UPS, AI & U

 UPS, AI & U

   “United Parcel Service, Artificial Intelligence and You”  Yesterday I was treated to a glimpse of this future reality.  A package was delivered intended for me at 717 on my street, rather than my address of 617 (a driver human error).  The address on the package was 617 (correct).  The package was clearly marked, “SIGNATURE REQUIRED”.  This is probably the case, since Medicare is being charged fifteen Thousand dollars for each monthly delivery of the drugs.  As is standard UPS delivery procedure, the driver did not ring the bell, received no signature. used his or her own signature, laid the package on the porch and was on their way.  My neighbor later picked up the package ($15,000 in drugs), thought it was a newspaper and was about to discard it, when she noticed it was not addressed to her, but was addressed to me, a hundred numbers down the street.  She was nice enough to call me and I went down the street to pick up the package.

   I called UPS customer service at 1-800-742-5877 to report the incident and was greeted by a robot (AI) that asked several questions, not allowing me to describe the transaction, but unwilling to transfer me to a human.  I was told to go to a web site, also with no human contact or comprehension.  On the fourth attempt to get past the robot recording I was able to travel the maze and be transferred to a human.  She was in the Orient and English was her second language, so we were able to communicate, but not efficiently.  This is another customer assistance program, designed to save money, not serve the public.  The young woman informed me that I had signed for the package at 12:30.  So, had my neighbor tossed the $15,000 package in her trash, according to UPS records, I had signed for receiving it and was responsible for the loss.  When UPS was founded the “S” stood for service.  That was a long time ago.  As recently as the 1970’s I dealt with UPS as a customer and was treated as one.  Today the “customer” is a single digit profit source and is dealt with by a machine and treated as less than a machine.

   Was I given the opportunity yesterday to get a glimpse into the future, or was I merely made aware of the present.  UPS is aware that the drivers are forging delivery signatures.  They are willfully blind to it.  Morality and customer care is not an issue.  It saves the corporation time and money and time is money.  Artificial Intelligence is replacing human interaction.  This may not be good for humanity, but it is certainly good in the short term for CEO’s.

Cheers, Old Buz          08/18/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

CEOs: “Camel riders in route to attempt passage through the eye of a needle.”       – Old Buz

It's about balance

 

Balance

   The bodies of The Universe move through time and space relying on balance.  Our planet travels about our sun with an orbit guided by a balance of gravity and inertia.  Without that balance our planet Earth would either be pulled into the sun or be flung out into space.  Humans have little or nothing to do with maintaining that balance and it is a good thing.  We live in an atmosphere that supplies us with a balance of carbon and oxygen and most would agree that we can and do affect that balance.  Animals take in oxygen and exhaust carbon, while green plants take in carbon and exhaust oxygen.  This might be an oversimplification, but the basic theory is correct.    

   So balance is a basic of long term survival.  Most would agree that what the atmosphere is composed of is the major factor in climate change.  We see that an abundance of tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, droughts and forest fires are tied to climate change due to an overbalance of carbon in our atmosphere.  We humans are on the carbon team.  We take in oxygen and exhaust carbon.  We heat our homes, fuel our cars, cool our homes and run our industries primarily by burning fossil fuel.  Burning fossil fuel uses oxygen and produces carbon.  Our prime energy source needs to shift to renewables and it can’t happen too soon.  We humans reproduce with little or no concern for overpopulation.

   The oil and coal industries concern themselves primarily with quarterly profits, not long term survival.  This is pretty much true of any corporation.  So you cannot reliably place your faith solely in the free market.  It needs some intelligent guidance.  Our gas and oil companies are actually a utility and should be owned and operated in that design.  More and more in our nation, the few benefit from the many (our increasing wealth gap). When government is controlled by the wealthy, as ours presently is, the nation suffers.  Healthcare costs become prohibitive.  Higher education becomes affordable only to the wealthy.  Housing costs go out of reach for the general public. 

   A good example of pure income driven action is the cutting down of the rain forest of South America.  Timber is a profitable industry as is corporate farming and those are powerful market driven excuses used to cut down the forest.  The problem is that forest is a major balancing force for our planet keeping the atmosphere’s oxygen/carbon ratio in line.  What is a solution to the problem?  You take our eight hundred billion dollar annual military budget (larger than the next ten nations combined) and cut it back to five hundred billion (still larger than the next five nations combined).  Take that three hundred billion annually you just saved and proceed to buy back the rain forest.  Replant the forest.  Let the world pay annual fees (for maintenance plus a profit) to the nations that house the forest for the oxygen produced.  When you have restored the rain forest start building desalinization plants to cure the drought in the Southwest and plant forests there on land owned by the government (in the case of Arizona it is 80% of the land).  Go after the cost of higher education next.  Start using a nation of the people, by the people … for the people.

Cheers, Old Buz          08/09/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

 

“With deeper understanding comes simplicity.” – Old Buz

"That's The Way It Is!"

 

“That’s The Way It Is!”

   When stupidity is accepted as unquestioned reality, we have a problem.  I’m sorry but when the present ineffective rules of government are accepted as unalterable reality we are being cowed.  “That’s the way it is Buz, accept it.”  It isn’t working, but accept it.  No, I intend to praise the positive, but rail against what doesn’t work.  And, to me, more and more of government isn’t working.  Are we being cowed?

   When a single member of The US Senate can hold up the ceremonial promotion of our military leadership, it is no longer just a harmless senate show.  It is very real.  By what insane rule of the Senate, is one member given the ultimate control of the other 99?  Is it just the way it is?  Moo.

   When over seventy percent of our nation’s citizens would like to see better regulation of the tools of death, can a majority leader of the Senate or the House not allow a motion of this intent to the floor for discussion and vote?  Well, yes he or she can.  It’s the rule.  We don’t have the right to see our children and ourselves safe from mass murder.  It’s the rule.  Moo.

   Medicare is being charged one hundred and ninety five thousand dollars a year for a lifesaving drug, by Abbvie Pharmaceuticals, to keep me and a couple hundred thousand others alive (that is, $195K/per year/per patient).   The justification for the pricing is that the company paid twenty one billion dollars for the government enforced patent protection.  Paid, not to the government, but to the previous owner of those rights.  The original developer of the drug, Celera Pharmaceuticals, sold the patent rights for three million dollars.  So, through the bidding up of the patent rights price, through time and transactions, the cost of the drug has been increased by a factor of seven thousand times (not with a test tube & a microscope but with a pen).  Well, that’s the way it is.  Moo.

   When our annual military budget is greater than the next ten militaries in the world combined, our government adds twenty to thirty billion per year with a bipartisan vote of eighty to ninety per cent of our representatives for the increase.  Could we use some of these nearly trillion dollars annually for climate change defense, or universal healthcare, or education or infrastructure?  Well, that’s the way it is.  Not a hell of a lot we can do about it.  Moo.

   When your government tells you that they are burying the evidence from the Kennedy assassination in the archives for fifty years (to be increased by another twenty-five years, before the release) is it just the way it is?  When we carefully observe the three buildings falling to the ground on 9/11 and our government tells us that no demolition was involved, is that really the way it was?  (I don’t wish to insult cattle here.)  Cluck, cluck.

   Are we as a nation being cowed into accepting the absurd by: “It’s the law?”  “It’s the way it has always been.”  “That’s the way we (Democrats or Republicans) see it.”  “I’m only one person.  What can I do?”  Moo.

   When women were not allowed to vote, “It’s the law” wasn’t an adequate answer.  Neither did that answer suffice when our nation turned a blind eye to slavery.  When one senator can stop the promotion of hundreds of military officers, “It’s a rule in our senate” isn’t an adequate position.  When one of the most important trials in the history of our nation is about to take place, don’t tell me there are no television cameras allowed in a federal courtroom.  It is my country.  I am a citizen.  Do not treat me like a mushroom.  I will see.  I will speak my mind.  Do not sluff me off with, “That’s the way it is.”  Put on your God Damn cape and take to the sky.  Grr.

Cheers, Old Buz      8/5/2023

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

“All living things base their conscious actions on their knowledge*. The difference in their effectiveness is the quality of their knowledge and their skill.” – Old Buz

*”The essence of knowledge is an ongoing search for accurate awareness”

TV or Not TV?

 

TV or Not TV?

   That is the question.  Whether to watch the trial of a former President tried, in real time, or receive the editorial opinion of a biased reporter.  That is the choice.  The choice will not be made by you, the citizens of The United States, but by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a man who leads a small group of Supreme Justices, who have no firm legal guidelines and like it that way.  The right to receiving bribery is embraced by our Supreme Court.

   What would be the advantage of giving each citizen of our nation the opportunity of witnessing firsthand the criminal trial of an ex-president of The United States?  It would move the nation toward fact driven public opinion.  Public opinion today is largely driven by partisan news sources.  We have the technical ability, with TV coverage, to offer reality rather than opinion of a historic event.  This TV coverage would not be magic.  We would still watch the coverage through our own bias, but at least the incoming data would be true.   

   I watch Left Wing news (MSNBC & CNN).  I find their political propaganda less insulting to my intelligence than the Right Wing (Fox) propaganda.  The spin coverage by either source will not be enlightening.  Long ago we were able to watch The Watergate Hearings.   In fairness, it was not a trial, but a legislative hearing.   They were re-broadcast in the evening, so that working people could witness them.  That was a better day.  Moving downward we experienced the evidence from the Kennedy Assassination being locked in the archives for 50 years.  As folks started to live longer, another 25 years were added.  The time for the full release of the events of the assassination of John Kennedy … is never!  Folks who tried to understand that event are called Conspiracy Theorists.  To me, it was the birth of The Gullible Nation.  Seventy-five years in the archives (and then some) equals no cameras in the courtroom.

   We live in a world now where a woman could vote for a man who would say that if a woman is attractive to him he, as a star, would just grab her by the pussy.  Or, “I wouldn’t rape her.  She isn’t my type.”  Woe unto those women who are his type.  We are a nation of political loyalists,  a nation of the Willfully Blind.  But we can claw our way back up the slippery slide.  We can demand to see the greatest event in our nation’s history, un-politicized.   Televise the trial in its entirety.  Let truth back into freedom.

   And what of the argument for not televising the trial?  Certainly there must be one.  A MAGA Republican (a fool) might argue that the nation would be better served with politicized knowledge only.  “The loyalists follow the under tail scent of the lemmings in front of them.”   Or that this man who places his name in large letters on his aircraft, or sleeps with porn stars while his wife delivers his child is entitled to his privacy.  This man did not enter the political arena with privacy in mind.   I apologize.  I am presenting an ad homonym argument against the man, not the precedent.  “Any action taken against the public good needs to be exposed without bias to the public.”  Let unedited television ring.

Cheers, Old Buz          8/03/2023

“If you have nothing to hide … you have nothing to hide.” – Old Buz

 

P.S. I am obviously a loyalist, but I am lucky enough to be right on this particular issue.  Truth and knowledge should not be a political hurdle.

New Business

 

Bring Back New Business

(This blog is not an attack on Jeff Bezos or his company, Amazon PD, for their total destruction of New Businesses (Mom & Pop small businesses).

   One could drop the prayer at the beginning of a government legislative session and add a call for new business at the end.  This would add to the effectiveness and the honesty of their endeavor.  I remember student government in high school, sixty-five years ago, and that was our procedure.  We were learning parliamentary order.  The last section of the governing body meeting was always to ask, “Is there any New Business?”  This enabled any elected representative to present a bill to the group and in order for the bill to be brought to the floor for discussion and a vote, an “I second the motion” was also required.  Therefore, what came to the floor for discussion and was voted upon was not the sole discretion of the leader.  Under Robert’s Rules of Parliamentary Order, democracy was alive and well.  Not so in our government today.

   Fast forward to Mitch McConnell’s Senate Majority Leadership, during the Trump Administration.  As you know, Mitch effectively blocked over three hundred bills passed by the House of Representatives from being brought to the floor for discussion and vote.  Any bill must be passed by both legislative bodies before being signed by the President into law.  This effectively gave one man elected by one small state control over the legislation of an entire nation.   As a secondary action, Mitch would not allow a justice appointment to The Terrible Nine by President Obama, for Senate approval, because at eleven months, it was “too close to a presidential election.” While later, under Trump, Mitch ushered in a Supreme Court appointment for Senate review with only one month left in Trump’s term of office.

  If J. Edgar Hoover has earned the right to his name posted on the building housing The Federal Bureau of Investigation, certainly Mitch McConnell has earned the right to his name in large letters posted on the Senate Building.  Like other great Americans, perhaps Donald Trump’s Name should be displayed in large letters on The White House.  It could then be called “The House of Trump.”

Cheers, Old Buz     7/27/2023

“The loyalist follows the under tail scent of the lemming in front of him.” – Old Buz

(This is my humble opinion of employing loyalty as one’s primary moral guide.)

Blackball

    The blackball is an unreasonable concept applied to a democracy that makes it no longer a democracy.  In a functioning democracy the will of the majority rules.  That required majority may be increased to 60% or even in cases of extreme importance 66.67%.  But what do you have when one member can overrule the entire body?

   One member should never be given this power.  Not if you wish to maintain the democracy.  So when the senior senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, stops the promotion of 165 US military officers in order to leverage an unrelated partisan issue, the system has stopped functioning.  The one member Blackball right must be removed from the parliamentary rules of our government.  The Republican senators will not apply pressure to this nut cake senator as our President suggested in a Finland news conference.  A ride down an escalator in the Trump Tower effectively removed the Party’s moral rudder.  The solution to the problem of any single vote ruling the Senate would be a secret ballot to remove the blackball option.   Even our President can have his veto overruled, but we currently have no system to overrule an authoritarian senator.

  There is another problem here that isn’t quite so obvious.  If you were to quiz the 100 members of the Senate and ask them individually: “What do you know about the performance of any five of the 165 military officers offered for your approval for promotion?”  It would surprise me if any of the one hundred had a comprehensive answer.  The obvious next question would be, “Then how is the US Senate qualified to take this vote, and shouldn’t these decisions be left in The Pentagon or below even that level?” Let the decisions be made where the knowledge exists to make them. 

  The original use of the term “Blackball” was to name a venereal disease.  We would have a more effective democracy if the concept returned to its original medical application. 

Cheers, Old Buz          07/13/2023

“You cannot change a person’s position with reason … if they did not reach it through reason.” – Anon

What do Atheists Believe?

   That sounds like a dumb question.  Atheists I have spoken with simply say, “I don’t believe in God.”  There is a hesitance to go any further.  Being as insensitive as I am, I will follow this up with “What does the word God mean to you?”  Those few who will answer come up with “The Creator of the Universe, as described by the bible of the religion I was raised in.”  Since historically there have probably been a thousand religions that they weren’t raised in, this is not a very logical denial.  The other concept I hear from Atheists is the Tea Cup & Saucer cliché, “Just because one can’t prove that there isn’t a tea cup and saucer orbiting the Earth, it doesn’t prove that there is one.”  Their point being, just because I have no evidence that God doesn’t exist, you certainly have no reliable evidence that He does.  I believe your books are based on symbolism and mythology, not proven data.

   I recently watched a couple of hours of discussion, on video, featuring four men of science that are leaders and authors in the Atheist persuasion.  These men have wonderful minds.  It featured Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Dennett (The Four Horsemen).  Harris mentioned that he didn’t think that “Atheism” is a very well defined belief system because it denies a belief rather than describing one.  To deny a belief (“I don’t believe in God”) leaves a lot of other possible philosophies out there.  To me, the best answer an Atheist could give to what they do believe would be, “I believe that the bibles I have read are obvious mythology.  This is easily proven with logic and science.  I would be glad to illustrate my present position.”  I don’t hear anything like this from any Atheist I have known.

  I would be happy to agree with this concept, but I don’t consider myself an Atheist.  An agnostic better describes my position.  I don’t know what or how the universe I live in came to be.  I use the acronym GOD (Grand Omnipotent Dna) to name the system or systems of the Universe being studied, but I don’t see science finishing their study and doubt they ever will … hence my questions i.e. agnosticism.   Harris faults the agnostic for simply questioning whether the god of the religion of their upbringing exists.  This would not apply to my belief of questioning how the Universe was created or its infinity, as I have never had faith in any god.  I don’t see questioning faith as offensive, but as wise.  Remember, no honest agnostic ever started a war based on religious beliefs. 

Cheers, Old Buz the agnostic          07/07/2023

“Enjoy your awareness.  It is definitely a choice and possibly a gift.” – Old Buz