Heaven Board #18 Turtles all the way down

 I was sitting at the Bar in Paxton's Grill (Loveland) having lunch with J.R. and overheard a country song playing in the background.  "What a great song", I said to J.R. as we sat there.  Luckily, I have enabled the "Now Playing" feature of my Pixel 6a Android Phone and saw "Turtles all the way Down" by Sturgill Simpson.  

As you may (or may not) know I am a "melody guy" (vs lyrics) - see "Melody vs Lyrics".  So as soon as I got home I decided to look up the lyrics to determine was there subconsciously another reason (other than the melody, instrumentals, cadence or harmony) that the song appealed to me at the moment.

There must have been 3-5 God winks going on. Enough to make this Heaven Board #18! 

 #1 "But I swear that God is there every time I glare into the eyes of my best friend"

#2 "Love's the only thing that every saved my life".    

#3 "Turtles all the way Down" with infinite regress of the mythology of a World Turtle.

Wikipedia - Turtles all the way Down

#4 The spiritual/mystic or medical mystery of psilocybin and DMT?  

#5 The second nudge phone call from S.F. for joining the Men's Walk to Emmaus #112 while I was constructing this blog

#6 Re-Reading from 2010 "The Six Secrets you must Discover before you Die" by John Izzo  "Be Love"!

I enjoy going down the research "rabbit hole" (as R.M. described it) and found the 10 year anniversary commentary by Simpson and Uhelski about the song and video from 2014.  

"To appease lazy music journalists, I've always said this song was about drugs.  It actually came from recreational reading "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" by Rick Strassman and the Omega Point Theory by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  The video has absolutely nothing to do with the song, which doesn't matter since nobody really ever knew what the song was about.  It's just four guys pretending to play with Electric Sheep Screensaver graphics overlaid on the performance"   Sturgill Simpson

Here are the complete lyrics:

Turtles All the Way Down

Song by

Sturgill Simpson

Introducing "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music"

I've seen Jesus play with flames in a lake of fire that I was standing in
Met the devil in Seattle and spent 9 months inside the lions' den
Met Buddha yet another time
He showed me a glowing light within
But I swear that God is there
Every time I glare into the eyes of my best friend

Says my son, it's all been done
Someday you're gonna wake up old and gray
So go and try to have some fun showing warmth to everyone
You meet and greet and cheat along the way

There's a gateway in our minds
That leads somewhere out there far beyond this plane
Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain
Tell me how you make illegal something that we all make in our brain
Some say you might go crazy
Then again, it might make you go sane

Every time I take a look inside inside that old and fabled book
I'm blinded and reminded of the pain caused by some old man in the sky
Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT, they all changed the way I see
Love's the only thing that ever saved my life

So don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes
And fairy tales of blood and wine
It's turtles all the way down the line
So to each their own 'til we go home
To other realms our souls must roam
To and through the myth that we all call space and time

Election - Humility not Hubris

 This morning Donald Trump has won the 2024 Presidential Election.  About 71.8 million voted for Donald Trump and 66.9 million for Kamala Harris in the popular vote with final votes still to be counted.  

Today's Wed 7:15BC group who are studying "Gossip - 10 Pathways to Eliminate it from your Life and Transform your Soul" by Lori Palatnik had a "God wink" discussion on the Chapter 11 - "Avoid Envy and Arrogance" that morphed into a complete discussion about Pride and Humility.

A.S. said it best - "Especially today we need humility not hubris!"

Another God Wink occurred in my mid-morning devotional from the Ligonier October Monthly TableTalkMagazine.com - Day 3 "Gentle and Reasonable Wisdom (James 3:17b).

Matthew Henry comments, gentleness means "not standing upon extreme right in matters of property; not saying or doing any thing rigorous in points of censure; not being furious about opinions, urging our own beyond their weight nor theirs who oppose us beyond their intention; not being rude and overbearing in conversation, [or social media - my words], nor harsh and cruel in temper."

Both parties promoted Common Sense.  Let's change that to Gentle and Reasonable Wisdom!

AI Infancy

As I try to use Co-pilot (Microsoft's AI), I get more and more frustrated with the misinformation that it provides.  And then tests my human quality of forgiveness with it's "I'm sorry" statements:

Copilot put me on two wild goose chases with short stories by Mark Clifton and Arthur C. Clarke that had nothing to do with the short story I was trying to find in my earlier blog "Franchise" by Issac Asimov.  

Now Copilot says "I'll make sure to double-check the information more thoroughly moving forward.  NOT!    I would say my experience with precise facts of searches by Copilot is at best 50/50 correct.

This counters with the experience of Google's NotebookLM and the latest update in self-driving by Tesla - both were very impressive.

So - I guess I give AI a grade of 5 - still in elementary school.

Eerie Election Echos

Back in early September T.M. graciously gave me a one-month free subscription referral to Nate Silver's "Silver Bulletin" suggesting a good way to monitor the poll data for this election. That referral marketing technique worked since I subscribed after the 30 days to continue to get updates until election day. 

This election - Assassination attempts, Biden dropping out, RFK Jr. third party run all reminded me of the 1968 election - Johnson dropping out, Humphery running, RFK assassinated, George Wallace third party etc.  An eerie set of echos of 1968.  

I was very interested in political elections as a teenager and remember playing endless hours the 1967 3M bookshelf board game - Mr. President Mr. President | Board Game | BoardGameGeek. 

I popped downstairs and found the old game (yes, I am a packrat borderline hoarder) - opened it up to remind myself of the rules and found two old index cards that we had designed of Hubert Humphry and Tricky Dick Nixon to make the 1968 election a simulation in the game.  

So how will this election result echo 1968 (see 1968 Election Results) ?   Nixon won handily 301 in the electoral college but barely won the popular vote and who knows how the 10 million votes George Wallace would have been distributed had he not run (regardless Nixon had the majority needed for the electoral college).  

More interestingly to me - this election and all the very precise polling has reminded me of a high school assigned reading (likely in history class) by Issac Asimov "Franchise" written in 1955 about the election of 2008 when a Multivac Computer (AI related) could select one person to vote to determine the election result.  Another eerie echo of how sophisticated our polling is - even 60 minutes had a segment "The Swingiest Count" where Door County Wisconsin has voted for the winning presidential candidate since 2000 - "a political weather vane".  However 60 minutes could not find one person in that county that had correctly voted for the winner since 2000.  

Who will win the 2024 election?  I might as well go out on a limb.  Based on the eerie echos - Flip a coin and hope it doesn't land on it's edge.

 

Rufferee's Time is Out

Today was a sad day as Fitch (our rescue black lab/mut) was put down - (2/2011 - 10/2024).  This time it was my turn to grieve as Susan historically had this duty for our other pets. One always thinks about the conversion of human years to dog years - Fitch lasted 13 1/2 years.   Actually, male black Labradors last typically 10-12 years according to this blog - How Long Do Black Labs Typically Live. Like human females, female dogs last longer 10-14 years and Fitch's sister Bella is still going strong (although she is losing weight lately). 

AI Copilot says a medium sized dog of 13 1/2 years is 68-80 in human years.  

So, many say "He had a long, good life" --- but long years don't determine good.  I think I can say Fitch had a good life - measured by how I would like to have lived if I was a dog.

We still own two dogs (Bella and Wally) after the acquisition of Jenna and Paul's dog - Wally in 2023.    I actually think Wally extended Fitch's life as they seemed to like to spar and added new life energy to the older dogs.

The whole family will miss Fitch - the Rufferee :)    He called a Time Out.

A Deep Dive

 Today - a WSJ article launched me into the world of AI and its new developments.   The article was "This will be your favorite Podcast - The hosts aren't human" by Ben Cohen.  He talks about the experimental site NotebookLM by Google.  I had so much fun playing around with this today.  

First- I tried using this blog site as the source to generate an audio DeepDive but then decided to concentrate on just one blog "Three Words" that I wrote in Heaven Board #15 on January 12, 2021.  

I was both amazed, unsettled, and entertained by both results but particularly the one on "Three Words"

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c0a0f8ee-f97f-48f2-80c6-1b823cb9bd02/audio

A six minute podcast dialogue between a male and female AI voice embellishing my 1214 Word Document story about Dad's words that impacted my life.  

But now my intellectual curiosity is peaked by recursive logic - how will an audio podcast do a Deep Dive on a blog about itself - A Deep Dive :)

Moral Speed Limits

What if there was a Speedometer Constitutional Amendment for the right to drive at any speed using “evidence-based standards requiring the least restrictive means within human survival viability”.  How would you vote?

As a moderate Libertarian (if that category exists), I have always claimed that morality ultimately can't be legislated.  Consequently, in matters of drugs, guns, and sex, I talk a good game of lassie faire - keep the government out of my life and others also.  

But the "rubber has now hit the road" The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety proposed Ohio Constitutional Amendment now being voted upon (early voting in Ohio has already started) mandates that I declare my belief, values, political viewpoint, and moral compass. 

A.S. has motivated me to research the daylights out of this issue.  Pouring through the Pew Research Views of Abortion, reading the actual legal jargon of the amendment,  researching the Heartbeat Law now being litigated in Ohio, and reading the book "The Turnaway Study" by Diana Greene Foster PhD.   This even motivated me to send the WSJ a letter to the editor about the issue. 

The political war is now in full gear with outside money trying to influence the Ohio vote.  The WSJ (10/3/23) has done a state-by-state analysis:

So - what's my conclusion?  I am now "forced" to vote.   Like other Ohioans - only the ballot box will know.   But regardless of the November 2023 outcome - this moral issue of our time will not be resolved, nor will legislation permanently change moral behavior.

As I drive the roadways I see the legal signs, my car tells me the speed limit, I know the risks of speeding, and I know the consequences.  The law sets boundaries, and we are provided the "dignity of risk".