Words are the bricks and mortar of the mind;
pictures alone bear insufficient weight.
“Message” demands a bridge more strongly lined,
passing from brain to brain our human freight.
Wagons of thought traverse these worded roads,
linking through space and time our separate heads,
making from widely spread synaptic nodes
a single mental net of verbal threads.
Mathematics traced our footsteps to the moon,
but Johnson didn’t calculate alone.
The brains that steered the astronaut platoon
amongst them counted Archimedes’ own.
Since words convey between us all we know,
how great that art that shapes them as they go.
Tag Archives: Facebook
Driven
In Riyadh drivers are a fact of life.
Domestics, Ubers, taxi men—they steer
the expat hordes and every mother, wife,
and daughter to their destinations here.
They come in droves from countries down the scale,
from Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Nepal,
and India—impoverished men who trail
the highways at another’s beck and call.
Each time I walk, I hear the taxi horns,
each plaintive beep, “Please white man, share your wealth
with me.” For fourteen hours, from early morns
and through each night they spend their life—and health.
I sit in back, while they the front are given.
My conscience knows who drives and who is driven.
AI and the Death of Truth
Note: I first became aware of OpenAI’s language model development work in 2019. Even then, it was clear where their work would lead. In the aftermath of ChatGPT’s release in November of last year, it’s quite clear that the disruptions to work and truth that were envisioned in 2019 are simply inevitable. I am sad for my children. I added a follow-up to the initial post a day later. Both are provided below. (DL, June 11, 2023).
Feed it the first few paragraphs of a Guardian story about Brexit, and its output is plausible newspaper prose, replete with “quotes” from Jeremy Corbyn, mentions of the Irish border, and answers from the prime minister’s spokesman. One such, completely artificial, paragraph reads: “Asked to clarify the reports, a spokesman for May said: ‘The PM has made it absolutely clear her intention is to leave the EU as quickly as is possible and that will be under her negotiating mandate as confirmed in the Queen’s speech last week.’” www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/14/elon-musk-backed-ai-writes-convincing-news-fiction
And who will be able to tell the difference?
I spent ten years as an English teacher. Trust me when I tell you most people definitely won’t be able to.
The search for truth is about to die—shortly before the planet does.
Continue readingGreat-Grandma and Typhoid
The second summer we were here was full of such sickness as I had never seen or thought of. . . . It was typhoid.
In the process of unpacking from our recent move, I have at my hand once again a letter that my Great-Grandma Nourse wrote from Louisiana in 1938 to a friend in California. It tells the story of her family’s life after their move from California to Louisiana and covers a roughly four year period during the Great Depression from around 1934 to 1938. It was written to an old family friend back in California and was later returned to my grandmother by one of that friend’s descendants.
The purpose of this post is to share that letter.
Continue readingMy Beef with Captain America: Civil War
Note: A high-school classmate regularly posts fun-to-read comments and threads on Facebook about the MCU. His “best of” lists and rankings are constantly being updated as each new title comes out. In 2018 he posted his then favorite six movies from the MCU. That led to an extended comment from me in response. (DL, Sept. 13, 2021)
Your top six [Avengers, Black Panther, CA:CW, GoG, Iron Man, SM:Homecoming] is the same as mine with the exception of Civil War. My beef with CW isn’t the convoluted plot-forcing (although as you note, it’s pretty bad). My problem is the way it handles the core moral motivations in the movie.
Continue readingAmerican Diplomacy
Capturing funny conversations for people who weren’t there is hard. But this one is worth trying. It is relevant that Pakistani Friend 2 in the dialog below is a big Pakistani nationalist, and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about international politics and the negative perceptions towards American policies.
Me to Pakistani Friend 1: “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Continue readingEqual Justice and the Border Wall
The other day in a thread about illegal immigration and deportation, I posted some words of Trey Gowdy’s from a commencement address at Liberty University:
Let me tell you something about the law. It is the most unifying and equalizing force that we have in this country. It is the only thing that makes the richest person in this county drive the same speed limit as the poorest. It is what makes the richest person in Virginia pay his or her taxes on precisely the same day as the poorest.
As Trump’s inauguration draws closer, and as he continues to fill his cabinet with right-wing picks, and as he continues to make a fool of himself on Twitter, I continue to believe that the DNC and the GOP establishment made space for all of this to happen by failing for so many years to take a stand for the rule of law on the matter of immigration. The wall issue gave Trump so much traction in his campaign, early and late.
The thing is, illegal immigration doesn’t negatively effect people with money and power. Illegal immigrants aren’t moving into their neighborhoods, changing the culture around them, and competing for their jobs, or—really—affecting them much in any way at all. As Ted Cruz said, last November, “The politics of [illegal immigration] would be very, very, different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande—or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press.”
I think this is a very important point in the aftermath of Trump’s election, and Gowdy’s quote made it click for me.
The refusal to enforce the law on immigration and on border controls is really an unequal use of the law. Whether they realize it or not, those with power and money have decided that a certain segment of law that primarily protects the interests of poor, non-elite citizens doesn’t matter. And they’ve failed to enforce it. This failure is analogous to me to busting poor people for speeding, but not the rich.
And while non-elites may often be poorer and have less education than those in power, they aren’t stupid. They know a raw deal when they see one just as much as my six-year-old daughter (sniff, now seven) knows when her older brother is giving her a raw deal.
How America handles the immigration question is a matter of social justice. But it is also a matter of justice—a matter of law.
As long as the political establishment continues their failure of enforcing the law in this area, so long will Trump and people like him have a potent weapon in their Populist arsenal. Our political establishment, for the sake of their own agendas, and for the sake of this country, needs to start consistently and thoroughly enforcing the rule of law at our borders and in regards to illegal immigration.
Disillusioned Tears
Notes: Much of my inner life since about 2010 has been lived against a backdrop of constant, dull pain. It is the pain of disillusionment, of hope betrayed. In the last few years I have learned to have more peace, to accept what I cannot change. In particular, I have begun to learn how to live a life of faith again and to hope in God even in the midst of unresolved doubt. But there are days (today was one in fact) where the old pain is strong, and then I feel lethargic and sad. (DL, June 10, 2023).
"You have been trying to trap me in words, playing with me? Or are you now trying to snare me with a falsehood?"
"I would not snare even an orc with a falsehood," said Faramir.
I was raised in a Christian home by conservative parents.
I was taught that the Bible is 100% literally true because it’s God’s message to humanity.
As a boy, I was taught that biblical, heterosexual marriage and the family is a great good and a gift from God. I was taught that husbands and wives deserve loyalty, kindness, and love from one another, and that they have a duty to be loyal, kind, and loving.
I was taught that abortion is wrong and a heinous slaughter of innocents because every human—even an unborn one—is a valuable soul made in the image of God Himself.
I was taught that God hates lies, and that to speak truth and eschew falsehood is Good, is pleasing to God, and is a mark of honor in a man.
I was taught that stealing from another—or even coveting what belongs to another instead of rejoicing with them in their bounty—is an evil deed, and that persisting in evil deeds, and hiding them, stains and twists the character and the soul.
I was taught that a man is to treat a woman with respect at all times, and in matters of love, with gentleness and chivalry.
That’s what I was taught, and each of those lessons took deep root in the very core of my being. I believed them all. And I wanted to be—longed to be—a man characterized by those things. A man of Virtue.
Then I grew up an learned lots of other things.
First I learned that the president was a Bad Man because he wasn’t a Man of Virtue. He did shady dealings with cronies. He Whitewatered and Travelgated and cheated on his wife with an intern and lied about it.
How sad for America that Bad People had chosen a Bad Man to be president instead of a Man of Virtue like Ronald Reagan.
Then I learned more.
I learned that my Sunday-school-dad was a serial adulterer. I learned that my mom and dad had, ahem, known each other for a long time before they were married. I learned that the guy who worked for Ronald Regan who went on to write the Book of Virtues was a gambling addict. I learned that Rush Limbaugh was a drug addict. That Newt Gingrich left his wife when she had cancer. I learned that pastors—so many pastors—cheated on their wives. I learned that lots of things taught as for-sure Bible truth were in fact a bunch of nonsense. And that the Bible probably isn’t 100% literally true at all.
And I learned more.
I learned that it was more fun to play video games than to work hard. I learned that I liked porn and that it was very hard not to look at it. I learned that telling lies could really make your day go a lot more smoothly than telling the truth. I learned that I liked eating junk food and would keep doing it even though I knew it made me fat and that my being fat was unpleasant for me and for those closest to me—but I did it anyway.
So much I have learned.
About the loss of faith. About political expediency. And WMDs in Iraq. And water boarding. And To Catch a Predator. About the Jack Bauers and the Frank Underwoods. The Bill Clintons. Bill Gothards. Arnold Schwarzeneggers. The Donald Trumps.
And yes, even the David Lohneses.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I very often wish with a lump in my throat (maybe even now, but shhhhh) that I could be that boy again who believed in Good and looked up to Good Men, and the Good Old Flag, and the Good Book, and delighted in Hope at the triumph of Good.
But I can’t.
I’m a middle-aged, overweight white guy who struggles with depression at what he and the world is and is becoming, even though I have nothing to complain about because I’m a scion of white upper middle-class America and have had basically all the benefits with very few of the pains of the human experience.
I grew up thinking I lived in Lothlorien only to discover I was in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. And the wound has never healed.
But I will be damned before I give up on Lothlorien.
And I’ll be damned before I vote for Saruman for loathing of Sauron. The light may fail, and darkness may cover the lands, and I may be an orc myself like every other orc that slithers across this globe.
But even if orcs and a world filled with orcish dens is all I ever know, in my heart the Idea of the Good Man still shines brightly—so brightly it hurts. And I may never be that, and I may never see it, but I’ll be damned before I walk away from it.
And I refuse to be a Wormtongue to Trump’s Saruman,
Even if so many of those I once respected and trusted have no problem being so.
EDIT: Based on several similar comments, it seems that this post has come across as more of a complaint against people than I meant it–as if there were some bitterness or disappointment I feel in people. That is not how I feel. One of my friends upon reading this post encouraged me not to forget forgiveness, and to save some for myself as well. I have pasted my response to him below.
Forgiveness.
If I have forgotten it, I suppose it would be for myself as you suggest. I love myself as much as any man does, yet often I do not like myself.
But I have no grudge with people. I don’t feel betrayed by the failings of others. How can I blame people for being people? Born into an inscrutable existence, beset with sorrows and challenges beyond their means, and finding their try half over just as they begin to understand the question.
I would have little knowledge of either myself or the human condition if I were to begrudge others their failures—no matter how low.
For many I feel mostly pity. Dennis Hastert is a good example. How must the enjoyment of his accolades and power been tainted by the knowledge of his secret sin—like Dimmesdale in the Scarlet Letter. Unless he felt no guilt or shame and was instead a nothing man not feeling the brokenness of his state, clinging to scraps of glory and power he could never keep, watching in vain as day by day his face grew older in the mirror. An evil man, but pitiable—like Gollum, grasping in vain after his Precious, and incapable of peace.
Probably if I had been a victim, my pity would be overcome by bitterness and hate, and forgiveness would be hard to find. And certainly I believe in Evil and that there are Evil Men worthy only of confrontation and destruction.
But mostly I see the human race as struggling blindly in darkness. We are something like sightless swine squealing after scraps, while singing stories about our royal pedigree and noble mien. We are also like blind children, left alone in the wild to grope our way home as best we can. Pitiable.
Some perhaps are born bent and broken, as are dogs which have been bred to cruelty and violence. But even then, a person can hardly choose his genes or upbringing.
No. I have no grudge with people. If I feel a grudge, it is with God.
It seems to me that if He is and rules as my Calvinist reading of the Bible says he does, He must be cruelly unjust—setting us to a test He knows we cannot pass, and torturing us forever when we fail it.
If He is and rules in some other way, then He seems to me distant and uncaring—giving no sure and loving sign to lead us on the road while we squeal and grope in the darkness, consuming ourselves.
If He is not . . .
. . . then Lorien indeed is dead and I am inconsolable.
My Environmental Conversion
Environmentalism is becoming my number one issue.
In the long term, other current issues are mostly irrelevant. Whatever legislation or policies we implement on issues like gay rights or gun control or religious freedom will only make a difference during our day. In one hundred years, or in five hundred years, when we and all those who knew us are dead and no one remembers us, new generations will come along and re-fight these issues and rewrite all we did.
Even the most influential triumphs (things like the Declaration of Independence or the Fall of Communism) are extremely fleeting in their effects. In another two centuries–or ten–no one knows what the world will be like. Maybe the center of the Earth will be Mecca. Or maybe it will be Tokyo. Or Salt Lake City. It’s extremely unlikely that the Fall of Communism will be much remembered–much less who the next US Supreme Court justice is.
Environmentalism is different.
Continue readingA Single Day’s Work
The morning after the Brexit vote, as the status-quo-shattering results were becoming clear, Hamburger Morgenpost, the daily newspaper in Hamburg, Germany, rolled out a front page featuring a large portrait of Winston Churchill and a long headline in bold letters: Etwas aufzubauen mag die langsame und mühsame Arbeit von Jahren sein. Es zu zerstören kann der gedankenlose Akt eines einzigen Tages sein.
The headline is a translation of words Churchill delivered on September 29, 1959 in a speech to the Conservative Party Association in his constituency of Woodford: “To build may be the slow and laborious task of years; to destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”