The Newell Post

Heuristic Algorithmic Computer or, as we more lovingly remember him, HAL was created by Arthur C Clarke in his book and Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I say HIM referring to HAL because even in the liberated 60s, women were having a hard time getting a good job in the tech world.

Every time I hear or read anything about Artificial Intelligence, I think the AI must really refer to Anti Intelligence. Surely, we have better uses for supercomputers than devising schemes to dupe would-be consumers into purchasing nonexistent products or helping a Nigerian Prince get his money out of Nigeria (which, to be fair, preceded AI).

Scarier attacks have surfaced, including scams to bilk you out of thousands of dollars by ransoming a loved one who phones you and sounds just like your child begging you to pay these people so that he or she can be released.

AI is used to create these voices that sound so real you would run to the bank to save your child. First, there was the Deep Fake that used trumped-up (sorry, couldn’t resist) videos of people doing and saying things that never happened. No wonder our nation has a hard time defining the truth.

Hal warned us that we were on the road to technical disaster, but we didn’t take heed.

After all, growing up in the 50s, we all believed that by 2001, there would be colonies on the moon and that a trip to Saturn or Jupiter would only require a transfer from the moon, much like transferring buses at West Farms in the Bronx from the 36 to the 20. Sadly, we are still waiting for the transfer.

Space travel and even Earth travel are much the same as they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon. If anything, Earth travel is worse as often the wait in the airport is longer than the flight you’re hoping to take.

Never thought about Deep Fakes or the horrors of AI; I mean, even Isaac Asimov had his Three Laws of Robotics in his I Robot series. The Cliff Notes version of Asimov’s laws simply states that Robots cannot injure a human or allow a human to be injured.

I realize that’s a lot of government regulation for some of you, but when AI strikes, you’ll wish there was a robotic McGruff Crime Dog to sic on the techno-miscreants.

Don’t get me wrong I still have great hope that AI can turn the corner and provide valuable service to a world teetering on collapse.

Re-creating circa 1980 ABBA holograms appearing live in concert is probably a good thing, well, better than a kidnapping ruse. And I might have resorted to ChatGPT when I had those three term papers due the same day when I was in junior year, but I think even my professors would have approved rather than reading the typo marred drivel I submitted for their reading pleasure. But no harm, no foul, as they say.

We just might be a little better off with less tech.

But then I would just be writing to myself (which just might be better for you all.)

Happy Saturday!

The year is racing towards its end, and how do you feel about that?

I decided to say goodbye to 2023 today as I will be tied up watching The Honeymooners on DVD (I’m living in Florida, and we are culturally deprived, not having WPIX to remind us of our traditions.)

I used to play a game with myself by trying to remember New Years Eves past. There was a time when I could revel in the memories of 15 to 20 past celebrations of transitioning to a new year, but sadly, those days are gone.

It’s not so much that the recall power of those memories has been lost with old age but more attributable to the sheer boredom of most recent Eves, thereby making them unmemorable in the first place.

Even before moving down to Florida, we hardly rejoiced in the recognition that one year was ending while a new one blossomed before our eyes…big whoop, as they say.

Nevertheless, I probably shouldn’t dwell on the dramatic fall from excitement and celebration that my Eves have undergone. After all, do we really need to drink to excess, eat to excess, wear funny hats, and blow tin horns to signify the planet and its passengers getting older?

Auld Lang Syne, or for old time’s sake, is the spirit behind ushering in the new year with a celebration of the past year. What we must remember is that we don’t necessarily have to go to Times Square (although everyone should experience New Year’s Eve there at least once in your lifetime.) or watch the Big Eye in London erupt in a flurry of fireworks at the stroke of midnight on December 31st. A more controlled festivity can be enjoyed by sitting in a comfortable chair with family and loved ones.

This, after all, is what makes surviving the past year in order to welcome the new year a tradition worth savoring.

Now that I think of it, the memory of these Eves really is more worthy of my recollection.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Love.

Peace.

Joy

If we still remembered History, we would know the poignancy of the word infamy.

Those of us who are boomers cannot hear or read the words without thinking of FDR’s speech following the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Nearly thirty-four years later, I was sitting in the endzone of Shea Stadium for a game between the Jets and the Patriots. Joe Namath would throw three touchdowns en route to a 36-7 rout of the Patriots, but this is not what I remember of that day.

During halftime, all those in attendance were asked to honor the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, and give a rousing Jet welcome. I’m not sure if we were asked to give a rousing Jet welcome or not, but we did clap and cheer somewhat.

Hirohito was Emperor of Japan during World War II and, of course, on December 7, 1941.

At the time, I was in the middle of my graduate degree in American History, and I could not help but think that there were probably a few people in the stands who had fought in World War II or lost loved ones during the war, perhaps even in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

Nevertheless, we cheered out of respect for an ally.

How far we had come in our forgiveness and understanding of a man who had once been our enemy.

It was a fascinating lesson in global politics and something I have always remembered. It is something we should never lose sight of when we determine any nation is our enemy.

Indeed, it is a lesson that we should all ponder in our age of polarization and division. People who disagree with us are not our enemy. People who disagree with us may hold opinions for which we have no tolerance but that doesn’t mean we should be intolerant to the people who hold such ideas.

Hate the idea, perhaps, but not the person. Leave a little doubt in the absolute righteousness of your opinions and try to understand the opinion you despise.

Anyone alive that day and still with us remembers precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

Though the term was not applied to the event at the time, it was indeed America’s first mass shooting.

One person lay dead, and nearly two hundred million were seriously wounded.

It was the end of an era.

It was the beginning of the end.

Nothing was ever the same afterward.

Life went on, but not the life that a thirteen-year-old had imagined.

Life was not perfect the day before, but any chance at a more perfect union bled out in Dallas on this day sixty years ago.

It wasn’t that President Kennedy was perfect, but he was inspirational to many despite his flaws.

Sister Margaret was our eighth-grade teacher in Blessed Sacrament, and I can still see the shock seemingly frozen onto her countenance when our Principal, Sister Irene Mary, announced that our President had been assassinated. It may have mirrored my own disbelief and that of my classmates.

When you’re in the eighth grade, you don’t necessarily understand the meaning of transformative events. But on this day in 1963, we all knew that America would never be the same.

We knew that hatred was the culprit responsible for killing our President even if we hadn’t fathomed how extensive this hatred permeated the country. The day before, we were still living in postwar America and had forgiven our enemies and the atrocities they had committed.

So, how could hatred have replaced forgiveness?

So, how can forgiveness be restored in a nation that loves to hate?

The wounds of November 22,1963, continue to fester and have been passed down in our nation’s DNA.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and many of us have so much for which we should be thankful. Maybe it’s time to celebrate Forgiveness Day and bring gifts of love and understanding in lieu of pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce?

It’s just a thought.

If you had the good fortune of growing up in The Bronx in the late 50’s and the early 60’s, you would already understand the significance of the title of this essay.

This quartet of magical instruments provided hours of fun for the fifty or so children that resided on Leland Avenue in what was known as postwar America.

Unlike comic books and baseball cards, which were equally gratifying in their own way, the toys mentioned above kept us moving and outside of our apartments and our mothers’ hair.

The automobile had yet to take over the streets of the Bronx, so while fathers were not home from work, Leland Avenue was our field of play to which we put good and extreme use. In addition to the physical enjoyment provided by each, a spark of genius was engendered as we thought of new ways to enjoy ourselves while employing these wondrous and relatively inexpensive treasures.

The Spalding (most often pronounced SPALLDEEEN) perhaps was the perfect toy of that era.

In addition to stickball, enjoyed on many a summer’s afternoon, the pink Spalding rubber ball was the medium for many of our street games. It was cheap, twenty-five cents, the purchase price often funded by five investors willing to give up a nickel.

Added to stickball was a long list of games for utilising this marvel of modern sports technology.

There were: I Declare War; Hit The Stick; Ace King Queen; Three-Box Baseball; Four-Box Baseball; Off The Wall; Triangle; Stoop Ball; Curb Ball.

I am sure I left a few out, so maybe you can add to the list.

Roller Skates also provided hours of fun on the smooth tar surface that was Leland Avenue. Potholes hadn’t been invented yet, and while Con Ed was advising “Dig We Must For A Greater New York, their unsightly digging took place elsewhere than on the streets of the Bronx.

Creative games utilizing roller skates included drawing the outline of a super highway with pastel chalk (another great outlet for the creative-minded in our group.)

This highway had on-ramps and off-ramps and areas of rough terrain where you had to walk as you skated and some where you had to jump over an obstacle represented by a thick pastel application.

These skates were not the type that employed laces on a boot with wheels affixed to the soles. Rather, you wore your shoes or sneakers to slide the skate on and tighten clamps on the front to hold the skate to your shoe. This required you to own the ubiquitous skate key that often hung on our necks, ready to be called into service at any moment your skate slipped off the front of your shoe while still tethered to the back via a strap, making walking cumbersome at the least.

As the skating season wore on, so did the wheels on your skates, which often developed “boxed wheels.” But while these made skating less enjoyable, your old skates could now be affixed to a plank of wood to fashion a scooter, which would then be completed by nailing a milk crate or fruit crate to the front of your street transport.

While stickball and the other Spalding-related games, as well as roller skating, did not have defined seasons during which we adhered to (or maybe the candy stores where we bought them forced us to) for Tops and Yo-yos.

Tops always appeared in the fall. No sooner did school start than the first box of tops appeared in Hock’s Candy Store. Tops came in two varieties: there was the ball-bearing top, which had a ball-like tip. They were often bigger and easier to spin; the other variety was the “Digger,” which sported a needle-like tip and was usually smaller in girth than the ball-bearing variety. The Digger was especially useful in playing “crack-top,” where you purposely aimed your top to hit your opponent, knock it off its spin, and perhaps take a chunk of wood off it as a collateral victory.

Then there was the Yo-yo, more specifically, the Duncan Yo-yo.

Duncans came in three models, each with a distinctive look but all seemed to offer the same yo-yo experience. There was the traditional wooden model to which we all gravitated. But then Duncan introduced the Buttlerfly and the Imperial yo-yos.

The Butterfly merely had its components reversed, so the edges flared out a bit and may have enhanced your ability to Walk The Dog. The Imperial, on the other hand, was Duncan’s premier offering. Made of plastic and coming in a few colors, this was by far the costliest yo-yo; for this reason, I never owned one. It never made sense as I was able to do the same tricks with my Butterfly as I would be able to do with the Imperial.

I could do Around The World, Loop Deloop, and Walk The Dog. The one trick I could never master was The Cat’s Cradle. Lacking the dexterity to quickly form the cradle, my cat had long lost its spin by the time my cradle was ready. It’s something I’ve had to live with for a very long time.

Playing with these toys not only provided opportunities for safe exercise and a healthy dose of fresh air but also helped forge lifetime memories and lifetime friends.

I haven’t posted a blog since the middle of July.

A lot has happened since then, and I am sure much has happened in your life during my hiatus as well.

Living in The Land With Two Seasons, as I do, the weather has become one of my most watched spectator sports. It’s not just the heat, which by New York standards is excessively hot and unbearably long beginning in May and ending in time for Thanksgiving if we’re lucky.

Ninety-degree days with an index of over 100 can be annoying, but it’s watching storms developing off the coast of Africa that really grabs your attention. No sooner does one storm veer off the coast of the United States than another one is heading our way.

So far, we have had only one hurricane that brushed our coastline, and now that we have passed the September 10th peak of the hurricane season, am I tempting fate by hoping we have made it through another summer?

The sad fact is that the hurricane season runs from June 1st through November 30th. I wonder if we ever had a hurricane on Black Friday?

I lived on Long Island for over thirty-three years, and we had three hurricanes during that time and one Super Storm named Sandy. In all four storms, we suffered a few fallen limbs and loss of electricity three times, ranging from one week for Sandy and two to three days for the others.

With power lines above ground surrounded by trees, it only took one good gust of wind to power us down for the week.

Fortunately, here in Bradenton, all our utilities are underground, which has prevented long-term power availability, and the steel shutters have provided protection from flying debris. Luckily, these have never been truly tested as we have had only one direct hit of a hurricane and have only experienced glancing blows the other times the west coast of Florida has been hit.

So now I watch weekly weather reports to comfort me that we are getting closer to November 30th. Like a prisoner awaiting his parole date, I seek release from the potential categories coming up the coast and the next names on the list that might be heading toward Bradenton; I check off the weeks on my meteorological calendar and then do the NYT crossword.

I neglected to write about my summer playlist that I usually share on the first day of summer. I guess that I haven’t updated it over the last year or two was the primary reason for not boring you once again with my summer hits of yesteryear.

Today I will try not to bore you with a list of songs that may get you through the week ahead.

For those of you who listen to WFUV in the Bronx, you may be familiar with their daily themes that relate to a word or topic that appears in a few songs that listeners suggest. Well, here is a list of songs I have come up with that relate to the days of the week.

Most of the songs I have included are personal favorites, but a couple are, quite honestly, the result of a Google search because I was coming up empty.

So here goes:

SUNDAY Will Never Be The Same (Spanky and Our Gang)

MONDAY MONDAY (The Mommas and The Papas)

TUESDAY AFTERNOON ( The Moody Blues)

WAITING FOR WEDNESDAY (Lisa Loeb)

THURSDAY (Pet Shop Boys)

FRIDAY I’M IN LOVE (The Cure)

SATURDAY IN THE PARK (Chicago)

So, there you are.

I’d be interested to know what songs make up your week.

Till next time, have a great Friday!

We celebrate holidays during the year that have had special meaning to all of us.

Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve.

I always placed my birthday in this hierarchy of special holidays despite the fact that it has not been recognized as a federal or even a state holiday, but I continue to have high hopes in that regard.

Among the special holidays that we all celebrate is, of course, the Fourth Of July!

As kids, we were barely a week into our summer vacation when this special day got our summer off to an explosive start.

Living on Leland Avenue, which consists primarily of apartment buildings, the American Barbeque did not exert a firm grip on the neighborhood plans for the day. While the kids on our block would commence disposing of our firecrackers early in the morning, our parents waited until late afternoon before they set up camp in front of their respective buildings.

Coolers stocked with quart bottles of Rheingold or Ballantine Beer were brought down by the Dads while the Moms brought assorted snacks and sandwiches to celebrate the birth of our country.

Everyone was indeed dandy by the time the skyrockets, aerial bombs, and Roman candles produced their oohs and ahhs.

There was no noticeable police presence required as our mothers made sure we set off our firecrackers safely and held our sparklers far away from our eyes and clothing.

I always considered the Fourth of July a neighborhood holiday, similar to New Year’s Eve when our neighbors kept their doors open for easy access to whatever treats they had to share.

Many years later, when Eileen and I lived in East Quogue, we had similar get-togethers with friends and family. We first began the day with an early visit to Ponquogue Beach, but not too early for Eileen’s Big Sandwich and a couple of cold ones surreptitiously poured into solo cups, which were often enjoyed by PJ and me.

Though our location has changed, and while we have added new friends to our lineup, the Fourth Of July has retained all its Dandiness for me, and I hope for you.

Happy Birthday, America!

I probably write too many posts regarding past experiences and nostalgia. It’s quite intentional as I got to the point of avoiding controversy, fearing I would piss somebody off who owns an automatic rifle.

You might say I am overreacting, but am I?

You can’t watch an evening news program (not on MSNBC or Fox) without a report of yet another mass shooting. So, writing something that might be viewed as inflammatory by some racists and bigots might not be the thing to do.

When did life get like this?

When did having opinions that differed from another become so volatile?

There was a time in my lifetime when you could have your own opinions without worrying about insulting anyone. Discussions might get heated, but you rarely hated the other side of the argument and had no fear that you were despised.

Not today.

Even atheists are getting into the act as every now and then, a person (who I won’t dignify by identifying) can’t resist the urge to mock those who believe in God as they proclaim their right to not believe.

It’s even affected sports.

When I had season tickets to the Yankees, I gave away the games against the Red Sox and the Mets. The fans were despicable towards one another.

This was all made ridiculous when you saw how the players on both teams would talk and laugh with each other and pat each other on the ass when called for. (I probably shouldn’t highlight this writing here in Florida).

Thinking back to The Adventures of Superman, whatever happened to TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY?

It seems that those values have escaped the collective unconscious of American life.

As we approach our nation’s founding anniversary, perhaps a deep read of the Declaration of Independence is called for?