[ExI] ai in education

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
…

 

>… Is it really that difficult for you to say anything negative (other than balanced budget trivia) about You Know Who?

 

Because John, I get the feeling that everything eventually is all about that one topic for a certain group of people and possibly AI generated avatars.  It dominates the thought processes to the exclusion of everything else.

 

Give ya an example: these Epstein files.  One really gets the feeling that the release of those were less about finding out who did bad things and more about finding out if one particular person did bad things.  Apparently he did not.  Result: loss of interest in finding out who did, and carrying out justice.  Another example: the legal cases against POTUS appeared to the voters to be less about justice and more about somehow any-how-available, to get that one guy.  We may have even had politicians running for top law enforcement positions specifically to get that one guy.  This is not how our justice system works.  

 

So no, I am not going to do your job for you.  This one topic seems to be dominating an otherwise good mind.  This is tragic.  The current POTUS will be gone in less than three years John.  Let it go.

 

>…And speaking of Vietnam, were you of draft age during that "war"? John K Clark

 

 

No.  It was long over before I really had enough access to news to even know much about it.  Our TV reception was terrible in those days, and our newspaper didn’t say much.  I was still in elementary school when I heard that the very influential news guy Walter Chronkite had convinced then-POTUS Nixon there was little to be gained by staying there.  Two of my uncles returned soon afterwards.  One was killed there and didn’t even know it at the time: he developed cancer of the everything a few years after he returned.  We think it was exposure to defoliants, but we could not prove it.

 

Fun aside on those days: the military contractors hadn’t hired new people out of college in over a decade.  When class of 83 showed up in large numbers with actual degrees in engineering, there was a missing generation, a gap of about 10 years from us to the next older people.  

 

The seasoned veterans (of WW2 in those days) had a marvelous time asking us what we knew about the war (which was practically nothing (Vietnam or any other war (we scarcely knew who the contestants were in WW2 (it was the days before video games (all kids know now (but have some very weird attitudes (which we damn well need to pay attention to.)))))))  What little we did know was usually completely wrong.  For instance: Cronkite went on and on about Vietcong Guerillas.  We knew Ellie May Clampet had a pet Go-rilla.  But I looked at the footage they showed, I never saw any gorillas.

 

The old ones were astonished that we were not uniformly liberals.  We had no particular orientation politically.  We were told that tradition firmly demanded that all young adults were liberals, then they gradually moved to the right as they aged.  Well, OK then, if tradition demands it, I suppose we should comply.  None of us made very convincing liberals, and don’t to this day.  So I would suggest that the model itself is flawed, and that the political orientation of a generation depends entirely on what is happening at the time of peak influence on young minds, with the threat of draft being a huge influence.  

 

I have some fun and insightful experiences about Berkeley and a tale of three elections, if anyone wishes to hear.

 

spike   

 

 

 

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