tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65354816497277204922024-03-18T15:58:13.965-04:00NEW SAVANNA“You won't get a wild heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds.”– George IvesBill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comBlogger10087125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-25609037490063378932024-03-18T15:51:00.001-04:002024-03-18T15:57:42.784-04:00GPT, the magical collaboration zone, Lex Fridman and Sam Altman<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jvqFAi7vkBc?si=5NLwcqqH-E6AlII3" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
I was making one more run around the web before I buckled down and got back to a major writing task, when I came across the brand-spanking-new conversation between Lex Fridman and Sam Altman. Lex is Lex, and an interesting guy, and Sam is, well, he's interesting to me, but – there was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/sam-altman-open-ai-chatgpt.html" target="new">a hint of megalomania at the end of that <i>NYTimes</i> story from Mar. 31</a>, 2023, that rubbed me the wrong way, and all the AI hype – he IS the CEO of OpenAI. So it seemed to me that I just had to listen in, not the whole thing – and I could legit play solitaire while listening – and so I did, skipping over stuff.
</p>
<p>
But then the conversation hit an interesting patch. So – and I'm not going to try to re-create the context – they're talking about GPT-4 at roughly 46:03:
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<blockquote>
<p>
<b>Altman:</b> what are the best things it can do
</p>
<p>
<b>Fridman:</b> what are the best things it can do and the the limits of those best things that allow you to say it sucks therefore gives you an inspiration and hope for the future
</p>
<p>
<b>Altman:</b> you know one thing I've been using it for more recently is sort of a like a brainstorming partner <br />
and for that <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">there's a glimmer of something amazing in there</span><br />
I don't think it gets you know <br />
when people talk about it <br />
it what it does they're like <br />
ah it helps me code more productively <br />
it helps me write more faster and better <br />
it helps me you know translate from this language to another <br />
all these like amazing things <br />
but t<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">here's something about the like kind of creative brainstorming partner <br />
I need to come up with a name for this thing <br />
I need to like think about this problem in a different way <br />
I'm not sure what to do here <br />
uh that I think like gives a glimpse of something I hope to see more of </span><br />
um one of the other things that you can see like a very small glimpse of is <br />
when it can help on longer Horizon tasks <br />
you know break down some multiple steps <br />
maybe like execute some of those steps <br />
search the internet <br />
write code whatever put that together uh <br />
when that works which is not very often <br />
<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">it's like very magical</span>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
At about 52:54:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<b>Fridman:</b> I use it as a reading partner for reading books <br />
it helps me think <br />
help me think through ideas especially when the books are classic <br />
so it's really well written about and it actually is is I <br />
I find it often to be significantly better than even like Wikipedia on well-covered topics<br />
it's somehow more balanced and more nuanced or maybe it's me <br />
but it inspires me to think deeper than a Wikipedia article does <br />
I'm not exactly sure what that is <br />
<span style="background-color: #fcff01;">you mentioned like this collaboration I'm not sure where the magic is if it's in here [gestures to his head] <br />
or if it's in there [points toward the table] <br />
or if it's somewhere in between
</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
It's that magic-collaborative zone that interests me. While I've spent a great deal of time working with (plain old) ChatGPT, most of that time I've been doing research on how it behaves. But every once in awhile I'll play around just to mess around. And then I've seen sparks of magic. The interaction that generated <a href="https://www.academia.edu/112341527/AGI_and_Beyond_A_Whale_of_a_Tale" target="new">AGI and Beyond: A Whale of a Tale</a> certainly had the magic flowing, and it showed up here and there during the <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/p/green-giant-chronicles.html" target="new">Green Giant Chronicles</a>. I suspect those two cases are somewhat idiosyncratic. Nor am I sure that I can do this at will. But there's definitely something there, and its in the interaction.
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<p style="text-align: justify;">
I would guess that the magic varies from person to person as well. I wonder how many uses have had these kind of magical flow interactive states? I'd thinking finding that out would be tricky because they're likely to be idiosyncratic and elusive. If I were to research it, I'd probably start out with interviews, either face-to-face or through some online medium. That might lead to a questionnaire that could be used more broadly.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
It'll be interesting to see how Altman ends up characterizing this flow state – which is what I'm calling it for the moment, a man-machine flow state. It's the human, of course, that's in flow. The machine is just being the machine. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * * <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I have a final comment, of an epistemological nature. As the post indicates, I'd already had a magical interaction or two with ChatGPT <i>before</i> I listened to this podcast. The first time it came up in the podcast, from Altman, OK, I noted it. And went on, playing solitaire with one part of my mind and listening in on the podcast with another part. But then it came up again, this time from Fridman. <i>Wham!</i> <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">That's three,</span> my threshold number for this kind of thing. Three people independently have the same or similar experience. Maybe there's something real there.<br /></p>
Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-64140961756294744202024-03-18T10:40:00.005-04:002024-03-18T10:40:29.254-04:00Clementines and acorn squash<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWkQXwwuOFVGX1Orc_s8VcfP1WZDhki2rpKjCY_GNcTL6kkY7bdYjs1issmKtD8oKcFCuFycXVsIZcviZMD0hH7Lq4-hDSnQsYM04A1kol8MDoPxsOdduIcM4z2RQclVJeTiVu66feg3cUUjTaEzofjm0AjHUPQziHC7NN1NOUmTyczm-VV4r9bFuhMbC/s3880/20240316-_IGP5310.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="3880" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWkQXwwuOFVGX1Orc_s8VcfP1WZDhki2rpKjCY_GNcTL6kkY7bdYjs1issmKtD8oKcFCuFycXVsIZcviZMD0hH7Lq4-hDSnQsYM04A1kol8MDoPxsOdduIcM4z2RQclVJeTiVu66feg3cUUjTaEzofjm0AjHUPQziHC7NN1NOUmTyczm-VV4r9bFuhMbC/s400/20240316-_IGP5310.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgya0iqNkxfUQmOEHPFdhjuJSL7wdBTtlz7YnFWceF958h-8T0d_YxhYSQpq_LTUaerzUPbNUdO8cOJOMCTvc0ntJTzfFamWzqAhlqi-RBj01xT5b0FxtiO8hMQOohTw6wAMCOnqYPVG8IvNbpjFH9oz0ueaatPRfXzPmdLSD4B2379cTm8nSteLchr6hS/s3880/20240316-_IGP5311.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="3880" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgya0iqNkxfUQmOEHPFdhjuJSL7wdBTtlz7YnFWceF958h-8T0d_YxhYSQpq_LTUaerzUPbNUdO8cOJOMCTvc0ntJTzfFamWzqAhlqi-RBj01xT5b0FxtiO8hMQOohTw6wAMCOnqYPVG8IvNbpjFH9oz0ueaatPRfXzPmdLSD4B2379cTm8nSteLchr6hS/s400/20240316-_IGP5311.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-23556095427602013452024-03-18T10:31:00.003-04:002024-03-18T10:31:25.138-04:00Two thoughts about being human during the coming AI apocalypse<p style="text-align: justify;">
One problem doesn’t compute, the other does. Why?
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-family: helvetica;">Human specialness</b>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Scott Aaronson worries: <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7784" target="new">The Problem of Human Specialness in the Age of AI</a>. I don’t get it. It doesn’t compute. Are we special now? Aaronson seems to think so; we’re special because we’re the smartest. I suppose that’s true. But you know, that doesn’t compute either. Not for me.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Back in 1990 David Hays and I published “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/243486/The_Evolution_of_Cognition" target="new">The Evolution of Cognition,” where we observed:</a>
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>
<p>
A game of chess between a computer program and a human master is just as profoundly silly as a race between a horse-drawn stagecoach and a train. But the silliness is hard to see at the time. At the time it seems necessary to establish a purpose for humankind by asserting that we have capacities that it does not. It is truly difficult to give up the notion that one has to add “because . . .” to the assertion “I’m important.” But the evolution of technology will eventually invalidate any claim that follows “because.” Sooner or later we will create a technology capable of doing what, heretofore, only we could.
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</blockquote></div>
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So that’s one thing. There’s another.
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<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-family: helvetica;">What to do with our time in a world with UBI</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">
There’s lots of talk about universal basic income (UBI) these days, a lot of it coming from Silicon Valley, where they think that machines are going to take over most of the jobs, putting people out of work. What will those people do with their time?
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
We’ve got a society that’s been built on the idea that one’s job is one’s primary identity and source of a sense of self-worth. In that dispensation raising a family qualifies as a woman’s job. Keeping in mind that many jobs are what David Graber has called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs" target="new">bullshit jobs,</a>” and so not an adequate anchor for self-worth, what happens in a world where many people are not required to work. What will people do with their time?
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
In that world, how do we connect with the larger world? For that matter, given the widespread existence of those bullshit jobs, how do we do it now?
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
See this post from 2021: <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-are-we-as-culture-addicted-to-work.html" target="new">Why are we as a culture addicted to work? [Because we have forgotten how to play.]</a>
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<p style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Let me repeat: The problem of human specialness does not compute. The problem of filling time in the absence of (nonbullshit) work does. Why?
</p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-60957533708711406762024-03-18T08:19:00.004-04:002024-03-18T08:19:34.100-04:00An alternative to generative grammar formalisms<p style="text-align: left;">
Geoffrey Keith Pullum, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343216416_Theorizing_about_the_Syntax_of_Human_Language_A_Radical_Alternative_to_Generative_Formalisms?fbclid=IwAR1kuTqvFpvMU9TXBBz36hrtbqyFUb1NYtcIFaOHL2xGLSMAL9X2l1zcj1w" target="new">Theorizing about the Syntax of Human Language: A Radical Alternative to Generative Formalisms</a>, <i>Cadernos de Linguística </i>1(1):01-33, July 2020, DOI: 10.25189/2675-4916.2020.v1.n1.id279
</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Abstract:</b> Linguists standardly assume that a grammar is a formal system that ‘generates’ a set of derivations. But this is not the only way to formalize grammars. I sketch a different basis for syntactic theory: model-theoretic syntax (MTS). It defines grammars as finite sets of statements that are true (or false) in certain kinds of structure (finite labeled graphs such as trees). Such statements provide a direct description of syntactic structure. Generative grammars do not do this; they are strikingly ill-suited to accounting for certain familiar properties of human languages, like the fact that ungrammaticality is a matter of degree. Many aspects of linguistic phenomena look radically different when viewed in MTS terms. I pay special attention to the fact that sentences containing invented nonsense words (items not in the lexicon) are nonetheless perceived as sentences. I also argue that the MTS view dissolves the overblown controversy about whether the set of sentences in a human language is always infinite: many languages (both Brazilian indigenous languages and others) appear not to employ arbitrarily iterative devices for embedding or coordination, but under an MTS description this does not define them as radically distinct in typological terms.
</p>
</blockquote>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-49857272893190311382024-03-18T06:29:00.005-04:002024-03-18T06:30:11.362-04:00The AI Marketplace is cooling down <p style="text-align: justify;">
Anissa Gardizy and Aaron Holms, <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/generative-ai-providers-quietly-tamp-down-expectations" target="new">Amazon, Google Quietly Tamp Down Generative AI Expectations</a>, <i>The Information</i>, March 12, 2024.The article begins:<br /></p>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
In the past year, major technology firms have championed generative artificial intelligence as the next big thing, boosting the stock market to new highs. But behind the scenes, representatives of major cloud providers and other firms that sell the technology are tempering expectations with their salespeople, saying the hype about the technology has gotten ahead of what it can actually do for customers at a reasonable price.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Several executives, product managers and salespeople at the major cloud providers, such as Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google, also privately said most of their customers are being cautious or “deliberate” about increasing spending on new AI services, given the high price of running the software, its shortcomings in terms of accuracy and the difficulty of determining how much value they'll get out of it.
</p>
</blockquote>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-13939141762409581492024-03-17T17:39:00.000-04:002024-03-17T17:39:01.198-04:00Michael Moschen performs THE TRIANGLE<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjHoedoSUXY?si=-wpyzFmbuAiXIoVx" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p>From 2007:</p>
<p></p><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">Master juggler Michael Moschen performs his incredibly famous, jaw-dropping piece where three balls and a triangle become a musical and visual work of art. From PBS Great Performances produced by Skip Blumberg. To book Michael Moschen visit WWW.BELENZON.COM or call 858-832-8380. Join the Michael Moschen mailing list at <a href="http://www.michaelmoschen.com/fans.html" target="_blank">www.michaelmoschen.com/fans.html</a>.</blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I've been <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/MacArthurFP" target="_blank">quite critical of the MacArthur Foundation's Fellowship</a> program, the so-called genius awards, and have argued at some length that it mostly awards the same-old same-old. Every once in awhile, however, the award someone of genuine talent and originality. Moschen is one of those. He's in the class of 1990.<br /></p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-595024154803301772024-03-17T14:35:00.002-04:002024-03-17T14:35:52.524-04:00Ride a bike<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-hp93wDURCuzCps4_WR1lZEeAHeVvAJ5xtJESyFUYYVJp97P4RKg7HrgNAXW5z7qO0oINqleyX5lyorGTyD1uCHfoeoXuu7_4kxJwTDAPcpINb_rKoe9_4spaQxC6Q0xhIvfE4CXIIzfQd-FPFsh8ZGEQevS4o3rUsv_9YnjZA3nAocV_OU6HiYKJd1K/s4672/20240316-_IGP5323.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-hp93wDURCuzCps4_WR1lZEeAHeVvAJ5xtJESyFUYYVJp97P4RKg7HrgNAXW5z7qO0oINqleyX5lyorGTyD1uCHfoeoXuu7_4kxJwTDAPcpINb_rKoe9_4spaQxC6Q0xhIvfE4CXIIzfQd-FPFsh8ZGEQevS4o3rUsv_9YnjZA3nAocV_OU6HiYKJd1K/s400/20240316-_IGP5323.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-12301924629869236812024-03-17T14:31:00.006-04:002024-03-17T14:31:51.145-04:00What we can learn from toddlers about well-being<div style="text-align: justify;">Jancee Dunn, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/well/live/tips-happiness-mental-health-well-being.html" target="new">Who Has the Secret to Well-Being? The Answer May Surprise You</a>. <i>NYTimes</i>, Mar. 17, 2024. From the article:<br /></div><blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Try positive self-talk.</b>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Young children tend to coach themselves out loud, a practice known as private speech (such as this <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chasing.sage/video/7060548356803939631?lang=en" target="new">popular clip</a> from a 4-year-old snowboarder).
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Toddlers aren’t shy about self-talk, Dr. Merali said, and you shouldn’t be, either. Research suggests that for adults, positive self-talk can help with problem-solving, learning, confidence and managing your emotions.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Take any opportunity to move.</b>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Two-year-olds are active for almost five hours a day, according to a review of 24 studies. They move joyfully and instinctively, Dr. Merali said.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Adults can look for ways to move more, even if it’s just for a minute.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
That's one thing that's a drag about my current living situation. There's not much room for me to pace the floor, which I love to do.
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>
<p>
<b>Ask questions.</b>
</p>
<p>
Young kids are not afraid to pose questions, Dr. Merali said. One study found that they asked an average of 107 questions an hour. (This will not surprise their parents.) [...]
</p>
<p>
Adults have been socialized to hold back our questions because we’re often worried about what other people think, Dr. Merali said. But asking questions not only helps us to gain information, it’s also an important way to build relationships, he said. [...]
</p>
<b>Fix your sleep schedule.</b>
<p>
Toddlers thrive on routine, and having a schedule with consistent sleep and waking times will help you, too, said Alberto Ramos, a sleep neurologist and researcher with the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
</p>
<p>
If your schedule permits, and if you have the urge, napping also has a host of benefits, including sharper thinking and reaction times and improved memory.
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Yes, I love naps, always have. And then there's <i>laugh when you can</i>:
</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
One study found that young children <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00852/full" target="new">laugh six times as much</a> as adults. But we can seek ways to build playfulness and humor into our day.
</p>
</blockquote>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-44273378298536481092024-03-16T20:52:00.003-04:002024-03-16T20:52:31.453-04:00Today's lunch, The Little Grocery, Hoboken<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI-3DoSoOlx9EihLqcK6UTi_p-BxplRjC8JVxHS_Q4Q7NxLXnnrOUVA9b7iQwtP1k0biEltuGdX5QpFvgxPLSWXI-XhDdKrSavI1pe6Zd-fu5JmvFDEIKx31qqB3LrRJzAcHiu7-4qovbdgcUVu4r1_X4LLcYQ1Nb6hxvVz2wYsalbmB-ejpnLswCZNX9q/s3880/20240316-_IGP5327.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="3880" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI-3DoSoOlx9EihLqcK6UTi_p-BxplRjC8JVxHS_Q4Q7NxLXnnrOUVA9b7iQwtP1k0biEltuGdX5QpFvgxPLSWXI-XhDdKrSavI1pe6Zd-fu5JmvFDEIKx31qqB3LrRJzAcHiu7-4qovbdgcUVu4r1_X4LLcYQ1Nb6hxvVz2wYsalbmB-ejpnLswCZNX9q/s400/20240316-_IGP5327.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHrL453WBfOldWbpCW5OH_NhnpIkZc-BJwessXQBG-pbgbdNeVqiWsS1mWr8uOyYZ3fdj0G5KNWPbltkHl1hLMNX5kcBwzYD1EHYrl7kJBGgLvSoqhxCtewhFyacpKDUsPzA7_Q6OwyhElCK5FoQFXgDb2Okxa7onPqJJHEDrLNdLWZCfsbo62W0I1K88/s4672/20240316-_IGP5325.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHrL453WBfOldWbpCW5OH_NhnpIkZc-BJwessXQBG-pbgbdNeVqiWsS1mWr8uOyYZ3fdj0G5KNWPbltkHl1hLMNX5kcBwzYD1EHYrl7kJBGgLvSoqhxCtewhFyacpKDUsPzA7_Q6OwyhElCK5FoQFXgDb2Okxa7onPqJJHEDrLNdLWZCfsbo62W0I1K88/s400/20240316-_IGP5325.jpg"/></a></div>
Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-53210106589391916692024-03-16T20:48:00.002-04:002024-03-17T11:14:54.470-04:00Tight Like This: A Tale of High Adventure in Ancient Nubia [the fourth arena]<div><div style="text-align: justify;">
<p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><i>Yet another bump, and less than two years after the previous bump, In August of 2022. This time I'm preparing for the 3QD piece that's due of Mar. 24, for posting on the 25th.</i></span><br /></p><hr />
<blockquote><i>I'm bumping this to the top of the queue. Why? Because I can, that's why. Because the world's got to change and it's got to change NOW. You know, now's the time! We've been mugged by the future and don't realize it. We're still waiting for jet packs when the time for jet packs has done come and gone. There isn't going to be any AGI (artificial general intelligence) coming down the pike, not in time to make a difference and maybe not ever. Get real and figure out how we're doing to deal with a network of self-driving cars that can learn. Anyhow, this is going to require major changes in how we think, and that's going to require <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2022/07/playing-for-peace-reclaiming-our-human.html" target="_blank">a new mythology</a>. I figure maybe old Golfotep and the Mystic Jewels have something to say about that.</i><br />
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<i>I published this on The Valve some years ago and, as the introductory note says, I'd published it on <a href="http://www.newsavanna.com/meanderings/me206/me20604.html" target="_blank">Meanderings</a>, now defunct, before that. No doubt I will republish it somewhere else sometime in the future. Or maybe someone will make it into a movie. Who knows.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Oh, and be sure to check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67xLA-pbuU8">Tight Like This</a></i> <i>(this is Wynton Freakin' Marsalis, Armstrong link in text below)</i>. <i> High drama & low-down hoochie coochie.</i> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><b>Jivometrics</b></span><br />
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Back in the mid 1990s, about the time <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_browser" target="mosaic">Mosaic</a> was being unleashed on the internet, I met a fellow in the African-American Forum at AOL Online. Called himself <a href="http://www.newsavanna.com/meanderings/cuda.html" target="cuda">Cuda Brown.</a> We hit it off and began emailing privately. Before you know it we were collaborating on a website called <a href="http://www.newsavanna.com/meanderings/" target="meander"><i>Meanderings</i></a> - which later became <i><a href="http://www.newsavanna.com/" target="_blank">Gravity</a></i>. Cuda did most of the work, including all of the HTML coding and the back-end database coding. I helped editorially, wrote some pieces, and did some art.</div>
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One day I sent Cuda an email containing a spur-of-the moment paragraph satirizing Afrocentrism, something much discussed at <i>Meanderings</i>. While Cuda and I were sympathetic, we were doubtful about the more inventive flavors of the brew. Thus I had improvised something about golf being invented by one Pharoah Golfotep: the primo white-shoe Anglo country club <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus-fours" target="+4s">plus-fours</a> game was invented in ancient Egypt. <i>What could be sillier?</i> Over the next two weeks, however, this little bit of satire jes grew and grew, like Topsy, and became <i>something else.</i></div>
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So, we posted it in <i>Meanderings</i>, which may have become <i>Gravity</i> by that time, I forget. And people read it. In time, however, <i>Gravity</i> died. Since then I've been looking for a place to revive “Fore Play.” Well, here it is. Let's call it a cultural studies primer for the new millennium.</div>
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Some of it is a bit dated. Who remembers Dennis Rodman, much less his experimental tonsorial stylings? Back then Tiger Woods was more potential than achievement – <i>but what potential!</i> – while boom boxes have now bifurcated into iPods and beat boxes. "Muggles" hadn't become a Potteresque term of art for – well, just what exactly, non-magicals? (I've never read any of the books.) Back then I used it as the name of a <a href="https://youtu.be/X8o9Qtj8aUo" target="muggles">Louis Armstrong blues</a> and I'm sticking to it. It's also old New Orleans slang for something Bill Clinton didn't inhale.</div>
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Otherwise, it's pretty much now as it was then. Only back then the turn of the millennium was in the future. Now it's in the past.</div>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Fore Play:<br />
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A Lesson in Jivometric Drummology</b></span></span><br />
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<br />
Jefferson Ribonucleic Parker IV<br />
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aka <br />
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Mr. Ribs</center>
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Tiger Woods is only the most recent in a long line of fine black golfers. In saying that I refer to players other than the moderns such as Charles Sifford, Jim Thorpe, Jim Dent, Lee Elder, Calvin Peete, and Renee Powell. Truth be told, the tradition of sepia swing masters started in ancient Egypt, where the game was invented. In that company Woods would be no more than a middling player. </div>
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By today's standards Tiger is ferociously talented and filled with promise for the future. Perhaps he'll become the best in post-modern times, the primo putter of the 21st Century, the first master to break par on the New Savanna. But those African drivers of ancient Egypt were giants the like of which haven't been seen in thousands of years.</div>
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Their stories, like so many stories, have been suppressed by the Europeans. Fortunately many of those stories have been collected by The Order of Mystic Jewels for the Propagation of Grace, Right Living, and Saturday Night through Historic Intervention by Any Means Necessary. The Jewels are dedicated to preserving the ancient stories and to intervening in history in ways variously clever and indirect. They are the chief source of that version of Afrocentric thinking known as Jivometric Drummology. In her classic study, <i>Klactoveededstene: Riffing the Noumena</i>, Ella Birks Roach defined the basic concept thus:</div>
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<b>Jivometric Drummology:</b> A philosophical system grounded in African and African-American musical practice. “Drummology” indicates that the governing logos is that of the drum, of rhythm, of hands and sticks coaxing sound from skin, of people joining together, each playing a simple rhythm, with the many simple rhythms melting into a single stream of infinite diversity. “Jivometric” is here because of the way it rolls off the tongue and tickles the ear; its meaning is secondary to its sound. Jivometrics is thus a principle of grace. When jivometrics is in play outer sonic auras join in the creation of tones played by no one, but heard by all. A treatise may have drummological ideas, but if the language lacks grace, then the treatise is not jivometric -- jiveturkey is all too often the appropriate term. In the most profound works of this school jivometrics and drummology are joined through <i>agape</i></blockquote></div>
<p>The Mystic Jewels, however, are not mere signifiers. They signify with a stern purpose. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe was invented by the Mystic Jewels. They knew the abolitionists would never get beyond a lot of grand indignant talking so they figured a novel that stirred the imagination would be just the thing. A light-skinned sister named Eleanor Gough McKay changed her name to Harriet Beecher, married Calvin Stowe, and wrote <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>. That book, as President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged, is what gave the North the guts to wage the Civil War.</p>
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Anyhow, my mother's father, Cassius Photon Gaillard, aka Slim, was a Mystic Jewel and took a special interest in the history of golf. The following story is based on information from his papers.</div>
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</div><h1 style="text-align: center;">• • • • • • •</h1>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Origin of Golf and the Lights in the Sky</b></span></span></center>
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Golf was invented by the ancient Egyptians – well, that's what we call them now, but they were really Nubians, and proud of it, too. Most of the details have been lost, but the general shape and thrust of the story has been preserved.</div>
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It began in the reign of Pharaoh Ramses Golfotep LVII of the 'N Baa Dynasty. One day Rams was hanging out with some of his friends in the Lark Meadow gazebo at his summer palace. As usual, they were playing bid whist and sipping Mount Gay and Coke, with a twist of lemon. As so often happens, they got to talkin' trash about their wives and girl friends. Ramses talked about how he particularly liked going into a special glade with his wife Cleopatra and a boom box loaded with some righteous jams. The best time was early evening when things were cooling down and the sun lit the sky with orange fire. They'd meander down this long narrow opening among the palms and get to a secluded spot ringed with patches of sand. The ground was firm and the grass kept closely cropped so they could dance freely. Inevitably the dancing would lead to a little fooling around, and that little fooling around generally led to more and before you know it Cleo was baking Ramses' sweet potato in her oven. That was some fine sweet potato pie they'd cook up. Yes indeed.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div>
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So, Ramses and his friends kept talking and drinking and talking and drinking and before you knew it they were chasing a lemon around, trying to roll it into an emply goblet that had fallen on the ground. It was a lot of fun and they decided to do it again. Once a week or so they'd get together in the gazebo, break out the Mount Gay, and go out to the Lark Meadow to fool around with the lemons. In the course of about a year or so they structured this camelsplay into the game we now know as golf.</div>
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The ancient game was a bit different from the modern one. In the first place, the course was layed out in three sets of nine holes, for a total of 27, rather than the modern 18. 27 is the 3rd power of 3, and thus brings the basic design into agreement with the ternary basis of the underlying rhythms in ancient Egyptian music. Par three holes typically varried between 200 and 250 meters while par fives were between 500 and 600 meters. Par for a single round was 108.</div>
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However, the most significant differences between the ancient and modern games involved the finely-tuned geometric judgment and kinematic finesse of greens play. The ancients mastered putting so quickly that the rules had to be changed to make putting even more difficult. Inspired by Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks routine, the rules committee, officially called the Jive Adjudicators and Soul Satisficers (JASS), required that all putts be executed while the player is standing on only one leg, with alternation from one leg to the other being required from one green to the next. When that became too easy they decided that all putts less than a meter long were to be executed from a headstand position. On the front nine players were required to hold the putter in one hand only, their choice, using the other hand to maintain balance. On the middle nine they were required to hold the putter in both hands. The concentration and balance thus required taxed the ability of even those magnificent athletes. The JASS decided that those with a handicap above 13 were allowed to use a head ring to help them maintain stability. On the back nine players were required to use both hands for balance and support and to execute the stroke with their legs, which were bent from the hips so that they stood out at a right angle from the body. The caddy would then place the putter between the player's knees and the player would execute the stroke with a twisting movement starting in the torso and continuing to the legs. In time, as knowledge of the game made its way to India, meandering from village to village, town to town, and city to city, the system of putting postures became separated from golf itself and evolved into the spiritual practice of Hatha Yoga. But that's another story, to be told at another time, in another place.</div>
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There were a few players, Golfotep LVII among them, who mastered these challenges and aspired to more. For awhile Rams had been thinking about going to Dennis Rodman's hair stylist and, just as he had reluctantly concluded that such outrageousness would not be appropriate to his imperial position (not that there was anything imperial about some of the advanced Tantric positions he assumed with Cleo the Riggish, but that was private business between him and his beloved), he had yet another one of his jivometric mind jolts. The idea was to cut the grass on the greens to three lengths, 1.5, 2, and 2.5 centimeters, so that patterns could be inscribed on the surfaces of those greens. These patterns -- stripes and geometrics, swirls and fractals, lilies, roses, fig trees, the burning bush, ravens, lions, dolphins, Sojourner Truth, Daisetz Suzuki, Elvis Presley, Benazir Bhutto, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Sequoyah, Martin Buber, Confucius, Kwame Nkrumah, passages from the <i>Talmud, Lysistrata, Bardo Thodol, Roman de la Rose, Ramayana, Vibe, Othello, I Ching, Essence, Madame Bovary, Beloved, Alice in Wonderland, Sita Sings the Blues, The Garden of the Forking Paths</i>, etc. - made it much more difficult to judge the ball's roll, as the path generally cut across, at least a few if not many, patches of varied-length grass. On those greens where pattern intricacy was above 5 on a 7-point scale the players were allowed to use computer simulation to test alternative combinations of stroke direction and force before actually executing the putt.</div>
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Clearly this new game required new gardens expressly designed to meet its demands in a surprising but felicitous way. And so Ramses issued a royal decree and it was built: the Imperial Xanadu Golforama. It had sparkling brooks and fragrant cedars among the ancient forests. The clubhouse was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The icy wine cellars had rare vintages from all over and the domed ballroom featured the finest music for your dancing pleasure: Jelly Roll Liszt and his Red Hot Peppers, Ammon Bechet and the Swinging Scarabs, the Nomo Percussion Ensemble, featuring Zutty Pozo Addy, Nina Elman and her Swing Sisters Seven, Rudy Zerafino's Copascetic Syncopators, Duke Prez Earl and HonoriffX, the Hawk Cheops Orchestra, Rama ben Jammin and The Great Sphinx Riddle Masters, and, greatest of all, the Mighty Royal Roof Raisers, led by Daniel Louis Satchotep II, also known as King Toot.</div>
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And toot he did. When he was on his form couldn't nobody keep from dancing and dancing. On a bad night he was better than most, popping those high C's like they were birds lined up on a telephone wire. But on a good night, the Tootman was the baaadest horn player in the world, and then some! He could bring sight to the deaf, sound to the blind, make a lame man talk, and inspire the dumb to walk. He was mean!</div>
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But he couldn't bring light to the night. And that was a problem. You see, in those ancient days there weren't any stars or planets. Not even the moon. Just the sun and the earth. So, it was real dark at night, darker than you can possibly imagine. Of course, they had torches and whale oil lanterns and Zippo lighters. They could see enough to get around. But it was a drag and so unfriendly. Now that people were always out late dancing it got real oppresive coming home under that infinitely dark sky.</div>
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Ramses thought about it every day for years and finally he had an idea. He got his clubs and several buckets of balls and went to the top of the highest pyramid. Once there he started hitting the balls as hard and far as he possibly could. 500 meters, 550, 563, he kept hitting them farther and farther. After three weeks he was approaching 600 meters. But ten weeks after that he wasn't hitting them any farther. He was up against a wall.</div>
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Then he had an another idea. He got King Toot's latest tape, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUarPWNVxnA"><i>Tight Like This</i></a>, popped it in the Grand High Imperial Boom Box, and once more mounted the Big One. He teed up a Simulacrum II, took out his beloved No. 3 Jivometric Umoja Slammer and turned on the box. Slowly he started moving to the music, harmonizing his movement, summoning the Inner Spirit, the Ka force, easing into a righteous groove. As the music started coming up on Toot's first solo chorus Ramses laid his eye out there on the ball, went into a backswing and as Toots hit his first note, Ramses connected with the ball and knocked it a full kilometer. Solid.</div>
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Of course, since he started so high in the air, he had an advantage over contemporary golfers. Yet, a kilometer on the fly is pretty impressive anytime anywhere anyhow. The man was cooking! Within two hours he was up to ten kilometers. Breakthrough!</div>
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The next day he decided live music would be even more effective. He brought King Toot and the cats with him and they laid down some serious riffs. They started with a hot version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSbRs2TjVKs"><i>Struttin' with Some Barbecue</i></a> - one of the Rib man's favorites, if I do say so myself, and I do - and Ramses swung into some serious slamming. By the end of the day he had knocked one all the way to the headwaters of the Nile. It flew so fast you could see a heat trail shimmering in the air. About ten minutes later they heard it land, tchhcck! in a bird's nest. Over the next few weeks that nest floated to the Mediterranean and became the island of Crete. The day after that King Toot's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49yZzCggSJM"><i>Gully Low Blues</i></a> inspired Rams to loft five into North America where their impact craters became the Great Lakes. </div>
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On the next day Golfotep achieved orbit for the first time. Toot rounded 3rd base heading into the final chorus of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK1UC-vCUZY"><i>Cornet Chop Suey</i></a> and Whrzhaap! “To the moon Alice! To the moon!” There it was, for the first time, the moon. One groovin' swing by a man, one giant step for mankind. “Yo! Toot my man, how's 'bout a few hits of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY6Yo6lE-Jg"><i>Muggles</i></a>?” “You got it Rams.” Thuuunnk! with the No. 3 Slammer and Mars bestrode the heavens. A couple of choruses into <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ-8LuHbcHA"><i>Hotter Than That</i></a> and Wuzzschkk! Venus was up there making bed-time eyes to the world. Then Mercury, Saturn, & its moons, Jupiter, & its moons, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto, & another handfull of moons scattered here and about. Of course, those aren't the real names. The real names have been lost, erased from history by Nineteenth Century European Running Dog Jackal Pig Facist Racially-Deluded Honkey Imperialist White-Face Round-Eyed Devils.</div>
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I digress.</div>
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That night there was light in the sky for the first time. The cool cats and jazz babies were delirious with joy. They danced and sang and balled the jack till the cows came marching Johnny home on the range where the buffalo roam from sea to shining amber waves of amen brothers and sisters praise the lord shalom-a-rama dama ding dong daddy from Dumas gonna do muh stuff with YOU baby! The day after that Ramses hit a zillion more into the heavens and created the asteroids. The next day he hit a gazillion more and there were all the stars and the so-called Milky Way - alas more white-washing. </div>
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<i>A little smooth sippin' <br />
Gets the honey drippin'<br />
A little sweet talkin'<br />
Gets the hips rockin'<br />
A little righteous jammin' <br />
Gets the backswing slammin'</i></blockquote>
That's how black folks invented golf and brought light to the night.<br />
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<i>Kusa mura ya: <br />
Na mo shiranu,<br />
Shiroku saku.</i><br />
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[Among the grasses,<br />
An unknown flower<br />
Blooming white.]</blockquote>
And that's the truth, Ruth.<br />
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<b>About the Author</b></center>
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Jefferson Ribonucleic Parker IV is Director of Abyssinian Memorial Parlor, Inc., a funeral home in Baltimore that was started by his great-grandfather, Jefferson Ribonucleic Parker I. His friends call him Mr. Ribs, mainly because they can't pronounce his middle name and don't much trust it. Mr. Ribs has a B.A. in Music Education from Morgan State University and a Ph. D. in History from Howard University. He's an honorary Fellow of the Mudbone Institute for Advanced Studies in the Sepia Sciences, past President of the Left Bank Jazz Society, has served on the board of Baltimore's Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and maintains a box seat at the Camden Yards baseball park, “strictly for pleasure mind you, but I'm not adverse to spicing up my pleasure with a little business.” </div>
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</div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-19114981656813164792024-03-16T08:35:00.003-04:002024-03-16T08:35:20.620-04:00On the street [Hoboken]<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AD-0OHnKRf6EzAwwqj1gDB4sv8q3D7LKjAMjqXuMG5uhPLH8jMvtoxz81s70arAHo2WUAW50LiPDNJ5-hepMlVe_3oxYPY9a0yLye0RXS5XunOnB6fmEcp7G5x2ZFmE1-d0NihupCRJjwYUEwFDHDGCitYpbWOdqFe0DWURqlkjp3PsfOQ4Z0o8s7W0j/s4672/20240314-_IGP5165.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AD-0OHnKRf6EzAwwqj1gDB4sv8q3D7LKjAMjqXuMG5uhPLH8jMvtoxz81s70arAHo2WUAW50LiPDNJ5-hepMlVe_3oxYPY9a0yLye0RXS5XunOnB6fmEcp7G5x2ZFmE1-d0NihupCRJjwYUEwFDHDGCitYpbWOdqFe0DWURqlkjp3PsfOQ4Z0o8s7W0j/s400/20240314-_IGP5165.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBnNlvetM3_rouk-bL-D7DXlwb4lNjV1aBLcbR53h9iDtChFqLtGhsNovOmr5Vc-i-dYrs2la-83TsfrSvKx1Kqt3Jw69TNtBa6VxRb34b_kii0iFASg5ld_S-oHbXnFhKvJ1kBsQZtKw1mWWzFqyCWmw3Os0M1-OaAy7HEQPXqGRLpRGO-D49dpfYcTYL/s4535/20240314-_IGP5167.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3013" data-original-width="4535" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBnNlvetM3_rouk-bL-D7DXlwb4lNjV1aBLcbR53h9iDtChFqLtGhsNovOmr5Vc-i-dYrs2la-83TsfrSvKx1Kqt3Jw69TNtBa6VxRb34b_kii0iFASg5ld_S-oHbXnFhKvJ1kBsQZtKw1mWWzFqyCWmw3Os0M1-OaAy7HEQPXqGRLpRGO-D49dpfYcTYL/s400/20240314-_IGP5167.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-49984392769747894042024-03-16T08:28:00.000-04:002024-03-16T08:28:02.666-04:00Ellington's version of jazz history in 3 minutes & 45 seconds<p style="text-align: justify;">
Jazz scholar Lewis Porter has an interesting post featuring an all-but-forgotten composition in which <a href="https://lewisporter.substack.com/p/duke-ellingtons-filmed-history-of" target="new">Ellington runs down the history of jazz in three+ minutes</a>. The only available recording is on a short film-clip, which Porter includes in his post.
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Here's Porter's account of what happens:
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A lot happens in this piece, which actually runs about 3 minutes and 45 seconds. First of all, it’s not a chronological history. It’s a kind of collage, with many short sections at different tempos that could, conceivably, be rearranged at will. It starts with a close-up of the clarinet going into a New Orleans piece—then it suddenly goes into a bebop line, followed by a tiny quote of Basie’s hit “One O’Clock Jump,” then a fast excerpt of that same number, followed by a little bit of stride piano by Duke. It’s from his own piece for Willie “The Lion” Smith, “<a href="https://youtu.be/NUrNEwEY6wk?si=Jr5RE5E4ATB5BF2H" target="_blank">The Second Portrait of the Lion.</a>” At 1:50 all six saxophones play a ballad while the camera pans from left to right, as we saw above. Suddenly at 1:56 the whole band claps and sings “ah, ah, a-a-ah!” That marks the end of the first half.
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The second half begins with Rouse playing, solo, a few phrases from the famous 1939 “Body and Soul” recording by Coleman Hawkins. Then the previously heard ballad continues, now featuring Glenn’s trombone. At 2:36 Duke plays some boogie-woogie, then goes into an abstract version of “Basin Street Blues” while Nance imitates Louis Armstrong with a handkerchief. But it’s a pantomime—he makes no sound! Then there’s a wild fast number, interrupted when we are suddenly taken back to the New Orleans piece that started it all—and finally, once again, “ah, ah, a-a-ah!”:
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[FILM CLIP IS HERE]
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What a journey! And what does it all mean? Today we might call this “post-modern” for the way it draws freely from such a range of styles, in a seemingly random, chopped-up fashion
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
This film also represents a step in Duke’s long-standing interest in creating a piece about jazz history. He credited Orson Welles for having gotten him thinking about this in the early 1940s, when Welles commissioned Duke to work on a history of jazz. Welles paid Duke in advance for that project, but it never happened. Soon afterward, in 1943, Ellington premiered his major suite, <i>Black Brown and Beige</i>. This was not a history of jazz—Duke’s subtitle was “A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America"— but one could see these projects as related, since both involve creating musical works that offer a long historical view. He returned to jazz history in 1950 with the piece you just watched. The next year, 1951, he wrote his <i>Controversial Suite</i> with its two chronological sections, “Before My Time,” and “Later.” Then came <i>A Drum is A Woman</i>, recorded in 1956 and televised in 1957, which Ellington explicitly referred to as a history of jazz.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
By all means, follow the link to watch the clip. It's marvelous.
</p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-58920911927052409632024-03-16T04:39:00.000-04:002024-03-16T04:39:02.123-04:00Reckless abandon – the wisdom of Barry Harris [Master Class]<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cBIyqtMok60?si=_NtxIqTHdrvZgTFC" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-36109326341607844922024-03-15T22:34:00.005-04:002024-03-15T22:34:30.099-04:00Power to the people [Hoboken]<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yPNNC9_b0D0qbmm03MH7HSPI3toxlHP6DC_DDWNxRblVNtLaZUGzK_N6dQ_r99WjgD-9qYpDcy63QEqs6Ys-mpoQXsV3aXRqUd9-AkeF_ouPKQlls0YkcK_-nQyKM40Z-roOZ0TC_y4L0FB301fdJqWKXbPBtqm_R2fXFfmlT-ObuOfL8HbnQNnujJCS/s2989/IMGP2074%20EQ%20LD.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="1995" data-original-width="2989" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yPNNC9_b0D0qbmm03MH7HSPI3toxlHP6DC_DDWNxRblVNtLaZUGzK_N6dQ_r99WjgD-9qYpDcy63QEqs6Ys-mpoQXsV3aXRqUd9-AkeF_ouPKQlls0YkcK_-nQyKM40Z-roOZ0TC_y4L0FB301fdJqWKXbPBtqm_R2fXFfmlT-ObuOfL8HbnQNnujJCS/s400/IMGP2074%20EQ%20LD.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-41148992999371374422024-03-15T12:13:00.005-04:002024-03-15T12:13:59.970-04:00How to power the AIs. It's a crazy new world.<p style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Casey Handmer's Blog</i>, <a href="https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/how-to-feed-the-ais/" target="new">How to Feed the AIs</a>, March 12, 2024.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
AIs use a LOT of power. Producing that power is one thing. Getting it to the AIs is another.
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>
<p>
The challenge with grid development is that it’s a permitting and construction nightmare, and like many things in the West, has gotten extremely expensive and time consuming to execute. But the datacenters need power much sooner than conventional development can build new power plants and transmission lines – even if permitting, eminent domain, technology, and construction costs were a solved problem!
</p>
<p>
It is time to lift the constraint that a new data center must be attached to the grid. Instead, we can provide most of the power locally using “beyond the grid” renewable energy generation, backed up by batteries for energy storage overnight.
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
For example:
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>
<p>
A 1 GW data center (containing roughly a million H100s!) would have a substantial footprint of 20,000 acres, almost all of that solar panels. The batteries for storage and data center itself would occupy only a few of those acres. This is in some sense analogous to a relatively compact city surrounded by extensive farmland to produce its food.
</p>
<p>
Of course future data centers will use more advanced and productive computers but their power consumption and heat generation will remain much the same. Radically more efficient panels, batteries, and computers will only increase the revenue per unit land used for this purpose.
</p>
<p>
The development cost of a 1 GW data center would be around $60b including the solar+battery power plant, and importantly the lead time and permitting complexity for each of the components: solar array, batteries, structures, racks, internet connection, and servers is about the same. This is in direct contrast to conventional on-grid power supply, whose capacity is nearly exhausted already.
</p>
<p>
Is this going to pave the Earth with solar?
</p>
<p>
My startup Terraform Industries looks to apply solar to produce synthetic fuel, consuming substantial amounts of land (though less than agriculture) in the process. Something like 2 billion acres, or 7% of Earth’s land surface area, would be sufficient to provide every man, woman, and child on Earth with US levels of oil and gas abundance and commensurate prosperity. It’s possible to imagine a future where people consume even more than that – widespread personal supersonic transport, for example – but ongoing conversion of land use away from intensive industrial agriculture toward inherently more productive solar synthetics is a clear net win for the environment.
</p>
<p>
Is this the case for solar AGI? It’s currently hard to imagine Nvidia and friends producing 100 billion or more H100s, but it’s also hard to imagine our collective demand for artificial intelligence will saturate. If we’re spending $60b on a 20,000 acre solar powered data center development, that’s about $3m/acre. Even if the land acquisition budget is only 3% of the budget at $100,000/acre, this is still substantially higher than essentially all land outside of major cities, including prime agricultural land. Is AI a solar panel maximizer, rather than a paperclip maximizer?
</p>
<p>
Will AIs prefer to live in space instead of on the Earth?
</p>
</blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
There's much more at the link, like this crazy-ass final paragraph:
</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
It seems that AGI will create an irresistibly strong economic forcing function to pave the entire world with solar panels – including the oceans. We should probably think about how we want this to play out. At current rates of progress, we have about 20 years before paving is complete.
</p>
</blockquote>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-47025215239180681872024-03-15T06:03:00.002-04:002024-03-15T06:10:29.852-04:00Friday Fotos: The saucer has landed [New park in Hoboken]<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9jtoYZu6zmIHVW1TXCZTS_8B7FcxOa_mlawyNAt9Lrwc1H05bwdstR3qeoEx7inLzwfhZo1NlVtXt0bhir3MtU8p3lC_mB_BM3sAkft0v7wy1CVm75v-6K4m4a8RiZpyctRHZ7W7JoU0kM3_lnWkuplDr2EIcskIInlpJQ8oCSaRZRayUfewizy6X6JR/s4672/20240314-_IGP5205.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI9jtoYZu6zmIHVW1TXCZTS_8B7FcxOa_mlawyNAt9Lrwc1H05bwdstR3qeoEx7inLzwfhZo1NlVtXt0bhir3MtU8p3lC_mB_BM3sAkft0v7wy1CVm75v-6K4m4a8RiZpyctRHZ7W7JoU0kM3_lnWkuplDr2EIcskIInlpJQ8oCSaRZRayUfewizy6X6JR/s400/20240314-_IGP5205.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmK6cgrfi7OhZ6OJd6M6_EmY8zrOLQ-6tb9ZZ4xKnpqHRAcEIwXAtHXgQZbEsA_V9gBLUyr3gGVQnFglTo563dGZ6JaZJqN7nLrG5KIL7jw2WThH75aYcnNSnfeOel0NxO6xgVqwlaNTATx9XJnxP0qWGoi48kNx6Lt8Se5L1A5TAMwGoRc-Xhe7Ro5FXo/s4672/20240314-_IGP5271.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmK6cgrfi7OhZ6OJd6M6_EmY8zrOLQ-6tb9ZZ4xKnpqHRAcEIwXAtHXgQZbEsA_V9gBLUyr3gGVQnFglTo563dGZ6JaZJqN7nLrG5KIL7jw2WThH75aYcnNSnfeOel0NxO6xgVqwlaNTATx9XJnxP0qWGoi48kNx6Lt8Se5L1A5TAMwGoRc-Xhe7Ro5FXo/s400/20240314-_IGP5271.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-45455114475326105052024-03-15T05:00:00.000-04:002024-03-15T05:33:32.541-04:00Is the cognitive work of science grounded in tracking?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<p></p><blockquote><i>Another bump on general principles, just to remind myself. </i></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</p>
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span face=""Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Bumped to the head of the list partially in response to <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/page/2" target="_blank">a recent post by Tyler Cowen</a> about human intelligence.</span></blockquote>
That's what Louis Liebenberg argues, and he's got a variety of publications and materials at <a href="http://www.cybertracker.org/" target="_blank">Cybertracker</a>. Here's the <a href="https://cybertrackerblog.org/" target="_blank">associated blog</a>. Here's a blurb for his book, <a href="http://www.cybertracker.org/science/the-origin-of-science" target="_blank"><i>The Origin of Science</i></a>, which you can download for free:</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>The Origin of Science</i> addresses one of the great mysteries of human evolution: How did the human mind evolve the ability to develop science?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The art of tracking may well be the origin of science. Science may have evolved more than a hundred thousand years ago with the evolution of modern hunter-gatherers. Scientific reasoning may therefore be an innate ability of the human mind. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The implication of this theory is that anyone, regardless of their level of education, whether or not they can read or write, regardless of their cultural background, can make a contribution to science.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Kalahari trackers have been employed in modern scientific research using GPS-enabled handheld computers and have co-authored scientific papers.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Citizen scientists have made fundamental contributions to science. From a simple observation of a bird captured on a smart phone through to a potential Einstein, some may be better than others, but everyone can participate in science.</div>
</blockquote>
And here's a <a href="http://www.cybertracker.org/science/citizen-science" target="_blank">citizen science page</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * * * *</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What it<a href="http://www.cybertracker.org/persistance-hunting/the-kudu-chase" target="_blank"> feels like tracking an animal</a> to run it down (push it to exhaustion):</div>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
As we followed the tracks I could visualise the whole event unfolding in front of me. The kudu started to show signs of hyperthermia. It was kicking up sand and its stride was getting shorter. As it ran from shade to shade, the distances between its resting periods became shorter and shorter. In visualising the kudu I projected myself into its situation. Concentrating on the spoor I was so caught up in the event that <span style="background-color: yellow;">I was completely unaware of my own state of exhaustion.</span> As if in an almost trance-like state I could not only see how the kudu was leaping from one set of tracks to the next, but <span style="background-color: yellow;">in my body I could actually feel how the kudu was moving. In a sense it felt as if I myself actually became the kudu</span>, as if I myself was leaping from one set of tracks to the next.</div>
</blockquote>
Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-4177308911847138942024-03-14T12:54:00.005-04:002024-03-14T12:54:36.661-04:00First flowers<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Ir9ALOZezlbHRPJLmYRxsGg89oLQ1unKsdrRm9KjiWznIQ5cuNDjYgQK7WpnklZaLn7UEsmOXxXVXZYaK1CG9meLPfVkoRG2Xr7GfRc1THpCkrdzT2UwoWVdzJCn-8texavIBE4vm-9w33mFteWgQB8e1ipZQ21PEqt9XGn33q8xOugHl-5LqZbs80pe/s3795/20240314-_IGP5176.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3036" data-original-width="3795" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Ir9ALOZezlbHRPJLmYRxsGg89oLQ1unKsdrRm9KjiWznIQ5cuNDjYgQK7WpnklZaLn7UEsmOXxXVXZYaK1CG9meLPfVkoRG2Xr7GfRc1THpCkrdzT2UwoWVdzJCn-8texavIBE4vm-9w33mFteWgQB8e1ipZQ21PEqt9XGn33q8xOugHl-5LqZbs80pe/s400/20240314-_IGP5176.jpg"/></a></div>
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Watched it over two sessions on the previous two days. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Knight" target="new"><i>First Knight</i> </a>(1995) is yet another retelling of the King Arthur story. Sean Connery is a middle-aged-growing-old Arthur of Camelot. Julia Ormond is a young-enough-to-be-his-daughter Guinevere of Lyonese. and Richard Gere is a handsome young Lancelot. In a departure from tradition, however, this Lancelot is not born an aristocratic knight. Instead, he’s a ronin warrior, one of the original free-lances, a hired gun (so to speak), of a murky background. Ben “Chariots of Fire” Cross is the evil Malagant, rogue fugitive from the Knights of the Round Table.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
I’ll give you the whole Wikipedia plot summary because you need to know the whole sorry story and I don’t want to waste keystrokes making up my own summary:
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><p>
King Arthur of Camelot, victorious from his wars, has dedicated his reign to promoting justice and peace and now wishes to marry. However, Malagant, a former Knight of the Round Table, desires the throne for himself.
</p>
<p>
Lancelot, a vagabond and skilled swordsman, duels in small villages for money. He attributes his skill to his lack of concern whether he lives or dies. Guinevere the young ruler of Lyonesse, decides to marry King Arthur out of admiration and for security against Malagant, who has been raiding local villages under the guise of "upholding the law."
</p>
<p>
While traveling, Lancelot chances by Guinevere's carriage on the way to Camelot, and spoils Malagant's ambush meant to kidnap her. He falls in love with her, but she refuses his advances. Though Lancelot urges Guinevere to follow her heart, she remains bound by duty. She is subsequently reunited with her escort.
Later, Lancelot arrives in Camelot and successfully navigates an obstacle course on the prospect of a kiss from Guinevere, though he instead kisses her hand. He also wins an audience with her husband-to-be, Arthur. Impressed by his courage and struck by his recklessness and freewheeling, he shows him the Round Table, symbolizing a life of service and brotherhood, and warns him that a man "who fears nothing is a man who loves nothing".
</p>
<p>
That night, Malagant's henchmen arrive at Camelot and kidnap Guinevere. She is tied up and carried off to his headquarters, where she is held hostage. Lancelot follows, posing as a messenger from Camelot. He requests to see Guinevere alive before he delivers the message, then overpowers the guards and escapes with her. Once again, Lancelot tries to win her heart, but is unsuccessful. On the return journey, it is revealed that he was orphaned and rendered homeless after bandits attacked his village, and has been wandering ever since.
</p>
<p>
In gratitude, Arthur offers Lancelot a higher calling in life as a Knight of the Round Table. Amidst the protests of the other Knights (who are suspicious of his station) and of Guinevere (who struggles with her feelings for him) he accepts and takes Malagant's place at the Table, saying he has found something to care about.
</p>
<p>
Arthur and Guinevere subsequently wed. However, a messenger from Lyonesse arrives, with news that Malagant has invaded. Arthur leads his troops to Lyonesse and successfully defeats Malagant's forces. Lancelot wins the respect of the other Knights with his prowess in battle. He also learns to embrace Arthur's philosophy, moved by the plight of villagers.
</p>
<p>
Lancelot, guilty about his feelings for the queen and loyalty to Arthur, privately announces his departure to her. Not able to bear the thought of his leaving, she finally asks him for a kiss. It turns into a passionate embrace, just in time for the king to interrupt. <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">Though Guinevere loves both Arthur and Lancelot – <b>albeit in different ways</b> – they are charged with treason. The open trial in the great square of Camelot</span> is interrupted by a surprise invasion by Malagant, ready to burn Camelot and kill Arthur if he does not swear fealty.
</p>
<p>
Instead Arthur commands his subjects to fight, and Malagant's men shoot him with crossbows. A battle ensues, and Lancelot and Malagant face off. Disarmed, Lancelot seizes Arthur's fallen sword and kills Malagant, who falls dead on that same throne he so desired. The people of Camelot win the battle, but Arthur dies of his wounds.
</p>
<p>
On his deathbed, he names Lancelot his successor and asks him to "take care of her for me" – referring to both Camelot and Guinevere. The film closes with a funeral pyre raft carrying Arthur's body floating out to sea.
</p></blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
What the plot summary doesn’t say is that the punishment for treason is death. Lancelot does not deny the kiss, nor does Guinevere. Good fellow that he is, Lancelot pleads with Arthur to let him take the fall. Just then Malagant saves the day by invading Camelot. Arthur is saved from having to pass sentence on his wife [daughter] and valiant warrior [romantic rival] and Guinevere gets to wed her young stud while still treasuring the memory of her father [husband].
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, that’s not how the story frames Malagant’s arrival. It frames it as unambiguous evil, which it is, of course. But I’m talking about the underlying psychodynamics, which is about fathers and sons and fathers and daughters and husbands and wives and how those roles are so easily mixed-up, confused, and conflated. <i>First Knight </i>brings the whole mess to a head, then sweeps it away through this invasion in which Arthur gets killed. Problem solved. Arthur gets a grand send-off at sea and Guinevere and Lancelot hustle off to the bedroom at Camelot.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
The Wikipedia entry notes: “The film is noteworthy within Arthurian cinema for its absence of magical elements [...] and the substantial age difference between Arthur and Guinevere.” A big YES to that last. As for the first, perhaps it’s that very lack of magical elements that makes Arthur’s speechifying about the ideals of Camelot seem like pious hokum. I liked Connery much better as Danny Dravot in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Would_Be_King_%28film%29" target="_blank">The Man Who Would Be King</a>. Heck, I liked him better as Bond, James Bond, where he didn't have to mouth any nonsense, just get the bad guys and bed the ladies.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
On the whole, a most peculiar film.
</p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-3253159949830395042024-03-14T06:47:00.003-04:002024-03-14T06:47:16.788-04:00Andreessen on Open Source AI<p style="text-align: justify;">
From <a href="https://a16z.com/america-needs-more-techno-optimism/" target="new">American Needs More Techno-Optimism</a>, a conversation between Marc Andreessen and Tyler Cowen.
</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: left;">
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Tyler:</b> Why is open-source AI in particular important for national security?
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Marc:</b> Yeah. So, for a whole bunch of reasons. So, one is, it is really hard to do security without open source. And so there actually used to be…there’s actually two schools of thought on kind of information security, computer security broadly that have played out over the last 50 years. There was one school of security that says, “You wanna basically hide the source code.” And you wanna hide the source code precisely. And this seems intuitive because presumably you wanna hide the source code so that, you know, bad guys can’t find the flaws in it, right? And presumably that would be the safe way to do things.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
And then over the course of the last 30 or 40 years, basically, what’s evolved is the realization, you know, in the field, and I think very broadly, that actually that’s a mistake. In the software field we call that “security through obscurity,” right? It’s sort of, we hide the code, people can’t exploit it. The problem with it, of course, is, okay, but that means the flaws are still in there, right? And so if anybody actually gets to the code, they just basically have a complete index of all the problems. And there’s a whole bunch of ways for people to get to code. They hack in and…
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
You know, it’s actually very easy to steal software code from a company. You hire the janitorial staff to stick a USB stick into a machine at 3 in the morning. So, like, you know, software companies are, like, very easily penetrated. And so it turned out security through obscurity was a very bad way to do it. The much more secure way to do it is actually open source. Basically, put the code in public and then basically, build the code in such a way that when it runs, it doesn’t matter whether somebody has access to the code, it’s still fully secure. And then you just have a lot more eyes on the code to discover the problems. And so in general, open source has turned out to be much more secure. And so I would start there. If we want secure systems, I think this is what we have to do.
</p>
</blockquote>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-18980127080309077892024-03-14T06:03:00.002-04:002024-03-14T06:03:13.929-04:00Trees, and the sun<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8UEF8_wbaxM5sHWnmOYNkbgyx93Vt8J4J4pmkpmMYRxapPwUMow7-YV0f2ge6BfGeDuemy8KPrbtZIkYcMhbi5-zZ8_aJmcsihXQl5DOp0dutZ2snjpvCbkHxUypshDdTuUfZ1BEphYAVAEDO_hgiofOoHJ-Sxq-ZjNVcvAdpim8t-qfABlFr5VPzCVZ/s2510/IMGP5828.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="2008" data-original-width="2510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib8UEF8_wbaxM5sHWnmOYNkbgyx93Vt8J4J4pmkpmMYRxapPwUMow7-YV0f2ge6BfGeDuemy8KPrbtZIkYcMhbi5-zZ8_aJmcsihXQl5DOp0dutZ2snjpvCbkHxUypshDdTuUfZ1BEphYAVAEDO_hgiofOoHJ-Sxq-ZjNVcvAdpim8t-qfABlFr5VPzCVZ/s400/IMGP5828.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJD_ZZ_F8b1dj9Tfc_yCUpqyctkUo86EnSfBH3kwy-yXQ2cYPsrftzS4MYOMmRszehHTqM5JvPlaM1F3bBG122CuvTStZuLeVI-poJEMvMZFown8CLE5E9WthXE59e8j8esrR3XjqycY5uH7cfsh80Jjywn6SQlia6oRUh16exbVJlFuE7W8Ol7iuI1Hie/s2676/IMGP5837.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="2008" data-original-width="2676" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJD_ZZ_F8b1dj9Tfc_yCUpqyctkUo86EnSfBH3kwy-yXQ2cYPsrftzS4MYOMmRszehHTqM5JvPlaM1F3bBG122CuvTStZuLeVI-poJEMvMZFown8CLE5E9WthXE59e8j8esrR3XjqycY5uH7cfsh80Jjywn6SQlia6oRUh16exbVJlFuE7W8Ol7iuI1Hie/s400/IMGP5837.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9XYkK4ZpVG1U7OtNmoGAHK7j5XPktxUevEsEmwoy_SxDhntjmu4Tj3DDBSKDpvuP9VdZ5d-FbC10eh7u9wfgOXpJgYGnP-g5F4AyL4WvFCgjjSE2d4eKcNBokKeo4bd8G14JWq6J00pHQ87UszAaJLoPN85qNRMDJ6N_Crxq2LNBbyN8dOhdpVUiOXPy/s2676/IMGP5844.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="2008" data-original-width="2676" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW9XYkK4ZpVG1U7OtNmoGAHK7j5XPktxUevEsEmwoy_SxDhntjmu4Tj3DDBSKDpvuP9VdZ5d-FbC10eh7u9wfgOXpJgYGnP-g5F4AyL4WvFCgjjSE2d4eKcNBokKeo4bd8G14JWq6J00pHQ87UszAaJLoPN85qNRMDJ6N_Crxq2LNBbyN8dOhdpVUiOXPy/s400/IMGP5844.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-52734723980450329642024-03-13T09:23:00.009-04:002024-03-13T09:37:37.894-04:00Review of empirical research into musical grooves [Born to Groove]<p style="text-align: justify;">
I just got off the phone with Charlie Keil. He told me about a recent review of the empirical literature on the groove: Takahide Etani, Akito Miura, Satoshi Kawase, Shinya Fujii, Peter E. Keller, Peter Vuust, Kazutoshi Kudo, A review of psychological and neuroscientific research on musical groove, <i>Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews</i>, Volume 158, 2024,105522, ISSN 0149-7634, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105522" target="new">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105522</a>.
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><p><b>Highlights:</b>
</p>
<p>
</p><ul>
<li>Moving the body to music is an activity that is universal and ancient.<br /></li>
<li>The pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to music is called groove.<br /></li>
<li>We review work on related musical features and psycho-neurophysiological processes.<br /></li>
<li>Open questions and future directions in empirical groove research are discussed.</li>
</ul>
<p>
<b>Abstract:</b> When listening to music, we naturally move our bodies rhythmically to the beat, which can be pleasurable and difficult to resist. This pleasurable sensation of wanting to move the body to music has been called "groove." Following pioneering humanities research, psychological and neuroscientific studies have provided insights on associated musical features, behavioral responses, phenomenological aspects, and brain structural and functional correlates of the groove experience. Groove research has advanced the field of music science and more generally informed our understanding of bidirectional links between perception and action, and the role of the motor system in prediction. Activity in motor and reward-related brain networks during music listening is associated with the groove experience, and this neural activity is linked to temporal prediction and learning. This article reviews research on groove as a psychological phenomenon with neurophysiological correlates that link musical rhythm perception, sensorimotor prediction, and reward processing. Promising future research directions range from elucidating specific neural mechanisms to exploring clinical applications and socio-cultural implications of groove.
</p></blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
I've been reading around in the article. It's a real head-twister. That is to say, it's dense with information which is difficult to integrate into a coherent overall picture. I keep wishing I could hear the musical examples being talked about. I'll be the authors of the article would have liked that as well. Some examples involve just drums, others just a piano, others some kind of ensemble; but this is just a review article, so the authors aren't listening to those examples.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
In view of Charlie's interest in participatory discrepancies (PDs), this next summary paragraph seems particularly pertinent, though the author's don't use Charlie's term. They write of microtiming, where PDs would be a kind of microtiming:
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote>
In summary, the studies that have been conducted on the relation- ship between the groove experience and microtiming except one (Nelias et al., 2022) suggest that microtiming is not necessarily an important factor for eliciting the groove experience, while there are conditions of microtiming (i.e., small microtiming) that are comparable to quantized rhythms. However, it is important to note that microtiming has positive effects on rhythmic behaviors such as stabilizing sensorimotor syn- chronization to rhythmic stimuli (Hove et al., 2007) and enhancing the degree of synchronization of body movement to music when dancing (Kilchenmann and Senn, 2015). These results suggest that microtiming is not necessarily systematically related to deliberate conscious aspects of communicating the groove experience, but it might be relevant to the effects of the music on movement induction and stabilizing sensorimotor synchronization. Further research is necessary to elucidate how and under what conditions microtiming could contribute to eliciting the groove experience. In addition, musicians have been insistent about how important microtiming is for the groove experience and the feel of the music (e.g., Berliner, 1994, p. 151–152), so there is a discrepancy between practitioners’ opinions and what research has found. To date, manipulations in research on relations between microtiming and the groove experience have involved displacing events in time without changing the properties of the sounds. However, recent studies have found that microtiming displacements are also associated with changes in timbre, dynamics, and attack times (Danielsen et al., 2019; Caˆmara et al., 2020a; Caˆmara et al., 2020b). This highlights the need to take into account these aspects when investigating the relationship between microtiming and the groove experience in the future.
</blockquote></div><p></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Read that whole paragraph with care. Note, in particular, the discrepancy "between practitioners’ opinions and what research has found." Practitioners (of anything, not just music) don't always know what they are in fact doing, especially when much of what they are doing is largely intuitive and preconscious. But the research is far from conclusive on its own terms. That is to say, there's more work to be done. Skipping over a lot of stuff I find:
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
These results indicate that the average groove experience also differs among musical styles. In particular, music belonging to African-American music, such as soul, R&B, funk, and jazz, seems to receive high groove ratings in general. This may be because music belonging to African-American music is typically characterized by drum patterns with a moderate degree of syncopation, as well as a moderate tempo around 120 bpm. Although less is known about the groove experience in other musical styles, it may be relatively consistent and present in concentrated form in African-American music.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Yep. Not surprised. But the part about 120 bpm is new; that's roughly double an average heart rate.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
There's much more in the article and I'm far from done with it. But let's look at a couple of concrete examples of the power of the groove. While the whole video has some value in the "slice of family life" category, I'm interested in what happens about about 7:35. A little guy – between 18 months and two years I'd guess – is listening to music on a smart phone.
</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KdxEyoG8keo?si=HyjMR-Fs0_mHBkXX&start=454" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Watch him start moving to the beat. My guess is that it's not a matter of active willing. He just does it. He can't help himself. The way I read it, mom notices his movement, he notices mom's attention and utters, "Whoa!" Mom answers in kind, and then he stops grooving and starts walking. I want to know the microtimings involved in that, but the meso-timings as well. How long after he starts listening does his body start to move? Notice that he moves from the hips. Is he in synch from the start? How closely? Etc.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
On a different tip, be amazed by the young bass virtuoso, Mohini Day, playing Coltrane's solo on "Countdown." LOL!</p><div style="text-align: center;"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CTEWBZY-i5w?si=HmaAhDm7jYb8W6LL" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Propulsive as hell. But a groove? Yes? No? Maybe? Sorta'? How's it work? How'd Coltrane get from "walking the bar" with RnB bands in Philly 1954 – hardcore groove music, though playing with Dizzy Gillespie to THAT?<br /></p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-63952640730436283632024-03-13T07:29:00.005-04:002024-03-13T07:29:43.135-04:00Are you sure about that?<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0v7MbK4Er-vqCR4Ran2X5W3hPfZv3SfO0arl_kJjgS1HhKtYI_cWHrUssZ1p5zqh7K0URJsy_3UzYf7pV3Khyphenhyphenr7ztKAjMEW_0KOVG_OUZyeyjix2LqkhbR6uszcoknSMPMInEVjWq7lcu23hz7mVy_NKy-z4hnDdyZbC5lovHmOEH9YsVpFA6Kj7zXtAU/s4346/20240216-_IGP4866.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0v7MbK4Er-vqCR4Ran2X5W3hPfZv3SfO0arl_kJjgS1HhKtYI_cWHrUssZ1p5zqh7K0URJsy_3UzYf7pV3Khyphenhyphenr7ztKAjMEW_0KOVG_OUZyeyjix2LqkhbR6uszcoknSMPMInEVjWq7lcu23hz7mVy_NKy-z4hnDdyZbC5lovHmOEH9YsVpFA6Kj7zXtAU/s400/20240216-_IGP4866.jpg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLvirh0EY8Xgkt7ETfls7BCLOPpmRFAC9j5doqnhhC_pfpEjSVcLnYM8d3RgCRulThdN77QZxKN6m1UIGpRsnAIUBH7Ce-pRqJDeGrJnoovtw7seEeyBkF8onx6z35Mu1QTXAAwIWAw6ZM6VYSDPWnMLfFYQ-R5888ueutmjqtd-f3g29GRpK1BNem3UEC/s4672/20240229-_IGP4959.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="480" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLvirh0EY8Xgkt7ETfls7BCLOPpmRFAC9j5doqnhhC_pfpEjSVcLnYM8d3RgCRulThdN77QZxKN6m1UIGpRsnAIUBH7Ce-pRqJDeGrJnoovtw7seEeyBkF8onx6z35Mu1QTXAAwIWAw6ZM6VYSDPWnMLfFYQ-R5888ueutmjqtd-f3g29GRpK1BNem3UEC/s400/20240229-_IGP4959.jpg"/></a></div>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-8077206966594272002024-03-13T06:10:00.002-04:002024-03-13T06:10:18.159-04:00Multi-tasking and its vicissitudes [consciousness]<p style="text-align: justify;">
Anna Borges, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/well/mind/multitasking-tips.html" target="new">A Multitasker’s Guide to Regaining Focus</a>, <i>NYTimes</i>, March 11, 2024.
</p>
<p>
Doing a single task:
</p>
<p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><p>
First, “multitask” itself is typically a misnomer. According to experts, it’s not possible to do two things at once — unless we can do one without much thinking (like taking a walk while catching up with a friend).
</p>
<p>
“Usually, when people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually switching their attention back and forth between two separate tasks,” said Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity.”
</p>
<p>
Let’s consider what happens when you engage in a single task like cooking dinner. From the moment you decide what to make, different regions of your brain, collectively referred to as the cognitive control network, collaborate to make it happen, said Anthony Wagner, a professor of psychology at Stanford and the deputy director of the university’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
</p>
<p>
This network includes areas of your brain that are involved in executive function, or the ability to plan and carry out goal-oriented behavior. Together they create a mental model of the job at hand and what you need to accomplish it. Your brain might do this, Dr. Wagner said, by drawing on both external and internal information, like the ingredients in your fridge or your memory of the recipe.
</p></blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Switching cost:
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><p>
As you would probably expect, the potential harm varies depending on the activity and how adept you are at doing it. But, generally, “when we switch between tasks, we pay what’s been dubbed a ‘switch cost,’” Dr. Wagner said. “We’re going to be slower and less accurate than we would have been if we stayed on a single task.”
</p>
<p>
Speed and precision aren’t the only risks, either. Multitasking is more cognitively demanding, even when we’re doing things we find enjoyable or easy. When we multitask, we can tax our working memory, or our ability to hold and handle information in our mind, Dr. Byers explained. “The more we overload that system and the more we’re trying to keep in our brains at once, the more mental fatigue it can lead to,” she said. And other studies have found that multitasking can set our heart racing, raise our blood pressure, trigger anxiety, dampen our mood and negatively impact our perception of the work at hand.
</p></blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
The article then goes on with advice for focusing on one thing at a time, which is all well and good. For example:
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"><blockquote><p>
Dr. Mark suggested you start by observing yourself throughout the day, noticing when and how you task-switch without realizing it. From there, the advice is simple yet challenging: You’ll need to practice monotasking, or doing one thing at a time, to gradually retrain your focus and build your tolerance.
</p></blockquote></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
Then we have: When to keep multitasking ... by sticking to your strengths weighing the risks, finding break points, and, finally, Use multitasking when it actually helps. And so forth, <i>yada yada</i>, as they said on Seinfeld.
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">
This is all about one of my current hobby-horses, and a recurring theme here on the Savanna, <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/regulate-mind" target="new">regulating the mind</a>, which is in turn about <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/consciousness" target="new">consciousness</a>. It puts me in mind of Walter Freeman's speculation that consciousness is like frames in a motion picture, flitting from frame to frame at the rate of about 10 frames (of consciousness) per second. I discuss this in, e.g. this post: <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2023/03/two-more-thoughts-on-chatgpt-conceptual.html" target="new">Two more thoughts on ChatGPT: Conceptual spaces and system time-steps</a>. You might also want to look at an old working paper: <a href="https://www.academia.edu/238609/Music_and_the_Prevention_and_Amelioration_of_ADHD_A_Theoretical_Perspective" target="new">Music and the Prevention and Amelioration of ADHD: A Theoretical Perspective</a>. For that matter, I've got a number of posts that mention <a href="https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/search/label/ADHD" target="new">ADHD</a>, which, I suppose, could be characterized as involuntary multi-tasking.
</p>Bill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-73970807067009721242024-03-13T05:38:00.001-04:002024-03-13T05:38:13.519-04:00Night and Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBy4Bv3Kk2pAskobhZ5bQExUTBVipa_cs3yt6Ni_9arTsUKf0nrDPfdiUDEZZi7ASv_RXmCgffm5Z2QI5PZaVYteWB0oyU_TEa0UeWbKrgY9PKLxbNFLH9PX-vgE0UNBJPf_GlEmd7Map70rjdLszIJ2KznQZ79r1ounsLMKRx2_B-MsRRA8KO7WpMMiws/s4672/20240303-_IGP5131.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="3104" data-original-width="4672" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBy4Bv3Kk2pAskobhZ5bQExUTBVipa_cs3yt6Ni_9arTsUKf0nrDPfdiUDEZZi7ASv_RXmCgffm5Z2QI5PZaVYteWB0oyU_TEa0UeWbKrgY9PKLxbNFLH9PX-vgE0UNBJPf_GlEmd7Map70rjdLszIJ2KznQZ79r1ounsLMKRx2_B-MsRRA8KO7WpMMiws/s400/20240303-_IGP5131.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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