Just a Free Thinker at Large

Looking For The One Who Is Looking

Warning! This post doesn't have anything to do with politics. I used to believe in souls. Even after I'd given up on religion and gods, I still told myself that there was some kind of energy field that lived inside our mortal shells. Whether that soul

Snowflakes: Telling Better Stories

We're losing the battle of ideas. Oh, and facts. I tell you, those things are strewn across the battlefield. Some are still twitching, but it doesn't look good for facts. Somebody should really call a medic. I suppose I should start by pointing out that I

The Evolution of Mind Children

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man." These words are spoken in the introduction to the TV series, "The Six Million Dollar Man," back when six million dollars was a lot

Everything in Human Life is Really About Sex, Except...

If you've spent any time on the internet—or better yet, in the world of quotable dead authors—you've probably come across this gem: “Everything in human life is really about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Brilliant, right? So brilliant, in fact, that it’

Can FOSS Bring "Open" to AI?

If I try to trace my roots in Open Source, I'd probably have to go back to my early days in the mid to late 1970s and the time I spent playing with my Commodore PET, then TRS-80 Level II, as well as all those other computers that

Naps, Snacks, and Belly Rubs

What follows is a story about writing a song. A song about living life as a dog, which you know (at least in this part of the world) isn't terribly difficult or taxing. :-) You know what is hard? Writing music, especially when you don't know

We Are Not Doomed. We Are Paladins!

Oh, the humanity... In a brilliantly orchestrated symphony of calamity, our world pirouettes on the brink like a drunken ballerina in a minefield. Climates change more often than a moody teenager's love interests, with Mother Earth cranking the thermostat like a forgetful grandparent. Meanwhile, politicians bicker with the

Unusual Eclipse Watching Tips

Over on yon Facebook, there was this list of eclipse watching tips floating about. Some of it was pretty funny and so I reshared the list. I've been trying to trace the origins of these tips to something other than the original poster (OP) but I'm

The Easter Story Explained

Some years back, my youngest son asked me about Easter. What it was all about? More importantly, what's with all the eggs? Luckily, as a parent, I was (and am) endowed with the power of complete universal knowledge and, naturally, explaining how Easter works is child's

The Quantum Pen

Before we get into the story, I need to set this up. A couple of days ago, I signed up for Perplexity.ai's Pro offering. In case you've never seen it, Perplexity is a kind of AI powered search engine. While it has access to AI

The Problem with "The Three-Body Problem"

I don't often do reviews, but when I do, they're not usually in my blog, but they are very opinionated. You have been warned. Okay, so it's more personal observation than actual review, but there you have it. I promise to keep it short.

We Are As Gods

I've been reading a fascinating book, "God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning", written by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Technically, I've been listening to it on Audible. It's a fascinating book which covers, among its pages, the subject

Blame the Tool, or the Tool User?

A long time ago and far away, a Captain in the British Army retired from service and moved to an estate near Ballinrobe in Ireland. His name was Charles and he moved into Lough Mask House, a property owned by a wealthy landowner by the name of Lord Erne who

Who Stole The Pockets?!

Sherman, set the Wayback machine to 1983, to a time when MTV ruled television. You're captured by the endless stream of music videos, falling into each one like that woman at the diner falling into the comic in the "Take On Me" video. In this case,

Goodbye, Privacy!

"You have no privacy. Get over it!" If you've been around tech long enough, you've probably run across former SUN Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy's famous (or infamous) quote. That goes back to 1999 and it raised a boatload of hackles back in

The Thanksgiving Day War!

Hey everyone, It's me. I know I'm fashionably late to the party—a couple of days behind for the folks in the U.S., but hey, just over ten months ahead for us Canadians, right? But let's not get bogged down in the details.

Lest We Forget...

Remembering the past is what this post is about and on this November 11, 2023, I once again find myself thinking about wars past, wars present, and sadly, the wars to come. This year, in particular, there are two high profile wars going, one in Ukraine, and the other in

The Real History of the Middle Finger. Maybe.

Some stories just keep coming round and round again. That's why God invented Snopes; to helpfully and hopefully explore the veracity of stories shared by your friends on social media. Put another way, there are places to see if a story is bullshit. That stuff shows up everywhere,

Superhero Fashion 101

On Halloween night, while waiting for kids to come begging for candy, I sat on the couch and started throwing strange but simple prompts at DALL-E 3, and basically just having fun. In case you haven't spent much time with DALL-E 3, it's different in that,

The Soul for Getting Down: The Spirited History of Halloween Parties

Feeling a little on edge? Like someone is looking over your shoulder? Do you hear a creaking sound in an otherwise silent room? Wait! Was there something moving in the shadows? You could swear you just heard a low kind of moaning sound, as though the saddest, loneliest creature in

A No BS Guide to Getting Rid of Your Back Pain!

Let’s start with my tragic backstory. I suffered with crippling back pain for more than twenty years. I’m talking about being out on my back, unable to drive, barely able to walk, or work. I spent every moment trying to deal with the pain while doing my best

Everything's Coming Up AI Roses

TRIGGER WARNING! This post paints AI in a largely positive way. Readers who feel threatened by positive outlooks may want to avoid this one. Too often, discussions about AI's future pit humanity against machine, as if preparing for some cataclysmic showdown. Yet, this perspective fails to recognize the

Bromelain for Nasal Polyps: Personal Experience

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, consider yourself lucky and just move on. This isn't likely to be too interesting for you and it might just gross you out. If you do know about nasal polyps, or you know of someone

Confusing Religion and Technology

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." – Abraham Maslow I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been putting off responding to this. I suppose it's partly because I had such a visceral reaction to it. Maybe I

Your Smartphone Camera's Deep, Dark, AI Secret

As viral art apps from Stable Diffusion, to Midjourney, to DALL-E 2, stoke fears about machines stealing human creativity, it’s worth remembering we’ve been training AI to enhance our creative skills longer than you may realize. Every snapshot you’ve taken with your smartphone camera in the last