Geronimo's Cadillac

Modern mythology springs from the best and worst of us. It evolves.

The Web amplifies  and accelerates the evolution of this mythology.

Modern mythology illustrates the best and worst of the human condition. 

Mythological stories last longest when they show that good behavior will be rewarded and foolish, evil, or stupid behavior will be punished. 

Modern mythology reveal people's fear of rapid change in technology.


SONGS
Michael Martin Murphey's song "Geronimo's Cadillac" was inspired by Walter Ferguson's photo of Geronimo sitting in a luxury Locomobile.
 Contrary to what you might think, the person in the feathered war bonnet is not Geronimo. Geronimo is the man in the top hat sitting at the wheel.
The song was also recorded by Hoyt Axton and by Cher, whos real name is  Cherilyn Sarkisian, who is not an indian, but of Armenian / Irish decent.

On March 4th in 1905 Geranimo rode in the president Theodore Roosevelt's Inaugural parade. Of the six indians who were invited to march, he was the only one who was not an Indian chief.
Geronimo is second from right. Many people thought he was a cowboy.

His real name was Goyathlay (The cunning one), The mexicans called him Geronimo, (One who yawns)

Had Goyathlay owned a cadillac it would have looked like this. However, he never owned a car, or learned to drive, He simply sat in a Locomobile for a photograph.

When A.I. Escapes

A photo I took at Fort Pickens in Pensacola Florida, Edited.

Every technology either reaches escape velocity, or  dies.
If at some point, a new technology becomes viable, it explodes into the human experience like gangbusters.
It happened with automobiles. I saw that with the personal computer. We are seeing it now with artificially intelligent robotics.

Some questions arise. We weren't prepared for them when the automobile, TV, and PC arrived. Will we be prepared for the A.I. Robot?
Will Robots have rights.
Should Robots that replace human workers pay income tax?
Are Robots slaves?
What do we do with a dead Robot?
Once a Robot reaches general intelligence, can they vote?

Why did I capitalize "Robot"? Well... we capitalize God, don't we?

Artificial Intelligence  -  Just the Beginning.

MIT teaches AI to transform photos into creepy images.

This is an example of an A.I. agent that is specialized. It just makes scary pictures. 

Cortana, Sari and Alexa are also specialized. They find things on the web, do simple math and keep track of appointments. They are not generalized. They would not pass for humans in a Turing test.

The consensus among A.I. researchers today is that A.G.I. (Artificial General Intelligence) is still thirty to forty years away.

Some even argue that A.I. stands for "Augmented Intelligence". That A.I. is just a set of tools we use to augment our own intelligence. Neural networks help us spell words correctly, identify possible viruses to protect our PC's, recognise our faces to log us in, correct our english, translate a foreign language, or search the internet.
Today we understand how neurons work, but not the brain. We create Artificial brains by arranging neurons in rows and columns. But that is not how they are done in biology.

We can use MRI to see the locations in our brains where math is done. And, we see they are different when we do spelling.   Math takes place in two places at the same time. One in the left half of our brain, and a similar place in the right half. Why? Is there some sort of arbitration mechanism in the human brain that chooses the correct answer to the math problem or the correct spelling of the word?
Do we do it in two places just for redundancy?
Does our brain simply pick the answer form whichever side finds it first? Or, since answers are based on rather fuzzy strengths of neural pathways, is the brain looking for a consensus? Maybe the left brain says the answer is either 3, 7 or 9, while the right side says the answer is 3 or 4. Three is chosen simply because both sides of the brain seem to agree. Right now, I can't answer that question.
There is a bundle of nerves that connect the two halves of the brain, (the corpus callosum), but  that seems to be just a communications path, (much like a bundle of fiber optics). But that still does not answer how or why the brain does most things in two places.

While on the subjec of the human brain versus A.I., here is an interesting experiment.
Are the white blocks moving up and down or right and left. This is a common test used to determine where in the brain  movement processed. Try looking at the center of the black square. Try viewing the test from an angle by moving your head three or four feet to the extreme right or left of the screen. This test is often used to determine if you are right or left brained.

Ambiguous apparent-motion quartet

Additional reading:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-human-brain-split-into-two-hemispheres

Also; this book is on amazon and is available for Kendel:
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - by Julian Jaynes

Placeholders for misplaced slides from my dads 35 mm slide drawers.

When Digitizing my dads 35 mm slides, some got misplaced. I made these images as place holders for the files that I haven't yet found. They feature photos dad took of me and my sister

Lost in the woods.

For the first time in over 200 weeks I missed my show.
....    Sorry!

My Brother, Sister and I decided to build some roads on our property in Defuniak Springs.
<-- This is my little brother in the Bobcat. ... Before he got it stuck!

Tracks buried in muck.

This is us trying to dig it out.

This is me going for help. 

 My sister to the rescue.

This is me apologizing for not doing Bobs Bytes last Tuesday.

Another notes page

Notes

I have so many field notes, photos and sketches, I decided to make a cover sheet  for them.