Gray Matter Musings Archives

On The Wings Of Butterflies

By Chris Carosa on October 20, 2026

Have you ever replied to a simple, innocent question on impulse and then immediately thought, “Oh no! What have I just done?”

I recently attended a presentation. Nothing unusual about this. This time of year, I attend a lot of presentations. And, as is the norm, I sat in the front row.

There’s a reason for that. Sometimes presenters make their PowerPoint font one size too small to read from anywhere but the front row. Also, if I have a question, it’s easier for the presenter to hear me.

Now, there is a downside to this seating choice. Not only does it make the speaker more Continue Reading “On The Wings Of Butterflies”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged A Sound of Thunder, astronomy, Butterfly Effect, Chaos Theory, Domino Theory, Edward Norton Lorenz, Homer, impostor syndrome, Jacques Salomon Hadamard, James Clerk Maxwell, Jules Henri Poincaré, math, mathematics, meteorology, nonlinear differential equations, Philip Merilees, Physics, Ray Bradbury, Robert M. May, Simpsons

My Life With AI—Part VIII: The Fallacy Of Grading GenAI

By Chris Carosa on August 4, 2026

Lured you, didn’t I? When I said last time, “Eventually I realized the problem wasn’t GenAI. It was my prompt. I wasn’t asking it to preserve my voice. Once I explained that preserving my voice was part of the assignment, the results improved dramatically.” You no doubt thought, “What was his prompt?”

There is an art and a skill to training AI. That’s a bit involved and definitely depends on your use and needs. It’s also not the subject of this column. Rather than discussing how to train GenAI, I want to discuss something just as important: how to evaluate it.

Every semester, students receive report cards. Imagine how little a report card would tell you Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VIII: The Fallacy Of Grading GenAI”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Anthropic, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Copyedit, excel, fact-checking, Gemini, GenAI, Google, Grammarly, Grok, hallucination, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, Pinpoint, Powerpoint, presentation, proofread, ProWritingAid, research, SpaceXAI, voice, Word, X

My Life With AI—Part VII: The Joy Of Discovering The Hidden Value Of GenAI

By Chris Carosa on July 28, 2026

Have you ever hired an intern? Besides having a good heart, you probably also hoped to get more work done. An intern can help you do it.

Hold this thought. I’ll come back to it in a moment.

Despite piquing my curiosity, I quickly abandoned the first generation of GenAI platforms. They were too inconsistent. That frustration led me to build my own local AI environment, which taught me Python but also taught me how demanding AI infrastructure really is. Ironically, while I struggled to Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part VII: The Joy Of Discovering The Hidden Value Of GenAI”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged AI, artificial intelligence, Charles Dickens, English teacher, Ernest Hemingway, GenAI, generative AI, Hamburger Test, hidden value, intern, Python, resources, speed, voice, William Faulkner, writing

Midsummer Musings

By Chris Carosa on July 21, 2026

Midsummer is a misnomer. The Anglo-Saxons called it “midsumor.” They apparently stole the term “midsommar” from the Swedes (who may have themselves stolen it from the Germans). Unlike what your instinct tells you, it’s not really about the middle of the summer. It’s about the summer solstice. That would be the beginning of summer.

But don’t blame the Old English. The blame goes to the Romans, who, to be fair, once ruled the province of Britannia. In the strictest chronological terms, this would fall under the category of “Older than Old England.” Julius Caesar first invaded the island in 55 BC. About a century later, in 43 AD, Emperor Claudius formally conquered it. Rome would hold the land that would become Great Britain for nearly four hundred years.

A lot of things can happen in four centuries. For one thing, the conquered can assimilate the Continue Reading “Midsummer Musings”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged AI, Britannia, Catholic Church, compromise, data center, Emperor Claudius, Fasti, Fors Fortuna, Fortune, Germany, Great Britain, Julius Caesar, midsommar, MIdsummer, Midsumor, Ovid, Roman, Rome, Sandra Billington, solar farm, St. John the Baptist, St. John's Day, summer solstice, sun-worship, Sweden

Democracy Dies On The Blackboard

By Chris Carosa on May 12, 2026

“Democracy dies in darkness.” When the Washington Post formally adopted this phrase in 2017, critics immediately questioned the implication hidden within it. Why?

Perhaps because the phrase originated in a judicial ruling that echoed a modern myth about the role of newspapers in our country’s history. Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote in his opinion for the court in Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft, 303 F.3d 681 (6th Cir. 2002): “Democracies die behind closed doors. The First Amendment, through a free press, protects the people’s right to know that their government acts fairly, lawfully, and accurately in deportation proceedings. When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people.”

The opinion, and many subsequent interpretations of it, overstate the importance of Continue Reading “Democracy Dies On The Blackboard”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, History, Media, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Advertising, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Athens, Charles Yancey, Constitution, Damon J. Keith, democracy, democratic republic, Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft, dictatorship of the mob, Enlightenment, Federalist Papers, First Amendment, Founding Fathers, George Washington, investigative reporting, Montesquieu, New Journalism, newspaper, pamphlets, Republic, Revolutionary War, Roman Republic, Spirit of Law, Thomas Jefferson, Washington Post, watchdog, Watergate

Are You A Promoter Or A Closer?

By Chris Carosa on April 28, 2026

They don’t teach you this in business school. But they’ll still give you an “A” for it.

The textbook teaches you how to draft a presentation. It doesn’t teach you how to deliver it. Here’s what happened in real life:

The MBA course focused on communications. It wasn’t a marketing course; it was a corporate governance course. The professor assigned a final project requiring us to form teams, with each team offering their presentation to the class.

We had a week to complete the presentation. It was the week I was away attending my company’s annual strategic planning meeting. I couldn’t help craft the presentation. This was OK. I was the only one on the team willing to give the presentation. I’d be back in time for that, but not back in time to rehearse.

One of my teammates didn’t like that. She was nervous about the grade. The other teammates apparently trusted me and let me go in front of the class.

I gave the performance you’d expect from a former AM disc jockey. It mentioned all the facts, but it was animated, entertaining, and completely different from what the class expected. My nervous teammate fumed.

The professor gave us an “A.”

Here’s the funny thing. I may have hit it out of the park in front of the large group, but if the Continue Reading “Are You A Promoter Or A Closer?”

Posted in Business Tips, Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged air force, army, business, closers, dealers, finishers, marketing, promoters, promotion, public relations, sales, selling, Simon School

Only Heels Can Be Heroes Redux

By Chris Carosa on March 24, 2026

What separates a hero from a heel?

Sometimes, nothing more than timing.

On our thirty-seventh anniversary, it’s fitting to revisit the very first Carosa Commentary that appeared in the inaugural issue of The Sentinel.

This is in the same vein as “No Guts, No Glory.”

Essentially, Heels and Heroes are made of the same stuff. Only the outcome of their deeds is different (or at least viewed differently). Ultimately, the critical factor leading to the labeling of a man (or woman) may be nothing more than luck.Continue Reading “Only Heels Can Be Heroes Redux”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged baseball, business, Carosa Commentary, Character, confidence, courage, entrepreneurship, failure, fear of failure, heels, heroes, human nature, judgment, leadership, life lessons, man in the arena, moral philosophy, perception, personal growth, resilience, risk, Sentinel, success, taking chances, Theodore Roosevelt

Why Competition Is Good (And What Mrs. Fish Knew)

By Chris Carosa on February 24, 2026

Competition is good. It’s the bread and butter of every successful team, organization, and nation. Not because it crushes the weak, but because it reveals who we are. It pushes the best to heights never before imagined. It weeds out those who are better suited for critical supporting roles.

Think of the purpose of competition not as a cruel arbiter of the human condition, but as a vast casting call. Every great story needs a Continue Reading “Why Competition Is Good (And What Mrs. Fish Knew)”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged antagonist, Big Tree, calculation, capitalism, Chili, Chuck Knoll, competition, dopamine, drama, dramatic arc, Florence Brasser, gamification, Hero, leader, leaderboard, loser, losing, math, Miss Powell, Miss Wilson, Mrs. Duly, Mrs. Fish, Mrs. Fitzer, Mrs. Jackson, Persuasion, protagonist, rhetoric, rule, speed test, story, supporting character, villain, winner, winning, Woodlawn

We Just Wanted To Play Hockey… Before The Miracle

By Chris Carosa on February 17, 2026

It’s that time again. The quadrennial event. The Winter Olympics. And you know what that means.

Men’s ice hockey.

That and curling. My most favorite things to watch. But that’s not all we watch.

Before going out with friends, Peter decided to start playing the movie Miracle. Again.

He had no intention of watching the entire film. When I asked him why, he said, “You and Mom will watch it to the end.”

He was right.

He likes the beginning. It’s a montage of news stories from the 1970s. If you were to choose Continue Reading “We Just Wanted To Play Hockey… Before The Miracle”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged 1970s, 1980 Olympics, Al Michaels, Baby Boomer, Betsy, Forgotten Boomers, Generation Jones, Herb Brooks, Iran, Jimmy Carter, Lake Placid, mailaise, Miracle, NHL, Peter, second wave, Soviet, U.S. Hockey, Yae Hockey

Too Many Mondays

By Chris Carosa on January 6, 2026

There’s a reason your car doesn’t enjoy driving in the city (or Henrietta). Too many red lights. Vehicles can’t stand all that stopping and restarting. That’s what red lights force them to do. Cars hate it. And it kills your miles per gallon, too.

What red lights do to cars, Mondays do to you.

Think about it. Why has no other day been as universally panned as Monday? From Garfield’s primordial meme—“I hate Mondays”—to the Carpenters’ immortal “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” the first day of the week has always borne the brunt of criticism.

Unlike what the calendar implies, Sunday is not really the first day of the week. For those unfamiliar with the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the seventh day of creation; ergo, the seventh day of the week.

But even if you go by your day planner, at the very least, Monday remains the first day of Continue Reading “Too Many Mondays”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Bible, Black Friday, Carpenters, Christmas, deadlines, December, efficiency, end of year, Garfield, I hate Mondays, Monday, New Year's, red light, Thanksgiving, The Lord's Day, The Rainy Day, traffic