Common Sense

 

On Being Retired

In 2015, my wife and I retired...  I am not sure how many years she had worked, but I had worked 45.  For five more years, I continued to work part-time as an adjunct professor teaching businesses classes at a university in Knoxville.

During those first five years, my wife and I traveled all the time, leaving our cats for 7-10 days at a time every other month.  We took cruises, flew to Europe, Canada, Hawaii, and Los Vegas.  When we weren't on cruises or flying Delta, we drove our vehicle...  sometimes the destination took 4-6 hours, sometimes it took 10-12 hours.

What we learned after those five years was that...  number one, we were tired of traveling and number two, we never wore all the clothes we packed.

No matter where we went or how often, we always went to Myrtle Beach twice in the summer.  Once around May/June and again around September/October.

I know several people, including members of my immediate family who will never retire as they have opportunities where they can mix business and pleasure...  and, while that is fine for them, I have no desire to continue working and see how much money I can earn and save.  I have saved enough money to take care of our needs until we are both 95 years old.  I don't need anymore money than that.

Our children, from previous marriages, have already indicated that they do not need us to set aside money for an inheritance, as they are already planning for their retirement.  There will be a substantial amount of money left to them but they are not expecting it and don't need it.

Being retired, does not mean that you do nothing each day.  It just means that you don't have to shave every day, wear a shirt and tie every day, and can take a week to complete a task that would have taken you a day.

My retirement comes with the statement that my wife is no longer cooking and if I want to eat I have to cook my own meals.  If I am cooking my own meals than I have to do my own cleaning up as well.  I did not mind hearing that from her, as I feel she is under no obligation to cook.  I am not a great cook, but after 8 years, I have only thrown away two pots of food that were not tasty.  

When I am not cooking, I am maintaining two blogs and when not working on my blogs, I am writing novels.  The main concern here is that I am staying busy.  I watch the news in the morning until about 10am or so and very little television after that.  I prefer to watch series rather than stand alone hour dramas and find that the BBC series is always better than any American series.  It is a combination of acting and directing, I suppose.

From time to time, I may share some of my travels with you and/or my cooking.  When I cook, I usually make enough for 2-3 meals so I am not cooking everyday.

Be Safe and enjoy your freedoms, especially your freedom of speech...  don't let the government or anyone else censor your opinions.

Buckdancing

 

AI Used to Eliminate Weeds

Underneath Carbon Robotics' LaserWeeder (Photo courtesy of Carbon Robotics)

Carbon Robotics, a Seattle-based AI-powered robotics company, has developed the most efficient way to rid massive farming fields of weeds.

The LaserWeeder, a chemical-free, no-till weed control solution for specialty crops, can eliminate over 200,000 weeds per hour and offer up to 80% cost savings in weed control, according to Carbon Robotics.

“We have what’s called a deep learning neural net,” Paul Mikesell, the CEO of Carbon Robotics, told Jason Rantz on KTTH 770 AM. It’s this subset of AI. And this computer is trained on a lot of images, 1000s of images with pictures from farm fields, where we know what the weeds are, and we know what the crops are. And we know what we’d like to eliminate. 

And then we plug that AI system into a series of lasers that we have a millimeter level of control over where it’s going to hit on the ground. And the AI targets the weeds and burns them out of the farmer’s fields.”

The LaserWeeder is installed with 150W CO2 lasers with millimeter accuracy, ready to fire every 50 milliseconds.

“They don’t have to spray herbicides. They don’t have to hire farm workers to come out there and pull these weeds,” Mikesell continued. “The robot just takes care of it on its own. And it’s been incredibly effective.”

The LaserWeeder was crowned 2023’s “Best AI-based Solution for Agriculture” for its time-saving efficiency — lowering costs of labor — in the sixth annual AI Breakthrough Awards program conducted by AI Breakthrough. Labor accounted for 28.2% of a modern farmer’s total expenses, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

The average farm LaserWeeder has worked on has been approximately 4,000 acres in size, but the device can even be handy on smaller farms of sub-1,000 acres. Mikesell stressed the invention’s risk of fire is non-existent.  READ MORE...

Clueless

 

Once A Sports Lover

When I was in high school I played sports:  football, basketball, baseball, track, and volleyball.  It was the thing to do in high school as I was supporting a pretty good frame and had a fair amount of natural talent in all those areas.  However, when I got to college, I found myself on the lower end of the scale from a talent and physical standpoint, so I never pursued sports there.

As I was growing up, I remember supporting the local professional football and baseball teams and carried that competitive spirit throughout most of my early life...  following both football and baseball and soon added basketball after becoming aware of Michael Jordan.

Around the age of 50, I lost interest in sports both on the college and professional levels for some reason...  maybe it was all that early exposure to sports that did me in but whatever it was, I pretty much stopped paying attention cold turkey.

Nothing really replaced sports but I did become involved in watching SciFi shows on cable along with a variety of different series.  What bothered me about series was that you had to wait until the next year to watch the next season.  So, I would wait until all seasons had been recorded and would watch them straight through which came across more like a movie than a series.

But like everything else, I grew tired of SciFi and Series and stopped watching everything on cable or WIFI except the news and maybe a few cooking shows.

About this same time I got interested in creating blog and posting articles to them...  actually, I started posting article on LinkedIn and Facebook first.  At one time, I had 4 blogs and then condensed them down to two...  one where I would publish poetry and the other one where I would publish journalistic articles on a variety of subject about which I had an interest.

I maintain these two blogs daily and when I am not doing that, then I am usually writing novels,  I have completed 7 with two that are 50% and 80% complete.  A chapter outline for my 10th novel is written and ready to begin but I have lost interest in writing once we decided to downsize...  that activity has occupied all my time for a couple of months.

Maybe tomorrow I return to writing, I tell myself.
 

Bear With Ball

 

China's Place in Space

China has claimed to outpace the US-based SpaceX by successfully launching the world’s first methane-liquid oxygen rocket into orbit on July 12.

A commercial Chinese firm, LandSpace, launched its Zhuque-2 rocket late Tuesday and made history as the first company to send a methane-fueled launcher into orbit.

According to state media reports, the Zhuque-2 carrier rocket, developed by LandSpace, took off from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 9 a.m. and successfully completed its planned flight.

The launch of the Zhuque-2 rocket by LandSpace marked the second attempt by the Beijing-based company following an unsuccessful first launch in December.

Nonetheless, the rocket successfully deployed a test payload into a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), becoming the world’s first to execute this remarkable feat.

Furthermore, this accomplishment propelled China ahead of its US competitors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, in the race to develop carrier vehicles powered by methane.

Methane is considered a cleaner, safer, and more cost-effective propellant for reusable rockets, enhancing China’s position in the field.

Early this year, the Terran 1 rocket by Relativity Space in the US and SpaceX’s Starship experienced unsuccessful maiden launches in their endeavors to reach orbit using liquid oxygen methane propulsion.

LandSpace’s achievement also marks the second instance of a private Chinese company launching a liquid-propellant rocket, with Beijing Tianbing Technology successfully launching a kerosene-oxygen rocket in April.   READ MORE...

Camper

 

Drum Solo

 

Green Path for Hydrogen

Hydrogen has great promise as a low-emission fuel source. It burns clean, generating only water as a by-product, and when it’s produced through electrolysis by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, the entire life cycle can be very environmentally friendly.

But the use of hydrogen has never reached its potential as a renewable fuel, mostly because its production process drives up the cost. Most hydrogen today is still produced as a by-product of fossil-fuel refinement—using methane with carbon monoxide as a by-product. 

Meanwhile, the hydrogen produced by electrolysis represents less than 1 percent of all the world’s hydrogen production. In order for hydrogen to be a viable source of clean energy, the cost of electrolysis needs to be much lower.

Sharaf Alsharif, a researcher at the Oldenburger OFFIS Institute for Information Technology in Oldenburg, Germany, believes digital twins could help bring down the cost of clean hydrogen production.

Digital twins are computer-simulation programs that can track and adjust the operations of a physical device in great detail. The close monitoring of hydrogen electrolyzers that digital twins provide could help streamline the devices’ operation and bring down the cost of electrolysis as a result.  READ MORE...

Crossing Stream

 

Systems Thinking

The concept of Systems Thinking came out of the quality movement that hit the USA in the early 1980's.  An NBC white paper entitled "If Japan Can Why Can't We?" aired and our manufacturing industry especially the automotive and electronics industry went crazy...  as they were losing market share to the Japanese. 

Dr. Edwards W. Deming was at the heart of the issue because at the end of WWII he was sent to Japan to help them rebuild their war devastated economy.  What he taught them has later become known as quality management and the soul of quality management is systems thinking.

Everything that is done from building a widget to planning for a Thanksgiving Dinner can be seen as a system.  Each system incorporates VARIATION and in order to improve the system, the variation must be eliminated or reduced.

Variation in the system can come from common causes and from special causes.  The trick is to understand which is which because the actions that one takes are substantially different.

In special cause variation, the issue must be identified and eliminated right then and there...  but, in common cause variation, the system MUST BE CHANGED.  It is this changing the system that causes so many managers problems because they were trained that if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Variation from common causes comes from the following:

1. People
2. Methods
3. Raw Materials
4. Machines
5. Environment (Temperature as well as attitudes)

Some companies have added money to this list but I would submit that money is inherent in all five areas.

Once the variation in these five areas has been identified, it is removed or eliminated one by one.

The variation in people is obvious but the variation is not so obvious as people simply do things differently.  Everyone must be doing it the same way.  Raw materials is a bigger because how does one exercise control over a supplier or a vendor?  Still, it must be done.  Older machines have greater variation that new machines and part of that variation comes from the different techniques in repairing them.  Finally, temperature can fluctuate and that fluctuation can cause machines and raw materials to respond differently.

All variation can be tracked on control charts and those control charts can help the worker identify whether it is common or special.

All

Spinning

NSA Working With AI Technology

Intelligence and National Security Summit in Fort Washington, Maryland, this week largely agreed that the AI developments over the past nine months have been surprising.

George Barnes, deputy director of the National Security Agency, called it a “big acceleration” in AI since last November, when OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT.

“What we all have to do is figure out how to harness it for good, and protect it from bad,” Barnes said during a July 13 panel discussion with fellow leaders of the “big six” intelligence agencies.

“And that’s this struggle that we’re having,” Barnes continued. “Several of us have actually been in various discussions with a lot of our congressional oversight committees, just struggling with this whole notion of how do we actually navigate through the power of what this represents for our society, and really the world.”

The NSA and other intelligence agencies have been working in the broader field of artificial intelligence for decades. The issue has become a major priority in recent years, with many policymakers looking to ensure the defense and intelligence communities keep pace with China on AI and related technologies.

Barnes said the NSA is now developing a new “AI roadmap” to guide its internal use of the technologies.

“That’s really focused on bringing forward the things we’ve been doing for decades actually, in foundational AI, machine learning, but then tackling these newer themes, such as generative AI, and then ultimately, more artificial general intelligence, which is beyond the generative and something that industry is still searching to grasp.”  READ MORE...

Fully Performing Female Robot

 

George Carlin

 

Decoding Ancient Script

The ancient Kushan script carved into rock in the Almosi Gorge, Tajikistan. Researchers have managed to partially decode an ancient script that has puzzled scholars for around 70 years.© BOBOMULLO BOBOMULLOEV




Researchers have managed to decode an ancient script that scholars have been unable to understand for decades.

In a study published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society, a team of scientists describe how they partially deciphered the "unknown" Kushan script, an ancient writing system that was once in use in parts of Central Asia between around 200 B.C. and 700 A.D.

It has been associated with early nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe, such as the Yuèzhī, and one of their ruling dynasties, the Kushans, who founded a large empire encompassing much of what is now Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India.


The Kushan Empire is notable for having facilitated the spread of Buddhism to East Asia, as well as its monumental architecture and artworks.

The mysterious Kushan script has been known since the 1950s but had never been successfully deciphered. Several dozen, mostly short inscriptions, written in the Kushan script have been found to date, most originating from the territory of the modern nations of Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.  READ MORE...

Freaking Out a Friend

 

Characteristics of a GOOD Leader

 My first thought in these situations is EXPERIENCE....  but, lot of experience does not always make a good leader.  It is also debatable that this experience has to be in the same field as the position.  While that may have its advantages, management is management and leadership is leadership and if one is a professional manager/leader, then one should be able to demonstrate these skills in all fields.  However, bear in mind that there are always exceptions.

My second thought is one must have excellent communication skills which includes oral, written, as well as listening.  Listening is a key to understanding, especially when there are two side to the story.  It is not always clear when one is listening to the truth or not.

My third thought is taking responsibility.  When one takes responsibility, one is leading by example and it is this example the people want to follow or do not want to follow.  Taking responsibility means admitting mistakes and setting about to correct those mistakes.

My fourth thought is having a clear, concise vision and a detailed set of goals, along with a set of tasks to achieve those goals.  One cannot lead, if one has no idea where one is going.  Coupled with goals and tasks are realistic time tables that have incorporated into them milestones, so that one can feel that one is accomplishing something.

My fifth thought is that one must be FAIR.  This is not the same as equity or equality which does not really pertain to the world of business.  A business leader is color blind and put the best person they can find in critical positions that has nothing to do with race, gender, or age.

My sixth thought is that a good leader must fully understand the business they are leading and all the products.  They need to have a general understanding of accounting, economic forecasting, marketing, advertising, human resources, and all related technologies which includes quality management and process improvement which includes a concept called SYSTEMS THINKING.