Feedback Foibles
Many people don’t really know how to give feedback or, rather, they don’t quite understand the purpose of providing it.
Denise Choppin
Finding Nemo… or Nema? Gender Fluidity in Nature
Many of us delighted in the Disney film “Finding Nemo” Several of the traits ascribed to various fish shown in the movie are relatively accurate, but some of the more fascinating characteristics of clownfish received no mention. Clownfish have matriarchal societies and change their gender from time to time. With
Memory of a Gordian Knot
When I was sixteen years old, I had an emergency appendectomy. But that’s not what I want to write about. This is about my father. After the surgery, decades ago, I ended up on my back for several days and wasn’t allowed to sit up. At the time
Art, Literature, and Rooming Houses
In 1976 and 1977, I attended University in Perugia, Italy. I received my degree (in an accelerated programme) after subjecting myself to two years there, studying what was termed Humanities and Interpreting. The Interpreting part of the curriculum is straightforward; the Humanities, perhaps less so. My studies on that side
Emalyn Smith Burney: An Endling
can’t go on. I’ll go on. — Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air Emalyn first came to my attention in a sensational newspaper article from the Berlin News Records, April 26, 1913 (now Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): He Died Again but Shock Killed his Grandmother Butte, California, April 26, 1913
AI Gets it Wrong Again: First Responders and Cliff Clavin
Not long ago, I wrote an essay on how misleading and incorrect AI can be when it provides a pre-digested answer to queries made through Google: When AI is Wrong: An Absorbing History of Paper TowelsThere are a few things I would like to cover in this essay: * How alarmingly