headset microphone
for speech recognition, you
wear this on your head ….

I remember reading once that one of the most asked questions at the MicroSoft Help Desk was “Which key is … ‘any key?'”

As in the instruction, “Press any key.”

I was goofing around with my MicroSoft powered laptop to make sure my headphones were connected so I could take part in an online meeting when this prompt popped up.

I was fascinated to read that in their instructions for connecting a head set, those nice people at MicroSoft felt it necessary to further the identification of a Headset Microphone by pointing out that “you wear this on your head.”

All this talk about AI and computers being smarter than humans.

Seems like the bar is kinda low as is the a computers opinion of us humans as well.

God’s toes are buried
deep in the earth He’s ready
to run but … but where?

The cost of flight is landing.
On this warm winter day in the southwest,
down here on the edge of the border I want
to go to France where we all came from
where the Occident was born near the ancient
caves near Lascaux. At home I’m only
sitting on the lip of this black hole, a well
that descends to the center of the earth.
With a big telescope aimed straight down
I see a red dot of fire and hear the beast howling.
My back is suppurating with disease,
the heart lurches left and right,
the brain sings its ditties.
Everywhere blank white movies wait to be seen.
The skylark dove within inches of the rocks
before it stopped and rose again.
God’s toes are buried deep in the earth.
He’s ready to run. But where?

The Present by Jim Harrison

call this a govment!
Why, just look at it and see
man can’t get his rights

“Call this a govment!

Why, just look at it and see what it’s like. …

They call that govment!

A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this.

Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country.

… Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin.

… I says, I’ll never vote agin.

Them’s the very words I said;

they all heard me;

and the country may rot for all me — I’ll never vote agin as long as I live.”

So said Pap Finn … better known as the no account father of one Huckleberry Finn in the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Gulf of America?

Buy Greenland?

Re-Take the Panama Canal?

Annex Canada?

I will say one thing for the incoming Govment ….

Nobody … and I mean NOBODY is asking about plans for improving the overall economy, lowering inflation or the cost of groceries.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the date of D-Day for the invasion of Greenland.

Call this a Govment?

remember our sons
grandsons going to do things
that would stagger us …

Make no little plans.

They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.

Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.

Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

Think big.

Sitting on the cusp?

Standing on the cusp?

Waiting for the 2nd era of Presidential Administration that defies comprehension.

In the ‘Baseball Speech’ in the movie, Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones has the line:

America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.

We all listen and we nod and say yes, thats true.

But that army of steamrollers, that army of erasers, come with an eye on the future.

A look to rebuild better.

A plan to move forward.

We sit at the start of another 4 year effort to turn back the clock.

No vaccines.

No education.

No progress.

Go back.

They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.

It will be rough.

I hope we survive.

I think of my grandchilden.

The ones who will rebuild this country.

I hope they will stagger us with what they do.

I am making no small plans.

My watchword be order.

My beacon beauty.

Thinking BIG and hoping for the best.

• The quote is from architect Daniel Burnham, the man who rebuild Chicago. According to wikipedia, “A proponent of the Beaux-Arts movement, he may have been “the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ever produced.” A successful Chicago architect, he was selected as Director of Works for the 1892–93 World’s Columbian Exposition, colloquially referred to as “The White City”. He had prominent roles in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including the Plan of Chicago, and plans for Manila, Baguio and downtown Washington, D.C. He also designed several famous buildings, including a number of notable skyscrapers in Chicago, the Flatiron Building of triangular shape in New York City, Washington Union Station in Washington D.C., London’s Selfridges department store, and San Francisco’s Merchants Exchange.”