Remember that oft-postponed Honeoye Falls-Mendon Rotary Club meeting I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. It finally happened. We had a sumptuous supper at Mendon 64 and, as always, the conversation was jovial, inspired, and ever enlightening. If you don’t know by now, Rotary does an awful lot of good things in our community. I like organizations that do an awful lot of good things in our community. I like the organizations like the Honeoye Falls-Mendon Rotary Club.
Betsy and I were delighted to be the appetizer for the evening’s dinner. And by “appetizer,” no, I don’t mean Hilary and Molly named a pre-dinner dish after us. Rather, I mean we provided the entertainment prior to that delicious dinner I referred to in the first paragraph. During our short presentation, I offered a never-before-told story about the beginnings of The Sentinel. (The end of this story was alluded to briefly in the never published Carosa Commentary entitled Banzai! that was “reprinted” on our Throwback Thursday page seven in the March 23, 2017 issue of The Sentinel.)
It occurred to me it would be unfair to our vast ocean of readers to limit knowledge of “the rest of the story” to the select group of Rotarians who attended the March 22nd meeting. Upon further reflection, it seemed there are actually two lessons in this story. Rather than consume an entire page of print, I’ve decided it best to create a two-part Commentary.
Lesson #1: Never Let Bad News Defeat You and Never Underestimate the Power of Curiosity
Our story begins in the spring of 1982. It’s roughly thirty-five years ago to the day that I Continue Reading “The Incredibly Weird Way I Landed My First Job and Accidentally Started a Life Long Career”
My Life With AI—Part I: Early Geekdom
For reasons that aren’t important right now, I spent my high school years channeling my inner Spock. Relying on logic to drive your life rather than the vicissitudes of emotion made things quite amazing. Today we’d call it going down rabbit holes. Back then, I merely explored wherever my curiosity took me.
“Hold on!” you’re saying, “isn’t ‘curiosity’ an emotion?”
Well, some psychologists might agree, (see Litman, “The Measurement of Curiosity As a Feeling of Deprivation,” Journal of Personality Assessment, 82(2), 147-157). Spock merely uses it as a statement of fact. In Episode 26 of Season 1, “Errand of Mercy,” in Star Trek—The Original Series, he says, “It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.”
There is an intersection between Litman (who says curiosity is a “motivation”) and Spock’s use of the term. Think of what happens when you hear a strange noise on the other side Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part I: Early Geekdom”