Geeky Bob

I belong to a group of former military linguists, and someone shared the following article earlier today: Man Alarmed as His Cognitive Skills Decay After Outsourcing Them to AI. That article referenced a source article on the Wall Street Journal's website at How I Realized AI Was Making Me Stupid - and What I Do Now. As I read both articles, I must admit - I hadn't encountered the term "cognitive offloading" before, but I can easily see where it's happening more and more, and it's an interesting phenomenon that the majority of people don't realize is happening in their daily lives, and in some cases it's not necessarily a bad thing.

For example: there was a time when we were all required to give people directions to some location that would typically involve statements like, "Get off Main Street at Brown Ave, then drive until you see a Circle K on the right (not the one on the left), then you'll need to make a half-turn on your left past the big Oak Tree in front of a green house, and drive until the road ends near the corn field, and then..." Those days have long passed, because now everyone is carrying a GPS that is usually (e.g. 99%) accurate to get someone where they're going, and we've "offloaded" the part of our brains that used to have to think through the problem of getting someone where they needed to go. Building on this idea, I recently bicycled 500 miles across Spain along the Camino de Santiago, and for the most part Google Maps managed to get me from Point A to Point B (with only a few minor episodes where Google Maps tried to kill me).

In the past, I would have needed to haul a map with me and spend far more time planning than I did. So from a navigation perspective, I fully realize that I had become lazier. (Which, in hindsight, could have been an issue had my phone died on me.)

However, the concept of "cognitive offloading" made me think about languages. As a former Russian linguist, and as someone who lived 6½ years in Germany and used to speak that language passably, during my trek across Spain I intentionally chose NOT to let Google Translate do all the work for me throughout my journey. To be sure, I used Google Translate now and again to look up a word here or there in the same way that I used to use one of those tiny Langenscheidt dictionaries in the past.

But for the most part, I conversed with all the locals the old-fashioned way: by memorizing vocabulary and phrases, and by simply being willing to make a ton of grammatical mistakes along the way. My efforts were rewarded through some genuinely great discussions with lots of locals as I pedaled my through the mountains and villages of northern Spain, though in particular I'd like to highlight the discussions I had with a fellow traveler whom I occasionally ran into a few times: he was from Italy, and he didn't speak any English, and I'm from Arizona, and I don't speak Italian, so the only language the two of us had in common was our mutual poor grasp of Spanish (and we had a lot of laughter at our respective lack of skills in that regard).

All this is to say, I can attest to "cognitive offloading" in my life - I think today's technology has made that unavoidable to a degree. However, I can also attest that life is better when you don't let technology take over everything that requires active thought - especially when it comes to learning languages. In other words: life's a journey, make sure you enjoy the ride by stopping now and again to talk to the locals.

In honor of March 21st being the International Day of Forests, I thought I'd share the following anecdote:

When my wife and I bought a house in Seattle many years ago, we had a single Maple tree in our backyard that was surrounded by towering Pine trees, which were, of course, blocking out the sun and clearly causing the lone Maple undo distress.

After a day of working in our yard to clear out some underbrush, my wife asked me how my labors were progressing, and I replied:

Oh, sure - any self-respecting Rush fan could probably see that joke coming a mile away, but still - how could I resist? (IYKYK)

PS - My wife, who is no fan of the Triumvirate from Toronto, responded, "That's from a Rush song, isn't it?"

In the wake of the "Gulf of America" renaming debacle, I think that Mexico should rename the "Gulf of California" to the "Gulf of Mexico," and California should rename "San Francisco Bay" to the "Gulf of California."

Meanwhile, "Cape Cod Bay" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ireland," the "Black Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ukraine," "Long Island Sound" should be renamed the "Gulf of England," the "Red Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Saudi Arabia," and all the "Great Lakes" should be renamed the "Gulf of Canada."

While we're at it, the "Atlantic Ocean" and "Indian Ocean" and "Mediterranean Sea" should all be renamed the "Gulf of Africa," and the "Pacific Ocean" should be renamed the "Gulf of Antarctica."

I think that takes care of just about everything.

My granddaughter is obsessed with the children's superhero "Dog Man" these days, but I have to admit - every time she mentions him, I can't help but think of this song:

That's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?

I believe I've stayed at this hotel on more than one occasion:

A friend of mine posted the following image from Twitter (with the actual names removed to protect the innocent):

I responded that I like to mess with people who are that scientifically illiterate by saying things like, "You realize that when you compare a woman's XX chromosomes to a man's XY chromosomes, there are 8 branches in a woman's DNA and only 7 for a man, which means that women have 12.5% more DNA than men, and that extra branch is where DNA stores all the building blocks for intelligence and logic, which is why most women are smarter than you."

Yeah, sure - that statement about DNA isn't scientifically accurate, but it doesn't matter - because whoever the illiterate idiot is, they've already proven that they're too dumb to know better.

Today my wife and I celebrate our 40th anniversary, which is no small feat by any stretch of the imagination. Together she and I have faced more than our share of triumphs and tragedies, prosperity and poverty, happiness and heartbreak. This year we joyfully greeted our fourth grandchild, while bidding a tearful goodbye to my wife's brother and aunt and my father. When my wife and I both said "I do" all those years ago, we were mere children ourselves, blissfully blinded by the stars in our eyes from the realities that lay before us. Side by side we survived eight years of Cold War deprivations during my time in uniform, followed by almost 30 years of my wife's career as a nurse and my never-ending adventures and misadventures with Microsoft. Through it all, however, she and I have trod the path before us hand-in-hand, and words cannot do justice to how much my wife makes everything better in life.

Perhaps the great Irish poet, Thomas Moore, expressed it best when he penned the following verses:

I saw this image and it reminded me of an actual advertisement that I saw on a bulletin board back in the early 1980s in Tucson's Guitars Etc:

"Drummer wanted for band.
NO RUSH TYPES!!!
Drummer must be able to keep a straight beat."

IYKYK