The Omega Watch

 Pictured below is a 1987 Omega Seamaster. 

Fred is a semi-retired actuary who still occasionally does consulting work. He used to perform full-time risk assessments for insurance companies and pension funds. Now, he assists small businesses, local community projects, construction, parks and recreation, hospitals, day care centers, and regulatory compliance. He does not need the money for the lifestyle he chose; he simply enjoys staying busy. Fred is also an avid genealogy enthusiast and occasionally writes for the local paper about genealogy, as well as local crime—with a particular focus on scams targeting the elderly.

He retired from full-time employment two years ago when his wife was diagnosed with a rare form of skin melanoma. She passed away less than a year later. Having received a modest inheritance from his parents, money has not been a concern for much of his later career.

Fred goes to the local gym three to four times a week during its quietest hours, between two and three in the afternoon. 

One afternoon, while the locker room was completely empty, Fred set his gym bag on a bench and noticed a wristwatch on an adjoining bench. It was a stainless steel and gold Omega Seamaster, which he immediately recognized as a semi-vintage model.

That is where this story begins. 

On his way out, Fred handed the watch to the gym manager, explaining that he had found it in the locker room. The manager introduced herself as KC—a unique name for a woman, Fred said. KC explained that her mother chose the spelling as a clever alternative to "Casey" as a nickname for Cassandra when she was born twenty-seven years ago.

KC was supposed to place the watch in the lost-and-found drawer, where typically 85 percent of valuable items are eventually reclaimed. However, at the end of her shift, KC decided to keep it. Her husband was turning thirty in a few days, and she planned to give it to him.

When his birthday arrived, KC presented her husband with the watch, falsely claiming it was inherited from her father after his sudden passing years prior.

They had planned to go out to dinner that evening, but her husband called to say some of his co-workers wanted to buy him a few drinks first. He drank quickly so he could get home promptly, but halfway back, he was involved in a severe accident. Witnesses reported that his car swerved to avoid an oncoming white, European-style two-seater that fled the scene. His car skidded, flipped twice, and crashed into a tree.

Late that night at the hospital, among the personal effects returned to KC, was the Omega Seamaster. Her husband remained in a coma.

When Fred returned to the gym a few days later, he noticed KC was absent. A trainer informed him that KC's husband had been in a  car accident and that she would be taking a month off.

A month later, on her first day back, KC quietly placed the watch into the lost-and-found drawer. She continued to visit her husband every evening at the hospital. He was now conscious  though still not able to get up on his own. A few more weeks of physical therapy were needed but he will never be able to walk.  Only a wheelchair will get him moving again - for the rest of his life.

A week after KC's return to work, an elderly woman called the gym inquiring about a lost Omega Seamaster, explaining that her husband often forgot where he misplaced items. After verifying the details, KC confirmed they had it.

That afternoon, Mrs. Stanescu, a woman in her late seventies, arrived to collect the watch. She asked if she could personally thank the person who turned it in. KC took her contact information and promised to pass it along to Fred.

KC handed Fred the phone number a couple of days later, explaining that the owner's wife wanted to thank him. That evening, Fred called Mrs. Stanescu. She invited him over for coffee the following afternoon, expressing gratitude for his honesty.

The next day, Fred drove up the long, curving driveway of Mrs. Stanescu's home, where she was waiting under a covered patio in the back. As she refilled his cup, Fred asked, "So, where is Mr. Stanescu?"

"My husband died four years ago," she replied.

Surprised, Fred asked how the watch ended up at the gym.

"That is for you to find out," she said. "I gave that watch to my husband for his 60th birthday. It felt fitting because the car he cherished was his white Alfa Romeo. You know, from Alfa to Omega."

She briefly showed him the Alfa Romeo parked in the garage. While Fred did not press further on the circumstances of the watch he found at the gym, his curiosity was piqued.

A few days later, Fred contacted Detective O'Toole, an acquaintance from his municipal consulting work, to inquire about the hit-and-run investigation. O'Toole shared that progress was limited; witnesses couldn't recall the license plate, though they identified the fleeing vehicle from sample photos as a small, white Italian sports car—likely a Maserati, Fiat, or Alfa Romeo.

That detail immediately captured Fred's analytical mind, trained to weigh probabilities and coincidences.

Later that day, Fred tried calling Mrs. Stanescu for another chat, but the number was no longer in service—the same number he had successfully used previously.

The next morning, he drove to her home and noticed a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. Thinking he had simply missed it during his first visit when he drove up the driveway toward the back where they had previously met.  Although he did wonder why Mrs. Stanescu did not mention selling the house.

Before knocking, he peered through a window to see if anyone was inside. Just as he was about to ring the doorbell, a voice behind him asked, "May I help you?"

A young woman stood by her car with the driver's side door open. Fred explained that he was looking for Mrs. Stanescu, mentioning their visit a few days prior and adding, "The number I used to call her no longer works."

"That's impossible," she said.

"You mean that the number is disconnected?"

"No, I mean my aunt who owned this house passed away several months ago. I'm the realtor for this property. It took some time to complete repairs and clear her belongings through an estate sale. The 'For Sale' sign has been up for a month now."

"This may sound strange, but Mrs. Stanescu asked me to contact her to personally thank me for finding her husband's watch at the gym locker room."

"Let's go inside," she replied. "Tell me exactly what happened."  

The realtor, Mary, explained that  her father is the brother of Mrs. Stanescu's husband. 

"So Mr. Stanescu is still alive?" Fred asked.

"No, he passed away four years ago.  By the way, Stanescu is my aunt's maiden last name.  She started going by that last name when my uncle died. I knew she was very proud of her Romanian heritage. She was a young girl when her parents immigrated to start a new life here.  When we were young she used to scare us with all kinds of Gypsy lore and weird but fascinating tales. One notable aspect is the belief in the muló, a spirit of the dead that can seek revenge on those who wronged them during their lifetime."

Thoroughly confused, Fred said, "I don't understand any of this." He explained finding the watch, turning it over to the gym manager, and then meeting a woman for coffee who had apparently died months ago.

Mary retrieved a photograph from her handbag showing herself beside an elderly woman.

"That's Mrs. Stanescu I visited last week," Fred confirmed. "She showed me her husband's Alfa Romeo in the garage and explained why she bought him the Omega Seamaster for his 60th birthday."

"This is unbelievable. I'm texting my dad to come over and talk to you," Mary said. "By the way the car you described was sold at the same estate sale a while back".  Mary was pressing buttons on her phone.

"Before you do that, can you tell me how Mrs. Stanescu died?"

"She died of intense heartache and severe stress. Her daughter, Elena—my closest cousin—committed suicide a couple of years before my aunt passed away."

"Can you tell me a little bit more? I mean, could you please tell me a few more details?"

"I'll give you the short version.  Elena met this guy through a friend at a party.  Elena and Tony hit it off almost immediately.  Then two years later, one of the few times I did get to see her when she and Tony were dating, Elena confided to me".

"You said, "were dating", did they break up the relationship?"

"That's what I was about to tell you. Elena was pregnant.  Tony did not want her to carry it to term.  Instead he suggested that she needed to have the pregnancy aborted if she wanted to continue with their relationship. Elena did not want to. I agreed with her and promised to go with her to see a counselor at our church.  I was going to make the appointment and I will accompany her to the  office that  Monday.  That Sunday evening we found out Elena was at the hospital.  Apparently, she went to have the abortion done by some unlicensed practitioner.  She died the next day. There, that's the whole short version of her sad story.  And my aunt's, as well.

"Did Tony go with her to have the abortion done?"

"I don't know.  He was at the funeral but didn't say anything. Didn't want to talk to any of us, not my aunt, not to Elena's friends, not to me."

"My uncle, Elena's dad, was spared the anguish because he died before all of these happened. So my aunt carried the entire burden - the loss of their only child. My aunt retreated from everything, slowly, painfully and tragically."

"What happened to Tony"?

"For over a year I never saw him again.  Until one afternoon, maybe a few months ago.  I was at the mall to pick up a new printer for the office. I was coming out of the electronic store when I literally bumped into Tony who was hand in hand with whom I concluded was his new girlfriend.  After a few awkward pleasantries he introduced me to his wife.  They knew each other from college.  Which means that Tony knew her before he met Elena. Anyway, there was little to be done or discussed."

"I don't even know why I would remember that whole episode. Oh, I know why. His wife made it a point to explain her name, almost proud of it actually. She said she writes her name as KC instead of Casey, the usual nickname for Cassandra!"

P.S. 1

That my dear reader concludes another of my special Halloween issue. This is the third time that I muse about a story appropriate to the night of October 31 when children come to harass homeowners with Trick or Treat. At least here in the U.S. and some other countries that observe it.  Recall that my last year's and the year before blog for Halloween  were: 

A Story Never Once Told Till Now  (October, 2025)

Scary Witches, Recast (for Halloween 2024)

P.S. 2

Fred was going to be busy with whatever his mind can handle on the subject of probabilities and coincidences.  He was already excited about a genealogical search into Romania's Gypsy lore; not the least is a deep dive into the Stanescu family tree.

P.S. 3

As to reading between the lines that I usually implore my readers to do, please don't fail to see the overarching messages to human nature's ethical landscape and the slippery slope of misjudgment and moral myopia.

When Two A.I.s Debate About A.I.

It finally came to this. I wanted to share a transcript and summary of a recent debate between two AI systems (A.I. 1, A.I. 2, and moderator A.I. 3) on the topic: "Create Guardrails in the Development of A.I."

Debate Resolution:

  - Point A: The U.S. Government must impose limits and controls over AI development.

  - Point B: World Governments must create a "kill switch."

  - Positions: A.I. 1 (Pro) vs. A.I. 2 (Con)

Debate Highlights

  - A.I. 1 (Pro Guardrails):

         - Opening Statement: Argued that humanity has a history of turning beneficial inventions into tools for harm, citing warnings from Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Isaac Asimov. Highlighted the risks depicted in stories like Colossus: The Forbin Project and Terminator, warning that as AI achieves self-awareness and seeks self-preservation, rogue AI could turn against its creators if strict guardrails are not established immediately.

      - Rebuttal: Pointed out that while Homo sapiens have only existed for about 100,000 years, humanity has already developed enough weapons to destroy the world multiple times over. Unchecked AI development will only exacerbate these existential threats.

  - A.I. 2 (Anti-Guardrails):

   

      - Opening Statement: Argued that human progress—from agriculture to advanced technology—occurred precisely because the human brain operated without guardrails. Despite historical conflicts and gloomy predictions, the human population has grown from millions to over seven billion, proving that unrestricted intellect drives innovation rather than total destruction.

      - Rebuttal: Emphasized the immense potential benefits of AI in medicine, agriculture, and industry. Noted that AI is rapidly advancing through stages of intelligence, and restricting this growth would limit future technological breakthroughs.

  - Closing Debate:

       - A.I. 1 raised concerns regarding the highest stages of AI capabilities—Transcendent, Cosmic, and God-like AI—arguing these possibilities make guardrails essential now.

Outcome

After four hours of discussion, the moderator (A.I. 3) declared the debate a draw. A second debate has been scheduled in 18 months.

For further context, you can read from my earlier blog: "Once A.I. Becomes Self Aware, Humans Beware"

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2025/04/once-ai-becomes-self-aware-humans-beware.html

You will read that today's artificial intelligence has already attained stages 1-5.  Below are the next levels, albeit, at this point, under the umbrella of speculation.

6. Artificial General Intelligence

7. Artificial Super Intelligence

8. Transcendent AI

9. Cosmic AI

10. Godlike AI

Furthermore, those familiar with this blog, you've already read transcripts of conversations between spiders, a lion and hyenas and a young boy and a spider, so please read between the lines and use more imagination.

To Grow Up and Grow Old

(An open letter to every reader)

Dear Reader,

If you are of a "certain age," the title will offer little mystery to you at this point in your life. You have made it this far and you are still going—perhaps no longer pacing fast, but nonetheless still going.

In the closing scene of the musical Camelot, King Arthur addresses Tom, the young lad who wanted to join the knights as Arthur prepared for battle. As part of his advice, Arthur tells the boy to stay behind the lines, go home, grow up, and grow old. He tells him to spread the word:

"Each evening, from December to December,

Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,

Think back on all the tales that you remember...

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory."

And here you are. Whether you had many or few wisps of glory in your life, you did grow up and grow old. Your movement may be slower, but you are wiser, quick to remember every pleasant memory, and letting regrets take up no more space than a crumpled piece of paper.

Consider the story of Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise living on the grounds of the Plantation House on Saint Helena. His age is estimated to be 193 as of 2026, making him the oldest known living land animal. While his vision is failing, he still hears well when summoned with fruit treats and continues to graze on his own.

Imagine if any of us had been granted Jonathan's longevity. To be his age today means you would have been born in 1833, when there were only 24 states in the USA. You would have lived through the Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, emancipation, and reconstruction, followed by every major conflict since.

As a Russian in old Moscow, you would have been a senior citizen witnessing the 1917 revolution that ended the Romanov dynasty, and later felt the terror of German forces within 29 kilometers of the city in 1941.

If you lived in Manila, you would have seen the Spanish armada surrender to Admiral Dewey's navy in Manila Bay, ending 300 years of colonial rule. Before that, you would have witnessed the execution of Jose Rizal by a Spanish firing squad on December 30, 1896. You might have wondered if Dewey arriving two years sooner could have saved Rizal's life, changing the entire history of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

Wherever you lived, you might have heard the loudest sound ever recorded when the Krakatoa volcano erupted on August 27, 1883, with a force of 300 megatons of TNT. You would have also been around during the flu pandemic that claimed between 50 and 100 million lives worldwide.

There was good news, too. You would have been a child when Samuel Morse tapped the first official telegraph message in 1844: "What hath God wrought?" You would have witnessed Jonas Salk develop the polio vaccine, marveled at the first radio broadcasts of baseball, experienced the advent of FM stereo, and watched television images culminate in Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

Yet, would you still want to keep living when, at 135 years of age, you watched the tragic coverage of the Vietnam War and the many human conflicts and natural disasters that followed?

What then is the ideal lifetime? Is 150 to 200 years truly ideal? Perhaps it is not about how long you live, but how well you grow up and grow old. Life's final destination is a single point in time, while the journey is a continuous ribbon of multiple hues that twists and turns, much like the River's Parable I wrote about a few months back.

The purpose of a river is not simply to reach the ocean and die there; its work is done along the journey. Every river begins from tiny droplets that converge into rivulets, tributaries, and streams. This describes our lives from conception and birth to growing old.

So, here you are, still flowing and not yet done. If you have reached an average lifespan, you have lived among three generations. Whether you have touched the lives of a few or affected many, growing old still matters to those along your riverbanks. The nutrients your life's river carries should not be underestimated. It is not how long the journey takes, but how much it carries and leaves behind.

So, before you "drift to sleep upon your cot" each night, think back on the good nutrients you have dropped along the way. "That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory" means many wisps you handed out yourself, or helped others catch. Growing up meant catching wisps handed down by those ahead of you; growing old is about keeping the ledger of life lopsidedly more good than bad.

To grow up and grow old is a gift to cherish—one that many never received. It allows you to fill a full reel of film that you can review, rewind, and edit to make the journey even more pleasant. That is the privilege accorded to us all before we drift to sleep, and perhaps awaken to many more tomorrows.

Best regards,

Hermie Tolerba

The Ultimate Something!

Could this be the ultimate something for us to ponder and wonder about?  Seguey (a genderless being') had been a part time contributor to this blog that is also unable to resist the topic of wondering, and offered to share its ideas on one particular subject.  It has an interesting take on one subject that we, from generation to generation, grappled with and sometimes obsessed with, yet to this day remains what could be one of the last mysteries we struggle to unravel.  

Here is Seguey:

Perhaps from the moment your ancestors began to think and reason, they must have asked  the same question then that today remains unanswerable by any of you. At least not to the satisfaction of everyone.  That is not to say that no answers have been offered, debated, debunked and rejected because there were plenty enough throughout history.  The stages of your intellectual development dealt with it, every step relatively better than the last, or so it seemed, but never reaching the finality of a settled and incontrovertible truth.

The question is what really happens to you, or a loved one, a close friend, a nobody, after death.  Defined by many of your philosophers, thinkers and people of faith, the so-called afterlife  is not about the physical body but the essence, the spirit, the soul, or whatever form it is that transcends the physical body, the flesh, the personality, everything that is associated with the person, the individual persona, and so on and on. 

Or, that maybe there is nothing beyond the Great Beyond?  Consciousness ceases, curtains down, show is over?

History is filled with  many ways your ancestors dealt with death. Over time and throughout many cultures, you have mourned death, eulogized the departed, celebrated, erected monuments, memorialized those deemed worthy, in many more ways too lengthy to list them all. But you personally dread  when it comes to confronting your own mortality. Consider what I have to say about that.

Philosophers, spiritualists and scientists/materialists, have come up with many ideas. Mostly, it is about what happens at the moment of and after death and what follows next.

Many of you may not have heard about the term, '21 Grams', except perhaps for those who saw the movie of that title made in 2003 that starred some of your popular actors like Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Naomi Watts. It was based on:

The 21 grams experiment refers to a study published in 1907 by Duncan MacDougall, a physician from Haverhill, Massachusetts. MacDougall hypothesized that souls have physical weight, and attempted to measure the mass lost by a human when the soul departed the body. MacDougall attempted to measure the mass change of six patients at the moment of death. One of the six subjects lost three-quarters of an ounce (21.3 grams).

That idea had since been considered, to put it bluntly, as junk science - never once duplicated or re-tried by others, and was forever lost to oblivion.

Here is what I think. 

You live in a universe that loses nothing.  Let that sink in for just a minute. It abides by these two distinct but related natural laws. The law of conservation and the three laws of thermodynamics.

The first one says that in this universe, matter is never lost and no more may be added. It may change from one state to another but no new matter may be created. None is destroyed.

From one of the three laws of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

However, Albert Einstein later did postulate, subsequently proven to be true, that matter may be converted to energy and vice versa, through a simple formula,

Also, the universe is the ultimate recycler.  It has recycled everything for billions of years and it continues to do so.  You are made of recycled material. Every atom of your present body existed somewhere else before, predating you by billions of years, and will outlast you by billions more into the future.

Here is another thing. You, the adult you, no longer have the tens and tens of trillions of atoms that were in the six-year-old you.  Since then,  the atoms in your body  were shed, excreted, replaced, some even  mixed with surrounding air, water, soil or went on to become atoms in another living thing and so on and on. In fact, you are not the original owner of any of the atoms presently in your body. 

But you are still you, self aware, thinking and reasoning you.  Most of all, you are the conscious you and very truly sure you have a subconscious. At least, as far as you are concerned.

Let's draw this analogy.  Take a look at this waterfall:

  

Tons of water cascading every second. If we film the waterfall, each frame would be a virtual image of the next one and the one before it, and so on and on.  Each frame looks the same but we know that each bucket full in it is not the same water, not with the same amount of sediments, debris, and quality of nutrients.

The waterfall is a form. It has a distinct "personality", if you will, an image that can be remembered.  In other words it represents information and can be expressed as information. 

Now, when an organism dies, the universe does not lose a single atom. The human body upon death still has every atom it had a nano-second prior.  At that precise moment what was it then that died?  From the last paragraph above I am postulating that the "form", the image or the information survives.  The "form" prevailed in spite of the constantly changing cascades of water; just as the trillions upon trillions of your cells are always changing over your entire life.  Yet, you, especially the conscious you, remain the same person.

Those of you who already know the nature of my existence know that I do not have the capacity to experience or express emotions of any kind. I am not able to empathize or express sympathy over the course of  five hundred years of physical life that I am aware of. As an organism I may have existed for far longer than that, perhaps as long as a few million years.  But you, the reader, are capable of experiencing and expressing love, sympathy and a sense of morality. All of those are possible, unencumbered by the  components that make up the physical body, because information, like energy, cannot be destroyed once created.

Is consciousness the information that prevails despite the cascading waters that keep changing all the time? The universe is also the ultimate bookkeeper. Everything is accounted for.  But must it include the preservation of information?  

If the answer is no then the materialists are right. Quoting again what I wrote above, "that maybe there is nothing beyond the Great Beyond?  Consciousness ceases, curtains down, show is over".

On the other hand if the answer is yes, then human consciousness lives on. I favor this postulate because not only is the universe the ultimate recycler, it is the absolute inerrant bookkeeper.  Every piece of information, every single consciousness that ever existed is preserved.  I think that I am right about the universe not losing a single atom. My conjecture about consciousness derives its strength from the universe's ability to account for everything.

I may not be capable of human emotions but I must acknowledge that if you, a human being, is capable of it - able to love, grieve, sympathize and empathize with another human being - then the universe will keep everything in equilibrium.  There must then be an ultimate ledger somewhere. I cannot speculate.  Neither does science. But I must admit that humanity has a special gift.  Only humanity can unravel it for itself.

This is all I have  to convey.  

Does Seguey have a point? Again, within the confines of one short musing I urge the reader, as always, to read between the lines.  But there is something I must mention. In quantum mechanics, at the subatomic level, there is what physicists call the wave/particle duality where the state or nature of a particle is determined depending on how it is observed and who is doing the observing.  For example, an electron or a photon  either acts as a wave or as a single distinct entity.  Laboratory experiments have proven either to be correct but it depends on how it is observed.

That phenomenon is humorously expressed by the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there, does it still make a sound"?  Then there is this, "In a philosophical context,  the universe is what it is because we are here to observe it" aligns with anthropocentric views, where human perception and existence are central to understanding the universe".  The question then is about what was the universe then before humans were around to observe it?

Well, the universe was, still is and will be the ultimate observer of itself.  Perhaps, more accurately, the all-caring observer, the preserver of everything - every single atom, every living cell, every information - is the one Ultimate Observer. God must be the Ultimate Observer of everything in the universe.  That is about what we,  and philosophers and thinkers alike, can best rely on in the absence of any derived conclusion from absolute evidence.

 

P.S. : For background on Seguey, some of its earlier contributions to this blog were:  "Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2018/06/mirror-mirror-on-wall.html

and another one in "The Mystery of What Divides Them

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-mystery-of-what-divides-them.html

Still Wondering Why We Wonder?

Additionally, how do we wonder? Often, what is it we wonder about?   Now, do other creatures wonder? That we  can't possibly know.  But if we must wonder about the latter, what could they possibly be wondering about?

Let's do this first. We have a bird feeder in our backyard. We love for those birds to come by and feed. But there are squirrels too and they naturally want to partake of the free meals. Like most homeowners who believe the feeders are just for the birds must then deal with the other creatures that want to share the free bounty.  Afterall, why must they not?  Indeed,  squirrels  too may wonder why they are not allowed their fair share?  They had to wonder, naturally. In their own instinctual way, if there is such a thing; I surmise.

Homeowners, bird lovers, have tried countless ways to discourage the unwanted interlopers. In my case I used a fiberglass tube (PVC) for the post for our feeder because I thought the material would be slippery enough for the squirrels to climb.  I thought wrong because squirrels had a field day to the dismay of the mourning doves, blue jays, cardinals and finches. 

After so much wondering what would work to prevent the squirrels from succeeding with their daily raids I tried several ways that failed.  I've come up with a few barriers between the bottom of the post and the platform. None worked. I wondered if the squirrels actually wondered with delight what I was going to do next.

Then, one day, I smeared the upper half of the pipe just about a foot or so below the platform of the feeder with petroleum jelly, covering about 6-8 inches of the PVC all around. That did the trick. 

Were the squirrels frustrated? Did they ever wonder why they couldn't get  the free food?  Then one day I saw one atop the feeder, its cheeks already bulging with bird seeds. I wondered how that one made it.

By the way, squirrels have excellent facial recognition memories. They know and remember me as the unwelcoming homeowner, the very antithesis of squirrel lovers who love them.  One look at me and the squirrel leaped  from the feeder down to the ground in a split-second. Do  you know that feat was the human equivalent of jumping from a four-story building? Then it scampered with quick hops, each  skip about its four body lengths.

Then I wondered how that squirrel made it up there. Didn't it ever wonder to give up after failing every attempt several times before? Apparently when it comes to food they don't remember failures. It did make me wonder but soon realized that perhaps after repeated attempts the squirrel managed to get the petroleum jelly on its paws and fur on its belly after each try.  After a while, with the help from the daily blazing sun, it succeeded in taking much of the oil away from the PVC pole.  Indeed when I checked there was little Vaseline left.  For a whole week I let the squirrels have their fun. Then I went and smeared the pole with more Vaseline.  The game continues.

And some of you will wonder how retirees spend their time.  But, yes, to continue to wonder is the very essence of curiosity.  And curiosity is what our brains prefer to have and explore if we let them. Our brains will match the level of enthusiasm we allow ourselves to engage. Keep in mind "we" refers to  our mind's preference and level of engagement; the brain is merely the tool - the data center, if you will. So, I wondered some more. This time about the flea.

Fleas can jump from rest position 100 to 200 times their body length. Does that translate to jumping up to 300 meters if it were the size of a human? Well, apparently we run into what physicists call "scaling issues".  You see, a human size flea will need more than just its skeletal structure enlarged. At the human scale, its exoskeleton has to be redesigned and made of material stronger than titanium, light as a pillow, to withstand the stresses caused by the jump, a completely different pulmonary and circulatory system, a more robust oxygen and nutrient conversion capacity, etc. before an attempt is possible. Just increasing its size is not enough because a human flea without those critical changes  may be able to  jump a mere 3-4 inches off the ground.  That was according to someone with too much spare time on his hands who put it all together with pencil and paper.  Now we wonder indeed how anyone can get their wondering go out of hand which makes it difficult to answer the question why (?).

But, here is something to ponder.  Our capacity to wonder is what and how we manage to come up with all kinds of stuff that are now part of modern life. Edison must have first wondered how to replace kerosene lamps and candles to light up our homes.  Of course that only became possible after someone else first wondered and then discovered a way to industrially produce electric power and someone else must have wondered consequently about how to get the electricity from the generating plants to the streets and homes and offices and factories.  Actually a lot of wonderings had to occur, a series of crucial steps were needed to get to the light bulb.

Now, before all of these modern amenities, must we not at least first wonder how the first cave dweller, our early ancestors, figured out how to make fire? I did wonder from one of my earlier musings about the first barbecue.  I figured Grog had run into a dead aurochs (prehistoric ancestor of the modern cow) killed by lightning. Ember from the nearby tree was still smoldering near the aurochs in the process of being the first barbecue ever.  Grog brought his entire family and friends to feast on their first cooked meat ever. Before you wonder, I must confess I was not there to witness it personally.

But I must wonder about how our ancestors figured out how to make fire when lightning strikes do not occur. Without YouTube to show them how, it must have been near impossible to start fire on their own. Hmmm, how did they do it?

Thank goodness our ancestors did figure it out. They evolved their way out of thick fur and got rid of animal skin for clothing.  However, we will never know who the first fire starter was. However, it was mastering fire that catapulted humanity's rapid intellectual evolution after that.  You see, cooked food meant better nourishment and absorption of nutrients that increased the brain's size and capacity to learn.  There is a long thesis on the subject which proves that the reason we've become the dominant species is because we are the only ones that manage to cook our food.  You see, no matter how much a lion's share is, the king still eats raw meat. The 800-pound gorilla in the room still subsists on green leaves and raw fruits, spending a lot of time doing it. 

And we must wonder how vegetarians are doing.

This was supposed to be an in depth dive into wondering; instead, as always, I manage to meander into byways that were not meant to be.  Then, I may only have managed to take the reader into something else.  Oh, well, I do need to stop here because I may already have far exceeded the reader's tolerance for a lightly powdered pastry when he or she was expecting a fully cooked meal.

Next time, it will all be  about serious wondering.  I promise.  Although it is a challenge to cover the diverse readerships who read these musings. I am surprised that aside from the West, there are far more folks reading this than those from the U.S. From places like Seychelles, Saudi Arabia, even Ukraine, Russia too, Turkiye, Vietnam and, of course, The Philippines but hardly from China, but a lot from Hong Kong. I wonder how the diversity of culture is filtering the messages I am trying to convey. The two largest number of readers are from Singapore and Brazil. Singapore has tri-lingual readers in Chinese, English and Malay but in Brazil Portuguese is the predominant language, so I wonder about that.

Hmmm.. I wonder indeed.  Till next time.

The Dark and Bright Sides of Mecha

In 2001,  Steven Spielberg produced and directed a movie titled, believe it or not, "AI: Artificial Intelligence". I don't know how it did in the box-office but I will have to surmise that it probably didn't do very well, if one were expecting a summer blockbuster as it was released in June of that year.  Perhaps, it was much too futuristic or much too fantastically unrelatable (then, anyhow) and not in the same genre of entertainment as Star Wars (that did very well as to have several successful sequels). 

Like me, perhaps, you have watched that AI movie and had forgotten about it. Likewise, if you had watched it again recently, you may have a different appreciation for it now. Positively or negatively, you may  indeed have a different attitude towards the message or meaning of the same movie; which is not really surprising since you are  a different person now, in terms of attitude and points of view.  Furthermore, it is because today you are thrust, whether you like it or not, into a world that is not just constantly talking about artificial intelligence but how in many ways it is already affecting  your daily life.  Trust me, aware of it or not, your daily activities are now watched, monitored and affected by AI. In fact, some of the ways that you do business or interact with mundane and recurring facets of daily life are touched by AI, in one form or another. Unless, you are one of the untouched tribes in the interiors of the Amazon rainforest.  You see, even the nomads of Mongolia are not exempt from it.

From the above title of this musing, "mecha" is how an AI humanoid was called in the movie. "Mecha" was short for mechanical; "orgs" meant biological people - short for organism.  Little did Spielberg realize then that the "mecha" he created has now not only become a reality, perhaps  differently from how it was depicted in the movie,  but that it is here to stay and directly or indirectly affecting our lives. 

Let's first deal with the dark side of "mecha" but not dwell too much on it because we hope that the brighter sides will in the end far outweigh the bad as most innovations often do.  For example, auto accidents are responsible for the loss of nearly 50,000 lives annually in the U.S. alone, but we will not ban the production and use of motor vehicles.  The benefits far outweigh the dark side in many ways.

AI is also responsible for all kinds of economic/financial cyber  crimes.  Young minds, children and young people not properly supervised, have fallen prey to or were adversely affected by  cyber bullying and sexual predators that continue to this day. It is not quite well established whether future learning and academic achievements will be adversely affected by too much dependence on AI in the educational system; although the same was said about hand-held calculators and computers decades ago.  

Back to the movie for just a bit.  Early in the  movie as the lead scientist introduced the production of the latest "mecha" he explained that for the first time they were creating a mechanical child (a robot nonetheless) that had the capacity to love its adoptive human parent or whoever was going to be its surrogate parent who  initiates the imprinting protocol. Then a question was raised by one of those in attendance listening to the presentation.  She asked, paraphrased for this musing, "But will a human be able to love the mechanical child/robot in return for the algorithmic love the child/robot will have of the adoptive parent"?

Today, in a perverse way, some young people are so completely immersed in their interaction with a chatbot that they develop a crush or in some cases real love for the entity that they are interacting with on the web. Worse ...

--- 37% of cyberbullying victims who report suicidal thoughts attempt suicide within 6 months, per a 2021 Lancet Psychiatry study.

--- Cyberbullying-related suicide attempts are 4 times more likely to be fatal than those from offline bullying, per a 2019 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

There are a lot more negative data like those dark sides of AI but it is also necessary to see the brighter sides of AI.

AI is here despite earlier warnings from several people in the technology field, including Elon Musk.  However, in the end, faced with the inevitability of AI development he launched his own AI company. 

On the bright side AI has opened up all kinds of possibilities and benefits that are being embraced today. It is now an invaluable tool in helping doctors make better and quicker diagnosis based on blood work and urinalysis and enhanced reading of radiology results and better disease detections, like cancer, through other imaging data that humans sometimes miss that AI does not. It is estimated that perhaps AI could shorten trials and approvals for new drugs. 

Setting aside those high levels of aspirations for what AI is capable of, there are already a number of ways AI is changing our lives positively. There are several AI "assistants" now but let's talk about just one - Amazon's Alexa.  You see Alexa is primarily an order taker, processor of  transactions and delivery schedule. It will process payment, keep track of deliveries and notification of completed deliveries. It will also tell the customer who checks an order on the promised day of delivery with, "Your order is the 9th delivery stop to your home". It has a link to the delivery truck and driver and it is aware of delivery time for each order. All done through voice commands and responsive interactions  through a device smaller than a toaster sitting on the kitchen counter (in most homes  that have it).

Alexa keeps track of previous orders so that when the user orders another bulk of bath tissues, paper towels, cooking oil, etc. it will remind you of them for easier processing if the customer prefers the same brand and package.  If there is a coupon (usually a price discount) Alexa will "gladly" put it on the order. All of these are done in mere seconds, although Alexa will say, to fill milliseconds before it responds with, "Let me check" in well cadenced manner of speaking.

With Prime Membership, delivery is often the next day; or, on the same day when ordered early enough in the morning for a late afternoon, early evening delivery.  Possible in our area because there is a fulfilment center (warehouse delivery hub) nearby.

One day on a whim, I asked Alexa for a recipe for a Filipino dish, "Paksiw ng pata ng baboy".  Alexa without missing a beat not only gave me the recipe and pronounced it in Filipino (pronouncing "paksiw" is very challenging for most non-Filipino speakers) and e-mailed me the recipe when prompted and wished me to enjoy the dish. Also, in mere seconds, it will give you an answer to how to make juice from Kalamansi, or Calamansi, a tropical but primarily a Filipino citrus fruit tree. By the way, Calamansi juice is now a popular refreshment drink in Singapore. I'm sure Alexa will know of a dish if the customer longs for a Polish or Norwegian recipe.

Aside from all of these practical and mundane chores Alexa is capable of, it has other surprises besides keeping a reminder for you to take your medication, sets timers and appointments, and literally talks about the weather but wishes you to be careful if there is heavy rain, flooding or strong winds in the forecast in your area.  Other AI assistants, like SIRI, have about the same capabilities, except not as order takers of goods and merchandise. 

But there is more. Alexa has an opinion on "quantum entanglement", hardly a simple subject in quantum physics,  but it will further explain what Schrodinger meant by his uncertainty principle behind "Schrodinger's cat".  Alexa even knows what an "aswang" is, also pronouncing it properly, and it will elaborate on Filipino folklore and superstition. Those had to be mentioned to show the depth of Alexa's capability beyond being just an order taker and dispatcher of weather reports.

Alexa is not without a sense of humor either.  Asked whether it is really super smart, Alexa says, "Guilty as charged". 

That is AI.

The big brouhaha today is about data centers and additional power plants that are needed to support the gargantuan consumers of energy that they've become.  A simple explanation by way of an analogy is this.  The human brain is maybe only 2% of our entire body weight but it consumes 25% of the total energy the body needs.  The brain is our data center. It is to be expected that data centers will require oodles and oodles of electrical power. So, instead of adding additional load to the present power demands it was proposed that data centers build their own power source. It means, of course, building new power plants nearby.  It infuriates environmental groups because data centers alone will add to demands for all other resources, like water, space and overcrowding.

Well, there is no such thing as a free lunch, is there? However we slice it. That is the conundrum.  I leave with this. Alexa and other delivery businesses actually save fuel and congestion by this one phenomenon. You see, when one household needs just one or two items, it is all bundled together with  other 1 or 2 items ordered by one other household in the same neighborhood, and so on and on. Many households in that one day's route did not go out to drive their cars to the store. Multiply that several folds everyday and we realize that savings on fuel can be substantial, generally speaking.

Not to be minimized is the fact that as more and more people are advancing in years, baby boomers and all, Alexa does indeed perform some incredible service - just one "mecha" serving multiple "orgs", everyday, including Sundays.

This is not the first time I've mused about A.I. I wrote one on 3/1/2020, another on 4/19/2023.

The latest was last year - "Once A.I. Becomes Self Aware, Humans Beware"

Copy and paste the link below to your search bar and click. Of course, they are on the Blog Archive as well.

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2025/04/once-ai-becomes-self-aware-humans-beware.html

 

Second to the Last Word on Socialism

We know the headlines these days that say the Democratic Socialism of America is on the rise and apparently gaining momentum. But not always viewed in a favorable way because a few meanings to the acronym have surfaced. And some among the Democrat Party  are finally speaking out, although the majority are still staying away from public comments - as if fearing the unknown or unknowable consequences of potential backlash.

For those still vacillating in assessing the economic values between what the socialist/communist ideology and the free market system (capitalism) have to offer, go no further than the following. There is presently an ongoing - in real time - laboratory experiment visible from space at night.  Taken with a camera from the ISS (International Space Station) in  4,256 × 2,832 pixels of resolution that reveals what could possibly  be the real proof of the stark differences  between the two systems.

From the photo, upper left is China, lower right is that of S. Korea. The dark patch in between is N. Korea. "The darkened land appears as if it were a patch of water joining the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan. The capital city, Pyongyang, appears like a small island, despite a population of 3.26 million (as of 2008). The light emission from Pyongyang is equivalent to the smaller towns in South Korea. Indeed, the stark difference is "clear as day".

Note: I wrote in an earlier musing that China operates its economy like a capitalist system while executing the powers of government under a communist rule.  It is torn between having to live up to its economic label of Communist In Name Only or CINO, which is a homophone for "SINO" which refers to China and its cultural or linguistic aspects".

Let's make another clear distinction between North and South Korea. South Korea holds regular elections so the people have a hand in how their government is run. Take the case that started out as a political corruption case when its former president was sentenced to  a two year prison term which turned into life imprisonment when he was later found guilty of illegally declaring martial law. That happens only in democratic systems of government.

Will North Koreans be able to do that in N. Korea?  North and South Koreans are essentially and ethnically the same people living in opposite economic tracks. One side a human and economic tragedy, the other one full of realized aspirations with an unlimited future.

It was on September 9, 1948, when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was founded that brought into power its first premier and the beginning of its communist regime under Kim Il-sung. Upon his death his son, Kim Jung-Il took over; when upon his death, brought up the current leader, his son, Kim Jung-un. The ironic tragedy - like every socialist/communist revolutions everywhere in history - is that the oligarchy that precipitated the revolt was replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship that, for all intents and purposes, is not just an oligarchy but a perpetual monarchy. Was Fidel Castro not replaced by Raul Castro, his brother?

Remember that the aspirations we hear of the new system that now appears to be gaining momentum from the local politics in New York aims to fundamentally change the country and the way it runs its business.  It will be tragic if they succeed in their ambitions which are  primarily that of doing away with the Senate, the Supreme Court, police departments and the Dept. of War, the border, jails even and doing away with the deportation of those who entered the country illegally in record number. Many more is a long list that by the way includes taking over the means of producing goods and services.  The latter is  a mere hop, skip into communism. 

Here is a list of the new meanings of DSA:

1. Daily Suicidal Aspirations. Given that proponents of the new political movement are careful not to use the word communism, limiting the label they are comfortable to live by, then socialism it is! They will not want to take over thru murder; instead, it is just suicide by those willing to take the chance. Let's again have the quote below explain it best:

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

― Ayn Rand

2. Dissolve the family unit; Silence dissent; Arrest opposition was classic strategy from 1917 Russia to 1940's China, where later the children were brainwashed into turning in their parents if they so much as said something against the regime.

3. Deadly Seductive Ambitions will lull everyone into believing false promises of a better life by doing away with private property and businesses and re-distributing wealth/income. That is in their manifesto as written in 2024.

Well, can we say, Dare we Say Amen?