Category: Uncategorized

It was five years ago today that a violent mob was directed to attack our beautiful nation by a criminal idiot. Unlike that idiot and his gullible followers, true Americans know that violence is not the answer.

The answer is to show up on Election Day and vote. Let us all pull together on November 3 and restore dignity and honor to our nation.

Our Constitution is more than a piece of paper to be trampled on by self-serving kleptocrats.

When I was a little kid, there was a recurring ad on television. The ad was for a collection of music you could send away for called “From Classics to Moderns.”

In the ad, an older guy with a mustache showed up on screen and introduced various popular songs, and then revealed that the music for those songs was actually lifted from classical music. For example, the music for “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” is actually straight up lifted from the “Fantaisie-Impromptu” by Frédéric Chopin.

My favorite moment was when the ad started playing the song “Stranger in Paradise” from the musical Kismet (one of my favorite melodies). At that point the man with the mustache would proclaim, rather dramatically, “But did you know that this is actually the ‘Polovtsian Dance Number Two’ by Borodin?”

After I grew up, I totally forgot about that ad. But then something happened many years later, when I was in grad school.

There was a review in our local newspaper for the Jim Jarmusch film “Stranger Than Paradise”. Except they got the title wrong, and printed it as “Stranger in Paradise”.

The moment I read that, it all came back to me. I found myself proclaiming out loud, rather dramatically, “But did you know that this is actually the ‘Polovtsian Dance Number Two’ by Borodin?”

It felt ridiculous, but also oddly freeing.

Now that the United States has begun collecting foreign presidents, maybe it’s time to go all in. This could be our new national pastime, sort of like Pokémon, but with foreign heads of state.

We could be systematic about it, going nation by nation. First we make up some sort of intentionally false premise (like pretending that the country in question is a major exporter of drugs), then we send in a SWAT team to extract that country’s head of state and their spouse.

We would put our captives and their mates to a holding cell in Brooklyn, and explain that the U.S. is now going to run their country. Which would give us unfettered access to that country’s natural resources, which of course is the real reason for this fun activity.

Sure, the extractions would each end up killing a few dozen people. But hey, nobody cares about that anymore, right?

Once we have collected enough foreign heads of state, we could set up public showings of our captives and their mates. The Brooklyn Zoo is an ideal location for this, because it already has people in place who know all about the care and feeding of exotic creatures from around the world.

We could even charge for those public showings, and that would generate revenue. You know, just to cover any unanticipated expenses after we are running all those foreign countries.

What could possibly go wrong?

I have a question.

Suppose, hypothetically, that Venezuela decides to try and convict, in absentia, the president of the United States for crimes against Venezuela. Given the various military actions taken in recent times by the U.S. government against Venezuela, that isn’t too farfetched a supposition.

Now suppose that in a bold and daring operation, Venezuela manages to capture the U.S. president and his wife, and bring them, blindfolded and handcuffed, to Caracas to stand trial for their crimes. One could imagine a news item something like this:

The American president and his wife were captured by Venezuelan forces in a raid in Washington D.C. and flown to Caracas, arriving at Simón Bolívar International Airport on January 6, 2026, to face federal charges including international terrorism and murders of Venezuelan fishermen, following an operation announced by President Maduro. The U.S. president is expected to appear in a Caracas federal court soon for charges stemming from a 2025 indictment.

You would think that this would lead to chaos in the now leaderless North American nation. But fortunately, Maduro also vows to run the United States.

So here’s my question: Would that be ok?

Today is the birthday of Isaac Asimov. He was born on this day in 1920.

When I was a kid I loved science fiction. I voraciously read Heinlein, Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and all the rest.

But my very favorite was Asimov. I wanted to live in the worlds that he created. Even the dystopian ones.

Given recent advances in AI, I think we are starting to catch up to the visions that he dreamed up all those decades ago.

Somehow it was more fun on the page.

Happy New Year!

The U.S. Justice Department is now reviewing 5.2 million pages of Epstein files. And we already know that those pages were all on the desk of U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, because she told us so.

Which leads to an interesting question: How big is Pam Bondi’s desk?

Let’s assume that Bondi doesn’t pile papers higher than 12 inches. Otherwise it might be difficult to conduct meetings in her office.

Let’s further assume that the sheets are 8.5 x 11 inches in size, and are standard 20 lb bond copy paper. That means she can fit about 3000 pages in each pile.

5.2 million pages would therefore require 5,200,000 / 3000 piles of paper, or just about 1733 piles. So how big does Pam Bondi’s desk need to be?

Let’s multiply 1733 piles by the ratio of page area to square feet. This give us 1733 x (8.5 x 11) / (12 x 12), or about 1125 square feet.

A standard desk is about twice as wide as it is deep, so the depth of Pam Bondi’s desk must be around the square root of half of 1125.

And that give us our answer: Pam Bondi’s desk is at least around 47 feet wide by around 24 feet deep.

The desk is probably a bit larger than that, to account for gaps between the piles. Also, she needs some space to put down her coffee cup.

No wonder they need to build that new White House ballroom.

We were talking today about life lessons. One of the people in the conversation said, ruefully, “The lesson you learn is never the lesson that you want to learn. Why is that?”

“I think,” I said, also ruefully, “it’s because you already know the lesson that you want to learn.”

I learned very early in my career that you can’t really tell anyone that something is possible if they’ve never seen it. You can talk all you want, but they won’t believe you.

Which is why I learned to make demos. People may not believe what you tell them, but they will be believe you when you show them something that works.

A demo doesn’t need to be a complete solution. It just needs to open a door wide enough to let people see into the next room.

And once people see something working, even in a crude form, then they understand that there is a path forward. Then they will give you the time and resources that you need to move forward.

Which is all you really wanted in the first place.

I use Google’s Gemini all the time. I ask it questions about computer programming, politics, movies, geography, coffee makers, or pretty much anything I’m curious about.

The answers are nearly always very helpful and to the point. Its response to my questions are usually excellent summaries of what I would have achieved if I had spent a lot longer doing a Google search.

But unlike much of the hype I have been hearing and reading, I never get a sense that there is a human-like intelligence at work. Rather, it feels just like what it is — an algorithmic gathering and summation of information from various sources.

I remember when I started using Google search about twenty six years ago. It was extremely useful, but I never felt that there was “a person in the computer”. Rather, it felt like I was interacting with an algorithm, albeit one that had been tuned by humans.

Similarly, the advent of desktop publishing four decades ago felt useful, but not magical, even though it was a radical advance for the time. It was clear that my document was being typeset by an algorithm — an algorithm that was performing calculations based on information that had been fed to it by human beings.

I suspect that people will soon come to see AI bots like Gemini and its cousins in the same way. There is no magical “person in the computer”. Like Google search and desktop publishing before it, a chatbot is just another useful tool in our ever expanding human arsenal of useful tools.