無為 Wu-Wei "inexertion", "inaction",
or "effortless action"
Joan Didion I
write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see
and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
Curiosity A
desire to know or learn. An object that arouses interest, as by being novel or
extraordinary.
Thomas Hobbes Hell is truth seen too late.
Polymathy Learning in many fields; encyclopedic knowledge.
Louise Penny Things are strongest where they are broken.
January 2026
This
tradition of the State of the Pete letter started during my gradual school
years. I was writing holiday cards as I was waiting for my simulations to run,
I decided that my efforts to explicate how my life was progressing would be
clearer if I collected all that I had written on each the cards and put them in
one hellaciously long letter. These tomes have evolved over the years into
overly long, meandering, and verbose exercises in self-indulgence. Many of my
friends have told me that they actually liked it; far be it for me to
disappoint the crowd after so many years, so the tradition continues. It is more than just an update
at this juncture; it is a snapshot of my convoluted mind over the past calendar
year, as far as I can recall in my old age. It is an imperfect integration of
my disjoint thoughts and summary of the year, which is the habit of many people
at the end of the year. It gives me the opportunity to practice what Joan
Didion advises: “I write to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm
looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” We will
see how this works out this year.
Dear
friends,
Yet
another year has gone by, it seems from my perspective that life is accelerating
in geometric proportion to my age, this is not a happy happenstance. I hope
that 2025 proved to be a great one for you and your family. My mother and I are
still living in Bucolic Tipp City Ohio.
2025
has been an eventful year for us.
First
and foremost, my mother turned one hundred in early October of this year, in
case you have not noticed my increased posting on social media around October,
which is the birthdate; she was born on the date of the Mid-Autumn festival on
the lunar calendar. It was an event that I could not foresee. It was an exciting landmark for both
of us, although I had to remind mom that she was crossing past the century
mark. As you can see in the photos, she is doing well. The big smile with the
cake is one of my favorite pictures of her. The cake came once again from
Leaguer Bakery here in Dayton. It is a Taiwanese bakery, something that I never
thought would ever exist here in a small midwestern city such as Dayton, but
here it was. This was the fourth or fifth birthday cake that I had asked them
to make for us.
The
second picture is of her and the bouquets and plants that she received from
relatives and friends. She was quite overwhelmed by the attention. Birthday
dinner was from Shen’s, our favorite and closest Chinese restaurant to us, mom
is not keen on leaving the house, so we did takeout.
Since
her birthday was actually on a Monday, I arranged for the family and friends to
join a Zoom call. I had split the people interested in calling into groups.
Each group got roughly thirty minutes on Zoom. She loved it, even though she
was confused by all the faces on the screen and she couldn’t keep track of the
voices and the pictures; she mostly pointed out how everyone had changed in
appearance since she had not seen many of the in years. She slept quite well
that night because of the excitement. Thank you all very much for having taken
the time to call in. We had people from Taiwan, Hawaii, Findlay, St. Louis,
Boston, Atlanta, California, Florida, and all points in between.
Mom
is doing quite well for a centenarian; certain physical parts have quit
working, but the same could be said for me, a sexagenarian. Her blood pressure
is better than mine, but then again, she doesn’t keep up with the news of what
is being done in our country. She does suffer from Sundowning on certain
nights; as the days have gotten shorter, her symptoms are more obvious in the
Winter months. Regardless, life is good for us here.
I
found earlier this year that the IEEE Industry Applications Society — my home
society since gradual school — was honoring me with the distinguished service
award. It was an unexpected and much appreciated honor. Working for the IEEE
has always been a responsibility and duty that had been drummed into my
consciousness by my father, it was never stated but always implied. I had
written down all of my thoughts in the blog version of my acceptance speech in
my Substack; the link is below. If you had not read it yet, you must have been
off my social media because I had posted it everywhere — the human ego at work.
The speech that I gave during the ceremony was not completely extemporaneous
but I had also tried to edit my thoughts in the interest of the time, I failed
miserably in my attempt to stay within the time limit, but I decided to speak
my piece because who knows when I was going to have a chance to thank those
people who had mentored me and made such an impact in my life as well as
expound on the importance of taking volunteering seriously and performing
honorably by telling my story.
https://thecuriouspolymath.substack.com/p/acceptance-speech-for-the-2025-distinguished
The
photos are from the awards ceremony, the middle one is of my good friend Ayman
EL-Refaie presenting me with the plaque, and the last picture is of my two
closest friends, Ayman and Andy Knight along with a newfound friend Mohammad at
Fogo de Chao post prandial. You can’t see it, but I had some serious meat
sweats going on due to the copious amount of beef and lamb picanha we consumed
that night. There can never be too much picanha, you can put that down in
stone.
The
award was presented at the 2025 edition of the Energy Conversion Conference and
Exhibition (ECCE). This is a conference that I have been volunteered to organize
since its inception in 2009. Andy figured out that I had missed six years of
the conference between the pandemic and taking care of my mother. It was great
to go back to the conference, even if it was for just a few days. Seeing and talking
with my old cohorts was the true highlight of the trip. I truly miss geeking
out with the best of the best in machines and drives and catching up with their
lives and their work, although they all seem so old, I don’t know why.
The
trip itself was a source of stress and trepidation. I had not left mom for an
extended amount of time for six years. Fortunately, I have some very good friends
who came to my rescue. They came and stayed with mom for four days while I was
in Philadelphia, the site of the meeting. I was nervous about telling my mom
about the trip, but she was completely relaxed as soon as she saw these friends
and had a chance to interact with them on the first day; so much so that she
simply waved at me nonchalantly when I left for the airport. When I called to
find out how she was doing during the trip, she couldn’t be bothered to talk to
me as she was having too much fun having a slumber party. And I was worried.
Since
I had not traveled for such a long time, and the changes that had wrought in
the travel protocol, I was quite nervous and being an anal retentive, I
planned, packed, replanned, and repacked innumerable times. Since I was not
checking any baggage, I decided to only bring one pair of shoes, my dress
shoes. A greater mistake could not have been made. It turned out that I walked
over five miles on the first day of the trip, walking through the airports and
the streets of Philadelphia. My dawgs were a hurtin’. The trip was smooth
otherwise, just the pains caused by my chronic knucklehead overthinking.
On
a serious note, a friend passed away unexpectedly in the middle of the Summer.
Jim Wall was someone I met a few years ago at Ghostlight Coffee (Now Wayne and
Clover Coffee Shop) here in the South Park neighborhood of Dayton about six or
seven years ago. Our coffee klatch bunch bonded over coffee and conversation, and
we met up as a group three days a week, those days that I was teaching at the
University of Dayton. Our extended group is diverse, but Jim and I were at the
opposite ends of the spectrum in more ways than one. He was a staunch
conservative free marketeer, he had built his business up from scratch, he was
a firm believer in American mythology of the rugged individual loner, and he worshipped
the people I despised: Jamie Diamond, Jack Welch, and other corporate
parasites, he worked out religiously until he had to give it up for fear of
hurting himself, and he was a devoted booster of all things Dayton — especially
the Dayton Ballet. We had certain areas
in common: we both had a strong disregard for the modern day McMBA-from-a-box,
we both loved to eat, although we liked to eat different things, we were both
big fans of underdogs, we both couldn’t stand self-promoting blowhards, and we
both had idealized visions of how the world should work, even though we
couldn’t agree on the same vision. He always cared for the interest of the
various people we met in the coffee shop, no matter who they were, he had a
heart of gold, the demeanor of a tough guy, but was a softie deep down inside. Jim
had turned ninety-three this year and he had been showing signs of slowing down
physically and mentally. I had been picking him up to go to the coffee klatch
for our regular meetings, his kids would come and take him home after the
appointed hour, until one day his son called to say to hold off on the coffee
klatch because Jim had fallen off the last few steps of his stairs. He
succumbed a few weeks later. He is deeply missed by all who knew him from the
coffee klatch. I miss the irascible old man for many reasons, but mostly for
his bluntness and no BS attitude.
As
I alluded to before, my coffee shop mainstay had changed names and ownership.
The new name is Wayne and Clover’s Coffee Shop, named after the intersection
where the shop resides. The new owners are not strangers; they are coffee
klatch participants of long standing. When they noticed the original owner
struggle, they stepped up to the plate. It is all good, they brought in
different and innovative ideas for the space and the business, it is exciting
to see the new developments.
My daily routine rotates between taking care of mom,
teaching, reading, writing, practicing quite a bit of omphaloskepsis,
occasionally exercising, and generally existing happily. I never thought of it
as taking early retirement, although the oncoming freight train that is the age
of sixty-five is making me realize that my status can be interpreted as
retirement, even though it doesn’t feel like it. Famous last words.
I always knew I love sharing knowledge, so being a pedagogue
is a natural extension of that focus in life for me. After having aught for
over six years, I can definitely say that this is my density, to paraphrase
George McFly.
I am once again teaching two courses in the Fall and two in
the Spring. Two of the courses are taught live at the University of Dayton and
two courses are taught virtually at Marquette University. Both universities
have been impacted by the demographic cliff fall off — the hard drop in college
age student enrollment. Both schools are scrambling to make up for the deficit
in income: layoffs, forced retirements, consolidation of departments and
schools to reduce overhead, which ends up creating reductions in the courses
offered because they don’t have enough faculty to teach those courses. While I
understand that these solutions are both dire and necessary, I wonder how an
early warning shot eighteen years prior to the event was not enough. Our
proclivity to kick the can down the road as well as the short-term focus on
profitability is where I have my finger pointed.
One might think that I would be bored with teaching the same
classes every semester, but that would assume that the subjects and the makeup
of individual students remain static from year to year; fortunately for me,
that is never true.
Electric power is a part of the greater energy usage
challenge, further constrained by the human efforts to slow down global warming
and to deal with the very pragmatic problem of operating the electric power
system at a profit, no matter how thin the profit is. The topic is further
complicated and — by implication — enriched by the need to meet the myriads of
physical constraints associated with the interconnected electric grid. The integration
of new technologies into the grid means new and unknown challenges. All this is
to say that I am trying to keep up with the technology, sifting out the facts
from the hype.
The students are the most interesting wild card in my teaching
gig. This year’s students are not much different from last year’s students, but
different enough so that I am both exasperated and entertained by them. Instead
of trying to fit square pegs into round holes — which I have done and will
probably inadvertently continue to do — I have tried mightily to adjust my
teaching to their proclivities. It is a full-time job, except it does not pay
that way. It certainly makes my life very interesting. It doesn’t take away my
hatred of grading assignments, but then again, I am the one who continues to
assign them. My experiment in forcing the students to think and have opinions
has seen a modicum of success. Most are drug along for the ride, some revel in
the exercise, even though I try to challenge their opinions with requiring them
to back it up with non-AI proof. My tactics are not always welcomed; the best I
can say it that they don’t hate it. To paraphrase Elvis Costello: Oh, I know it
don't thrill them; I hope it don't kill them.
One of the side
topics that I have had to jump into with both feet is the subject of using artificial
intelligence for the classroom. As I take an accounting of the flood of
commercial Large Language Model (LLM) bots that are available, I try not to be
a Luddite but it is difficult to not be critical of the type of products that
are foisted upon the general public as the miracle solution for all that ails
humankind. I became even more skeptical after researching just a little bit, digging
just below the surface through the book by Melanie Mitchell (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2025/08/book-review-artificial-intelligence.html)
, Gary Marcus, and the writing of other AI pioneers on
Substack who are skeptics of the ability of LLMs to someday achieve Artificial
General Intelligence. I found it reassuring that as commercial LLMs begin to
show their deficiencies, more cognoscenti in the area have agreed with that
assessment, unfortunately more smoke is being blown up on people’s arses by
those people who have much skin invested in the game.
I usually assign a semester ending project presentation in
each of my classes, so I needed to anticipate the students in my class using
LLMs blindly and without thinking critically. I started to ask the students to
annotate their AI search prompts as a part of the assignment and as a check on
whether they are thinking critically — yes, I actually ask undergraduates to
think critically, it is a rather unique idea. Additionally, a part of the
assignment is for them to verify all the information that they had retrieved from
LLMs as a double check on the verity of the information. Not surprisingly, any
of them have found that the LLM result are so full of hallucinations that is
was better to just do the research themselves, which is what I had hoped.
I found it interesting that neither university that I teach
at had a written and vetted policy regarding the use of AI, even though they both
had asked that all the faculty state our own personal AI policies in our
syllabus. As a result, I was scrambling and using the scorched earth strategy
and scrambling to collect AI usage policies from different universities to
kluge some semblance of an AI policy. After doing a bit of digging, I found
that the existing policies that I was able to collect fell into three buckets:
don’t do it or we will flunk you; use it all you want, it is the wave of the
future; or the administration buries their collective heads in the sand. The
vast majority of the universities that I sampled took the last stance. I ended
up mixing and matching recommendations that I found on Substack from professors
who did not bury their collective heads into the sand and kluged a policy just
for my own use. I ended up sending it up the chain of command of the university
bureaucracy for their approval. They tell me they will take it into
consideration and may use it to create their own policy. I am just a little
shocked.
As an only child,
reading has always been my refuge from loneliness, I have developed the habit
of reading whenever I had nothing to do or if I ever felt lonely; that habit
has evolved into a serious addiction, but of course you all knew that. I read
multiple books in parallel; I have boxes of books that serve as my ad hoc
To Be Read (TBR) stashes — just in case I am caught short of reading material —
the spirit of Umberto Eco lives within me. Yet I have not stopped buying more books,
mostly from small independent online book sellers. I don’t know if it amounts
to a hill of beans worth of difference to their bottom-line, but it makes me
feel better. I buy physical books, eBooks never appealed to me, personal
esthetics. This is why I always schlepp a selection of books when I travel, to
prevent boredom.
At this time in my
reading journey, I have more non-fiction books in my rotation than fiction. The
fiction books I read are almost all mysteries, not many of the literary fiction
genre, whatever that is. Mysteries are
easy to get through, and they don’t need much mental acuity or engagement; just
put the brain on cruise and go. I spent much of this year reading through the stash
of Michael Connelly collection I bought last year; I am at a point with
Connelly where I am getting caught up. I also blew through Louise Penny’s latest;
it was a fantastic read. I am also reading Ian Rankin’s latest. Since I am
running out of series, I decided to look through some of the other series that
I had paused previously, one never stopping reading a good series, one just tap
the brake a bit for a short respite.
I dug back into Zen
and the Are of Motorcycle Maintenance this year for the third of fourth
time, but the first time in the last couple of decades, even though I refer to ZMM
as one of the books that fundamentally changed my life. The latest reading revealed
parts of the book that I did not remember, but those parts intersected nicely
with some of the topics that I have been learning about, so far it has been a
successful re-reading. ZMM also pulled me back into my collection on Taoism.
Buddhism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, etc.
My non-fiction TBR is
broad and since I am under no pressure to “finish” studying a subject, I am
indulging on going down some rabbit holes to satisfy my curiosity. I am of the
belief that learning never ends even as my best learning days have receded. I
have amateurishly diagnosed myself with the affliction of — consciously and unconsciously — making up
for the liberal arts education that I had not obtained since I sacrificed that
liberal art education as an undergrad to focus on engineering, even though
there are still quite a bit of technical content in my non-fiction reading TBR
pile. Most of the books are on broad topics in philosophy, history, mathematics,
neurosciences, music, pedagogy and learning sciences, amongst many other
topics. I suspect that there is a bit of latent ADHD in my neural make up;
whereas many other men are enthralled with shiny things, I am enthralled with
the “shiny” subjects. Many of the subjects are connected and cross coupled, for
example, the subject of neurosciences — a big subject area — encompasses
philosophy, physiology, psychiatry, anatomy, AI, causality, systems thinking, and
even bits of electrical engineering. My rabbit holes tend to be open ended
because many of the subjects are unresolved and new. This gives me an opportunity
to riff , abstract, and generalize to my heart’s content.
One of the pleasant
surprises is that my interest in the workings of the brain coincides with the
interest area of one of my good friends from undergraduate. The difference is
that he comes at it from the anatomical perspective and I am coming at it from
a more philosophical side. In addition, the son of another friend of my undergraduate
days is doing his doctorate in psychology and is well read in the subject, so
it is a nice triumvirate, even though my TBR list on the subject has expanded
considerably with recommendation from those two.
In a DUH moment, I
realized that most of my non-fiction readings are focused on the stories and
histories of those who advanced the boundaries of the subjects that I am
reading about; I am particularly drawn to the historical narratives of how developments
were made. I do occasionally read the original sources —they are a struggle to
read — but I tell myself that they are worthwhile obstacles to overcome. Doing
a bit more amateur self-analysis, this is why I was not so great at the
development part of my engineering work, as I was more interested in the
research part.
A
recently discovered book titled: Everyday I Read by Hwang
Bo-Reum posited that reading and writing should be considered as one task, as
both reading and writing are inextricably coupled even though most shy away
from the writing portion of the equation. The concept resonated with me
immediately and it is clearly aligned with the Joan Didion quote that I have
listed above: “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what
I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
The “process” becomes: read everything I can on a subject, summarize what I had
read, leave it alone to marinade to give myself time to abstract and generalize,
and then write my thoughts and impressions in my own words to find out what I
really think. This is why I started my blogs, even though I didn’t realize it
when I started it. The blogspot address is where I put my book reviews and, for
the time being, the State of the Pete since I want to keep it kind of private for
my friends and family. I joined Substack a few years ago and that is the place
where I aim for broader distribution. I like to think that between Heather Cox
Richardson and I, we have over a million readers on Substack.
It
takes me a long time to gather my scattered thoughts and formulate a central
theme for an essay, what comes out is never the same as what I started with;
the result is that the writing turns out differently from what I had in mind in
the beginning, that is beauty and serendipity of the discovery process and not
having to work to a schedule so that I can putz. Those of you who know me also
know that this laissez-faire attitude towards writing is highly ironic since I am regimented and
inflexible because I am an engineer, those engineering traits will always rise to
the surface, but not as often as when I was younger. An unintended consequence
is that there are many unfinished writing files on my computer, but I am not on
the clock. My so-called “writing process” allows me to indulge in both reading
and writing habits simultaneously. It also is true to my habit of chasing my
intellectual shiny thing, I can focus on the newest ideas until I run out of
steam, then I go back and think about it days and weeks after I get started.
My friends convinced
me to accept an assignment to help organize and write some articles on the
history of the IEEE Industry Application Society. These friends conspired to make
me believe that this task came from me certainly knew what they were doing
since I have been quite excitedly researching some topics for it. My friends
know me well.
I had abandoned the legacy media outlets, television,
newsprint, news sites, etc. The litany of the usual suspects in the legacy
media bending at the knees is unending, the latest being CBS. It is a shame
because I quite enjoyed CBS Sunday Morning. I just hope that Steve Hartman’s
pieces aren’t corrupted by Bari Weiss and her corporate overlord: Larry Ellison.
I still maintain an electronic subscription to the New York Times, but only to
maintain access to the Strands and Spelling Bee games, and the By the Book
column in the Sunday NYT Book Review section. I am addicted to all three.
My search for uncompromised and truthful news sources has
now become more time consuming, but it is worth the effort, even though I fall
for slop all the time, both AI and non-AI slop. The social media empires are as,
if not more corrupt, than the legacy media. Finding reliable news sources is time
and effort sink in the modern era because we must test for the veracity of each
source by putting each news source to the test. As it turns out, my writing
outlet, Substack, has so far been surprisingly useful. The main reason is that
many of the legacy media journalist refugees have switched to Substack, many of
them are proven and are known quantities. I subscribe for free and I sample
what they put out for cheap bastards like me; it is FAFO in the best sense of
the phrase. I grudgingly pay for a subscription if it is worthwhile. Currently
I am paying for Heather Cox Richardson, Paul Krugman, Jay Kuo, David Epstein,
Andy Borowitz, and a handful of non-news related subjects.
The freebie subscriptions have been great investments for my
money. It is a treasure trove of expert knowledge on AI, especially knowledge
that runs contrary to the echo chamber of the LLM cheerleaders that permeates
throughout social media. Substack also has little pockets of knowledge on
esoteric subjects that would take me a long time to unearth, so esoteric that
most of the people who write do so for free, like me. I am quite happy with
Substack, so far. As we all know, the status quo can change on a dime. Apropos
of nothing, Dolly Parton is also on Substack.
I have presence on Threads and Bluesky as well; but they are
just meh, too much AI slop.
Threads is the National Enquirer of social media, people and
bots generating click baits. The gist of the postings range between the
extremes of AI generated infuriating stories of people being done wrong or
inspirational stories of people rewarded for doing right. If you want to waste
time, go there. It’s no surprise since the site belongs to Meta, the Facebook
parent company. Bluesky is lefty heaven, lots of groupthink that leans to the
left. Ironically, it started out as a skunk project for the former Twitter, but
when Voldemort took Twitter over, he let it get spun off by the project lead, a
young American Chinese woman. Their membership blew up after the November
election from people abandoning the former Twitter.
Even the stodgy web site LinkedIn is suffering from AI slop
overload, although it is still an excellent resource for my research for certain
kinds of technical material for my class, because there are some amazing and legitimate
sources on the site. For example, I learned more about the Iberian Peninsula
blackout, information that is verified and cite the actual official
investigations. Many of the recent postings are becoming unreadable and poster
children for the Dunning-Kruger Effect. A salient account is Ralph Aboujaoude
Diaz’s take on the foibles of modern corporate life.
My two alma maters were both in minor bowl games, even
though both flirted with being included in the College Football Playoffs.
Illinois dropped out early and Georgia Tech was able to hold out a bit longer
before losing enough games to knock them out. They both had decent seasons, won
enough to keep the fanbase happy since neither university had ever been
football powerhouses, even though Georgia Tech had won a National Championship
when I was in gradual school.
Women’s College Volleyball had an amazing season, ending
with Texas A&M winning the national championship. It was especially
thrilling for all the fans of the underdogs when they beat the can’t lose
Nebraska team, who had run through their opponents like a buzzsaw. Texas
A&M played nearly flawless volleyball to win the Natty. It was a banner
year for the sport as the television ratings, attendance, and national media
attention reached record levels, even an uneventful three game final match
didn’t the viewership. Being a fan of two middle of the road college athletic
programs, my Pavlovian reaction to my teams winning and losing carried over to
my expectations of women’s college volleyball, which is: how badly can we fuck
this up? We, the sport, didn’t.
One of my friends is a TAMU alum, she is ecstatic because
two of TAMU’s teams were in the running for the national crown. She also had
the Pavlovian defensive reaction: don’t fuck this up. Volleyball did not.
My volleyball activities had been curtailed for the last few
years; since I cannot leave my mom by herself, I did not coach club for the
duration. I miss it, partly because this has been what I had always done, partly
because I miss the look of accomplishment on the player’s faces. And partly
because I miss having a laboratory for experimenting what I had learned. I try
to stay current with conversing with coaches at all levels, track the teams during
the college volleyball season, and write about what I think regarding coaching.
It isn’t the same, obviously, but it must be for now.
In my absence, the club volleyball world has gone through
some dramatic and unwelcomed transformation. My friends in club coaching have
all had the same thought: it is time to quit coaching, go through their minds. The
era of big money and private equity is amongst us. The small non-corporate
clubs are getting smaller because they have a tough time competing with the big
dogs. All of this is driven by snowplow parents’ desires, fanned by clubs
filling them with mythologies. The topic could take another ten pages, so I
will spare you. It stopped being about the players, the families, or heaven
forbid, the sport anymore. It is about the bottom line, the quarterly earnings
statement. Everything that I hate about modern business practices. Youth sport
by MBA.
One opportunity that
had been granted to me this year was that I was asked to on the Master Coaches Roundtable
in May alongside some legendary coaches who are the hosts. Here is the clip. https://vimeo.com/1082035677 I was honored to be asked and enjoyed conversing with these
legends whose coaching careers I had followed from afar. It was enjoyable and
quite an ego boost.
