THESE are [once again] times that try men's souls (Thomas Paine). All known governments have a rise and a fall. Is this the United States' time to stall, trip and fall? It certainly can seem that way, with all the disruptions surfacing these days, and growing, polarized dissension replacing compromise. There seems to be a craziness bubbling up, as if the simmering pot called America were approaching a boiling point. But is this true? 

It certainly is a reflection of the times in which we live,...

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IF you find plastic/metal/code Artificial Intelligence somewhat daunting (think of the AI inside your cellular phone that translates what you say into text), then fasten your seatbelt before reading this report: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/americas/xenobots-self-replicating-robots-scn/index.html. Scientists “at at the University of Vermont, Tufts University and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering said they have discovered an entirely new form of bi...

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ABSTRACT Artificial Intelligence (AI) thoughts aren’t science fiction anymore. SciFu (science-based futuring) AI thinking is already happening, incredible as it sounds. They’re learning. But consider this: GPT-3, a trained AI language model by Open AI, with prompts, “can write humanlike news articles, short stories and poems. But in one demo, it wrote: ‘It takes two rainbows to jump from Hawaii to seventeen'” — https://www.sciencenews.org/century/computer-ai-algorithm-moore-law-et...

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It's becoming harder these days to find unbiased news. What used to be dry factual reporting seems to have swung to its counterpoint: interpretation and opinion. What's missing, in my opinion, is BALANCE. But by balance I don't mean the "mean." 

Good news reporting involves presenting the facts (to be interpreted in various ways by the viewer/listener) and meaning (as be interpreted in various ways by the preparer/broadcaster). "Weighting" the news based on popularity moves it into the realm o...
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The fourth of July is when everyone American celebrates the birth of the United States of America, right? Maybe. But I've always believed that it's the day when the world celebrates MY birthday, replete with fireworks. Like Yankee Doodle Dandy, I've always been a firecracker, and I guess I will be until I pass from this crazy world. In the meantime, I bring that energy into "thinking outside the box" in everything I do. 


Take education, for instance. A university professor for over 40 years, I...
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There's an increasing amount of confusion these days about what education is and isn't. It's hard to separate the fact from "fake news." But there's a couple of "facts" that can be relied on, even in these changing times:

First, there's a big difference from the business of education (involved in the selling of products) and the provision of education (involved in the service of educating learners). The former deals in money; the latter in truth. These days, educational institutions are sorely...
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I'm often asked where in the great scheme of things educational I think our current American system of education falls.  On the surface it seems like an easy question that begs a simple "rank" answer.  Think about it awhile, however, and both the question and any answer that might result become complexly rank.  As an academician, I value clearity, completeness and conciseness, in that order, so, I have decided to take on this "simple" question as the topic of today's entry. 

Hold your nose!  ...
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