Best Wishes For 2017!

Cheers to you, my blog readers!  Here are a few suggested resolutions for 2017:
1)  Give of yourselves…
2)  Love others (and tell them / show them often)…
3)  Enjoy long walks (preferably while holding someone’s hand), nutritious food and candle-lit meals, good reading, music which touches your soul, and quiet moments for reflection…
4)  Laugh frequently and loudly…  Cry freely and unashamed when you must…
5)  Look forward (Hope), while living in the moment (Enjoy), and not forgetting the past (Memories)…
May you have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2017!
Please have a happy (and safe) New Year’s Eve!
[Yes, this is a similar post to many of my earlier New Year’s Eve suggestions.  And, no, I’m not just being lazy!  LOL    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2015	Better Red Than Dead
	Tomorrow Starts A New Year
2014	Recovering
	Best Wishes For 2015!
2013	Best Wishes For 2014!
2012	My Creed
2011	It Probably Isn’t So

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And Fathers, Sons

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs;  they expect too much of ordinary men.
—    Thucydides
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On This Day In:
2015	My Suspect Confidence
2014	Disguised Blessings
2013	Be
2012	The Only Way to Win
2011	Honest Writing

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Supervise The Results

It usually takes a big man to delegate responsibilities to others – and then leave these others to handle them.  He will install a man, give him a free hand and watch results.  He does not actively supervise his men, but he does – actively and minutely – supervise the results.  The man afraid to deputize will retard growth – his own and that of his organization.
—     B. C. Forbes
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On This Day In:
2015	Just Magic!
2014	It Lies Ahead…
2013	At Least One Difference
2012	Are We, Are We?
	On Not Playing The Game
	Scale
2011	Nutcracker And Nooks
	Seeing Differences

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We Did This

A leader is best when he is neither seen nor heard, not so good when he is adored and glorified, worst when he is hated and despised.  But of a good leader, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, the people will say, “We did this ourselves.”
—    Lao-Tzu
[If you elect an amoral con-man to be your President and he drives the country into deeper debt, continues to destroy the middle-class by transferring wealth to the top 1% and who engages in off-the-cuff twitter diplomacy, perhaps we should remind ourselves that “elections have consequences” and modify Lao-Tzu’s quote to:  “We did this TO ourselves.”    —    KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2015	I’m Talking To You
	Forced (Again)
2014	We Are Not A Fearful Nation!
2013	Risking Truth
2012	Working On Reality
2011	Massive Contradictory Changes

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Preparation

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
—    Elbert Hubbard
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On This Day In:
2015	Scarcely Asked
2014	They Resemble Us
2013	Both
2012	That’s Success!
2011	Losing At Dominoes
2010	1,001

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Control In The Age Of Entanglement

The implications of an unparsable machine language aren’t just philosophical.  For the past two decades, learning to code has been one of the surest routes to reliable employment — a fact not lost on all those parents enrolling their kids in after-school code academies.  But a world run by neurally networked deep-learning machines requires a different workforce.  Analysts have already started worrying about the impact of AI on the job market, as machines render old skills irrelevant.  Programmers might soon get a taste of what that feels like themselves.
…
This explosion of indeterminacy has been a long time coming.  It’s not news that even simple algorithms can create unpredictable emergent behavior — an insight that goes back to chaos theory and random number generators.  Over the past few years, as networks have grown more intertwined and their functions more complex, code has come to seem more like an alien force, the ghosts in the machine ever more elusive and ungovernable.  Planes grounded for no reason.  Seemingly unpreventable flash crashes in the stock market.  Rolling blackouts.
These forces have led technologist Danny Hillis to declare the end of the age of Enlightenment, our centuries-long faith in logic, determinism, and control over nature.  Hillis says we’re shifting to what he calls the age of Entanglement.  “As our technological and institutional creations have become more complex, our relationship to them has changed,” he wrote in the Journal of Design and Science.  “Instead of being masters of our creations, we have learned to bargain with them, cajoling and guiding them in the general direction of our goals.  We have built our own jungle, and it has a life of its own.”  The rise of machine learning is the latest — and perhaps the last — step in this journey.
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To nerds of a certain bent, this all suggests a coming era in which we forfeit authority over our machines.  “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand,” wrote Stephen Hawking — sentiments echoed by Elon Musk and Bill Gates, among others.  “Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
—    Jason Tanz
From his article:  “The End Of Code“
Appearing in the June 2016 issue of Wired Magazine
[Every 10 years or so we are cautioned about computers, the end of programming, Artificial Intelligence and “the end of code”.  And, as always, I am reminded of the quote:  “The survival value of human intelligence has never been satisfactorily demonstrated.”   —  Michael Crichton from his book:  “The Andromeda Strain“.   I guess we may see, sooner rather than later.   —   KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2015	Okay, Maybe Not Ceaseless
2014	Can Do
2013	Are You Helping?
2012	Inside All Truth Is A Vacuum
2011	So, Whom Are We Trying To Fool Then?

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Merry X-mas – 2016

You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out, the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
—    Henry Drummond
[Merry Christmas to all… !!   —    KMAB]
[The image was “borrowed” from one of the comments I’ve rec’d from a fellow blogger.  Please visit his site if you have a few minutes:  http://pacificparatrooper.wordpress.com/   —   KMAB
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On This Day In:
2015	Merry X-mas – 2015
2014	Merry X-mas – 2014
2013	Merry X-mas – 2013
2012	Merry Christmas – 2012
2011	I Have Seen

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The President-elect: Making Spirits Bright

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
—    Donald J. Trump
President-elect, Twitter account December 22, 2016
How can we dispel the notion of some people that anyone will survive a nuclear war?
—    Dr. Yevgeniy Chazov
Official physician to Leonid Brezhnev
Nuclear War…  When you’ve seen one, You’ve seen them all.
—    Bumper sticker from the 1970’s
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On This Day In:
2015	What Are You Looking At?
2014	Ite, Missa Est
2013	I Hear Voices
2012	Positive Thoughts
	Hope Works
2011	Look! Up In The Sky…
	Humility Before The Unknowable

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Sincerest Flattery

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
—    James Baldwin
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On This Day In:
2015	What Are You Looking At?
2014	Ite, Missa Est
2013	I Hear Voices
2012	Positive Thoughts
	Hope Works
2011	Look! Up In The Sky…
	Humility Before The Unknowable

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Proceeding Still

Ever since our love for machines replaced the love we used to have for our fellow man, catastrophes proceed to increase.
—    Man Ray
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On This Day In:
2015	Seeing Rainbows
	I Am A Runner
2014	The Law Of The Perversity Of Nature
2013	One Standard Deviation
2012	High Anxiety
2011	And I’m Taking Me There
2010	1,000

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And Without Expectation

Love must be given without thought of reciprocation.
—    Frank Tyger
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On This Day In:
2015	Just Do It
	I Am A Runner
2014	Some Things I Learned (Mostly) In The Army:
2013	Who You Are
2012	Mine Stands
2011	Aversions

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Starting To Stumble

The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society.  That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.
—    Edward R. Murrow
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On This Day In:
2015	Begin Combat
	I Am A Runner
2014	Just Dig ‘N It, Why?
2013	Additions
	The Object Of Instruction
2012	Telling Her
2011	On Torture

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Something Authentic Happened

The recurring discovery I made in each virtual world I entered was that although every one of these environments was fake, the experiences I had in them were genuine.  VR does two important things:  One, it generates an intense and convincing sense of what is generally called presence.  Virtual landscapes, virtual objects, and virtual characters seem to be there — a perception that is not so much a visual illusion as a gut feeling.  That’s magical.  But the second thing it does is more important.  The technology forces you to be present — in a way flatscreens do not — so that you gain authentic experiences, as authentic as in real life.  People remember VR experiences not as a memory of something they saw but as something that happened to them.
—    Kevin Kelly
From his article:  “Hyper Vision“
In the May 2016 issue of Wired Magazine
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On This Day In:
2015	Back On The Bricks
	On, Rocinante!!
2014	Changing Frequently
2013	Trifles
2012	Simple, Ordinary And Wonderous
2011	Humane Writers

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Job Security

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—    Elbert Hubbard
[Yet.   —   KMAB]
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On This Day In:
2015	For I Have Always Lived Violently
2014	We Stand !! (I Stand With George)
	Additional Requirements
2013	In The Present Day
2012	Feeling It
2011	Stretching Science

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And A Fellow Who Insists On Telling Us He’s Smart?

A fellow who is always declaring he’s no fool usually has his suspicions.
—    Wilson Mizner
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On This Day In:
2015	Curves Ahead
2014	Sitting?
2013	Misperceptions
2012	Essential Experience
2011	Lest We Forget Those Still In Harm’s Way
	Sound Familiar?

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