Columns

What you’re about to read is a story I’ve been telling for a long, long time. If you’re one of my former students, what follows may ring a bell. It’s a crazy story, but it happened. I was there.

Soft power? Sounds like a strategy promulgated by a convention of weak-kneed, free-spirited peaceniks who’ve listened to John Lennon’s iconic song “Imagine” too many times.

I saw the burro wearing pants and carrying a basket filled with paper flowers.

Years ago I had a player on my team named Robbie. Robbie came from a very poor 1family, and when I say poor I mean really, really poor. I went to visit him at his house once when he was sick and his room literally had no floor. It was just packed down dirt. I’m being dead serious here. His family of five lived in a tiny house and he shared this room with a younger brother and sister.

I’ve given you links to a lot of sites over the course of these columns. And I’m sure some of those you like to visit regularly and others you visit only occasionally. In addition, of course, you have your own sites you like to visit to get news, reviews, bargains or whatever. How can you possibly keep track of them all? Sure, you can use your browser’s bookmarks or just rely on your memory, but that’s all pretty hit-and-miss. And what do you do if you forget for a while? How can you catch up on what you’ve missed? That’s what I hope to address this week.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence enterprise and parent of the controversial ChatBTP, said recently that his vision of artificial intelligence is “to forge a new world order in which machines free people to pursue more creative work,” according to an interview in the Wall Street Journal. The question that lingers is to what extent will artificial intelligence affect the world we live in economically, socially, politically and democratically.

My husband, Peter, is trying to impress a local collie.

During my work days, I’ll periodically find myself on college campuses doing cleaning inspections in residence halls. And, while the areas I’m evaluating are limited to common spaces and not the dorm rooms themselves, often doors are open, providing me some glimpses at the young folks’ temporary quarters, the tidiness (or often the lack thereof) and the decor.

After three years of the pandemic, some of the socio-economic effects are starting to come into focus. The rhythms of daily life were changed in so many ways by lockdowns, fears over being around people in stores, churches, doctors offices, fitness centers and normal off-duty social gatherings. Those disruptions have led to cascading consequences — all in the dark shadows of overwhelming death (over 1,000,000 Americans have died from the pandemic so far).

Anxiety likes numbers.