Wednesday, October 31, 2018

French

I am sure that the French periodically get together and scramble the meanings of their words, just to confuse me.

DANS means IN.  So why does

l'attente de son apparition est vécue dans l'angoisse

mean the expecation of its arrival is seen WITH anxiety?

Just to confuse me, of course. 

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Artificial Intelligence... Among Other Things

Why is it that I regard sex toys for women as perfectly normal, but this as creepy?  Shouldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the sex-toys-for-women industry has a better PR function?

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Scary

When your wife goes to the local doc to investigate a random recurring pain.... and they recommend a quick mammogram.... and you do searches on LEFT BREAST RANDOM PAIN and find all that it could be - including but not limited to cancer -- that's scary.

Finding out that the mammogram and ultrasound showed nothing abnormal was a relief.

Monday, October 22, 2018

Reading

I don't read the range of things that I used to read, and, thanks to the internet, my willingness to read at more than paragraph length on a specific subject is diminished, too. 

Just now, I was at a local library,  where I read an issue of The Atlantic that contained two articles that interested me -- one about Newt Gingrich and his effect on slash-and-burn politics, and one about the rise of artificial intelligence, both in tools like Alexa and in medical (and other) diagnostic tools (one company offers to generate real-time analysis of a patients affective state, and to use it to suggest questions that the physician might want to ask).  It also contained an article about the state of politics written by David Frum, who suggested that we need to save our society from Trump and Gingrich's style of operation (Frum used a catchy phrase which I don't recall to suggest that Trump wants more and more of our politics to be controlled by fewer and fewer people, and he's succeeding at it)

And yet as I drove home, all I could think of was gee, I wish someone would summarize those articles for me.

Friday, October 05, 2018

Politics

The great thing about being a conservative politician is that you don't have to care about people.  As long as you keep your Papa Dog head of party happy, that's all you need.  Because liberals suck at firing up people, and conservatives are great at appealing to their base instincts..

Thursday, October 04, 2018

Israel Connect

In about two weeks, I start weekly sessions with two Israeli kids, and their teacher, to help them practice speaking English.  Should be fun.