In 2008, I
bought the basic Total Gym for $250.00.I have had that basic gym now for 18 years, and it is still working as
advertised.
It has been
an on-and-off exercise device for me, but more on than off.I may fall away for a few weeks or a month
and then return to regular use.Having
this machine sitting in my spare room prompts me to use it.
I am
approaching my ninth decade, and I honestly feel that this machine has helped
improve my stamina and has been a healthy exercise component; had I not used
the machine on a semi-regular basis, my health would have deteriorated beyond
my present condition.
I have no
connection with Total Gym.I am sure that there are other devices
available that are just as good or perhaps even better for a one-machine total
workout.
I am just
passing on my experience, hoping to benefit someone looking for an exercise
routine that doesn’t include traveling to a gym
My exercise
routine lasts about five minutes.I do
one set of ten: rowing, pulls, body twist for the abs, and curls – then I turn
around and do sweeps, pushups, pullups, crunches, and situps (I don’t know the
proper name for the exercises, but this may explain what I do.)
I end my
workout with two or three minutes of meditation where I control my
breathing.
I was
shocked today when I looked up the Total Gym website and found that their basic
machine now cost $600.
I can’t
advise anyone to buy this machine on my say-so; so do your own research if you
are looking for a one-machine workout. But, do consider a daily exercise as
part of your lifestyle: it is not that hard to spend five minutes exercising as
part of your daily routine.
In this day and age, I am not shocked or concerned that Robert Kennedy Jr would pull over to the side of the road, with his kids in the car, to cut out the penis of a road kill raccoon, to take it home to study.
The thing that I find shocking is that he has kids. Who the hell would want to have sex with a man with a brain worm who has an obsession with animal penis?
At least the raccoon's penis was small enough to take in the car. The whale's penis had to be tied to the top of his car.
This is who Trump picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
I am in my late
eighties. I have lived for almost a
century, and at this time of life, I tend to look back rather than
forward.The thing that stands out the
most to me is the stupidity of a human race that considers itself intelligent.
About six
thousand years ago, the great apes and humans had a common ancestor.We
are basically advanced apes.
We have
evolved a brain capable of functional intelligence. A majority of humans are capable
of training to perform a task and functioning in a loose society.We have not invented flight, mass
transit, and electronic technology; a tiny, small percentage of us have the advanced
intelligence of thought experiments, and have dragged the rest of us, kicking
and screaming, into the future we now live in.
Our future
should look exciting; but we are the only animals, except for chimpanzees, our
closest cousin in the animal kingdom, that regularly conduct wars and genocide against
their own kind.That propensity will be
our own destruction.
Our greatest
fear should not be AI or asteroids.The inevitability
of a theology with a nuclear weapon will be more likely to bring about the
sixth extinction.
It wasn’t
enough in Jonestown for true believers to drink the Kool-Aid; they had to bring
along all the others with them.
Religion is
a frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, mere reasoning.
Thoughts of
an old man in the wee hours of the morning
From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty, you want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say
At a time when
people seem to be getting dumber and dumber, Artificial Intelligence is needed
more and more.
Let me
clarify that statement:
We tend to laud
our achievements: that we have
developed technology and modern medicine, and we have sent men into space; but 98% of us have done fuck all.Two percent of our population (the bright 2%)
have envisioned and actually made these
advancements, while the rest of us have been dragged along, often kicking and
screaming.
For the last
two or three years, I have been hearing about AI (artificial intelligence), but
only vaguely understanding what all the hype was about.
I just finished
reading The Age of AI, by Kissinger, Schmidt, and Huttenlocher, and
still didn’t get my basic questions answered.
I don’t actually
give a fuck about the history, the math, or the philosophy of AI and
humanity.But to sate my curiosity, I
would like some simple answers.
My questions
are basic:
·Does AI think
·How is AI programmed
·How does AI learn
·Can AI teach itself
·Can AI experience
·Can AI become self-aware (alive)
·Will AI lie to us
·When we think of Singularity as
in The Matrix, will AI intelligence expand exponentially – become god-like
·Will AI ever be able to write its on codes –
no need for human input
·Can’t we just unplug AI if it becomes
too controlling
·What about power consumption
·How will it be used in war: make a
decision on its on to kill humans
·What are the positive aspects that
might outweigh the danger of a machine that is smarter than its creator
I have found
some of these answers on YouTube in the following Star Talk clip that
includes input from Jeffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize recipient in Physics.
Unless you
are interested in the concept, history, and mathematical concepts, I suggest
you fast forward (select to begin) at the thirty-five-minute mark of the
presentation.
Note: the
constant ad interjections are aggravating, but hang in there.
One of the statements that stood out to me was that AI's relationship with humans might become that of a teacher to a kindergarten class.
I am an old
man of nearly nine decades, and the odds against my being here are so astronomically
large as to be uncountable.
Of all the
billions of galaxies with their billions of stars, circled by all the billions of
planets: in this particular solar system of a relative minor star, the third
planet from the sun happens to be in the Goldilocks zone, which allowed the
development of life, that through the chaos of evolution and happenstance
produced a me.
My mother
worked at a defense plant in Memphis, Tennessee. My father was in the military,
stationed in Louisiana.Strictly by
chance, they both attended Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the year before my
birth.They happened to meet and ended
up having sex.She didn’t practice birth
control, he didn’t use a condom, he didn’t pull out, it wasn’t a hand job, or a
blow job, or anal intercourse. She happened to be fertile at that particular
time. He ejaculated up to three hundred million sperm, and the only one of those
three hundred million carrying my particular DNA managed to penetrate and fertilize
that egg.
What are the
odds of that happening?
I have often
wondered why I wasn’t aborted; she was a single woman, and he was a married
man.
The odds of
my existence are uncountable (like pi).
In almost
nine decades, the beauties, sunsets and sunrises I have experienced: the sting
of an Arctic blizzard; the thrill of running a wild river or transiting the
Okefenokee swamps in a canoe; the women I have known, the motorcycles I have
ridden, the pleasures I have had; and most exciting of all, I married the most stunningly
beautiful woman I had ever met, who has shared almost fifty years of adventures
with me and has made my existence on this earth pleasurable beyond description.
And I could
have lost it all!
My second
twenty years of life were spent in the military.I flew as air crew on dangerous patrols over
the North Atlantic, sometimes in blizzard conditions; I survived a crash
landing in Turkey; twice in Vietnam, our aircraft was riddled by ground fire,
and we limped back to the base leaking oil and gas; I have facial scars and a permanent
limp from a military accident…
If you lived
through the Vietnam era, you remember the daily death toll announced on the
radio and television: 28 men died today… fifteen men died today…
I don’t
believe the official total death toll announced by our government: 58,000. It was much higher.
Some vets
died much later from war-related illnesses and injuries, people who committed suicide
or drank themselves to death, or died as a result of mental breakdowns…
In Vietnam,
the men who died accomplished nothing.They were sent there at the whims of politicians playing partisan
politics, and more interested in keeping their illustrious jobs than caring for
the men and women of the military.
Where am
I going with this?
We have a
President talking about putting boots on the ground, in a war instigated by the
Israeli President, and ultimately about oil and natural resources that can make
the mega-rich more wealthy and powerful.
What a waste
it is to be young and die in a War; to squander these precious moments we have of
life; to never experience the pleasures of our brief human existence. To end up
as a name printed on some cold marble wall, as pawns of politicians who see the
military as boots, and not individual living men and women.
