Wednesday, February 22
I suppose it is Just Part of the Aging Process
My mother was almost 96, when she died, spending her last days in hospice at a Retirement Community that she considered to be her home. My 89 year old father died at the hospital and was planning to return home that afternoon or the next day....
Hearing about Jimmy Carter got me thinking about my parents and how they spent their last days... it is an odd thing to think about but I suppose it is also normal after one passes the age of 70, 75, or 80. I am currently 75. My sister is 4 years older than me, my brother is 8 years younger. Not sure what they are thinking as we seldom communicate.
We were closer when our parents were alive, so I am sure they held us together from the standpoint of not wanting to disappoint them. So, now it no longer matters.
What we all have in common is GETTING OLDER but what we do not have in common is how we deal with GETTING OLDER.
My second cousin Butch was like Jimmy Carter, when his time came and hospice was there, he was a peace with the inevitability of his impending death. I went to see him while he was in hospice and he took me outside and showed me the new plants he was growing, giving off no signs at all to me that he was dying. A few days after that visit he died.
When we are young and younger, we don't really think about death or the fact that we are getting older and sometimes many years pass until that reality slaps us in the face.
I 60 years of age I got my first slap with a heart attack and cancer. At 74 years of age, I got my second slap when I had L2-L3-L4-L5-S1 fused together and just about had to learn to walk again. Seven months later, I was moving a bed into our spare room and trying to move that large mattress down the hallway took every bit of strength that I had. I also realized that much of the strength in my shoulders and upper arms that I thought I still had, I no longer had... not sure if that was a slap or not but it sure was a wake up call.
I am walking a mile and riding a bike for 2 miles, three times a week now and while that might help my heart, digestion, and sleep, it does not build muscle strength. BTW, when the warm weather returnes in about a month, I will walk 5/6 times a week outside and not inside at our local community center.
Eating habits also change as one gets older which in my case I started at age 40 when I quit smoking and drinking alcohol. I also stopped eating red meat, fried foods, and lots of desserts. Focused on veges, fruits, fish, chicken, turkey, and beans. My total cholesterol both good and bad is 84 which is rather remarkable.
I don't mind losing my hair. I don't mind putting on a little extra weight. I don't mind not being as physical as I used to be. I understand that is all part of the aging process. What I mind is how fast it is happening once the process started at 60. I thought I would be more physical a lot longer... especially when we went to Myrtle Beach because I like to bodysurf.
Gaming Capital of the World
Think of the cities of the world which are renowned as hotbeds of innovative technology and Helsinki might not be near the top of the list. However, the often snow-covered streets of this relatively quiet northern European capital are home to some of the most ambitious and successful games makers in the world.
The first Angry Bird was flicked across the screen of an iPad in Helsinki, it's home of major games studios like Clash of Clans maker Supercell, and is also the place Netflix has chosen to set up its first ever internal gaming studio. "Why Helsinki? It is home to some of the best game talent in the world," the streamer has said. As a result of all this, the Finnish capital is considered by many to be the capital of mobile gaming, an industry currently worth an estimated £120bn to the global economy.
Which leads to an obvious question, how did it develop this reputation? In the 1980s and 1990s, Finland wasn't considered to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Much of the population relied on computers that were far from top of the range. The restrictions that came with that would help fuel what was known as the "demoscene" - a subculture which saw programmers create art presentations, music and games that pushed the technology of the time to the limits of its power.
Finns became used to doing a lot with very little, and then along came Nokia. Sonja Ängeslevä, CEO of Phantom Gamelabs, which is based in Helsinki, says this foundation is a significant reason behind the success of the games industry in the city today: "Nokia showed an example that we could build something big from here," she explains.
As a games maker, board member of the successful console developer Remedy games and the founder of a new development studio, Sonja knows the Finnish games sector inside out. READ MORE...
Tuesday, February 21
My Backyard Vacation Area
We did this to have a backyard vacation area in case we did not want to drive down to Myrtle Beach and spend time at a resort. A week at Myrtle Beach for an ocean view efficiency apartment/condo is about $1,500 to $2,000 which includes the rental, gasoline there and back, and meals. This is in South Myrtle Beach below the main part where the ferris wheel is located and all the drugs are sold.
I get into the hot tub about 3-4 times a week and use the jets to relax my shoulder and back muscles and just chill out for a while. I am usually out there about 45 minutes which is probably too long but it is so damn relaxing.
My hot tub soakings are take place 12 months out of the year although if it is really cold out there in January, I will not go out now whereas for the first 12 years, I did not worry about the cold influencing my body negatively... I have been concerned about that for the last 2-3 years, so if it is below 30 degrees, I am not going to soak.
Needless to say, I suppose that our backyard vacation area was well worth the effort, even every 3 years when the damn thing needs to be restained. It usually takes us about a week to accomplish this task and about 10-12 gallons of stain. We buy two 5-gallon containers at one time, making sure we get the same lot numbers otherwise the colors will differ.
Our cost of maintenance over these 15 years has been another $5,000 including pool upkeep during the summer months of use which averages out to about $56 dollars a month over the 15 years of ownership or 180 months that also takes into consideration the purchase price. For me, that does not seem like a bad tradeoff... I think I would have been willing to pay $100/month for this or maybe $150 which would have been pushing it...
Robots That Learn Like Humans
In recent years, numerous reports have appeared in the media expressing concern and even fear about robots and artificial intelligence: fear that robots are going to steal our jobs (minister Asscher in 2014), and fear that artificial intelligence will eclipse and endanger human beings (physicist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk). At the same time, we also witnessed impressive videos of robots, such as the one created by the American company Boston Dynamics: Big Dog robot walking up a slope in the snow, and the humanoid, two-legged robot Atlas that jumps over obstacles and does a back flip.
In the past decade, robots have indeed become better at learning new tasks, an essential part of intelligence. Robots are much better at perceiving their environment, which has led to smarter robot arms and which has also given the development of autonomous vehicles a powerful boost. It’s only when robots also manage to handle unstructured environments and unforeseen circumstances that we’ll be able to integrate them into all aspects of our daily lives.
Nevertheless, robots still have much less of a learning capacity of than humans. Humans are more flexible, learn from fewer examples and are able to learn a large number of tasks, from learning a new language to skiing.
It’s much more difficult teaching robots to learn than computers
But how has robotics actually evolved, and what are the most recent developments? Professor of Intelligent Control and Robotics at the Department of Cognitive Robotics at TU Delft’s 3mE Faculty is studying how robots can improve their learning ability.
‘Some robot videos are first and foremost PR videos,’ says Babuska. ‘What they show you is their robot performing a certain stunt once. But they don’t show all the times that the robot fell over. And that stunt will only succeed if the environment is carefully prepared. If you place a beam in a different position and dim the light a bit, then the robot will fall over. The videos will have you believe that a certain problem has been solved, but that’s nonsense. What you see can’t be generalised to other circumstances.’
What would need to happen to give the general public a more realistic impression?
‘As roboticists,’ says Babuska, ‘we have to be more honest about what robots can and cannot do. There’s too much overselling, often more so in the US than in Europe. Every time we speak to journalists or give a lecture, we have to clarify how complex it is to get a robot to operate well in the world. I also believe there’s too much fear. But drones can do so many useful things.’
‘The same is true for robots on the ground. There are so many challenges in society that robots can help to solve. There’s still so much boring, dirty and dangerous work that we’re better off giving to robots. Few labours who work in construction or scaffolding make it to retirement without wearing out their backs. Or look at people in the food industry who perform the same tasks all day long in a temperature of seven degrees. That sounds more like something from 1900 than 2020. I want to help ensure that robots can aid us with these kinds of tasks.’
‘My main focus is on robots that learn how to move efficiently,’ says Babuska. ‘It makes no difference to me whether it concerns walking, driving, sailing, flying or gripping and moving objects. I research fairly general techniques that can be used in several applications instead of just one specific application.’
When the deep learning revolution unfolded, it was soon apparent that roboticists weren’t going to be able to simply take an image recognition algorithm from a computer and transfer it to a robot and expect it to work well. A robot is more than a computer; it’s a computer linked to a physical body. A robot has physical interaction with its environment. ‘A moving robot keeps seeing the world a little differently. And it has to make real-time decisions that are also precise and reliable. If a robot makes a mistake, then it’s a lot more costly in the physical world than in the virtual world. These are all aspects that complicate efforts to teach robots to learn well.’ READ MORE...
Americans Love Their Illegal Drugs
In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s these illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroine, and LSD found their way onto college campuses and were heavily used by the musical groups mainly formed in the 1960s like the:
- Doors
- Beatles
- Rolling Stone
- Ten Years After
- Eagles
- Peter, Paul, & Mary
- James Taylor
- Credence Clearwater Revival
- Steppenwolf
- Jefferson Airplane
Artists, writers, actors and actresses, along with the wealthy and middle and upper management in industry in a recreational ways, oftentimes not realizing they were becoming addicted. If you were high it did not really matter if you got shot or how bad you were shot.
Around late 1960s and early 1970s, Americans were learning that most soldiers who were in Vietnam were taking drugs to suppress the anxiety of going out to war and possible not coming back.
During this same timeframe, doctors were prescribing relaxing meds to housewives along with pain meds not really understanding or even caring that their patients were slowly becoming addicted as well.
Sometime in the 1990s/2000s, not only did we seriously begin to realize that many Americans were addicted to drugs, treating it as if we were at war, but clever chemists started creating designer drugs that were easy to manufacture and even easier to sell becuause they were relatively inexperienced.
Countries all over the world were growing and/or designing drugs specifically to sell to AMERICANS because their appetites were INSATIABLE... The more they made, the more Americans would buy them...
Illegal drugs DID NOT replace tobacco or alcohol because both of those were also consumed in great quantities with cigarettes being the most costly to purchase.
Illegal drugs did not just find their way into our colleges and universities but they found their way into our high schools both public and private. Now from about 2015 to the present time, illegal drugs are making their way into junior high schools and elementary schoools and NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE...
Cloning Humans
There are, in mankind, two kinds of heredity: biological and cultural. Cultural inheritance makes possible for humans what no other organism can accomplish: the cumulative transmission of experience from generation to generation. In turn, cultural inheritance leads to cultural evolution, the prevailing mode of human adaptation. For the last few millennia, humans have been adapting the environments to their genes more often than their genes to the environments.
Nevertheless, natural selection persists in modern humans, both as differential mortality and as differential fertility, although its intensity may decrease in the future. More than 2,000 human diseases and abnormalities have a genetic causation. Health care and the increasing feasibility of genetic therapy will, although slowly, augment the future incidence of hereditary ailments. Germ-line gene therapy could halt this increase, but at present, it is not technically feasible.
The proposal to enhance the human genetic endowment by genetic cloning of eminent individuals is not warranted. Genomes can be cloned; individuals cannot. In the future, therapeutic cloning will bring enhanced possibilities for organ transplantation, nerve cells and tissue healing, and other health benefits.
Chimpanzees are the closest relatives of Homo sapiens, our species. There is a precise correspondence bone by bone between the skeletons of a chimpanzee and a human. Humans bear young like apes and other mammals. Humans have organs and limbs similar to birds, reptiles, and amphibians; these similarities reflect the common evolutionary origin of vertebrates.
However, it does not take much reflection to notice the distinct uniqueness of our species. Conspicuous anatomical differences between humans and apes include bipedal gait and an enlarged brain. Much more conspicuous than the anatomical differences are the distinct behaviors and institutions.
Humans have symbolic language, elaborate social and political institutions, codes of law, literature and art, ethics, and religion; humans build roads and cities, travel by motorcars, ships, and airplanes, and communicate by means of telephones, computers, and televisions.
Human Origins
The hominin lineage diverged from the chimpanzee lineage 6–7 Ma, and it evolved exclusively in the African continent until the emergence of Homo erectus, somewhat before 1.8 Ma. Shortly after its emergence in tropical or subtropical Africa, H. erectus spread to other continents.
Fossil remains of H. erectus (sensu lato) are known from Africa, Indonesia (Java), China, the Middle East, and Europe. H. erectus fossils from Java have been dated at 1.81 ± 0.04 and 1.66 ± 0.04 Ma and from Georgia at 1.6–1.8 Ma (1). Anatomically distinctive H. erectus fossils have been found in Spain, deposited before 780,000 y ago, the oldest in southern Europe (2).
The transition from H. erectus to H. sapiens occurred around 400,000 y ago, although this date is not well determined owing to uncertainty as to whether some fossils are erectus or archaic forms of sapiens. H. erectus persisted for some time in Asia, until 250,000 y ago in China and perhaps until 100,000 ago in Java, and thus was contemporary with early members of its descendant species, H. sapiens.
Fossil remains of Neandertal hominids (Homo neanderthalensis), with brains as large as those of H. sapiens, appeared in Europe earlier than 200,000 y ago and persisted until 30,000 or 40,000 y ago (3, 4). READ MORE...
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