“Pickleball?”
I finally had enough of putting air in a tire with a slow leak, and I know Diana certainly was tired of it as well. Time to get it fixed. Paul had recommended Al and Al’s shop and what a wonderful experience that was. Not a place I would ever have considered using from a curb appeal perspective, but I was in and out in 15 minutes with two patches in place. I would recommend Al senior and junior to anyone with tire woes.
The rest of Monday was boring administrative work – bills and other paperwork.
A hearing aid check up on Tuesday took me over to Metarie. I typically swing by Taco Bell for a snack while over there. My drink cup usually gets my secret visit busted by McD. I’m going to have to be stealthier.
Kelly organized a girls Happy Hour for Anne’s birthday at the Columns in the evening. Seems like they had a good time for three or more hours…
Diana had a busy girls day on Wednesday. Running with Lori in the morning, followed by yoga. I found out that Lori refers to her as “Coach D” while she’s pushing her to run further. In the afternoon, Anne and Kara joined Diana at Merry Lee’s pool for the afternoon. The brightly coloured bracelets that Diana had manufactured for Anne’s gift were well received.
Of course, the big fish were landed after Kenny and I left Grand Isle. Thom looks quite pleased with himself and apparently that’s a cobia that Jack has:
Jack was kind enough to drop off some trout fillets for us when he got home.
A text from Diana at the pool asked me if I had interest in seeing the new Jeff Buckley documentary at the Broad theater on Thursday. I had noticed this on their email an hour earlier and was waiting to ask if Diana would like to go when she got home. Nice when things work out like that. We both enjoyed the movie a lot. Here’s an interview with the director, Amy Berg:
Spin interview with Jeff Buckley documentary director
After the movie we stopped into the Whole Foods on Broad (not one we’d ever been in before) to get ingredients for making a lemon butter sauce for the trout. The store was small but very pleasant, and the sauce turned out well.
The roasted carrots were also yummy.
Diana and Lori had another run on Friday morning. I walked over to French Truck for a coffee while they were running. The sidewalks and walls of the cemetery are always “interesting.”
Then I made a trip over to the bank to renew our safety deposit box. Diana correctly pointed out that it should be overdue – apparently the notice was still going to McKinney and the mail forwarding stopped a year ago. Oopsy.
We had read that the Milan lounge had reopened in the bottom floor of the Library bar on Prytania and decided to give it a try for Friday Happy Hour. The door was open but the bar was deserted. I saw some guys in the kitchen at the back and went to check with them. Apparently the bar tender had an issue with their roof at home, so no go on the Milan and Jeopardy. No worries – let’s try the Library upstairs. This was a very pleasant experience with good drinks at a good price and delicious dim sum treats from those guys in the kitchen downstairs. Connor the bar tender and Andrew in the kitchen were both very pleasant.
Some interesting things from August 15th in history:
1057 – Macbeth, King of the Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain
1969 – first day of the Woodstock music festival
1939 -The Wizard of Oz was first released
1914 – The Panama Canal opened
Kenny invited us to join the krewe at Pickleball in City Park on Saturday afternoon. Diana was talked into joining several doubles games, and I think I would have tried as well had I not decided to wear my usual flip flops. I enjoyed chatting with the guys in the shade.
We had a group dinner at Taqueria Guerrero on the way home. This was a casual and delicious spot near City Park and next door to Angelo Brocato’s (home of the famous gelato and cannoli’s.) Another good Denny recommendation.
We made a trip over the Mississippi to Algiers on Sunday for brunch at the new Saint Claire restaurant. This is a large house on some beautiful grounds that once were part of some kind of Naval base. Chef Melissa Martin of the Mosquito Supper Club (close to our home) is in charge of the menu at Saint Claire.
Brunch was very good. Delicious biscuits, niçoise salad for Diana and lamb meatballs and grits for me.
After brunch we made a visit to the nearby Crown and Anchor “English Pub.” The entry is through an old Tardis like police box as seen in Doctor Who.
When we entered the bar tender was leading a debate on which musicians were better – “Joan Jett or Pat Benatar?” – obviously Joan Jett. “Elton John or Billy Joel?” – that’s a more complicated choice. This was a very pleasant stop on the way home.
From the only in New Orleans files, this was the headline this week – our Mayor indicted on 18 counts. Thankfully she only has a few months left in office.
My book this week was “Culpability” by Bruce Hoslinger. Here’s an online summary:
“When the Cassidy-Shaws’ autonomous minivan collides with an oncoming car, seventeen-year-old Charlie is in the driver’s seat, with his father, Noah, riding shotgun. In the back seat, tweens Alice and Izzy are on their phones, while their mother, Lorelei, a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, is absorbed in her work. Yet each family member harbors a secret, implicating them all in the tragic accident.
During a weeklong recuperation on the Chesapeake Bay, the family confronts the excruciating moral dilemmas triggered by the crash. Noah tries to hold the family together as a seemingly routine police investigation jeopardizes Charlie’s future. Alice and Izzy turn strangely furtive. And Lorelei’s odd behavior tugs at Noah’s suspicions that there is a darker truth behind the incident—suspicions heightened by the sudden intrusion of Daniel Monet, a tech mogul whose mysterious history with Lorelei hints at betrayal. When Charlie falls for Monet’s teenaged daughter, the stakes are raised even higher in this propulsive family drama that is also a fascinating exploration of the moral responsibility and ethical consequences of AI.
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.”
This was a thought provoking, entertaining and relatively quick read. I give it a strong recommendation.
An interesting paragraph that defines “anthropomorphic projection”:
“These systems are designed to respond in recognizably human ways. We give them names like Siri and Alexa. We speak to them as if they share our worldview, or care about our feelings and futures. This behavior is known as anthropomorphic projection. We want our helpful machines to be like us, and so we tend to project onto them our ways of understanding the world.”
A section that gets to the heart of the book – culpability of AI systems:
“Artificial Intelligence confronts us with the problem of distributed culpability. Human morality, historically, centers around agency and intentionality. We blame the drunk driver, not the car; we credit the artist, not the brush. AI systems muddy these waters. AIs are not mere tools; their learning algorithms endow them with agency. They make “decisions” based on data, albeit without consciousness or intent. A strict division between human and machine culpability is quickly becoming untenable, creating a landscape where ethical norms strain under unfamiliar weights. In this context, both legal and ethical frameworks must evolve to address this novel, intricate web of agency and accountability. Failure to adapt our frameworks risks ethical disarray, misassigned blame, and ultimately a kind of moral haziness that is already having a corrosive effect on our society. We must always take responsibility for our own mistakes. Yet in this new age of intelligent machines, we must also take responsibility for theirs.”
One of the scarier elements of AI, in my opinion, the “black box” decision making:
“The phrase “black box” refers to AI systems whose internal workings and computational processes are neither transparent to nor easily comprehended by humans. While deep learning and other AI models may produce accurate results and generate correct predictions, the means through which they arrive at these outputs is a mystery even to their most knowledgeable programmers. Nearly all of these systems’ decision-making processes, including how exactly they process ethical constraints, remain opaque. The black box thus embodies the inscrutability of AI in many of its current incarnations. In this sense, the black box is a harbinger of a potentially terrifying future of unknowability. In a black box, we are all flying blind.”
The ethical and moral issue at the core of the discussion of AI in the book:
“When humans do something wrong, they generally face consequences. Even when our wrongdoing goes undetected by another—a parent, a spouse, an institution, law enforcement—we tend to experience guilt, shame, or regret. Only a psychopath lives life free of remorse. Algorithms face no such consequences for their misbehavior, either societal or emotional. Punishment, guilt, culpability are alien to them. There are no moral qualms in an algorithm. Yet without acknowledgment of wrongdoing, how can there be regret? Without self-consciousness of guilt, how can there be remorse? And without regret and remorse, how can there be moral growth?”
Pavlov’s dog was mentioned in the book. My mind mapped to this song that I hadn’t heard in decades:
I think the lead singer, David Surkamp, sounds like a blend of Geddy Lee from Rush and Fergal Sharkey of the Undertones:
Coexist peacefully, with kindness and patience for all.
