Musings and Ruminations

"I write to find out what I think." Joan Didion. "Qu'est ce que je sais"-What do you know? "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog know one big thing" Archilochus I studied most of my life for credentials, now I study as a Polymath. This blog is my personal ruminations. I invite you along to explore many things. I won't promise that it will all be interesting, but I promise that the thoughts are honest. I realized, relatively late, that life is for the living. So, it was time to live.

Showing posts with label State of the Pete. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2022

State of the Pete-2023

Peter Wung

1234 Hermosa Drive

Troy, OH 45373

(937)339-0310(Home) (314)605-7344 (Cell)

pwung@earthlink.net http://PolymathToBe.blogspot.com,

Twitter: @Phaedrus1 and @PolymathToBe http://www.librarything.com/profile/pw0327 (profile) http://www.librarything.com/catalog/pw0327 (catalog)

Equanimity

"Evenness of mind or temper; calmness or firmness, especially under conditions adapted to excite great emotion; a state of resistance to elation, depression, anger, etc."

“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.”

Joan Didion

Curiosity

"A desire to know or learn. An object that arouses interest, as by being novel or extraordinary."

無為

Wu-Wei

"inexertion", "inaction", or "effortless action"

Polymathy

"Learning in many fields; encyclopedic knowledge."

"In this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation."

Alexander Von Humboldt

December 2022

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, and it has evolved into these overly long and verbose tomes. My friends have told me they liked it; far be it for me to disappoint them, so I have continued the tradition. It has grown to be more than just a letter of update; it is a snapshot of my thinking and opinion over the year. This exercise has been the means for me to integrate my disjoint thoughts and summarize the year, as most humans are wont to do at the end of the year. I have tried to steer this away from being a paean to me, as anything written about personal thoughts will de-evolve into; you, my friend, are the ones who need to decide it I am successful in that endeavor.

This letter is anything but an extemporaneous output, which is how I had hoped it would resemble, although this is not quite as difficult as giving birth to a dissertation. I have much more fun writing this than writing about controlling motors.

My dearest friends,

I hope my annual greeting finds you healthy and joyful. 2022 has been a year for the Wung house. We are still living in Dayton Ohio and my mom still lives with me. She turned 97 this year. It was celebrated in a low key way at home with Chinese takeout as she does not care to venture out of the house, both because of her lack of mobility and because of the threat of COVID, even though she has had all the vaccinations. Her days are spent between taking care of herself and driving me crazy.

The year was passing uneventfully until the Monday before Thanksgiving when mom was not feeling well. We rushed her to the ER where we found out that she was suffering from congestive heart failure. She stayed in the progressive care unit of the Upper Valley Hospital for a week. Her condition had stabilized, through medication, well enough for her to be sent to the same rehab facility where she spent seven months in 2021. The idea was to have her rehab physically so that she can be strong enough to be self-reliant and independent as she was before the CHF.

While there, she tested positive for COVID. Luckily, she had all the vaccines, so she only suffered for a couple of days before she recovered sufficiently. Unfortunately, she was kept in isolation for ten days. While she was in isolation, she was not allowed to be out of her room, so she did all of her physical and occupational therapies in the room. She was released on December 16. She is back home with me now and everything is seemingly back to the way it was before she went in. Her cognitive abilities suffered a bit while she was in the hospital and the rehab home. This was something that I did not realize. She started to hallucinate and was in the throes of various conspiracy theories. The nurses and staff assured me that this was normal, attributable to a combination of old age confusion, COVID brain, and the Sundowner’s syndrome. (https://www.seniorliving.org/health/sundown-syndrome/) It took her a few days, but she is back to her normal faculties today, mas o menos, much to my relief.

This experience, along with all the other experiences I have had with mom’s condition has made me ever more appreciative to the nurses, nurses’ aides, and everyone working in the hospitals and rehab centers. I frankly would not have known how to act and react without their compassion and care.

I am also grateful for my family — the Lin sisters and Dolores Lee — as well as good friends from throughout my life for allowing me to kvetch to them after long days and evenings in the various facilities, as I was physically fatigued and emotionally spent by the time I crawled into bed. You don’t know just how much the phone calls have meant to me and how grateful I am for you. Thank you all so very much.

My Life In General

I am still the manuscript portal administrator for my home technical society, the IEEE Industry Application Society (IEEE IAS). I am also involved in the organizing of two conferences within the society. Work that keeps me surrounded by the latest in the research that in industry, something I have been distanced from for a few years. I still have an interest in the work but I have gained a different perspective as I am further removed from the granular daily work, which afforded me a generalist’s eye view. I am not saying it is superior, but it is a much different perspective, it does keep me thinking, sometimes way too much.

December 31, 2022, will be the end of my four year term as the chair of the IEEE Smart Grid Program. It has been a wild ride, having to go through the COVID era in any leadership role is challenging. While I am not all that keen on every decision I had made in this role, I am not ashamed of the myriad of decisions that we had to make under duress to navigate the treacherous waters. As the coaching saying goes: never be the last coach for any player; I am glad that I am not the last chair of that organization. I leave the organization in a healthy state, having closer alliances with the sponsoring societies. I am also quite excited about the new chair, Prof. Wei-Jen Lee, he is more than qualified for the job and he is passionate about the mission. Interesting thing about Wei-Jen, he had met my father when he came to Taipei with his doctoral advisor back when my dad was working for the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Republic of China. It is a very small world.

I missed the annual geek fest, ECCE 2022 in Detroit, the conference that I have been attending every year since its inception. I miss the comradery and opportunities to converse, hang out, and enjoying adult beverages with my friends. My friend Emmanuel chaired the organizing committee for ECCE 2022, and by all accounts it was an absolute success, much kudos to him.

I am teaching electric power courses at both the University of Dayton and Marquette University. I am not, however, commuting between Dayton and Milwaukee; the Marquette classes are all virtual. I have become somewhat adept at using Zoom and Teams. I don’t think I will ever be the same with Webex.

I teach the same class: Introduction to Electric Energy Systems, that I have taught for the last few years at Dayton in the Fall. I also teach a more advanced version of that class called Contemporary Power Systems and the Smart Grid at both Marquette and Dayton in the Spring.

The changeup for the past Fall is that I agreed to tackle teaching a Power System Protective Relaying class at Marquette, a class that I last took as a student more than thirty years ago. I managed to find my notes in the chaos that is my basement. Unfortunately, they were not of much help as the state-of-the-art in power system protection has changed significantly in the intervening thirty years. I did manage to cobble a set of class notes together from three books: one a classic power system protection book geared towards practicing engineers, a modern protection book written by a relay manufacturer, and a power protection textbook geared towards students. Much thanks to Prof. Miroslav Begovic for recommending the books. The book for practicing engineers was written by a very good friend of my father’s, J. Lewis Blackburn, Uncle Lewis. In fact, my father took the famous Westinghouse Protective Relaying class with Uncle Lewis nearly 70 years ago. I have thus come full circle to revisit an area that my father had studied while he came to the US as a young man.

It was a chaotic semester, but it was a great learning experience for me, I hope that it was the same for the students. What made it all work was that the students were enthusiastic and were eager to learn, which made all the difference. It was an exercise in instantaneous turnaround for me, I had to learn the material and then teach it to the students the same week.

I also agreed to teach an introduction to Power Electronics class this coming Spring. This should be interesting, another topic that I have not reviewed in years, but much closer to what I was doing as an engineer.

I had a rather large contingent of non-American students this year, with different cultural norms, habits, and motivation. We all struggled with dealing with each other’s expectations. In the end, a number of students who had difficulties showing up to class dropped the class, while those who did appear in person did well. I need to rethink how I approach the class for next year if the influx of non-American students persists.

Volleyball

My volleyball life has changed. Since I am the primary care giver for my mom, I cannot travel overnight to tournaments. My club had me working with all the teams, depending on which coaches ask for help. I did not miss coaching in tournaments, I did miss hanging out with fellow coaches during the down times and I miss visiting with my coaching friends from around the country. Living and dying as the decision-making prowess of teenagers was not the most pleasant experience.

Since I was able to work with all the teams within the club, I got to know some players that I would not have gotten to know if I had my own team. Indeed, I believe that the group of 18’s that I spent the most time with made me love coaching again. A good number of them are playing in college now, and they were keen on being prepared before getting to college in the Fall. We had voluntary sessions with them, more individualized workouts with about four or five players at a time. I was able to teach them some advanced tactics that they had not been exposed to prior to this season. I benefited far more from coaching them than they benefited from being coached by me. The 18’s coach told me that they would sneak in some plays that we had worked on in matches because they just wanted to experiment.

Here is my appreciation for our time together and for them. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/02/volleyball-coaching-life-teaching.html)

I also worked with some of the younger players, doing specialized workouts. The rewards came from working with players whose minds were curious. It was also quite satisfying that they were quick studies. This is #WhyICoach.

Needless to say, I did not venture to the frozen tundra that is Omaha 2022 for the AVCA Convention and the NCAA Division I Final Four. It is the same reason that I did not go to Detroit for ECCE 2022, in fact I have not travelled in the last three years. I miss long nights at the convention with my volleyball friends, I miss the learning, the debating, the sessions, and the arguments.

The Chautauqua

Chautauqua was an adult education and social movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day.

Since I spend most of my time at home or teaching, I read and try to fulfill my self-proclaimed mission of becoming a Curious Polymath. It started life as a sardonic poke at myself, a haughty name for what I do: ask questions, learn so that I can answer the questions, organize what I learned to facilitate retention, and leverage that knowledge to become witty, erudite, and be THE colorful conversationalist at parties, which I of course, never ever attend. I doubt I will ever be known as a colorful wit, I will more likely be known as the monochromatic twit.

In my quest for Curious Polymathy, I chose to train my attention on many different subjects. All at once is my modus operandi, why focus on one thing at a time when you can try to do many in parallel. Hence the disjointed choices in reading material in heavy bag of books I always seem to carry with me.

I have also concluded that my temperament is more suited to be a generalist rather than a specialist as I get restless when I am too focused on one topic. I still enjoy digging into the granularity of topics of interest, but I need to spread my attention around so that I can think about everything unencumbered by tunnel vision.

My attention has been focused on cognitive neurosciences recently, it is completely outside of my comfort zone. The path I took is a circuitous one. It started as I was trying to fill in the large gap in my knowledge of statistics. In reading broadly about statistics, specifically inferential statistics, drawing inference, and learning about how people make decisions has been a theme in my curiosity meanderings for the last few years. The path now sits on the topic of Causal Inference. I had started and dropped reading Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why? (Pearl 2018) many times over the last few years. I finally managed to buckle down and dug into it with intent. It is difficult because it is a hybrid concept, depending on statistical ideas and a large dose of intuition. Pearl pioneered the area, developing the mathematics of causality to create a structure in the uncertain human decision-making process. My initial foray into causal inference stems from my experience with the misapplication of statistical tools; I like the idea of augmenting statistical calculations with causal mathematics. It just seems so much more organic.

I am still at the initial slope of the learning curve, far from a clear high-altitude view of the subject. It has been challenging, and the learning curve is stiff.

My interests in causal inference and cognitive neurosciences led me to a nascent interest in artificial intelligence. I learned of Gary Marcus’ arguments for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as opposed to the AI community’s reliance on Deep Learning through reading his Substack site. By the way, Substack is a valuable resource. I was exposed to it from my subscription to Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letters From an American column.

Gary Marcus articles speaks with expertise about the burgeoning application of artificial intelligent, more specifically, his focus on AGI; he posits that it is the key to creating AI that is capable of reasoning and make better decisions without the advantage of complete information. Most of the AI that is commercially applied uses Deep Learning which is based on using the scorched earth training through crazily large data sets. Marcu’s book, Rebooting AI, takes on that argument (Gary Marcus 2006).

The reason I bring this up — as I am only halfway through Marcus’ book — is that there has been a lot of attention developing about ChatGPT, an AI chatbot which can hold seemingly rational conversations and churn out articles which is sophisticated enough to fool people into thinking that the articles are written by human subject matter experts. ChatGPT is an OpenAI project. OpenAI is partly owned by Elon Musk, which is why the chatbot had garnered so much notoriety. They announced the launch of the chatbot with great fanfare, their claim is that this tool’s development solves the human intelligence problem. The founder of OpenAI has since walked back much of his hyperbole just months after the launch, after the open-source testing of the chatbot by the general public has churned out both brilliant articles and pure garbage. Gary Marcus examines the tool in this article (https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/ais-jurassic-park-moment ). Academia had seemingly lost their sh** about this because many professors were afraid that students had found a way to bypass the essay question, through using AI.

Non-Fiction Books

As I was reading through a list of books that Gary Marcus has authored, one stood out. He had taken a year out of his life to learn to play the guitar, approaching the learning process as a cognitive psychologist, as he is familiar with the latest in the best learning practices. He made himself his own guinea pig and experimented. Guitar Zero (Marcus 2012) is the result. I highly recommend it. I read it as supplementary material for my teaching and coaching, but I ended up reading it like an adventure story. Really good and fun read. Marcus also had the opportunity to meet some very famous musicians in his one-year sojourn through music, and he namedrops a bit.

I had read about The Puzzler (Jacobs 2022) while perusing the book reviews on various sites. AJ Jacobs has a unique temperament; he puts himself into the thick of experiencing the subjects that he is writing about so that he can write from a first person view point. This book investigates the world of puzzles, all kinds of puzzles, from Rubik’s cube to Crosswords, from Sudokus to rebuses, to anagrams, etc. I suspect that my friends who are jigsaw puzzlers might be surprised to find out that there is a World Championship of jigsaw puzzle solving. Jacobs and his family represented the US in Spain for that World Championship. He was able to do so because no one else in the US knew about it and all you had to do was write a check and enter. Thus inspired by the reading, I started to do more puzzles myself. I had played with the mini crosswords on the New York Times app as a pre-bed diversion, I had not done the actual NYT crosswords in a long time but found myself doing so and having some successes for at most, the Monday and Tuesday puzzles, they are the easiest. I have solved a few Wednesday crosswords, but not all of them, because Wednesday seems to be my limit. The difficulty for the crossword puzzles increases as the week goes by, with the Saturday NYT crossword being the most difficult.

One puzzle that he did get me hooked on is the NYT Spelling Bee puzzle. Jacobs said this was one of the most addicting puzzles, and sure enough, I am addicted. I do it every day without fail. I just achieved Queen Bee status recently: I was able to get all the words that were possible given the seven-letters given in the puzzle. I am kind of jazzed about that, as you see.

Fiction Books

I have generally strayed away from fiction the last few years except for murder mysteries. A well crafted whodunnit serves to take my mind off the mental challenges presented by my non-fiction readings. I am a creature of habit in that regard as I am only reading the books by Louise Penny, Peter Robinson, Andrea Camillieri, Ian Rankin, and Martin Walker, even though I have a bunch of fiction books on my TBR stack waiting for my muse to turn to other fiction.

One of the authors I listed, Peter Robinson, a British ex-pat who had lived in Canada for years passed away this year. Unfortunately, there will not be any new Inspector Alan Banks mysteries. The series was set in Yorkshire, a place that I had spent some time visiting when I was working for Emerson, so I have a soft spot for the story, the Yorkshire locale, and the characters. Fortunately, the dialog was not written with a Yorkshire accent. RIP.

I tried to introduce some variation in my fiction reading by deviating from my list of favored mystery writers this year by reading a couple of other authors, and I was sorely disappointed. None of their narrative, plotting, character development, and writing were up to the standards of the authors I read regularly. I am now resigned to just reading the same writers as they publish new books. I have paused the new author’s experiment, at least for a while.

I did throw another changeup in my reading when I read a novel written by my friend Karla Huebner. It was not a mystery; in fact it was very far from being a murder mystery. The title of the book is: In Search of the Magical Theater. Here is my review (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2022/06/book-review-in-search-of-magic-theater.html) It was a good break for me, it challenged me and pulled me out of my reading rut, and I learned about the world of theater. I rather enjoyed characters that did not have deep inner secrets that involved malice. They did have other inner secrets however.

Reading Pontification (Soapbox Topic)

When did reading become a competitive game? I had always ignored the challenges advertised by the likes of websites and groups like Goodreads. It seems, however, that I am in the minority. In some of the book groups that I subscribe to, reading has become a blood sport, the gauntlet being thrown down by the book groups: read as many books as possible within a given time. People are encouraged to read more books so that Goodreads can sell more books for Amazon. Some people are reading 100 books a year. How the F can you remember 100 books? That’s eight and a third of a book a month, nearly two books a week, one third of a book a day. What kind of books are they reading? Are they counting comic books? War and Peace, Don Quixote, Infinite Jest, and Robert Caro’s series on the LBJ presidency are definitely not on their list. The efficacious would devise a strategy of reading only short books. This is not to say that short books are devoid of merit, but how boring. A more germane question is: why even bother reading these books if they are not going to meaningful, memorable, or enjoyable. The key is memorable, because I cannot fathom how one can remember the gist of 100 books, especially when they are read in such a heated rush.

At this time of the year, people are desperate to meet their pledged goal, so they are begging for short, easy books to read so that they can reach their goals. I doubt that the last-minute readings are in any way entertaining because they are reading with the sword of Damocles hanging over them, that is just too much pressure. We go through our working life chasing deadlines and giving ourselves coronaries because of the arbitrary timelines our society imposes on us. The logical question is: why are people following the same unsustainable pace in their leisure life? Have we de-evolved so much in our habits to mindlessly mirror our corporate dictated lifestyle and rhythm? Are we this stupid?

The Tao

One of the threads that followed me into 2022 was the continued sampling of the book The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang (Lin 1937). Lin was, as I remembered him, THE public intellectual in Taiwan when I was growing up. His books in Chinese were continually on the best seller list, partly because the KMT approved of his writing, more importantly, they approved of his loyalty to the Republic of China. This is part of the reason that I had not considered reading his books: because I thought his popularity was due only to his political loyalties. I discovered The Importance of Living via a long and serendipitous path; as it turns out, I really enjoyed his book. Much of what he had to say aligned with the way my thinking on living life has evolved. It is a very Chinese viewpoint, so I was surprised that I was so agreeable with his thinking, I guess I retained more of my Chinese self than I realized.

I read small sections of the book every day; that is, I didn't read it as a book, but as a daily exercise in philosophy. His reference to Laotse and Chuang Tse rekindled my long-time interest in Taoism and my cultural roots. His easygoing style and simple way of looking at playing, reading, writing, loafing, thinking, being human, and living reinvigorated my mind. Thus influenced, I bought a used copy of his out-of-print treatise on the Tao Te Ching, deciding to delve into the meaning of the short tome for my own education.

#WhenPeteGetsAmbitious Indeed, I could not keep it simple, I am not Occam, I am approaching the reading in typical overcomplicated Pete style, dipping into the Tao Te Ching through comparing three translations of the book — a translation by Ursula Le Guin, (Guin 1997), a compendium of the four books of Chinese wisdom as translated by David Hinton (Hinton 2013), and Lin’s book (Yutang 1948) — so that I can explore the nuances with the different translation. Lin’s is the only translation that offers analysis and explanations. I am taking my time with the relatively short texts.

Music

Music is the center of any generation; as with all the other generations, mine feel like music is more important to us than any of the other generations, we are entitled in that way. We know that music sets the rhythm for the narrative of living, it provides the cadence to our lives as we live it. So it is that I have become uncomfortably aware of the ages of those musicians that had provided our soundtrack, it is a reminder that I am also getting older.

Bob Dylan is 81. Mick Jagger is 79, Paul McCartney is 80. Keith Richards is supposed to be 79 and Willie Nelson is supposed to be 89; but age is immaterial for those two, they will outlive everyone.

A number of my favorite musicians have announced that they had or are about to embark on their last tours. Peter Frampton had to quit touring because it became too painful for him to continue to play guitar night after night.

Genesis embarked on their very last tour in 2022. Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks are both 72, while the relative youngster Phil Collins is only 71, but bad drumming posture throughout his career has led to the bad back that has crippled him; that, and his numerous remarriages to the same ex-wife. He spent the entire tour singing from a chair and he left the drumming to his son, which made for some sentimental shots of Phil watching proudly as his son pounded out the rhythms that he originated. I missed the tour, I wish I could have seen this last farewell tour, but the logistics and the price were showstoppers. I have, however, broken out my newest edition of Seconds Out, the best live album ever recorded. It is my fifth copy. My first edition of Seconds Out was also the very first vinyl album I have ever bought. I played it on my Woolco-bought Panasonic turntable in the basement of 6169 South Steele Street in Littleton, and that dulcet tone has stayed with me all of my life.

Christine McVie wrote the soundtrack of my high school and college life, or a large part of it. Unfortunately, I had always thought of her as the woman in Fleetwood Mac who is NOT Stevie Nicks, a very unfair and ignorant attitude; but that is the way many testosterone addled teenage boys saw the situation. After her passing at 79, SiriusXM presented a two-day Fleetwood Mac Radio Channel, a recycling of the special program they had presented before. This was where I learned to appreciate her exceptional song writing talent and the amazing songs that she had written. I am finding time to revisit classic Fleetwood Mac tunes.

On a more positive note, when I first saw footage of Joni Mitchell, at 79, sitting on a throne and singing along with the younger artists on a stage, I melted. Brandi Carlile had convinced the Newport Jazz Fest organizers to allow her to organize a Joni Mitchell program during the festival. She also convinced many luminous younger musicians to pay tribute to Joni at Newport. It was a fitting tribute, given how Joni’s music and adventurous forays into numerous different genres of music inspired and paved the way for many that came after her. They owed her for their inspiration. It seems every single musician I respect is a Joni Mitchell fan. I came to understand her music much later in my life, I heard music in a cursory manner her when I was younger, but I listened to her music deeply as I got older. The YouTube videos of the Newport performances were sensational, it seemed like Joni herself was revitalized by the show. I am so glad people were able to show their appreciation for her.

Bruce Springsteen, a spry youngster at 73, put out a sublime album of Motown covers, Only the Strong Survive. He said, in numerous interviews, that he felt he wanted a chance to sing other people’s songs because he had spent his career writing songs for himself to sing, it was time to sing other people’s songs. His voice has mellowed and his singing chops have evolved enough over the years to do justice to the Motown material. The album is exceptional. Some would accuse him of doing what white musicians have always done to black musicians: stealing the music and making money off of their talents. But. This is Springsteen. His body of work speaks for itself, he didn’t have to cover the songs, he wanted to cover the songs because he is a fan. Discussion over.

The song that knocked me for a loop is Nightshift, the cover of the Commodores 1985 tune. It is the Commodores tribute to Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. Bruce’s version is a recursion of sorts: a tribute to the Commodores paying tribute to Marvin and Jackie. I looked up the originals 1985 video, with the band primping their jheri curls and dressed in the outlandish stage costumes from that era. It brought me back to that time and space. For better or for worse.

Sports

It was a wonderous Summer, as the Cardinals went on the Pujols and Molina farewell tour, with Wainright thrown in as a bonus since he didn’t actually retire; it didn’t hurt the sentimentality of the event that the Cardinals won a lot. Those three had given the St. Louis fans incredible memories while playing for the Cardinals, this grand tour season was a fitting end. There were many highpoints: Albert getting 703 homeruns, Wainright and Molina breaking the record for the most starts as battery mates with 325, Cardinals winning the NL Central in a tight race; yet the ending was not perfect, as the non-fairy tale season ended with the Cardinals losing in the playoffs. But what a Summer it was.

I was one of the many who vowed to never forgive Pujols eleven years ago for chasing the money with the Angels, and I was gleeful as the Cardinals made the playoffs the following season while the Angels did not. Time heals all wounds as they say, I was excited when the Cardinals signed him for the farewell season. The city of St. Louis was as classy as ever, unlike me, and welcomed him home with open arms. All three should be HOF inductees, despite what some Cub fans believe.

My alma maters had mixed results on the field and the courts. The Illini is playing in what is known as the ReliaQuest Bowl, ugh. In Tampa. Looking better! On January 2, 2023. OK, not a New Year’s Day Bowl, but close enough. Against Mississippi State. Oooh an SEC opponent! Whose coach, Mike Leach, is being remembered because he had died while undergoing a heart procedure. Uh-oh. These circumstances remind me of 1982 when Mike White’s Illinois team played Bear Bryant’s Alabama team in the Liberty Bowl. It was a no-win situation for Illinois as Bryant had announced that he was retiring after the bowl game. Good thing Tony Eason got hurt, and White needed to keep Jack Trudeau redshirted, so they played Kris Jenner, who went 0-3 with three interceptions to ensure the Alabama win. Bryant died four weeks later.

Illini basketball had an exciting season, winning the Big Ten (yay!) but then proceeded to be ignominiously knocked out of the tournament in the second round (boo!). Very disappointing. Boys are not playing well this season either.

The less said about the Georgia Tech’s football or basketball seasons the better. The best thing about the football team is that players didn’t quit on the interim football coach, they kept playing even though they were out matched, thereby getting the alum a chance at the big chair. The future looks bright, though we will see.

The Illini volleyball squad did not make the NCAAs this year. They were somewhat in the conversation, until they folded down the stretch.

Georgia Tech, however, made the world of collegiate volleyball sit up and take notice of the North Avenue Trade School. They made the NCAAs, were ranked 16^th in the season ending coaches’ poll, and had one of the most exciting players in the world. Julia Bergmann was amazing to watch, a fiery 6’5” redhead. You can hear the difference in the pop of the ball when she gets her kills. She will be playing for the Brasilian national team after this season, I am quite looking forward to her international career.

ESPN, to their credit, actually carried all the matches, albeit on ESPN+ for the first two rounds, and the finals were broadcast on ESPN2 rather than the flagship station. I still watched all the volleyball that I wanted. This was the first time that half of the final four coaches are women, exciting but also elicits a disappointing question: why did it take so long?

Some of my coaching friends are getting their chance at sitting in the big chair. Indeed, they did much better than the prognosticators in the various volleyball groups had prognosticated, at the same time other friends are leaving the game. The ebb and flow of the volleyball landscape. Time waits for no one.

Miscellaneous

Knowing what I know about the history of Tesla — the company was started by Martin Eberhardt, a fellow Illini, and not Elon Musk — I am less than impressed with Musk and his lack of personnel management acumen. Combine that with what I have learned about his dangerous promises about Tesla’s AI based autonomous vehicle algorithm, I am strongly on the side of the Twitter employees.

Even though Twitter had been described as a cesspool of miscreants and trolls, I find Twitter to be a great mode of communication with people that I don’t usually communicate with. I can directly access people who are very good at what they do: physicists, philosophers, mathematicians, athletes, media personalities, coaches, energy and electrical power engineers, and many others from my two Twitter accounts. The opportunity for serendipitous discussions while directly learning about the latest and greatest things that they from them do is invaluable. I am still there despite all of Elon Musks gyrations to destroy his $44 billion investment. I don’t know how or if it will survive. I have tried to get on Mastodon but I have had problems because of the mass exodus from Twitter. I have been told that the experience is not as freewheeling as Twitter, so I am not in a hurry to move. We just can’t have nice things.

Sports betting will be legal in Ohio starting in the new year. I remember when I moved to St. Louis, all the gaming companies were opening casinos in Missouri. The arguments then, as with the arguments now touted the influx of profits, the entertainment value of gambling for the masses, etc. I also remember how ill prepared the state governments were for the sudden opening of the betting gates. There were stories of people gambling away their mortgage and committing suicides because of it. All the casino companies did was slap up a bunch of billboards around their luxurious casino boats touting the programs that they were obligated to pay for to treat addiction problems as part of the deal for operating the casinos. We know about Americans and their proclivity for addictions, the billboards did not do much. Understand that I am not against gambling. I am, however, an engineer who understands the statistics, so I find it foolhardy to bet when the house has so much of an advantage, plus I am a cheap bastard.

Not being in the traditional labor market presently, I find the conversation about work environment and the corporate decisions on whether to return to the office or to allow employees to stay home revealing. I see the people who are the most adamant, Jamie Diamond, Elon Musk again, and the other juveniles in corporate America laughable in their naivete. Some have even implemented surveillance software and privacy intrusion policies that are essentially legal stalking their employees. I was gleeful that they have all had to back off of their threats because today’s labor force doesn’t play that way, as more people walked away than capitulate to their blackmail. Which brings up the interesting question of: what ARE these people who are walking away doing for work if they are not capitulating? We are under the impression that our society is leverage to the hilt, people owe large amounts of debt. We see reports of increasing homelessness, and yet the labor statistics are not as dire as what I had believed. One explanation is that people are moving away from work that they are used to in order to make their lives better, better in more manners than just the take home salary, something that corporate America just does not understand. The service industry is getting hit hard because people are refusing to be treated like chattel and they are moving on to other industries, but what other industries? The numbers are conflicting. If you laid all the economists head to toe, they will still not come to a conclusion.

Currency has always been ephemeral; it all depends on the trust that people place on the verity of the agreed upon value. Usually this means central banks and government-backed currencies. Yet, people are shocked. Shocked I tell you, when FTX, the third largest crypto exchange collapsed. The cybercurrency market has also collapsed from its highest points. WTF were people expecting? It was all a house of cards predicated on the ill placed faith in the non-regulated ledgers. Somewhere along the line people realized that the emperor had no clothes, that it was all vaporware. The first sign of trouble is when you realize that you had to exchange real, backed currency to buy crypto unbacked currency.

My other problem with crypto is that by virtue of the currency mining operations that is the backbone of crypto exchanges, the amount of electrical energy expended to perform these operations is immense. The total is staggering, in the order of the yearly total electrical energy consumption of several sovereign nations. Energy that is unnecessarily expended, energy that can be used to offset our greenhouse gas production. The tone-deaf crypto industry insists that they are converting their operations over to sustainable energy sources, so their carbon footprint can be minimized. A more logical explanation would be if they ceased operations and devote those sustainable energy sources to maintaining our normal energy usage. Just a thought. Surprisingly, the electrical utilities are using Blockchains to conduct their business transactions because of its speed and convenience. SMDH.

When Volodymir Zelensky was elected president of the Ukraine, he was caricatured as the clown that became president because he was a comedian. He is now the most admired man in the world for what he did not do, run away to save himself and his family; and for what he did do, inspired his countrymen to stop big bad Russia’s imperialist fantasies in their tracks and rubbing Vladmir’s nose in his own excrement. The undeclared war is not over, but anyone following the news well knows that Putin is losing ground, internally and internationally. The western world, especially the US, owe a debt of gratitude to the Ukrainians for showing us how precious democracy is; so precious that it is worth sacrificing all that you have. I keep hoping that the white supremacist Trumpites will learn this lesson, but I am not optimistic, since too many of them were involved in the traitorous January 6 insurrection.

On that note, you have now reached the fork in the road. The point of departure. I thank you for indulging in my attempt at storytelling, but the narrative is turning as you read, and as I write.

You must choose between the blue pill or the red pill, much as Neo had to do the same in The Matrix.

Red pills, continue reading my partisan, progressive, leftist, liberal diatribe.

Blue pill, stop right now. You are avoiding my partisan, progressive, leftist, liberal diatribe.

Regardless, My best wishes to you in the new year, for good health, good fortune, good friends, good reads, good food, and good libations.

Pete

References

Gary Marcus, Ernest Davis. Rebooting AI Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust. New York City: Pantheon Books, 2006.

Guin, Ursula K. Le. Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching. Boulder: Shambala Publications, 1997.

Hinton, David. The Four Chinese Classics. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2013.

Jacobs, A. J. The Puzzler. New York City: Crown Publishing, 2022.

Lin, Yutang. The Importance of Living. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1937.

Marcus, Gary. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York City: The Penguin Press, 2012.

Pearl, Judea. The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. New York City: Basic Books, 2018.

Yutang, Lin. The Wisdom of Laotse. New York City: Random House, 1948.

The Red Pill

“When stupidity is considered to be patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

Isaac Asimov

The quote encapsulates the modern conservatives, and not just American ones. More telling than the intelligence of the modern conservative, it is the integrity, honesty, empathy, compassion, and humanity, or lack thereof of the modern conservative which defines their place in the pantheon of bottom feeding hall of fame. DeSantis and Abbott thinking that it is funny to send desperate immigrants as political showpieces to New York, Washington, and to the Vice President’s house. Abbott and his award-winning performance as the NRA mannequin and mouthpiece during the Uvalde massacre. Jim Jordan, who can not manage to pass a piece of legislation, demanding to be the disrupter in chief during the January 6 hearings. Matt Goetz, Harvey Feinstein of congress. Spineless Kevin McCarthy, groveling before the orange moron to seek forgiveness after making daddy mad.

The epitome of conservative amorality and dispassion was on full display when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked by a white supremacist coward. Hammering an 87-year-old man repeated, that took true courage (sarcasm noted.)

Despite my vehemence, it isn’t the conservatism that reviles, it is the absence of any positive human behavior of the so-called conservatives around the world. They speak with their actions and non-actions. Many have abandoned any pretense of possessing empathy, compassion, kindness, reason, logic, or love of their fellow humans. Their greed and hatred have taken over their black hearts and of coure their words and actions. For this we have the orange moron and his ilk to thank. In this world where we preach and value compassion and kindness, the far right make it all very obvious that they have stopped caring to even pretend. The irony is that the greatest cheerleaders of the far right are the fundamentalist religious, all because of one issue. They got their wish in Dobbs. If the post Dobbs actions by the progressives are any indication, these f***** are in for a fight.

To refer to today’s American conservative party as Republicans is a slap in the face of the party of Lincoln. These pretenders to and usurpers of the mantel of conservatism are better identified as white supremacist Trumpites, because the GOP party machinery has de-evolved to the point that formerly traditional Republicans have discovered, much to their chagrin, that they are not welcomed at the inn. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are leaving congress. The formerly mainstream conservatives have abandoned ship because the “party” decided to cast its lot with the white supremacist Trumpites.

The red wave that was supposed to be the tipping point for all that is evil turned out to be a red trickle, or a red spritz, a premature spritz that is emblematic of Mister tiny orange hands.

It is an interesting conundrum, on the one hand, the endorsement from the Orange moron proved to be deadly, which restores my faith, somewhat, in the American electorate. On the other hand, the Orange moron’s slate of candidates were such a pack of dismal, unqualified, amoral, incompetent knuckle draggers that one wonders if someone had found them while looking under every slimy rock in the universe. The fact that those races were so close made me want to reconsider what I had said about the American electorate. The Fetterman and Oz race was close because people were wondering about Fetterman’s health, I get that. But the choice between Warnock and Herschel Walker? Seriously? Even Walker’s son disowned him. Why was this even close? Kari Lakes and Katie Hobbs? Another no brainer, but it was close. Why?!!

The surprising red premature ejaculation has the political pundits scratching their heads. The common wisdom, which may not be so common, is that the midterms are usually disastrous for the president’s party; the addition of the inflation and economics news should have doomed the chances of the party in power. The electorate ignored common wisdom and prevailed over evil, although not completely. The Dems retained the Senate, even though the betrayal of Sinema dampened the good news; and lost the house because of the gerrymandering. The shame is that the Dems are limited in what they can do with the findings of the January 6 committee.

The January 6 hearings had plenty of former Republicans testifying against the orange moron. Their testimony was powerful and it took courage to go against the white supremacist Trumpites. The real question is: why did they wait so long? Why didn’t they stop him? By all accounts there are officials within the White House who tried mightily to rein in the moron.

The midterms in Ohio were a dismal. Ohio is theoretically a purple state, albeit a reddish purple. The problem is that the white supremacists Trumpites have been unchallenged for so long that they feel they can run any idiot and win, witness J.D, Vance. The Democrats knew they have no chance, so they gave up too and they ran Tim Ryan, who might as well be a Trump Republican. The political ads from those two mouth breathers drove me to distraction, the strategy was to throw everything against the wall to see what sticks, the gloppier and smellier the ads are, the more they showed it. Vance, an immoral, lying, sack of vermin excrement who is in the pockets of Big Pharma won, to no one’s surprise.

The governor’s race was between Mike Dewine, the milquetoast carpetbagging former Democrat who switched parties going against Nan Whaley, the former Dayton mayor, who should have been indicted for corruption but wasn’t, probably because her corruption does not add up to a hill of bean’s worth of difference as compared to the white supremacist Trumpites. Dewine’s son ran for Ohio supreme court and won; my jurist friend is apoplectic because Pat Dewine is not supreme court material, he is barely human material.

The influence of Alex Jones and Infowars got smacked to the tune of $1.5 billion dollars. That sounds so good, even though it won’t give those parents their babies back. Too bad Jones only owes money. I was hoping he would become well practiced in reaching for his ankles when ordered.

The is the best video ever. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMB7QMIUkhA) Turtle boy and McCarthy getting snubbed by the Capital Hill police being honored for their bravery during the attempted coup.

I would go on, the material is there, but my blood pressure is too high and I don’t have the energy to continue. Once again, I thank you for reading as I bid you adieu.

Friday, December 31, 2021

State of the Pete-2022

I write so I know what I think.

Joan Didion

Don’t explain your philosophy, embody it.

Epictetus

To know is passive; to understand is to be able to act on one’s knowledge.

Aldous Huxley

When forced with a difficult question, we often answer the easier one instead, usually without noticing.

Daniel Kahneman

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Goodhart’s Law (Interpreted)

An obsession is a pleasure that has attained the status of an idea.

Balzac

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, and it has evolved into these overly long and verbose tomes. My friends have told me they liked it, and I was not going to not believe them, so I have continued the tradition. It has grown to be more than just a letter of update; it is a snapshot of my thinking and opinion over the year. This has become one of my favorite quotes of all time: ”I write to find out what I think” from Joan Didion, who has just passed away recently. This exercise has been the means for me to integrate my disjoint thoughts and summarize the year, as most humans are wont to do at the end of the year. I have tried to steer this away from being a paean to me, as anything written about personal thoughts will de-evolve into; you, my friend, are the ones who need to decide it I am successful in that endeavor.

This letter is anything but an extemporaneous output, which is what I had hoped for, although this is not quite as difficult as giving birth to a dissertation. I have much more fun writing this than writing about controlling motors.

My friends,

A new year is upon us. I wish you the best of the new year and an upward trend in good fortune in these uncertain times.

As 2020 ended, I had hoped, along with the rest of humanity, that we would finally revert to our state of existence from two years ago; that this transient state in which we have been living is exactly that: an unfortunate and short-lived transient; that our society can be resilient in the face of this challenge. Alas, that is not to be, some of the persisting problems ailing us can be attributed to the perniciousness of the COVID virus; while another part of the problem can be attributed to human nature: our inability to trust science and our inability to be altruistic to our fellow humans.

But we will have to Be Calm and Persist in living our lives.

Mom and I

At this point in 2020, my mother was still in a rehabilitation home just minutes from our house. She had fallen in July of 2020 and had broken her pelvis in two places and her hip in one place. She finally came home in February of 2021. I am happy to say that she is doing well, scooting around the house with her walker. It wasn’t an immediate recovery however, as the ravages of age are accelerated by the rehab home experience. The institution was a reasonable one, they did what they could under the pall cast by the pandemic: I could not see her, or even enter the facility, and we had to communicate with each other by cell phone while looking at each other through the window. As those of you who know my mother, she is a tough woman in a tiny package so she persevered. The only fortunate result was that she was one of the first people who received the initial vaccine. She has also been recently boosted.

Mom is now back at home, rarely venturing out because it is difficult for her to leave home, as well as living with a healthy dose of precaution. She only goes out for doctor’s appointments. Otherwise, she spends her time watching Chinese soap operas and tracking the stock markets’ daily troughs and peaks. She puts up with my cooking, which I must admit is getting better as I get to practice the culinary arts, if you can call it that. The long time away from the practice of cooking has eroded her skills, and she needs help to remember certain tricks. Occasionally, she will get frustrated with what I am putting out and she would make her own favorite dishes, those are good days. A lady from mom’s church comes in twice a week to do the cleaning and help mom with her laundry.

I spend much of my time at home, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are that I am around in case anything happens; the disadvantage is that I rarely have a continuous thought for an extended period of time.

Since her return to the house, we successfully resolved parts of her hearing and dentistry issues. Unfortunately, she also came down with a case of the shingles. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. Fortunately, we are over that disaster, fingers crossed.

We are doing quite well, considering the circumstances. Mom turned 96 this past August, we had a small celebration at home, her many nieces and friends sent birthday wishes and cards, and we had a low-key Chinese feast. It was an interesting experience as I did a progressive restaurant pickup run. I got steamed flounder from one place, tiramisu from a local Italian restaurant —mom’s favorite dessert— and the bulk of the rest of the meal was ordered from one of the few decent Chinese restaurants in town.

She is averse to speaking on the phone these days, contrary to her previous habit. Part of the reason is that her hearing has deteriorated, and it is difficult for her to understand what people are saying on the phone. The hearing aids are already cranked up to eleven.

On the other hand, she gets excited when people reach out to her. So., I don’t know what to tell you.

Contrary to the general media reports about expanding waistlines for the general population, I ended up losing some weight during the last few years, at least I sustained my weight loss momentum during the pandemic. I am down about 60 pounds in the last six years. Not bad. 40-inch vertical, here I come! (No? Not even a chortle? Tough crowd.) My diabetes is somewhat in control. I certainly have not experienced any sugar lows, thank goodness.

My Engineering Life

My engineering life, or what is left of it, involves working as the portal manager for my engineering society, the IEEE Industry Application Society. The work is, like most work, generally monotonous, disrupted occasionally by a sheer stress as the society conferences and time pressures pile on. I have learned about the other parts of the IAS and more than enough about the paper publishing world, and people’s reaction to those pressures.

I am still the chair of the IEEE Smart Grid, an organization that exists to promote Smart Grid within the parts of the IEEE that are tangentially related to the electric power grid, as those who are working in the area are already well aware of the developments. We had struggled a bit with the responses to our programs as people are just Zoomed out. What was once popular are now lagging in interest. We have been working on changing that perspective by creating and offering new programs. As a part of that effort, I was asked to be the Educator in Chief of the Smart Grid Academy for the IEEE. It sounds a whole lot more impressive that it is. I don’t do much except to interphase between instructional designers who are completely ignorant of the topic but well versed in producing educational materials; and the Subject Area Experts whose areas of expertise are the completely opposite. One of the key issues is one of communication, people are speaking in completely different vernaculars and slangs, it is like speaking different languages. I am working along with the program manager at IEEE Smart Grid with being the horse whisperers, iterating between the instructional designers and the Subject Matter Experts. It reminds me of playing telephone as children, and just about as aggravating.

One thing that I quite enjoyed is the opportunity to convene a panel at the virtual ECCE 2021. The panel was on the intersection of experimentation and simulation, where are the lines of demarcation, if there are any? How do we determine the accuracy and precision of the two very different practices and how does the engineer decide whether to trust the experimental results as opposed to the simulation models. It is a wide-open topic and expectedly, the panel discussion dove deeply into the granularities quickly. Indeed, it was a completely refreshing intellectual exploration. There were no conclusions, but it did what I wished to happen when I proposed the panel, that we start thinking and discussing the complex topic. It was great fun.

Teaching

I taught two classes at the University of Dayton last year, the same classes that I have been teaching for the last few years. I think I am at the point where more of my lectures are backed by actual understanding rather than an equal mix of knowledge and BS.

I have come to be much more comfortable teaching about electric power now, I have learned about the nuances with the issues, and I have come to read the information disseminated in the media with discernment. In fact, there is a web-based game that helps people understand the ideas of the load profile and gives them an opportunity to play power generation planner. I made my class play the game as a part of their class work. They seem to enjoy it, and they have learned some valuable knowledge through playing the game.

One salient teaching experience involved the higher-level power system analysis class. I only had five students in the class, the class was intended to be a hybrid but four out of the five were taking the class virtually, so I made it a virtual class. Three of the students were working engineers from Kabul Afghanistan, all three were Fulbright scholars. Since they have been working in the electric power industry for many years, they are very conversant in the area. To be honest, I think I learned more from them than they did from me.

The energy situation in Afghanistan is significantly different from the electric energy situation here in North America, the challenges that they face and the solutions that they are implementing. There was a moment of clarity and sheer terror when one of them emailed me to ask my forgiveness for not attending the Zoom class because the internet disappeared as the location where he was at was being bombarded. It was a learning experience for me to have had the opportunity to interact with them. The good news is that all three are now in Dayton trying to finish their graduate degrees through the Fulbright. They arrived on August 1 of this year. Kabul fell August 15. Now it is a race for them to finish their degrees and find work here in the US.

Volleyball

As with all things this year, the state of volleyball was affected, both in my small epsilon neighborhood of club coaching as well as with the larger world involving college and Olympics volleyball.

I took a regional team this last season because I could not travel on overnight trips, not being able to leave my mom alone overnight. The coaching part was de rigueur, we did everything as we always had, we took great care with the new practice of wiping the volleyballs down, taking temperatures of everyone that enters the gym, wear masks when we are not practicing, and learning to deal with missed practices because of quarantines. The difficulty comes with dealing with the mental and emotional part of training a team. Emotions ran high, and the team survived while dealing with the uncertainties and the inevitable upheavals it generated emotionally.

This regional team was generally shorter and slightly less schooled than I was used to, but most were eager to improve their skills. We had a difficult challenge to start the season when my setter, the one who didn’t want to set, ruptured her Achilles tendon at the first tournament of the season. One of the DS stepped up to set a 5-1 for the rest of the season and she did wonderfully well. The team improvised and transformed their games to help her be more productive, bettering the ball became our raison d’etre. We lost, a lot in the beginning of the seasons, but we had improved considerably at the end of the season. The improvement came at a good time because we were all exhausted by the end of the season, and I don’t think we could have persisted any longer than we did.

As far as the watching of the game, we had the unique situation of the 2020 season being played in the beginning of 2021, with most D1 college teams playing, but not all, due to each school’s response to the pandemic. Many matches were cancelled, the natural ebb and flow of the season were constantly disrupted. The inspiring part was that everyone persevered, which makes all of us volleyball dorks very happy. In a twisted way, it reinforced our belief in the sport, and it validated our devotion and dedication to the game. It showed us that the game matters to us: the coaches, the players, and the fans. The whole playoff was played in a bubble without spectators. The reaction from the players and coaches was that the single site tournament brought out the best of the players and the coaches. They felt that they were able to focus because there were no distractions. It was a monk like existence: eat, sleep, rest, play, and train. The NCAA continued to treat women’s sports as an afterthought: the training accommodations were dismal; the matches were played atop plastic tiles that served as padding over concrete. Yet these women persevered. University of Kentucky won the 2020 championship in a dominant fashion.

The actual 2021 season was played as a traditional season, just a few short months after the end of the 2020 season with very little time for rest in between. The 2021 finals finished in mid-December. It was probably the best level of play ever, thanks to the extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA to those athletes that might have missed their senior season. Some surprises and some surprising performances, both good and bad, from known powerhouses. The University of Wisconsin won the 2021 national championship, in five, over the University of Nebraska. Five very taut sets. The high level of play and the amount of defense played by both teams in the final match made Pete a happy man, even though I was not able to watch it in person.

My two alma maters both made it into the final 64 team bracket. Georgia Tech lost in the elite 8 and Illinois in the sweet sixteen. I am a doubly happy man.

I did manage one day in Columbus for the coach’s convention, hanging out with my friends and socializing like I had not done in two years, as last year’s convention was canceled, and I was not able to travel to the 2019 convention. I felt truly fortunate to be in the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Seeing old friends and telling the oft told tales of yore was comforting to me. The capper was having dinner with my partners in crime, the people I partnered with when we started the St. Louis Elite Volleyball Club. Time flowed backwards and I felt like twenty years had melted away in a blink.

The final four and the coach’s convention did turn into a super spreader event. Both teams who played in the finals were hit with infections, Omicron had a field day in Columbus. Even as the city of Columbus had a mask mandate, most of the people I saw at the exhibit hall were unmasked. I, however, escaped. I need to go buy a lottery ticket.

The Olympics comes once every four years, in this case five years. Those athletes who had planned on retiring after 2020 had to extend their athletic careers one more year, a single year which carried a significant amount of challenges and hardship. My friend John Kessel had wanted to go out with leading the USA Volleyball’s Paralympics team in 2020 and had decided to stay another year to fulfill his wish. Unfortunately, the powers in USA Volleyball decided for him and forced him into retirement because they had a crap financial model. A loyal soldier for the volleyball cause was thus unceremoniously sent packing. Yes, I am still bitter for John.

The road to Tokyo was fraught with landmines, although the results were spectacular on the women’s side. All the women’s team: indoors, beach, and sitting teams all earned gold medals. It certainly was not easy. The coaches made difficult decisions and had to leave deserving players back home, and once they arrived in Tokyo they had to isolate and live in the Olympic bubble, cut off from all fans and the usual fanfares.

I religiously watched all the USA matches, men, and women, indoors and beach. Indeed, since this is a once in a quadrennial celebration of athleticism, I indulged in watching as many volleyball matches as I could. It was a lot of matches. My enthusiasm never waned. My energy did however. Old age sucks.

The USA women’s indoors team has historically had an uneven history; even though historically we had some of the best volleyball athletes in the world, yet the gold always seemed ridiculously elusive. The trials and tribulations they had to endure to finally finish with a gold was the culmination of many fan’s dreams, especially this fan. I had written a blog post describing my feelings a week after the USA women’s won the gold. It was an emotional roller coaster, which made me an emotional wreck. Here is the blog post.

https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2021/08/ruminations-why-did-i-cry.html

I then wrote the following a few weeks after the end of the Olympics. It was one of the more satisfying overthinking episodes in my life. It pulled together a few things that I had been working on, it also allowed me to try to explain all that I had learned and express it in something that is close to being coherent. I hope.

https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2021/08/an-appreciation-of-karch-kiraly.html

The BIG Topic: Books

Being a Curious Polymath

It is no surprise that I spent a lot of time reading in the last couple of years. The central theme that dominated my reading can be roughly be aggregated into the areas of learning and cognition. I read many books on teaching and learning as I was embarking on this teaching career. I was also learning about coaching and how to best leverage the most recent research results about learning. I dug into a number of books which I had referred to and reviewed previously. One of the books was by Doug Lemov, about teaching online, a most timely book. I was to find out that he also had a book titled: The Coaches Guide to Teaching (Lemov 2020), which I found enlightening and very useful.

In parallel to that book, I read Scott Grafton’s Physical Intelligence, which introduced me to the connection between decision making by the human responses and the body actuation of the body parts, which incorporates the ideas of Systems 1 and 2 as defined by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow. Culturally, I was reading about the idea of wu-wei, a Chinese concept which can be directly translate to flow in western vernacular. In the mean time I had bought the following books because they seemed interesting: Mind In Motion by Barbara Tversky (Tversky 2019), The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul (Paul 2021), and Brainscapes by Rebecca Schwarzlose (Schwarzlose 2021).

On another front, Steven Strogatz, the mathematician and author, had recommended Sparks of Genius (Root-Bernstein 1999) on Twitter. I was dubious, but with time on my hands I bought that book as well. This one changed my position about being able to “teach” creativity. The book opened my perspective on what constitutes innovative thinking, it allowed me to extrapolate the 13 tools listed in the book from various contexts cited in each chapter into various milieus. It made a much more profound impact than I thought was possible.

I was able to integrate and synthesize the disparate information presented in these books, as they seem to intersect with one another; concepts that were seemingly decoupled seem to be closely related once seen from a different angle and under a different light. The synthesis of ideas is what has been exciting to me, this reminded me of my favorite part of the doctoral experience: the research, the analogizing, the practice of transforming concepts as I mentally twisted, turned, and morphed them into a new whole, and then taking that whole all apart again after the new conjecture proved to be unsatisfactory and then doing it all over again. It is exhilarating.

As a result, I am digging into the granularities of the cognitive science. I do realize that I am entering the area through the mass market literature and that I am not digging into the primary literature. Mea culpa. First, this is much more entertaining, writer for mass market literature take more care in writing for the general audience, which means I am engaged and remember more of the material than if I was reading dry textbook material; second, I am not sure where I would need to start if I tried to start from the basics although I have invested in an introduction to cognitive sciences textbook; and third, I am doing this to satisfy my curiosity, as I relish being the neophyte at this point in my life, so I don’t really care about being pedagogically rigorous.

I have also embarked on a digression from my digression. I had bought The Book of Why? By Judea Pearl, a pioneer in the AI area. Pearl had very publicly deviated from the mainstream of AI research and is quite outspoken about the state of AI research. I wasn’t getting much traction on that book the last few years, so I had left it alone, until I was ready. I then bought Possible Minds (John Brockman, Editor 2019) a collection of 25 essays about AI. Judea Pearl had written one of the essays. It was edited by John Brockman, the man behind the web site: https://www.edge.org/, a website devoted to writings by unconventional thinkers, focused on forward thinking topics. I am feeling ready now as I have been engrossed in the Brockman book, unless something brighter and shinier pops up on my radar.

As a part of the reading into AI, Brockman brought my attention to two works that I probably should have read much earlier in my life, they would have unskewed my viewpoints on systems and controls much earlier than now. Both books are by Norbert Wiener, one is quite famous amongst the engineers: Cybernetics (Wiener, Cybernetics 1961). The other is The Human Uses for Humans (Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings-Cybernetics and Society n.d.) We shall see how they hold my interest.

Fun Books

Not all my readings were serious in 2021, I needed a respite from the nonfiction books. There was a time that I read either classical literature or whatever was on the best seller list as a diversion, but I have grown to be more discerning. I usually follow three series: Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson, set in Yorkshire; Inspector Rebus series by Ian Rankin, set in Scotland; and Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri, set in Sicily. See the trend? Living vicariously through the eyes of the mystery book protagonists in different cultures and places. While I still read each new book in those series, I decided to expand my horizons and started looking for new series. I got on the LibraryThing https://www.librarything.com/home mystery board. The people who are on the LibraryThing site are passionate about reading, in this case, mysteries. I came away with two new series. The first one is set in the Dordogne in France, the main character is Bruno, a former soldier who had fought in the Balkans. He is now the police chief in the fictional town of St. Denis where he has settled. The mysteries are secondary to the archeological history, culinary arts, and viticulture of the Dordogne, as well as the gossipy interpersonal relationships of the people in the area, as with all good mystery books there is a mini subculture revolving around the people surrounding the protagonist. The author Martin Walker, who now lives in the Dordogne, used to be a reporter for the Washington Post and had covered the Balkan war, so his writing has a historical authenticity to it. http://www.brunochiefofpolice.com/ Interestingly he also has a Facebook page devoted to the series and he often pops in to interact with the readers. I had asked him if he was going to work in the fact that Michel de Montaigne, the writer from the sixteenth century who created the essay writing form and was also a citizen of the Dordogne long ago. His response: absolument. I can’t wait.

The second major discovery is Louise Penny https://www.louisepenny.com/ and her character Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The books are set in the small fictional town of Three Pines in Quebec. This one was a major discovery for me. The writing is impeccable, it is a pleasure to read. She does, however explore some very difficult contemporary subjects in very fecund ways. The Chief Inspector is more than just imperfect, but he has integrity, something that has very important to me as I get old and crotchety. This series is one that I am reading slowly to completely enjoy the books and writing. On a side note, after Louise Penny published her latest Gamache book, she teamed with Hilary Clinton on a political thriller based on HRC’s experience as secretary of state under Obama, congresswoman, and first lady. More books to read, why not.

Music

Genesis went on what is advertised as their last tour. I don’t doubt it, they are all over 70 years old and Phil Collins is looking very old. They sound good on the various cell phone recordings I have seen on social media. My first Genesis album was also my first vinyl album: Seconds Out. My world completely changed when the stylus hit the groove. The dulcet sounds that emanated from my Woolco special record player was the greatest sound I had ever heard, and my musical future completely changed. While I am sad not to have witnessed what will be the last concert tour of my favorite band, I was glad for them to go out in a blaze of glory, even as Phil sang while sitting in a chair because his back is chronically causing him much pain.

Springsteen sold off his masters and the rights to his catalogue. Kind of weird since he had been very adamant about owning his music rights ever since he got screwed by Mike Appel.

If you have not seen the podcast with Springsteen and Obama, do it. It was raw and honest; I didn’t think either one would be so forthcoming. A must listen.

One of the unexpected pleasures that I had discovered are the YouTube videos from Rick Beato. He is a music producer from Atlanta, and he makes videos about many topics, but his claim to fame is his series titled: What Makes This Song Great? A treasure trove. I have rediscovered and incorporated Keith Jarrett, Michael Brecker, Joni Mitchell, Lyle Mays, Pat Metheny, Brian May, and numerous others into my playlist after watching these videos and finding out WHY these songs are so great.

I am listening to more classical music as I work at home, I occasionally listen to the soft jazz station on SiriusXM because soft jazz works well as background music, until Kenny G comes on. Why doesn’t he retire and put us out of our misery?

I usually are not too enamored with the rap genre, but I loved watching Hamilton time and time again. I did have to turn on the closed caption, as my brain is not as nimble as the actor’s mouths.

In the Sporting World

The white supremacist owned baseball team from Atlanta beat the cheaters from Houston, really nothing to celebrate here, move along.

In Formula 1, the series owners decided not to follow their own rules and put a finger on the scales for Versteppen, I don’t think I will follow it much anymore.

Who thought the Urban Meyer experiment was going to be a successful one? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

It is terrific to see Cincinnati get one of the four slots on the college football playoffs.

It is also heartening to see Harbaugh finally succeed at Michigan this season. This is a lesson in perseverance, and most importantly, of people learning and adjusting whether the changes were voluntary or not; all in the service of the greater good. Even though it is Michigan.

I lack respect for the lump of flesh that Illinois hired for football. The season was less than stellar, but the key moment came when the lump of flesh denigrated the men he was hired to lead. Not as a motivation but as an excuse for his own failure. Do better Josh Whitman.

The less said about the Georgia Tech football and basketball seasons the better.

It is eye opening to see how each of the professional leagues: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, the IOC and the NCAA handled the pandemic, what they were willing to do and what they were not willing to do. Some of them opted for the bubble while others did not. They all suffered cancellations and massive amounts of positive tests. The decisions made by these sport leagues further illustrates the true relationship between labor and management as we know it in this time and in this place. It doesn’t matter that the athletes are paid massive amounts of money, the management still think of them as cogs in the machinery, their health and well-being is only maintained as one would maintain the machinery of profit.

The machinery analogy was especially apt and the disparity especially egregious in the instance of the NCAA tournaments in the Spring. All the bad publicity resulting from the women’s basketball and volleyball tournaments managed to push the NCAA towards some half-hearted amelioration measures but it was obvious that they were not willing, they just had to do it.

Thinking in the Bubble

The last two years have been difficult for all of us. One of most insidious part of the experience is our biological ability to adapt to any situation: it makes us resilient and enables us to survive, but it also makes us erase the memory of life before the pandemic so that we come to accept the negative impact on our lives as we move forward chronologically. We all complain, and quite often, about the hardships; but we often don’t realize how much our behavior have deviated from the old normal to the new normal until well after new habits have been formed. We have adapted, which is a part of our evolutionary advantage, but sometimes that advantage is not healthy for our mental health.

As an introvert, the artificially enforced solitude did not affect me much initially. I enjoyed my time at home, reading, writing my blog, and watching too much television. Subconsciously however, my behavior was affected, adding atop the stress of dealing with the myriad of issues that comes with being a primary caregiver. I have not consistently acted nobly in this time, but I am making sure that the lessons from this isolation are not wasted.

In my present state of thinking, the pandemic has shone a new light on Stoicism which put my attempt to live the Stoic virtues to a stringent test. Amor fati, momento mori, and the control dichotomy became my guiding principles as I dealt with the day to day. Sometimes I fail, sometimes I succeed, but my stress level is better managed, and I feel more at peace.

Fallacies and Biases

The forced isolation reminds me of an often-used metaphor: it is like hitting driver in golf. Whatever defects exists in a golfer’s swing, hitting the driver club magnifies those defects exponentially. So it is, that the forced isolation resulting from the effect of the pandemic has forced everyone’s thinking to dip deeper into our own cognitive biases and logical fallacies. This is nothing new, as Daniel Kahneman already explored the issue in his book. Indeed, the idea of cognitive biases and logical fallacies are so prevalent that there are websites devoted to identifying them: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/.

It is my assertion that the combination of our emotional response to our present state of reality and our ingrained assumptions that is a result of our biases and fallacies has caused more damage to our perception of reality than we are consciously aware. As a simple singular data point, I admit that some of my thoughts and my actions during the last two years have been sometimes contrary to my personal history. For this I apologize to my friends who have had to deal with my behavior.

Friends

As an only child in a family that moved around quite a bit in my childhood, my social network has been very important to me, as I religiously hang on to the barest threads of my past friendships. In many ways, that is a psychological crutch that I depend on to buttress my mental existence. Yet, as an only child, I also value my independence, in thought and in the way I spend my time. Social media is actually an outlet that I treasure as I am able to engage and disengage at my pleasure. This is part of the reason I am very active on my social media accounts. Whereas I used the excuse that I was attempting to stay in contact with my volleyball players, the truth is that the connections are far more ranging than I was willing to believe. I do treasure the friendships that I have online, it has kept me sane through these last two years.

But there is nothing like being in the presence of friends. The distance and time which separate us melts away and we can resume our friendship. The tri-weekly coffee klatch has enriched my life so much more than my partners in the klatch realize. My infrequent but always welcomed meals with my former co-workers and coaches is another example of an oasis in the social desert. My monthly Zoom cocktails with my friends from my undergraduate days has been a welcomed boost. Even the volleyball practices gave me jolt of excitement because of the people and friendships that I was able to renew.

My friends have reached out to me often at the correct moment when I needed them. I hope to have been as beneficial for them. My mental health would have been for the worse were it not for them.

Much thanks to one and all for being my friends and for being present.

I wish you all Peace, Health, Good Fortune, and Joy in the New Year.

Pete

PS A gift from me to you. This is a list that I look at daily, it is not a check box list, it is a reminder to myself that these are the details of life that I must try to do which will make me a better person.

Learn something new
Teach someone
Be inspired
Be vulnerable
Be moved to tears
Be kind and generous
Experience beauty
Experience the unfamiliar
Experience the uncomfortable
Love unconditionally

______________________________________________________________________________

The Red Pill

Are you sure you want to do this? Here is your demarcation point. You can take the blue pill and escape my pontification of my personal truths/opinions. Or you can take a chance. I hope we remain friend regardless of your choice.

Altruism

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the formal definition for altruism is as follows.

1 : unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

2 : behavior by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

As I observe the state of humanity right now, I see many whose behavior would fit easily in the first definition of the word. We are good altruistic people as individuals. I can find evidence of this in the numerous news reports that appears across my radar. Steve Hartman of CBS does an admirable job of finding stories of altruistic people. I watch, I cry, and I feel better about our collective humanity. Reporter Eric Johnson of KOMO in Seattle has a plethora of stories through his YouTube and Facebook channels. I watch, I cry, and I feel better about our collective humanity. John Krasinski has his Some Good News stories on social media which also puts out heart rending stories of generosity, goodness, and altruism. I watch, I cry, and I feel better about our collective humanity.

It seems, while just looking at a very small sample space, people are great being unselfish and being devoted to the welfare of the individuals, we are amazingly generous in spirit, willing to share what we have materially, and we willingly donate our time, material wealth, and external advantages to the plight of needy individuals.

And yet.

Many of us are horrible at the second behavior in the definition: we do not voluntarily do things that benefits others if it meant we could potentially hurt our own interests. There are many, those who serve the community in their profession comes to mind. Yet, when we look upon the great unwashed masses, the sheen comes off the word altruism for most of us. Indeed, in Shankar Vendantam’s radio program The Hidden Brain on NPR, he highlights how our hidden brain works or doesn’t work logically. Time and again we will act in generous ways when the singular person or small number of people are in need, but we would behave atrociously if it benefited a group that is much greater in number, a group that can easily be deprived of their collective humanity through caricature. Which is what we do, all the time.

Why is it that we are quick to contribute to GoFundMe campaigns for needy individuals, while we won’t remove the bureaucratic hurdles that created the need for the GoFundMe campaigns? Like Universal Healthcare. Like proper funding for veteran mental health.

Why is it necessary for restaurant workers to subsist on below minimum wage and on the largess of their customers? Why can we not away with tips rather than embarrass the wait staff by over tipping by orders of magnitude?

Summum Bonum is Latin for the greatest good. It is something that we assume that we can count on from each other. It is the foundation of our society and culture. It is the basis for our faith in our fellow humans, that we are working towards the greater good of our society. It is the basis of our faith in our government.

As I had said before, the 2016 election was a watershed moment for me, it made me question the heart and soul of my fellow man, dramatically. My mind has not changed, if anything, it hardened my less than charitable opinions of my fellow humans. Mainly because not many people believe in the Summum Bonum principle anymore.

As a part of the pandemic’s effect on the greater society, the economic phenomenon termed The Great Resignation is uncoiling. Workers, usually critical workers, many who are low economic status workers, are resigning in a tsunami of pent-up dissatisfaction with the underlying economic structure which has been in place for decades. As the advantage finally shifted towards the workers, many addle minded conservatives ala orange point their fingers at the emergency federal programs to help everyone through the health emergency. Their reasoning is that the paltry $1,800 and the enhanced unemployment benefits from the government was the cause for the work force to not want to work. The oft repeated trope of the lazy workers getting fat from the so-called socialist government largess is the culprit for the economic morass. They never stop to consider that people fear the virus. They never stop to consider that it may be a negative cashflow situation if they must pay for childcare for the privilege of working for minimum wage. They never stop to consider that those who have lived from hand to mouth for years may wish to change their lives for the better, to give themselves a better future. They never stop to consider that the economic system might not be equitable to everyone who take part in the machinery of economic production. They never consider creating a better, more equitable system to replace the faulty existing system. They never consider thinking in terms of win-win, rather than punishing the least fortunate. It is intellectual sloth, it is against the teachings of every set of religious tenets known to humans, and yet they claim to be religious believers. Of course, they never consider Summum Bonum.

As the nation finally begin to approach the forbidden subject of race in America, the knee jerk reaction of the conservative ala orange ilk is expected.

The conservative ala orange response from the Chauvin verdict is disheartening. Once again, they wheel out the fear mongering fantasy of public safety as a head fake, to distract, to obfuscate. They did the same when Kim Potter murdered Daunte Wright. Even though the verdict was equivalent for both cases: lock them up, they are guilty. I am sure the blackhearts of the conservative ala orange are seething with fear and indignation of someone who have lived with privilege for all their lives at the moment of the verdict rendering. An indignation that was in full display of joy when the Rittenhouse verdict was rendered, even as it is obvious that the trial judge significantly put his thumbprint on the scale to Rittenhouse’s favor.

Staying on the racial front, a question: is it considered revisionist history if it is a correction of previous revisionist history? Afterall, the Daughters of the Confederacy created a fiction worthy of literary recognition with its Lost Cause narrative and its insistence on the mythology of the true cause of the Civil War. It isn’t states’ rights. It is about the buying and selling of humans. It is amazing just how the self-professed pro-life religious right can be so anti-life when that life has dark skin. Hypocrite much?

The topic of Critical Race Theory (CRT) has given the conservatives ala orange a real rallying cry. Yet, we promote if not celebrate thinking critically in our daily examination and verification of any other theory. Except for religion, the validity of Edmund Burke’s philosophy, the Free Market, Milton Friedman’s trickledown economics, the qualifications or disqualifications of supreme court nominees proposed by conservative ala orange, the Jeffrey Epstein “suicide”, or the role of the Vatican in the coverup of child molesting priests.

A small symbolic occurrence is the dismantling of the statuaries to the Confederate traitors from the broad avenues throughout the south, itself an example of revisionist history as propagated by the Daughters of Confederacy through the person of the traitor General Robert E. Lee. At least that Confederate traitor can no longer be seen astride his trusted steed. A short and illuminating analysis of Lee’s competence as a strategist and a general can be found in Gen. Stanley McChrystals’ book on Leaders (McChrystal, Eggers and Mangone 2018), he was not impressed. In fact, he shed light on Lee’s incompetence and cruelty when Lee failed to take the responsibility of taking care of his soldiers, as befitting a leader and military commander.

The anniversary of the most recent act of treason in modern American history is coming up on January 6. It will be exactly one year from the date when the mob of conservatives ala orange tried to overturn the results of a legal election. When their efforts to gerrymander their way back into power failed, the conservatives ala orange pouted and convince their feeble minded true believers to overthrow the US government. I have rarely, if ever, agreed with Romney, Cheney, Dubya, et. al. I feel indebted, however, to them for making a principled stand. The same can not be said of most of the rest of the GOP congressional caucus who curried favor with the orange moron in order to get re-elected.

As the sentences comes down of the foot soldiers of the January 6 insurrection, I am hoping, beyond all hope, that those congressional traitors will also be sentenced and penalized. I am looking at you Turtle boy, McCarthy, Jordan, Greene, Nunes, Cruz, Boebert, et. al.

Works Cited

John Brockman, Editor. Possible Minds-25 Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. NYC: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Lemov, Doug. The Coach's Guide to Teaching. Clearwater, FL: John Catt Educational Ltd, 2020.

Lin, Yutang. The Importance of Living. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1937.

McChrystal, Stanley, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone. Leaders: Myth and Reality. New York City: Penguin, 2018.

Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind-The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michele. Sparks of Genius-The 13 Thinking Tools pf tje World's Most Creative People. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Schwalbe, Will. Books For Living. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2017.

Schwarzlose, Rebecca. Brainscapes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Tversky, Barbara. Mind In Motion-How Action Shapes Thought. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2019.

Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1961.

—. The Human Use of Human Beings-Cybernetics and Society. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, n.d.

A Polymath in Training.

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Thursday, December 29, 2022

State of the Pete-2023

Joan Didion

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Red pills, continue reading my partisan, progressive, leftist, liberal diatribe.

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Pete

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Friday, December 31, 2021

State of the Pete-2022

Mom and I

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The BIG Topic: Books

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Thinking in the Bubble

Fallacies and Biases

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