Author: slake

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF AI (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE)

by slake, posted in Miscellany
SAN DIEGO (Dec. 8, 2016) The guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) arrives at its new homeport in San Diego. Zumwalt, the Navy’s most technologically advanced surface ship, will now begin installation of combat systems, testing and evaluation and operation integration with the fleet. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Emiline L. M. Senn/Released)161208-N-OR184-0044
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Authors Guild provides its members numerous opportunities to advance our craft. A couple of years ago, AG asked its members to specify how much future involvement we anticipated having with Artificial Intelligence. I naively declared that I would have no involvement at all, and I still intend to avoid using AI assistance in my writing. But I find that right from the get go, I routinely involve Google AI in my research of various subjects, some of which relate to writing topics. I recognize that while Google AI seems to accurately answer most of my questions, occasionally it does not. And, being a curious individual, I ask a lot of questions.

I recently asked Google AI to confirm that there is a need for a fleet of US battleships to be built by South Korea. When I disputed Google AI’s initial response that there is indeed a need for battleships, I noted that my historical reading has taught me that battleships are obsolete and unnecessary for the US Navy, and have been so since the Second World War which concluded some 80 years ago. Experts acknowledge that the Aircraft Carrier played a much bigger role in winning that war than did the battleship.

Google AI responded using what I consider to be a weasel word that the term “battleship” had been used “colloquially.” I had never heard of such use for the word “battleship,” and so informed Google AI, and eventually Google AI admitted that the ships that were intending to be built would be, in fact, destroyers, not battleships. Aha!

AI learns, at least in part, from reading what is already published. There is a lot of published crap out there that is just flat wrong. Occasionally, a response from Google AI is “wrong” or misleading. As a result, I am now on a personal crusade to hold Google AI accountable for improving the degree of accuracy and specificity found in its answers.

If AI is going to rule the world of the future, then it needs to be as accurate as possible, and each and every one of us needs to assist in making it so. Right?

Admittedly, I am neither an expert on AI, nor on the effectiveness of US Navy combat vessels, but I am a patriotic American who wants to see America’s leaders base policy and strategic decisions on fact.

PEARL & YOUTHFUL SENSIBILITIES

by slake, posted in Brushes with Celebrity

My use of her nickname is presumptuous. I did not know her. I knew OF her. I could have secured an introduction had I wanted, but I didn’t.

She was not really famous as a student at the University of Texas… it was more like she was notorious, or at least so implies Google AI Overview. It notes that she was widely mocked on campus and even won a fraternity contest as the “Ugliest Man on Campus”… news to me at this late date, but then I was a good student, not involved in Greek life and oblivious to most campus gossip.

She hung out with a small group of disheveled students that seemed to always travel as a group. One of their members was a quiet young girl who lived in the same Co-op House as me. Periodically, the group would take over the living room at the Co-op House, and the rest of us would resentfully grab our books and scatter elsewhere.

Group members were different from house residents. We put our hair up every night in curlers and ironed our clothes and wore a little makeup. They didn’t. We considered them hippies… the great unwashed. I supposed they believed in free love and rejected mainstream norms and values, but I never asked.

I don’t know if they lived together. They seemed to do everything together.

While I didn’t witness it, I believed the housemate who reported that one of the boys in the group digitally penetrated one of the girls in the group, not Janis, in front of the other group members and anyone who happened to be watching. I don’t know if it was consensual. It never occurred to me to ask. Needless to say, my strait-laced friends and I were shocked. I assumed it was over quickly, but I don’t know that for sure. To my knowledge, no one reported it to authorities or even asked the young girl if she was okay.

In short, I formed a negative opinion of the group and its members and avoided them.

Imagine my astonishment when Janis became famous and then died all too soon of a heroin overdose. In March, 1971, the year following her death, her hit single, ME AND BOBBIE MCGEE, written by Kris Kristofferson, reached No. 1.

Janis Joplin was only 27 years old when she died. Her music has given and continues to give the world immeasurable joy and passion. Who woulda thunk it? Certainly not me.

INTRODUCING NICK RIGGS – THE PIG PARTS SERIES

by slake, posted in Miscellany, The Pig Parts Series

Nick Riggs, a principal character in my book PIG PARTS, is a freshman at the University of Texas, a large, outgoing, good-looking young man, a varsity swimmer majoring in pre-law. He’s attracted to Bess from the get-go and pursues her, ensuring they end up partners in Biology Lab where they dissect a fetal pig. He grew up in the industrial northeast, a cheerful, confident, ambitious young man. Although he’s a year younger than Bess, he enjoys familial resources and enhanced opportunities and has gained a depth of experience in the world greater than our small-town girl.

He was a delight to write.

Bess is attracted to him. The more she learns about him, the more she likes him, however she realizes too late that their relationship comes with unusual risk for him owing to her father’s notoriety. She agonizes over giving Nick up, postponing the breakup as long as she dares. It’s a terrible burden for her to reject him, and she suffers bitterly. Her little sister Jessie, too, is crazy about Nick and has a hard time forgiving Bess.

In the second book, it becomes apparent that Nick is not done with Bess.

I think most readers will really enjoy getting to know Nick. It’s my sincere hope that one day you get the opportunity.

AUSTIN CHALK OIL & GAS ROYALTIES… A LESSON IN FRUGALITY

by slake, posted in Miscellany

The Austin Chalk is a geologic formation running through the middle of Texas and into Louisiana. When drillers began producing oil and gas from this formation in Central Texas, some forty or so years ago, my aunt’s second husband, principal of the local elementary school and long-time farmer and rancher, told my mother and me of a conversation he had with another local landowner about oil & gas royalties. Landmen were signing up landowners as fast as they could, leasing access to oil & gas deposits on the owners’ lands.

The local landowner was a hard-worker whose farm had never supported him. For years, he had worked a full-time job to supplement his income and had, like many others,  farmed and “run cattle” in his “leisure hours.” Truth be told, there was little leisure… he worked all the time. And, he and his family were probably just scraping by at that.

He had just received his first ever monthly royalty check. It was in the dizzying amount of $43,000… a very large amount of money in those days. It was probably the largest chunk of money the farmer had ever received at one time. And while he didn’t say it, he was no doubt aware that he could expect to receive a similar check each month, possibly for many years.

My “uncle” asked the farmer what he planned to do with the money. The farmer thought for a long minute and ticked off his responses on his finger tips. He would set aside money for taxes, pay off the last of his debt on his farm and buy a “good used pickup truck.” Mother and I joined “my uncle” in amusement at the gentleman’s frugality in the light of almost-certain coming riches.

I was surprised to learn later, that a few newly wealthy landowners somehow failed to realize they would owe a healthy tax bill, and after blowing through their riches, were forced to secure emergency bank loans to get straight with the IRS… no doubt, a bitter lesson in frugality.

MY FAVORITE PHYSICIAN SUFFERRED AN OUT-OF-BODY DEATH EXPERIENCE

by slake, posted in Miscellany

I managed a department in a large suburban hospital in Houston for eight years followed by another long stint working for the Corporate Offices. The Medical Staff was knowledgeable, professional and committed to providing the highest possible quality care. I greatly enjoyed working with most of them.

My favorite physician, an internist and cardiologist, was a big bear of a man, a natural leader, the unofficial conscience of the Medical Staff and the favorite of the Medical and Nursing Staffs. He loved a funny story, and he loved helping others. He once spent a raucous half-hour describing a long Sunday night treating a patient’s sick parakeet over the phone.

Another night, one of his patients drove into the hospital parking lot and staggered into the ER. His chief complaint was, “Bad night in Nacogdoches.” With timely treatment, the patient survived a nasty case of food poisoning.

If my friend had an off-color joke he wanted department employees to hear, he would sit in a doctor’s dictating booth with his back to the main workroom, call a physician friend and tell the joke to him loudly enough that everyone present could hear. He was old-fashioned and would never tell a dirty joke to ladies.

He routinely reviewed patient records in the department and dictated DISCHARGE and DEATH SUMMARIES. Often, he would mutter under his breath, “Poor old Mr. So- and So-.” It pained him to lose a patient. He didn’t lose many, but he did lose the Nursing Administrator of the Cardiac Care Unit. Along with many others, I worried that her death would kill him. I don’t think he ever got over it.

At the height of his career, he suffered a massive heart attack. He coded, and emergency CPR had to be administered. We all feared he would die, but he eventually pulled through. A few weeks after he returned to work, he told me that while so very ill, he suffered an out-of-body experience. He was a very learned man and a scientist. Like me, he was probably skeptical of reports of such experiences before it happened to him. He described floating upward and hovering just below the ceiling in his ER treatment room. The CPR team was working on his body below, lying on the gurney. His body was clinically dead… no heartbeat, no respirations, pupils fixed and dilated. They shocked him with the defibrillator numerous times before they finally got him going. Then he floated down from the ceiling and re-joined his body on the stretcher.

He spent another fifteen plus years practicing medicine, but a second heart attack took him. His mourners were legion, city-wide. Everyone missed him.

 

NOW I’M JEALOUS – TWO READING RECOMMENDATIONS: MOCKINGBIRD SUMMER and ONCE UPON A ROYAL SUMMER

by slake, posted in Book Review

MOCKINGBIRD SUMMER: My neighborhood book club recently read MOCKINGBIRD SUMMER, a novel by Linda Rutledge. I enjoyed it, but internet reviews were somewhat mixed. Some readers had not expected the book to have a strong YA influence. The principal narrator is a thirteen year-old tomboy, a white girl, and I can’t see how it could have been nearly as authentic without the YA influence. A few reviewers did not think that the novel was tied closely enough to Harper Lee’s novel, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. The setting is small-town Texas in 1964, still under the influence of Jim Crow. Corky makes a new friend with a sixteen year old black girl and naively recommends Ms. Lee’s book to her. Their budding relationship is further complicated when her new friend is encouraged to join a white girls church softball team. From my perspective MOCKINGBIRD SUMMER explored many of the same themes and concerns that TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD had done decades earlier. I related to the book because it shares similarities with my first novel, PIG PARTS, particularly the setting and the time frame.

Jealousy reared its mean little head when I realized that Linda’s agent for this book is Jane Dystel. My first rejection for PIG PARTS came from her agency. But in any event, I recommend the book. Linda deserves the representation as well as the acclaim.

ONCE UPON A ROYAL SUMMER: In recent years, I’ve encountered increasing difficulty finding books that I enjoy reading. When I read another novel that I enjoyed within the span of a couple of months, I was delighted. This was a book that I did not expect to enjoy, but I was intrigued by the circumstance and gave it a try. ONCE UPON A ROYAL SUMMER, by Teri Wilson, was a joy to read. Teri based her book on the far-fetched premise that a make-believe theme park princess can fall in love with an actual European prince, and she makes it work. The story sparkles. The heroine believes that it’s her mission in life to comfort children who have grown up with hurt, and the author’s writing skills lead me to conclude the same.

No magical realism or writing tricks needed here. The magic is in the words and the skill with which they are strung together.

Teri creates an imaginative, well-thought out and cleverly populated Florida theme park that features her young protagonist, Princess Sweet Pea, as one of its main attractions. The real Prince brings his eight-year old daughter, Princess Rose, whose mother died four years earlier, to celebrate a special birthday. Mutual attraction erupts when Princess Sweet Pea is assigned as their tour guide. She sets out to rebuild little Rose’s shaky self-confidence. In the process, she falls in love with Rose as well as with her father.

My career was in acute healthcare, and I sometimes daydreamed about the advantages that a pediatric hospital operated in partnership with the Disney Corporation might bring to the treatment of sick children, so this story quickly caught my attention.

ONCE UPON A ROYAL SUMMER is a sparkling bit of escapist reading that I had not expected to like nearly so much.

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

by slake, posted in Miscellany

Like many others who follow business news these days, I read about the exploits of South African born mega-billionaire and entrepreneur Elon Musk. He enjoys a reputation as being very smart but has recently come under criticism for damaging his electric automobile brand. He got involved in partisan politics and failed to pay adequate attention to business responsibilities. Sales went down. Inventories stacked up, and investors worried. Some owners resorted to posting written apologies on their cars for having purchased TESLA, hoping to ward off angry vandals.

My point here is not to heap criticism on Mr. Musk, but to point to him as a highly visible example of the pitfalls of failing to focus on one’s job.  It can be tempting to help out a colleague with a high-visibility project, but one must first take care of business.

I once had a young friend who fell for such traps, not once, but twice. She seemed to become easily bored with her own work responsibilities and turned her attention to someone else’s job. She lost sight of her own responsibilities. As a manager in an important department in a major hospital, she failed to pay the department the attention it deserved. I was hired to help her out with her responsibilities, to help get her head on straight.

I saw this lack of focus far too often as a business consultant. It got too many promising people in trouble in their jobs.

My advice, of course, is to first focus on your own job if you want to be successful. Then, when your work is well-controlled and meeting deadlines and objectives, you can consider helping others with their initiatives. But you must always take care of your own business first.

THE POPE DIED… AGAIN

by slake, posted in Miscellany

Pope Francis died April 21, 2025. He was 88 years old and had been very ill for a long time. He was known as “The People’s Pope,” and many videos of him blessing sickly children have been playing on TV. His funeral was conducted in late April, and the Conclave to elect a new Pope begins today.

I was reminded of the events of August and September, 1978. I attended a Board of Directors Meeting for a state professional association. In the interest of economy, I roomed with another  association officer. Carole was a lovely young woman, and we got along well. When we woke up the first meeting day, we turned on the news and learned that Pope Paul VI had died. He had been Pope for fifteen years. We shared a cup of coffee and talked about his death, got dressed and spent the rest of the long day in meetings.

Some six weeks later, we again roomed together. Again, we were attending a Board of Directors Meeting but in a different city. When we woke up on the first morning, we learned that the new Pope, John Paul I, had died after serving only thirty-three days. It was quite a remarkable coincidence as Board Meetings were rare, Carole and I had never before roomed together, and Popes always served long terms. The last time there had been three different Popes in a single year was way back in 1605.

Carole and I resolved, somewhat jokingly, in the interest of papal longevity, never to room together again. Pope John Paul I was succeeded by Pope John Paul II who was critically wounded in an assassination attempt in 1981, but survived and served twenty-seven years as Pope.

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

by slake, posted in Miscellany

April 19, 2025 is the thirtieth anniversary of the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history… the truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

168 lives were lost including 19 children and babies housed in a day care nursery on the first floor. 850 people sufferred injuries. The principal bomber was a young man, but he had help. I refuse to call their names. They are scum to me, like so many young killers who think they know better than everyone else and justify their cowardly killing of the vulnerable through some miserable internal sick rationale. I cannot describe the depth of the contempt in which I hold such deluded, selfish killers.

At that time, I was doing a lot of work in OK City as a reimbursement consultant and account manager in a local hospital. I traveled there regularly, staying overnight for four nights in a local hotel. I reviewed patient medical records to ensure that the hospital was being reimbursed accurately for the care it gave to patients. The hospital employed a young lady to pull and organize the records for my review. She was a pleasant young woman, sweet, conscientious, gracious and always had the records and a smile ready for me.

I was in Baton Rouge that week when I heard about the bombing. I had no idea of casualties, but I stopped for a moment and thanked God for the OK City hospital where I worked and the many dedicated healers it employed. I knew they were crackerjack… that they would be up to the challenge if they received any casualties from the bombing. Later, of course, I realized that every hospital in OK City must have been swamped with casualties.

I think it must have been at least 2-3 weeks before I returned to OK City. By that time, law enforcement had worked out most of the major events of the bombing and had the principal actors in custody. When I picked up my rental car at the airport, I noted that the key next to mine on their keyboard belonged to the principal attorney for the young bomber who parked the truck in front of the federal building. That went on for months… the key business.

Oklahoma City was not a large city at that time, claiming a population of 461,000 citizens. Most of them sufferred consequence from the bombing. 7,000 people lost their workplaces. 462 were left homeless. 300 buildings were damaged or destroyed. 30 children were orphaned. 219 children lost at least one parent.

The most touching photograph that I saw was a heartbreaking photo that showed a firefighter, Chris Fields, cradling a precious baby girl. She was dead. I still get emotional over it. If I remember correctly, I saw the photo on TIME MAGAZINE, but it won the Pulitzer and was published all over the U.S. and probably the world. It can be found on the internet. The baby girl had turned one year old the day before.

When I returned to OK City, I learned that a woman in the nursing hierarchy at the hospital had an appointment scheduled in the Murrah Building some 2 minutes before the explosion. She ran late for the appointment and was just leaving her car and walking toward the building when it exploded. She lived because of a random interruption.

I also learned that the sweet young lady who pulled charts for me lost her brother in the bombing. I was told that he was the young Marine found very late in the recovery process in the basement of the Federal Building.

I still curse the bombers to Hell.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY?

by slake, posted in Covid-19

The question of “What’s wrong with young people today?” came up at a social gathering the other day. By the time we were done considering, the question had morphed in my mind into, “How have today’s young people managed to survive so many major traumas?”

When I was young, the only people who wanted to kill me were the Russians, the North Koreans, the Viet Cong and maybe the Chinese. I can’t remember any instances of loner gunmen invading schools and deliberately shooting and maiming and killing students at that time. I wonder how I would have reacted to mature American adults seemingly uncaring about the risks that youngsters face daily from a well-armed population. I grew up believing that almost all adults had my best interests at heart.

I keep getting hung up on Covid 19, not to mention the separate but equally devastating ongoing pandemic of Long Covid. Specifically, I wonder about dating and relationships with the opposite sex. When I was young, I worried a little about my commitment to postpone sex and a possible pregnancy until marriage, but not much else. Today, if one puts a lot of faith into the ongoing prevalence of Covid-19 as indicated by the data developed every week by waste water monitoring programs, which I do, the consequences of simply going on a date or being around other young people risks death and long-term disability. Right now, there is a HIGH prevalence of the Covid-19 virus in the wastewater in Texas as well as in most of the southern states.

I wonder how I would have reacted if Covid 19 and Long Covid had rampaged through the population when I was young. I wonder if I would have thought it was all so unfair… if I would have wondered how responsible adults could have been so thoughtless and uncaring about the risks to young lives, not to mention to everyone else.

I don’t have an answer. I’d like to think that I would have lived as carefully in a world with Covid 19 as I’ve done as a mature adult having worked in healthcare and having an educational background in public health. But I don’t know. I really enjoyed my time as a teenager and young adult dating and exploring relationships with a variety of boys and young men. Could I have given that up? Postponed? Could I have worn a mask on dates? Worn a mask while dancing? Foregone good night kisses? I doubt it… but I don’t know.

Coupled with the unnecessary hatefulness of a politically divided populace, it sometimes seems to me that today’s young people have been dealt a particularly rotten deal… and unfortunately, mental health statistics bear this out.