A Useful Initiative

 Biden is on the way to the Middle East without a clear agenda.  It seems to me that a useful gesture would be for he and Netanyahu to offer themselves in exchange for the hostages taken by Hamas.

Gaza

 Israeli forces are massing for an invasion of Gaza with the objectives of recovering hostages and dismantling the Hamas organization directly responsible for the horrific attacks on Israel.  To what extent the invasion will accomplish those objectives is uncertain.  What is certain is that the destruction of cities and the displacement of huge numbers of Palestinians will breed the conditions which produce hopelessness and extremist violence for many, many years to come.  There is no turning back now of the momentum for violent retribution, but at some point it will have to be admitted that the failure was not just of defensive preparations, but also of the loss of opportunities to create an environment of hope which is ultimately the only real insurance against extremist violence.

Balloons!

 We stationed ourselves about a mile south of the launch site to get a view of the mass ascension.

 On a quiet Thursday morning we visited our favorite outdoor Albuquerque eatery, Bike in Coffee at Old Time Farm.  Margaret and her brother went for the massive breakfast burrito.  I opted for coffee and carrot cake.

There is always some music to go with your coffee and, on weekends, crafts and books for sale.

Albuquerque Color

 I am mostly happy with the picture quality from my little yard-sale 10 mega pixel Panasonic Lumix.

Not so much, though, on bright, sunny days -- when the sun hits your eye like a big pizza pie that's (not) amore.

One way around the screen blanking reflections is to use a magnifying viewfinder that also shades the screen.  I just need to do a little work on the mounting system.

During Balloon Fiesta week I have been carrying around my Nikon FE mounted with a long zoom for shooting balloons.  The little Panasonic rides along in a pocket and lets me get color images during the noontime events in the tree-shaded Plaza Vieja.

AI, A Caution

 I have had some fun exploring the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models.  I have mostly played with Google's BARD LLM.  Questions about social and political issues have consistently produced well articulated responses which seemed well grounded in fact and logic.

With those thoughts in mind I decided to see if BARD might help a friend in getting some idea of what would be a reasonable sale price for a very early Leica 1, Model A camera.  Looking at prices on ebay and other sales sources was largely fruitless as prices were all over the map.  It was apparent, however, that a camera like hers that is a standard model without a very low serial number could occasionally be found for as little as $550.  When I posed the question to BARD I received a sale price estimate in the range of $55,000 to $85,000!

I tried a variety of prompts asking for ranges and averages of prices, but BARD insisted on sticking to estimates that appeared to be in the neighborhood of 100 times beyond reality.

My conclusion at this point is that entrusting decisions about issues of economic importance to Artificial Intelligence can be a very risky business.  I don't know if any of the other AI/LLM systems which are currently available might better handle such a task.  It is possible that prompts which are more specific and better formed could get more sensible responses even from BARD, but at this point it would take a lot to get me to entrust crucial decisions to any such source.

Oceanic New Mexico

 We nearly always include the Albuquerque Aquarium in our visitors' itinerary.  At the entrance level there are tanks of fish found locally.  At the back of that floor is an entrance to a deck overlooking the mooring of the Candy M fishing boat.  The saltwater fish are downstairs and they can also be seen from the site's restaurant.

Adventures in the Multiverse

 I entertain the thought at times that I am making some progress toward emerging from musical illiteracy, but then something comes along to correct that idea. Most recently I was brought back to reality by the discovery of Patti Smith.  I would hope I am not the last person on Earth to find her, but I have to admit the possibility. 

In my defense I am pretty sure that Patti Smith and I inhabited parallel universes which only intersected a few days ago when I stumbled on a picture of her on the cover of one of her books in which she is arm in arm with the photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. That improbable pairing prompted me to download her book, Just Kids, to my Kindle.

Just a few pages into the book I found that we were both wandering around the streets of New York's East Village in the late 1960s, eating in the same cheap Polish restaurants and searching for a new life vastly different to what we had known up to that point. A few years older than her,  I had made it all the way through college and was able to find work pretty easily. She often slept in the street and really lived hand to mouth for a couple years.

Part of my NYC journey was spent in a basement photography school in the Financial District learning the basics of the craft. Patti Smith developed an interest in photography which included a life-long attachment to a Polaroid 250. (One of the polaroids in her Instagram stream shows the Gem Spa at 2nd and Saint Marks which was just a couple blocks from where I lived.) From there our paths diverged significantly.  My path led me through San Francisco and Idaho to New Mexico.  Patti Smith, after the rocky beginning mostly stayed in NYC, always knowing who she was and working toward achieving fame as a writer, poet, artist and musician.

I thought Just Kids was excellent and I finished it in a couple days.  Her Instagram stream is also worth a visit; it was recently turned into a book as well.

Unexpected

 I have been shooting digital more lately due mostly to the fact that I am not willing to pay the inflated prices of color film.  When I recently gained unexpected access to the big shop buildings at the Albuquerque Railyards digital seemed a good choice because of the dim lighting and the subtle colors.  Having gone out that day expecting to just shoot film, the only digital camera I had available was my android phone.  That turned out ok as it also gave me the possibility of trying some panoramic compositions.

Why We’ll Never Live in Space

From an article by Sarah Scoles in the October 2023 issue of  Scientific American October 

"Human bodies really can't handle space. Spaceflight damages DNA, changes the microbiome, disrupts circadian rhythms, impairs vision, increases the risk of cancer, causes muscle and bone loss, inhibits the immune system, weakens the heart, and shifts fluids toward the head, which may be pathological for the brain over the long term—among other things."

Physiology aside, the economics don't add up.  The cyber moguls currently leading the way into space only do so because of vast subsidies made available from the U.S. budget.  The project will never be more than a great drain of resources.  Furthermore, the resources launched into the void beyond Earth's atmosphere are not then available for other vital priorities which are actually supported by a majority of citizens -- housing, equitable health care, coping with climate change, curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons...

None of the above, of course, will deflect the enthusiasm for space exploration among people who have been drenched in decades of Star Trek reruns.  The lure of  casting aside all the old habits and constraints and overcoming great challenges is nearly irresistible -- not to mention those spiffy Star Trek uniforms.

Not mentioned in the Scientific American article was a possible substitution for the challenge of Space which does not require absorbing large doses of radiation.  That is the exploration of the Earth's oceans which cover 70 percent of the planet's surface and account for 97 percent of our water.  Millennia of engagement with the seas have clearly only skimmed their surfaces.

The challenges of penetrating and living in the depths are surely in many ways as daunting as those presented by Space exploration, but the potential real benefits are greatly more tangible, and the solution to meeting the challenges are more a matter of adhering to sound science rather than pushing human physiology beyond sustainable limits.

Katsushika Hokusai

---------------------------------

Update:

For a good example of NASA boosterism about space travel see the recent NY Times article,

Maybe in Your Lifetime, People Will Live on the Moon and Then Mars

"NASA believes that with 3-D printing and soil made out of moon dust, they can create a subdivision in space in the next two decades."

The article is all about tech gimmicks, with no mention of the daunting challenges to human physiology posed by life in Space detailed in the Scientific American piece.