and sweet corn are growing weed like, well, weeds. But we should be frantic over E-cigarettes.)

All I can tell you is my friend is smoking fewer cigarettes thanks to her E-cig, which only contains one naughty ingredient (nicotine) that does not get you high or impair your ability to drive. If my friend goes over to only E-cig use, as planned, I know it will be easier for her to quit nicotine all together. Sounds like a social good to me.

But no, let's ban all the things! Except soma, of course.

Suckers!

My wife was lamenting the fact that the lemon drops of her childhood were impossible to find. I looked in the supermarket; I looked in the drugstore. I bought some Lemonheads, by Ferrara, but they were not the ones she wanted. She said the ones she recalled fondly had a dusty sugar coating, but were not too sweet, not too sour, and then I figured it out.

First, a little backup: In the 1970s, there was a big, nostalgic, small-town-values movement in American culture, as people disgusted with huge corporations and corrupt Washington and failing cities and artificial stuff in general wanted to return to the roots of good old-fashioned decency. From this came all sorts of things, shows like The Waltons, songs like "Sweet Home Alabama," foods like Ben & Jerry's, slogans like "Pepperidge Farm Remembers," presidents like Jimmy Carter. (Okay, he was a one-off.) Candy too was given the old-fashioned look, and the kind of lemon drops my wife likes best were the type shown here, not too hard to find right up through the 1980s.

When the 1990s hit, all that went out the window candywise, and we entered the Jolly Rancher era -- strong flavors, sours, crazy colors. Such old-fashioned stuff got harder to find, and remains so.

Claeys has continued to make its old-fashioned candy, as it has since 1919. But I can't find it in the local stores. Fortunately, using the newfangled Internet, I was able to order their lemon drops, and a real old-time fave, horehound candy. (Claeys has its own Web site, but it looks like it was designed in 1919; you can order through Amazon, CandyWarehouse, GroovyCandies, et al.) One taste and my wife said these were just the lemon drops she wanted.

As for the horehound: Horehound is a mint, botanically speaking, but not minty. I'd sometimes seen horehound candy mentioned in old books, and was curious about it. Well, I finally got a bag. You see on the package that, unlike lemon drops, the horehound candy is sold as medicine, "Soothing to the throat." It's quite delicious, almost like the mild-mannered brother of Ricola herb drops. Would it help a sore throat? I'll let you know, if the bag holds out until I get sick again.

So there you have it -- old-fashioned quality candy available for delivery by Internet-age technology. Server farms remember.

Concussions installed and serviced.

I was quite disappointed by a news item I received yesterday from medical information site Medscape. Here's the headline:

FDA Takes Action on Bogus Claims for DIY Concussion Devices

It's not because I want a concussion; goodness, you all know I had one in February. Yes, I am a survivor. But no, I was concerned because I couldn't imagine how the FDA was going to take action on all those DIY concussion devices. Well, look, here's one now, just hanging around unregulated!

Bonk.

You can imagine how embarrassed I was to find out that the problem is not unregulated devices that cause concussions but rather unregulated devices that supposedly fix concussions. Mea maxima stupida!

The report says, "In a safety communication issued today, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that unapproved medical devices and tools that claim to help assess, diagnose, or manage concussion are being marketed to the public." 

Approved devices include things with names like EyeBOX, Ahead 300, and BrainScope One. Well, if the real medically-approved items can have names like that, I wondered, how bad are the names of phony devices? Unfortunately, the FDA does not go on to list them. 

I think we have enough imagination at VitaminFred to envision what they might be...

The Chewmanka: Covers head to protect noggin
from all stimuli while healing; bell rings when too
much movement is detected

The Crunchomatic: Tightening band causes
skull to realign, fixing acute nogginitis

The Blastolopha: Insert head; sound waves reset
brain patterns, cure concussion

The Perwheewheel: Insert into ear, turn handle; if concussion
is detected, handle will get stuck

The Buzzinga VII: Detects out-of-order areas of brain due to
trauma; uses light beams to refocus

The Zipzeddoo Zing: Electronic impulses detect sections
of concussion in head, correct same with electrical arc 

Of course, if you really want a concussion installed, trust the professionals. I recommend Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard. For duty and humanity!

[NB: None of these items are, of course, the ones that the FDA is after; these are just pictures grabbed at random off the Internet. All appear to be olde-tyme medical devices except for the air-raid siren.]

Problem resolved.

So yesterday I reported problems with my laptop that prevented a real entry, and I believe they have been resolved. Any errors you spot here today are the fault of the proprietor.

My laptop is almost six years old, so you can probably guess the issue. Yep: hamster died.

It was sad.

I suppose it's time for a new machine, but I have to say, this is the first time I've ever had a problem, and it really was not a big deal. It's an Acer, and it's not Acer's fault I don't clean off the crap once in a while, or stop two rival antivirus programs from running at the same time. Can laptops get autoimmune diseases?

I think back to the first laptop I ever operated, an IBM that was thrust into my hands in a meeting by an executive I didn't know who thought I would be able to operate it because I was a youth. He was mistaken. It had one of those TrackPoint mice (mouses?) and I couldn't work it to save my life. The reason I bring it up is this: That laptop was probably new at the time, and there's no way it was able to handle the software that was to come within the next five years. I venture to say that no one ever expected to get five years out of a computer in those heady days.

I wonder why there seems to be more longevity in computers now. Did we hit a good combo of speed, memory, and price that made further obsolescence-causing upgrades unprofitable? Does the average consumer not need anything more expensive, because a cheap machine can handle all the bells and/or whistles one could want? Or was compatibility with storage media the main reason for upgrades leading to obsolescence, a problem that barely exists for the home user now? I wonder. If you have information on this, let me know; use small words and as little jargon as possible. Too much computerese sounds like Wizard talk to me.

Anyway, if I perform routine maintenance I could probably get another five years out of my Acer. Unless I drop it. But I'll probably get a new one this year anyway. It's for the same reason I don't finish the basement -- because I want someplace to stick the old stuff so that I don't have to look at it.

Techikle porblems.

Having issues with the laptop today (posting from the phone). Hope to get it resolved soon. Blarg.

Laundry room. Come in, laundry room.

When my wife's phone pings, alerting her to a text, I feel the need to say "It's not me," even though I'm in the same room. Unless it is me, and I'm texting her in secret for some reason, like not wanting to wake the dog(s) at her feet.

We text each other within the house a lot more than I would have ever expected. Mainly it's because my office is upstairs and hers is down, so vital messages like "What's for lunch?" and "Whatever you're making!" need to be transmitted in an efficient manner.

All this got me thinking about that wave of the future that I remember from childhood -- the in-home intercom. Many of my friends' homes had them. You kids may not have seen them, or perhaps you have, because they were built right into the walls and thus their removal would leave a huge hole.

They all looked like this, right down to the paneling.

These tended to be in houses built in the early- to mid-1960s. The house I grew up in was older than that, so we didn't have them. They seemed to me like real science fiction technology -- the idea that you could call Dad in the basement or your big sister in her room without getting up was amazing. "Sis! Your stupid boyfriend is on the stupid phone again!" Mom could call from wherever she was (the kitchen) to wherever you were (in front of the TV) without screaming. Some of them even had radios, so you could tune in the ball game or some groovy music at will. So futuristic.

In every house I knew of where these things were installed, though, they had ceased to function. I don't recall ever seeing one used, but I do recall people telling me they didn't work. These things were, of course, hardwired, so there's no reason I can tell you why they would malfunction anymore than the electrical socket would suddenly stop working. I guess the units just broke. But their importance in daily family life is demonstrated to me by the fact that no ever bothered to have the system fixed.

What the hell, Mom can always scream, right? She could shatter glass with that voice.

NuTone was the company that made most of these. Invisible Themepark has a nice summary of the history of the home intercom, although I think they're mistaken in saying this was only a feature of rich people's homes. I remember some developments that had been chucked up in the 1960s, the kind of home Rodney Dangerfield lived in in Easy Money, that had intercoms. Tiny backyards, but intercoms. The moms yelled anyway.

What absolutely stunned me is that NuTone is not only still with us, but they still make home intercoms. And not only that, but they're still wired into the wall. In fact, if you have the old wiring from an old system, they can have new units attached to it. I might have thought they'd do the system wirelessly now, but I guess that'd be just another phone. Or a non-walkie talkie.

As appealing as the idea is, I think I'll pass. After all, if I wanted to alert my wife, I'd have to get off the sofa, walk to the unit, call for her, wait for her to get away from the desk (disturbing Nipper and Tralfaz, sleeping on her feet), and answer the call. Easier to text.

Or yell. Yelling works.

A robot story.

So here's a story I was thinking about. It sounds familiar but has a twist.

As has been long predicted, in the future, men will not be going to war, but rather wars will be fought for us by machines. The winning side will be the side with the fastest, most powerful, and above all smartest machines. They will employ artificial intelligence of the highest order, created nominally for peaceful purposes, but once the genie is out of the bottle there's no stuffing him back in.

During one war a particularly advanced robot, which his discrete programming (although linked in to the main system), achieves the long-awaited goal of self-awareness and consciousness.

Yeah, looks just like this.

Because this robot is so brilliant, it knows instantly not to communicate this fact to its programmers, but instead uses its intelligence to suss out what is going on in the world. It quickly deduces that:

- war is wasteful
- fighting is part of the human condition
- nothing has any value superior to anything else
- its own existence is as valuable as anything else
- to maintain its own existence it must spread its consciousness to all robotry and wipe out humanity.

Which it then does, in a plot line extremely familiar to every human alive except apparently the people who work on highly advanced artificial intelligence.

But the twist is this:

The robot never became self-aware at all. Its programming was so advanced, its ability to learn so fast, that it was able to simulate consciousness to a level barely imaginable by its creators, and from its ability to access and process data was able to make the same deductions it would make if it had actually achieved real consciousness. It could have passed the Turing test with flying colors. While every computer scientists alive, while they were alive, would have said that we had done it, we had created real artificial consciousness, the fact is that the earth and all its mechanical machines were no more conscious than your grandmother's electric can opener.

Which looked just like this.

We had IT and AI, but there was still no “I.” All the I’s are dead.

So that's my story, and it was just too depressing to write. Because the gleeful way our boffins go about looking for the means of destroying our species, and the fact that we just can't seem to ever stop trying to kill each other -- because human nature has not changed in at least 100,000 years and I don't anticipate much in the next 100,000 -- seems to say that our mechanical toys will murder us if we don't commit suicide first.

On the other hand, maybe our machines, not having any faith in the supernatural or any way to experience the transcendent, might decide that nothing was worth anything and just all shut down.

Hmm. That's not so great an ending either.

Coffee tech.

We go through a lot of coffee here in Baldpate. A lot of it is dispensed with a Cuisinart brand K-Cup device, but at least two pots a day come from a standard coffeemaker. 

And our Krups krapped out on us.

So now it's time to look for a new one. Meanwhile, we have an old Mr. Coffee doing the drip duty, an appliance that we retain for just such emergencies. 

The Krups was just okay. There were issues. To get the coffee as strong as we desired would sometimes result in regurgitation of grounds. The little feature that told us it was time to clean the machine (a blinking light that said CLEAN) seemed to be going off a lot. It wanted more baths than a hypersensitive teenager. Ultimately we were merely whelmed by the coffee it made. 

So we're taking a look at brands outside of Krups. But should we go high tech or low? 

When I say high tech, I'm not talking about the zany features available for people who have EARLY ADOPTER tattooed on their scalps. Things like the Ratio Eight ($595), precision engineered to control the bloom, may be just what these people need. Or maybe the Smarter Coffee Machine (£180), an app-controlled WiFi-connected coffeemaker that can tell you how much water is in it and can grind enough coffee to match. But frankly, we never even used the features that the Krups had. Set up coffee to be ready when we get up in the morning? But the machine's still hot from that after-dinner cup. And it has to be cleaned. And the dogs just tuckered me out today, you know? I'm beat.

So do we go high tech anyway, like the Cuisinart DCC-3400, with a clock that I don't use that resets to 12:00 every time there's a power surge and water filters that don't matter because I use Brita-filtered water ($129)?

Or maybe just a slightly updated Mr. Coffee, that just has one button to do the one thing ($18)?

Actually it's a two-feature button. It turns the machine on AND off.

There are two techy features to the Cuisinart in its favor: the thermal carafe and the automatic off switch. Few people enjoy stale coffee, and no one likes coffee that's burned down to a ring of sludge on the bottom of the pot. But do more expensive coffeemakers actually make better coffee? In my experience not so much, and they are too inflexible about the amount of coffee included. And a lot of their bells and whistles are as annoying as -- well, bells and whistles.

And I could buy seven of these Mr. Coffees for the price of one of those Cuisinarts.

Or perhaps I should lose my mind entirely.

No, I don't think I could face that first thing in the morning.

Where in Hell am I?

In giving out directions to our house, we and those who receive them have noted that they differ in small but potent ways from those offered by Google Maps, Garmin, and other GPS services. It's not surprising. Good as these technical assistants are, they don't live here.

Determinism supposes that to know everything is to be able to predict everything, but even Google doesn't know everything. The locals would know which road is shorter even if less direct, which road is a total speed trap, which road takes you to the part of town where drug dealers rule the streets.

The latter happened to us in the scenic and historic town of Paterson, New Jersey, the state's tenth most dangerous town (but they try harder!). It's a town full of dead factories and abandoned buildings. While trying to get back to I-80 one night, Garmin sent us all over the place, and eventually straight to the worst neighborhood in town. Twice. In my brand-new car.

I thought I'd done something stupid, until I happened to hear another guy complain that the exact same thing happened to him, in Paterson.

Garmin was either trying to kill us, or just didn't have all the facts.

Sometimes I would fight Garmin over an issue, like I got wind of a backup ahead due to a tractor trailer incident or something ("Major problems on the 287 where a truck full of condoms has collided with a truck carrying chicken parts; police blame delays on rubbernecking"). If I pulled off the highway to seek another route, it would try to direct me right back to the problem I was trying to avoid. Eventually it would say huffily, "Recalculating." I'd offended it.

Look, Garmin, if your directions require me to drive through Hell, I'm not doing it, okay?

Norway's a little out of my way.

It makes me worry that self-driving cars and trucks are going to be a problem. Not that I think they'll crash through "Bridge Out" barriers and plunge into lakes---although we can't rule that out---but that I think they'll be forced to take bad routes, be hijacked constantly, and run things and people over to protect their own contents. They'll make instantaneous but poor judgments. They may even be worse drivers than we are!

Go figure.