AI Moving Fast Over Us

I have lately been noticing on YouTube and Facebook that artificial intelligence, or AI, has exploded in growth with the number of posts and channels dramatically increasing.  What's more, not only the AI-generated text but also its video presentation are coming chillingly close to resembling actual known people's images and writings.  I wonder how the Internet we've grown used to will look in just, say, five years and whether it will be recognizable.  AI presents its own challenges, especially coupled with the development in quantum computing that stands to massively empower processing speed and memory.  What's real and what isn't...that looks to be the fundamental question ahead of us as we trudge forward into this brave new world.  I've already seen commercials where users are using AIs as confidants, seeking personal advice from them..."really"?  What's the future going to be like?  Maybe each of us will have our own AI accounts, and with special glasses and audio we can have anyone we want around us, down to our most stringent specifications...who needs all those icky real people?  In the Ron Howard-directed award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, mathematical genius John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, hallucinated his own circle of friends and colleagues...but it was revealed that this was an element of his schizophrenia.  Are we entering a time of mass insanity...or have we already arrived?  What a time to be alive...

"Aught" We to Stop Referring to Decades?

Dr. Rick, the dude on the Progressive insurance commercials who has committed his efforts to helping young adults to stop acting like their parents, has one less item to work on. The tendency for baby boomers like me to group decades together from the previous century (Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties) came to an abrupt wall with the advent of the twenty-first.  The opening decade of this century is technically called the "Aughts", but I kind of like to use "Zeros" although nobody really uses either term...or even any name at all for this crucial span of time.  Lots of neat stuff happened in my life during this period, and significant events (like the 2000 election, 9/11, the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars, the Christmas tsunami, Katrina, Obama's election) occurred...but the Good Doctor has yet to feel any need to dissuade straying young'uns from grouping it all together as a decade.  No, young and old alike seem to have a mental block about time once the calendar shifted over from "19" to "20". You might think then that once 2010 came around than at least, at that time, folks would resume with the decade talk, calling it the beginning of the "Teens"...but nothing doing.  And now, deep into the Twenties, I had yet to hear any such reference to the times we live in, with most people I imagine thinking more of the roaring 1920s when the term does come up instead with the associations of Prohibition, silent flicks and Calvin Coolidge.  Are we truly finished with the decades talk?  I've heard references made to the "2000s", but as far as I'm concerned, that term covers every year in this century, not just the first decade...

The Ancestry Genetic Test Fad

A while back they began to show these DNA testing commercials on TV, Ancestry.com being the major company doing this.  In one of their ads, a man who had taken on the persona of what he deemed to be a "German" because he had a German-sounding name took one of these tests.  The result came back with little-to-no German ancestry, but a lot of Scottish...so he began to wear a kilt.  Oh, come on, folks...do people really take this ancestry thing that seriously?

Forgive me for being a little skeptical about this latest craze of people sending in their DNA samples to the big company for a fee and then getting a readout as to where their ancestors came from.  For one, I believe that there is a built-in bias in the process because of the names of the ethno-national groups and the criteria for dividing them from one another: since the company wants a saleable product pleasing to its customers, it will make familiar distinctions among the different groups that they can easily recognize.  Secondly, I wonder about the accuracy of it all, assuming that the DNA sample sent in is pure to begin with.  I wonder what the results would be if I sent in samples to various competing companies...how much would they vary from each other? And thirdly, all my life I have been educated to believe that, under the skin and outward appearance, we're all just fellow human beings.  The notion of "race" that we've been snowed under to believe for centuries isn't a matter of objective reality, but rather one of subjective perception.  After all, geneticists have concluded that our species is relatively very homogeneous in comparison with others, with very little genetic diversity between the so-called races and ethnic groups.  And lastly, I wonder whether people engage in genetic testing in order to classify themselves...at least partially...as members of a group that they want to identify with for whatever personal reasons...

The way I see it, you and I are what we are, and our respective lives, the things we have gone through, screwed up, learned, and accomplished create individual tapestries that are far more interesting and significant than any pie chart showing our ethnic origins...

My New Rule for Hired Political Spin Doctors on TV

General Electric, or G.E., as it is commonly known, has recently been showing a series of interesting and compelling TV commercials.  In them a young man, recently graduated from college, gets himself hired by the company and tries to explain what he'll be doing there to family and friends...with hilarious results.  You see, everyone has an old-fashioned view of G.E. as a twentieth-century manufacturer, but nowadays it is heavily into software and the digital age.  Our new recruit has a fulfilling job with his computer skills, and the latest commercial has him and his colleagues confronted, in their office, with two people rushing in promoting others wanting to work there.  These hired "spin doctors", while reciting their poetic-sounding lines, are costumed and made-up, one as an ogre and the other as an elf or leprechaun.  The message is clear: working at G.E. is now so attractive that people are resorting to all kinds of tactics to get in...including employing others to put on an entertaining show. Which gave me pause...

I don't know about you, but I am tired of watching these cable news channels with their endless political discussions during this 2016 presidential campaign season.  Tired because, whether you're talking CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, the tendency is to get professional spin doctors supporting the various candidates to appear on the air...and then you get the same old packaged nonsense with people talking past each other and continually interrupting.  My proposal is for a "new rule": go ahead and air all of those "spinners" like usual, but with a new provision: they all have to be elaborately dressed up like fantasy characters!  Because, like that G.E. commercial, these people don't provide anything "real" or substantial to the discussion...let their appearance underscore that obvious fact...

Worst Super Bowl?

I have read and heard people claim that the Super Bowl this past Sunday was one of the worst ever.  No doubt the main reason for this harsh judgment was the lopsided score, 43-8, by which Seattle drubbed Denver.  Other contributing factors may have been that the expected offensive fireworks of both Peyton Manning and Marshawn Lynch were pretty much squelched by stingy defenses, and Seattle's defense was especially tenacious as they put on an incredible clinic with their effective tackling.  Defensive struggles often make for perceived uninteresting games...although I personally don't see it that way.  Also, the folks who were pulling for Denver had to be crushed by the fact that, from the first play from scrimmage, their team acted as if they had forgotten how to handle a football. I'm sure many of these fans thought this was one of the worst Super Bowls ever.  I also think that viewers were spoiled by the exciting Super Bowl games that were played in the last few years...the last blowout had been after the 2002 season when Tampa Bay drubbed Oakland 48-21.  In fact, though, taken as a whole, many past Super Bowls have been typified by one team dominating the other...and fittingly enough, one of the teams "most dominated" has been the Denver Broncos.  As for my opinion on the subject, I liked to watch both the play on the field and the well-done halftime show featuring Bruno Mars (with a little help from the Red Hot Chili Peppers)... what I didn't care for about this year's Super Bowl was in another area...

The commercials during the Super Bowl, usually hyped for their imaginativeness and effect, were to me a pathetic, collective bunch of duds, some of which made no sense at all to me.  The car commercials in particular seemed to be especially weird and puzzling in a negative way, throwing in all sorts of extraneous nonsense...if you're trying to sell a car, then talk about the car! And the beer commercial where the "unsuspecting" dude ends up playing ping-pong with Arnold Schwarzenegger...you mean they actually PAID some advertising whiz who came up with that one?  Really?

Buy This Car...and Ignore Sirens

I was watching a TV commercial the other day, and I can't for the life of me remember the brand being promoted. That's often the way it goes with advertising for me: the message somehow becomes disassociated from the product. After all, what does a gecko or a caveman have to do with auto insurance, for example...

But at least with this commercial, I was able to retain an association with the general product, although that really wouldn't help out the company shelling out the big bucks, thinking that their fancy advertising was actually bringing in customers. The commercial was about a car that was so high-quality that it minimized...no, completely blotted out outside noise. Examples of noises being excluded from the happy driver's privileged ears were shown, with the last one being a loud jack-hammer being used right outside the car window, in a heavily urban traffic setting. The driver smiled (was it a smug smile? I can't remember) as he heard NOTHING but saw the worker jack-hammering away. A virtual sound-proof driving experience. And he blissfully drove off, with the last sound heard in the commercial being the wailing siren of an emergency vehicle. The implication here was clear: with this car, you can even ignore ambulances, fire engines, and the police! Well, let's add warning horn blasts from other drivers as well!

I didn't know that emergency vehicle sirens were sounded just to annoy drivers in "inferior" vehicles. Apparently, though, if you're the proud owner of the special automobile being advertised, you have entered a different class of humanity, one that is entitled to total insulation from unwelcome sounds...as well as unwelcome civic responsibilities...

Quarter Infomercial Follow-Up

As a follow-up to my "Commercial Dream Seepage" article a few days ago, I happened to tune in to that same infomercial, in which an obnoxious man was hawking a couple of albums full of American commemorative quarters. In my original article, I dreamed (yes, dreamed) that the asking price was $99: in full consciousness, I observed that the price was TWO payments of $99. However, there were a lot of quarters in this TV offer, and according to the annoying gentleman, they constituted a complete set of all the variants produced not only in the "American States" series, but also the "America the Beautiful" series in the second album. So it finally made sense boasting that the image of Smokey Bear would be on the album cover: it was for that latter album featuring beautiful American scenic places engraved on the quarters.

Watching this, although convincing me that it wasn't really a monumental rip-off after all, gave me pause for reflection. This offer was ostensibly targeted for coin collecting enthusiasts, but was it really so in the final analysis? After all, the fun in any collecting hobby is in the gradual amassing of the "stuff" that the hobby constitutes. That includes starting small, noting the items that are wanted, and investigating various ways to add them to the collection. And a great part of the enjoyment in going over one's collection is recalling how the various items were acquired. This goes for collecting cards, stamps, coins, or anything else. I was an avid card collector as a kid. I envied others who had a larger collection than me and wanted to build up my collection to their level. But if someone just handed me a series' complete collection, then I would get no real satisfaction from possessing it. So that leads me to the probable "real" target of this infomercial.

Investment, pure and simple. People are looking for ways to invest their money into hard, tangible commodities that will appreciate in value over the years. It matters not whether the buyer of these quarter sets is a numismatic enthusiast: collecting coins is (very) secondary to the goal of investment for future financial gain, at least the way I see it...

Commercial Dream Seepage

Last night, after an especially grueling shift of work processing Christmas season parcels and working overtime, I fell asleep in front of my television. For some reason, it was on H2 (formerly History Channel International) when I dozed off. I can't remember: did they really have a show on about history, for a change? But anyway, it couldn't have been all that exciting: apparently, before I knew it, I had fallen sound asleep.

I found myself having one of those interesting geographical dreams. I approached a place that had some kind of roller coaster ride going on. In my dream, I thought that it was familiar, but later couldn't place it: it was most likely just a composite of other rides I had experienced over the years. Anyway, I went into the little building where the ride's entrance was. A friendly, elderly gentleman (who seemed to be the ride's operator) greeted me as did a younger man. The younger man then suddenly began to go on babbling incessantly about some great deal he was offering, selling those old U.S. quarters from the 50 states. I calculated within my dream that $.25 X 50 = $12.50 (I wonder how many people can do that while asleep), so the deal had better be comparable. I was surprised when he instead asked for 99 bucks! But the dude was making clear that, not only was he selling every single version of these quarters, but was also putting them in a album with the official "Smokey Bear" logo on it. This began to seep into my mind as a confirmation that I was having a wacky dream. Moreover, this son-of-a-gun was not only bothering me with his heavy-handed, aggressive speaking reminiscent of some of those obnoxious fire-and-brimstone preachers (like John Hagee, ugh), but he was also keeping me from my ride! So I managed to arise out of my slumber. Only to find myself facing a TV infomercial (on H2, of course) featuring a different son-of-a-gun spewing out the same sales pitch, with the same overbearing manner, about the same coin album offer. With Smokey Bear on the cover. Surreal.

Still wondering whether I was still dreaming, I managed to get up and flick off that TV. In the process, I flicked off that salesman as well...

Infomercial Nation

Some nights I fall asleep with the television on. Often the channel that is on when I drift off into slumber ends its regular programming and instead broadcasts a series of half-hour-long infomercials. The topics are very wide-ranging, but they all have one thing in common: you can get an edge over everyone else if you buy their product, and at such a steal of a price!

The amazing thing is that these commercial "programs" are often more entertaining than the regular programming. Let's just say that the producers of these spots really know how to get my attention! And that can be rough on me, considering that I usually would be better off sleeping at four in the morning (after all, isn't that why I switched my working hours from the graveyard shift seven years ago?).

Even though many of these infomercials just keep repeating the same tape throughout the presentation, they are often the more interesting. Here are a few of the infomercials that have piqued my interest for various reasons:

Free Money: just go to a website, type in your name, and the government probably will be sending you a check, possibly for thousands of dollars. Perennial infomercial fixture Kevin Trudeau has written a book to this effect and is interviewed by two very attractive, very busty women for the duration of the show (with plenty of camera shots at them). Trudeau's message, regardless whichever of his books he is pitching, is almost always with the accompanied theme that THEY don't want you to know this privileged information he is sharing with you. What a nice guy, to stand up against THEM for you and me (and make a little dough on the side)!

Size Matters...to 88% of women (and the other 12% are lying). So says Dr. Victoria Zdrok, also very attractive and busty, with what sounds like a Russian accent, to the accompaniment of "real opinions" emphatically delivered by various incredibly shallow and self-centered young women affirming this notion. The solution is to buy their product, which will "extend" the happiness of its users.

I've seen infomercial after infomercial extolling the virtues of hard, sweaty exercise workouts, sometimes with DVDs being sold, sometimes with quirky (and sometimes dangerous) looking exercise equipment, and sometimes with both. And then there's the commercial that just says to put on their tight, squeezing, elastic suit around your body (under your clothes, of course) and you'll LOOK as if you've been working out without having to actually do anything. Yeah!

Finally, at least for the scope of this article, there is Brainetics, a program designed by math whiz Michael Byster that contains instruction on math and memory shortcuts. Brainetics, as the infomercial clearly reveals, is marketed to parents of little children with the not-so-subtle implication that (1) it will increase their intelligence and give them the needed competitive academic edge over other children and (2) the current, conventional system of education is hopeless without the aid of a system like Brainetics. The whole infomercial has Byster in front of groups of beaming, enthusiastic little children who instantly shout out the answers to what seem like the most complicated of arithmetic problems. More on Brainetics in a later article.

I haven't begun to touch upon the many other types of infomercials out there; frankly, some of them (like the ones dealing with household cleaning) don't exactly capture my attention. But they all seem to have a common theme. The product being sold is inexpensive, necessary, timely, and not available anywhere else. And if you don't buy their product, you are doomed to failure and unhappiness. Or mediocrity at best.

VW's Vile Ad Campaign

In a VW television commercial, two adult men are sitting in a parking garage, observing and noting the cars passing through. One, a burly, stocky man, is twice the size of his companion. He mentions something about a car and then viciously slugs the smaller man very hard in his shoulder. The victim winces, then acts as if he deserved to be hit. A few seconds later, it happens again. And then again, the aggressor never being held accountable for his actions. In fact, as far as Volkswagen is concerned, he is Mr. Right, the role model whom they want the viewer to emulate (Mr. Right is hip to their great product line, you see).

This isn't the only ad they put out with this theme. With the opening music of the old Andy Griffith show in the background, various people in a town go around slugging others in the shoulder when they see VWs drive past them. It's all good, mainstream, hometown, apple pie, acceptable All-American fun. At least that's how Volkswagen wants you to see it.

No, slugging a fellow human being hard in the shoulder is NOT acceptable. In childhood, this is called "bullying" and "child abuse". In adulthood, this is called "physical assault" and is a criminal act, subject to prosecution. But let me say that if someone tried to slug me like in their vile commercials, the justice process would begin immediately, back in the face of the aggressor!

I thought those old V8 vegetable juice commercials were over the top with the way people in public were being popped in the forehead for having missed out on opportunities to consume their product. But this goes way beyond V8's misguided gimmick. This legitimatizes bullying, and at a time of bullying-related suicides and efforts on the parts of schools to highlight and fight the problem. Boycott Volkswagen for this outrageous pro-violence campaign!