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 Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and writing. And most of the questions have to do with ethics. Is it ethical to use AI to write an article, story or poem? And is the AI program itself ethical, or merely plagiarizing existing content? I write for my own gratification. For me, using AI would feel like starting from the solution and copying the answers into the crossword puzzle. The result might look good, but why bother? Of course, those who write for a living may feel differently about the prospect of increased income. And human nature being what it is, I have no doubt that AI will be used in the arts much like steroids are used in sports. Even amateur athletes 'juice up' and then pretend to have earned their trophies. Professionals going after lucrative prizes and book deals will behave even worse. And if the end product is merely a commodity, like click-bait on the newsfeed, then why not use AI? There's no Pulitzer Prize for best click-bait headline. The whole point of writing greeting cards, instruction manuals, or ad copy is to turn a buck. If using AI increases one's productivity, then a writer would be foolish not to use it. And if a writer isn't needed, then a business would be foolish to pay for one. This may sound harsh, but a successful product has to maximize revenue while minimizing cost. If, however, an author is seeking a prize for excellence, then AI is definitely unethical. Just like using a grammar-check program or taking the advice of an editor instead of relying solely on one's own talent. Originality is a slippery slope and it's difficult to draw the line between content creation and content polishing. I do believe that ethical authors must credit the help of an AI program just as they should credit their editor. One of the biggest issues is the use of AI by students. It might be helpful to consider the point of writing an essay. Is it to reinforce the subject matter, or to learn how to write? Writing classes should definitely not accept AI generated content, but it could still be useful for learning. Students have been copying from the encyclopedia for generations. The act of reading and rephrasing is a form of learning, and originality isn't really the point. Today, students simply copy and paste from Wikipedia. However, the learning aspect is much reduced when writing is replaced by clicks. My suggestion is to require all writing assignments to be submitted in longhand. And to make the student fully responsible for the content. If a questionable AI 'artifact' is submitted, then the student should be dinged for it. A student would have to fact-check their AI to be ensured full credit. Writing in long-hand may seem onerous, but it would help to maintain the long tradition of learning through reading and rephrasing. Real learning always involves hard work. And learning should be the focus of the assignment. |
I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War. It was the first war to be televised in real time, and the news anchors included body counts in their evening broadcasts. I'd listen to the grisly accounts after going to bed, my transistor radio turned low so my parents wouldn't know that I was still awake. Thoughts of killing or being killed made it difficult to sleep. The older guys talked about their numbers in the draft lottery, and we all knew at least one gold-star family. I'd toss and turn while trying to decide if I should 'do my duty' or join the protests against an immoral conflict. I knew, even then, that the war was wrong. Fortunately, the draft never affected me. The final draft lottery of the Vietnam era occurred the month before I turned eighteen. Gerald Ford ended the military draft in March of 1975, so I wasn't even required to register. Jimmy Carter reinstated the registration requirement in 1980 for men born after January 1, 1960. I fell into the 33-month gap of those born between May 1957 and December 1959 who were completely exempt. I still don't know what I would have done had I been called up. The lottery process during the Vietnam era was ostensibly meant to ensure fairness, but it still provided advantages to those with wealth and/or political connections. Those who could afford college tuition 'bought' student deferments (Bill Clinton) and those with political influence were given posts in the reserves or the national guard (George W. Bush). And the least honorable could obtain questionable medical deferments (Donald Trump). Perhaps the biggest impact of the Vietnam War was lowering the legal age of adulthood from twenty-one to eighteen. Prior to 1971, an eighteen-year old needed parental consent to marry or to buy a car. But, by the height of the Vietnam conflict, there were protests against sending those too young to vote off to war. The cynical response was to lower the age of majority to maintain the supply of soldiers. Eighteen-year olds were given all the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. Instead of protecting immature young adults, conservatives made them targets. In addition to voting and being killed in Vietnam, young people also became legitimate prey for used car salesmen and credit card companies. Talk about a win-win! Many states even dropped the legal age for drinking to eighteen or nineteen. This was a real boon for the liquor companies, but it had a terrible influence on high school kids. Half of the seniors could legally buy booze to sneak into school functions. The impact on society was so negative that all states have since raised the drinking age back to twenty-one. But not the age for draftees! An eighteen-year old may be too immature to handle his beer, but he's plenty old enough to handle a gun. Full disclosure, I had a pretty wild senior year in high school and continued to 'party hearty' throughout my freshman year in college. I actually switched dorms as a sophomore to avoid my drinking buddies. I didn't completely stop drinking, but cutting back was an important part of finishing my degree. Looking back, I can honestly say that I wasn't a mature adult at age eighteen or even nineteen. The necessity of changing the drinking age back to twenty-one proves my point. I think it would be better to change the age of majority back to twenty-one. Those who can't be trusted with liquor shouldn't be drafted into the military, shouldn't vote, and shouldn't be allowed to enter into financial contracts either. |
| To celebrate April Fools, here's a story about the best prank I ever pulled at work. In 1988, we got desktop computers for each engineer in the Facilities department. These were 'advanced' IBM AT models with the 80286 processor, a 1.2 MB floppy disc drive, and a 20 MB hard drive. One of the features of their PC-DOS 3.0 operating system was the ability to modify the command line prompt. When I came across this option, I amused myself for a few minutes by changing my prompt from the boring default of: C:\> to: Hi Terry! Then I had a wonderful, awful idea. There were four desks in each bay of our systems furniture, and it took only five seconds to type the command that changed my cube mate's prompt to: sys error 10 please reboot When Matt instinctively pressed the Enter key, the 'sys error 10' message just kept repeating (as the prompt). But when he rebooted, the operating system reverted to the normal command line. Problem solved! It took a couple of minutes for his computer to boot up, and Matt was soon frustrated by having to wait for a reboot every other time he returned from the restroom. I made sure to keep the problem somewhat random. The IT guy was even more frustrated because there was no such thing as 'sys error 10' in the manuals. The IBM service people were no help either. They hinted that we might be crazy. The IT guy gave up and told Mike to just live with it. The 'sys error 10' message was a topic of conversation, speculation, and profane rants for several weeks. Every self-styled computer expert had an opinion, but no one came up with a solution. I just shrugged and held my tongue. The error message became more sporadic as time passed, but it never went away completely. So, whenever our bull sessions turned to crazy computer problems, Matt would tell the tale of the mysterious 'sys error 10'. The longer it went on, the more I enjoyed an inside joke that only I understood. The end finally came when I moved on to another position. I don't think Matt ever made the connection, and as far as I know, he's still telling the story. My little gift to him! |
Way back in the 1960's, we would occasionally hear the sonic boom of fighter jets as they trained over the sparsely occupied state of Montana. They operated from Malmstrom AFB, near Great Falls. It took them only a few minutes to scramble and rattle our windows even though their base was more than 100 miles away. Sometimes they came over at low altitude and scared the crap out of cows and cowboys alike. Sometimes, I could actually feel the sonic boom vibrating my internal organs. The skies got quieter when the FAA banned sonic booms in 1973. That pretty much killed the Concorde SST, the world's only supersonic commercial jet aircraft. Some said it was a political decision to aid the US aviation industry, but the Air Force was sitting on thousands of noise complaints and damage claims. Today, sonic booms are limited to over-ocean flights, emergency scrambles, and a couple of designated USAF training areas. In 1980, I visited the H. W. Ward company, near Birmingham, England to provide technical assistance with a new CNC lathe that they were developing. They built the iron bits, and my company provided the controller. As we left for lunch one day, a Harrier jet came screaming overhead at what seemed like tree-top altitude and reminded me of the fighter planes that had frightened me as a child. "What the hell are they doing?" I asked the engineer who'd been assigned as my 'minder'. "It's just a training exercise," Geoff said. "Happens all the time." "Directly over the city? Seems dangerous, why are they allowed to do that?" Geoff gave me an odd look and said, "Where else are they going to go?" At that moment, the light bulb came on. I suddenly realized that the Harrier jet would leave British airspace in about twenty minutes no matter what direction it went. All of Britain is barely large enough to do a reasonable practice run. I looked it up later and found that the entire island (80,823 sq mi) could be fitted inside the rectangular borders of Montana (147,040 sq mi). No folding necessary, and there'd still be a lot of empty space around the edges. I also realized that even though those Harrier flights were subsonic, they annoyed more than sixty times as many people! |
As we enter the new year, many resolutions will pass through people's minds. Some will be mentioned aloud, a few will be written down, and one or two might even be accomplished. With that cheerful prospect in mind, here are some thoughts on portfolio organization: Free Account: Folders aren't available to free accounts since they're allowed only 10 items. And they aren't allowed to create books, so that point is moot. There's little to be done in the way of organizing, but you can create separate items for poetry, short stories, non-fiction, horror, romance, etc. More than one piece can be saved in an item, but the size limit for each is 50 Kb. That's about 25 pages of text, so you can't really write a novel. Still, a collection of two dozen poems or a few short stories could be presented in a single item. Basic Account: A basic membership allows a portfolio of 50 items, and each can be up to 100 Kb in size (about 50 pages of text). A list that long is probably too much for our modern-day attention span. It may be better to use folders to direct the reader. Some authors name their folders for the year the items were written. This is easy, but most readers don't care, they're looking for something more specific. Love poems, for example, or horror stories. I'd suggest that an author start by collecting their items into folders of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, recipes, lyrics, etc., and then further organizing them by genre. Then the reader can find all the mushy stuff by clicking once on 'Poetry' and then again on 'Love Poems'. And they won't have to scroll past horror stories that could spoil the mood. Upgraded Account: An upgraded membership allows 250 items and each can be up to 250 Kb in size (about 125 pages). At this level, it becomes imperative to organize one's portfolio. Using folders is a good start, and 250 items may seem like a lot, but it's easier than you might think for an author to bump up against the limit. It took me less than three years to get there. One obvious option is to simply delete the lesser works, but vanity precludes that. A better solution is to learn how to use books. An upgraded membership allows the author to create up to 10 books of up to 5Mb each (about 2500 pages). That is truly a lot of pages! So, if you're short on portfolio space, then I recommend putting similar items into a book. This seems especially obvious for poetry collections, where individual entries tend to be short. Another good use for a book is to hold items that are in-work. Have you ever felt frustrated by all the 'save and view' clicking just to try out different formatting? A book entry has a 'preview' feature that allows you to quickly see how the finished item will look without leaving the edit pane. Once the story or poem looks 'right' you can copy and paste it into an individual item and make it public. A book is also useful for storing ideas. You can easily jot a few notes into a book entry, set it to private and save it for later. And, of course, a blog (what you're reading now) is just a special book format that's automagically linked to the blog tab of your portfolio. Oh, I almost forgot, you could even use a book to write the Great American Novel with each entry being a separate chapter. I haven't been ambitious enough to try that yet. A drawback of using a book is that you can't attach a cover image to individual entries. I feel that an appropriate image can be a big help in setting the mood for a piece. I'd like to be able to add a cover image to my book entries, but that's not an option. Another drawback is that awardicons can't be attached to individual entries within a book. An awardicon is attached to the book rather than the entry within the book. They can, however, be referenced within the entry itself. My method is to create a drop note and show the awardicon there. The ML code shown below will create the drop note shown further below. {dropnote:"Author's note:"} 20 lines of free verse Second place in the September 2022 round of {i}Second Time Around{/i} contest Prompt: Help celebrate WDC's 22nd birthday. Just for this month, all entries must be previously written pieces that did not win a contest, and that have a birthday or a party theme. {award:155262} {b-item:2164876} {/dropnote} Author's note: ▼ Premium Accounts: I haven't tried these levels, but they allow even more individual items and even more books. I won't give any further advice except to say that portfolio organization only grows more important as the number of items increase. |
| For your consideration . . . Hiding in Plain Sight by Cam E. Leon The Western Quest by Louis N. Clarke Making the Grade by Kenney Hackett Surface Shine by Dustin D. House Tap, Tap, Tap by Peg Legget A Frond Indeed by Fern N. Bracken A DIY Fox Collar by Rufus Mayne Meat, Cheese, Bun by Patti Melton See also: "Here I Go Again"  See also: "Below the Bottom Shelf" |
My commercial aviation career took a zig in 1995, when I transferred from facilities factory support to customer support as a maintenance manual author. As a Facilities Engineer, I prepared purchase specifications and wrote project status reports. I'd become comfortable with Word for Windows and I loved its WYSIWYG display (what you see is what you get). Seeing different fonts on the screen was a novel experience for someone who'd cut their word processing teeth on the original Wordstar program for CP/M. The proprietary publishing system used for the maintenance manuals seemed like a giant step backward. The minicomputer that held the actual data was accessed through green-screen terminals that were hopelessly outdated compared to a desktop computer running Windows 95. And the maintenance manual author didn't even use that ancient terminal technology. Data entry personnel did the actual typing, while I reverted all the way back to colored pencils. As an author, I analyzed engineering drawings, wiring diagrams, and vendor documentation (all paper) and turned them into step-by-step procedures for the airline mechanic. My original hand-written text was entered into the publishing system by a data entry clerk and then printed on fanfold paper, double spaced, for my approval. Editing was done with red pencil for deletions, blue pencil for additions, and green pencil for editorial comments. You might wonder why we used a proprietary minicomputer, and why the text was formatted as a database rather than a document. The answer is configuration control. Creating an aircraft maintenance manual is a complex process. Each model has its own base manual that fills an entire bookcase. Each airline has its own customized set of manuals, and the current configuration of each airplane in the entire worldwide fleet must be tracked per FAA regulations. Microsoft Word wasn't (still isn't) anywhere close to being able to handle the database-like requirements of tracking airplane configurations. Thankfully, things changed quickly in those early years of computing technology. By 1997, we all had desktop PCs with terminal emulation programs. We could enter our own data and display the simulated manual pages on-screen instead of wasting reams of paper. The downside was the wear and tear of spending hours hammering away at the keyboard. Ergonomics was just a funny sounding word in those days. Few of us really believed in carpal tunnel syndrome, it was something that shirkers used as an excuse to get out of work. No one understood the effects of an awkwardly laid out workstation. I had a keyboard and a state of the art 19" CRT on my desk. No keyboard tray, no ergonomic chair, just an upward reach to a mouse that kept my wrist bent at a near 90-degree angle. It took several years, but eventually I developed enough pain in my wrist that work became almost intolerable. Even then, I never saw a doctor. That would've been a show of weakness. Instead, I learned to mouse left-handed. That allowed me to solve the problem on my own. It worked out better than might be expected. I quickly gained left hand dexterity and mousing felt normal again in a couple of weeks. The pain in my right wrist subsided and I finally submitted to an ergonomic evaluation of my workstation. A better layout helped preserve my left wrist, and it remains pain-free. The damage to my right wrist, however, is permanent. I can mouse equally well with either hand, but the pain returns in a few days if I use my right hand. So, I know what I'm going to do with the time I have left. |
| I think most writers feel that getting published is the ultimate validation of their work. It makes that subtle difference between saying 'I write' and 'I'm a writer'. I was thrilled when my first submission was accepted by an online science fiction magazine. The money was minimal, but actually seeing my name in print would be priceless. Unfortunately, my story was scheduled for issue #5 and the magazine folded after issue #4. I'm still unpublished, but I'll always have this: Terrence, Hello, my name is Kip Shelton, Editor-in-Chief here at Synthetic Reality Magazine. We really enjoyed your story and wanted to include it in issue #5 coming out on March 26th. As a new magazine unfortunately, we can only pay .01 per word and in contributor's copies, which we send 3 to the writers. I realize that this is not much, but as we progress and grow, we will offer better. If this is acceptable to you, please let me know and I will make the Social Media announcements and have our graphics team add your name to the cover. After we receive your approval, we will be sending you a contract for the release of Song of the Vamp. Once again, thank you for submitting to Synthetic Reality Magazine and we hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, Kip Shelton / Editor It occurred to me recently that getting a story accepted is only a part of the writing experience. So, to expand my stock of life experiences, I decided to submit some other pieces. And I can now proudly display rejections from a couple of well-respected magazines. To: tgifisher Thank you very much for letting us see "The Veybach Machine." We appreciate your taking the time to send it in for our consideration. Although it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time, we wish you luck with placing it elsewhere. Sincerely, Sheila Williams, Editor Pronouns: she, her Asimov's Science Fiction www.asimovs.com ------------ Dear Mr. Fisher, Thank you for sending me your poem. Thanks, too, for your kind comments about the Meter column. Although I enjoyed reading "Cosmic Counterpoints," I'm sorry to say I'm going to pass. Response to the Meter column has been so robust that I'm forced to say "no" far more often than I anticipated, or than I'd like. Again gratefully, and with regret, Dava Sobel. <dsobel@sciam.com> |
An item about fecal matter on NYC sidewalks popped up in the newsfeed this week. The description of what New Yorkers are stepping in reminded me of a friend and coworker who preferred to go to the office barefoot. I met Gerry McDougal in 1995 when I transferred into customer service. That's when I began writing maintenance manuals for commercial jet aircraft and Gerry was my illustrator. He was about 10 years younger, but we got along well. Gerry was an easy-going guy, hip, but without the smugness of today's hipster. I'd describe him as a latter-day hippie, displaced in time but still very much in tune with 60's counterculture. Gerry sported a goatee and a long fringe of hair hanging down from a well-established bald spot. He dressed the part too, in vintage clothing that reminded me of the older kids from when I was in junior high. His strangest, and perhaps most authentic, hippie trait was that he seldom wore shoes. Gerry would usually come to work barefoot, even in icy weather. Of course, shoes were required in our corporate culture, so Gerry kept a pair of sandals under his desk for those occasions when management got on his case. At first, I didn't give it much thought. Growing up in a rural area, I'd known others who routinely went unshod. They developed tough calluses resistant to stones and thistles. Certainly, an office environment is far friendlier to the bare foot. But one day I had an epiphany in the restroom. Several dozen men shared a pair of urinals, and by the end of the day, the overspray left a noticeable residue. I stepped back after finishing my business and felt the unmistakable adhesion of a sticky floor. Suddenly, I realized that Gerry had to share that same sticky spot, sans shoes, and I felt a bit nauseous. A somewhat similar situation arose with the hand towels. The restroom was originally equipped with a couple of 'endless roller' cloth towels that would get rather damp by the end of the workday. There were many complaints about having to dry one's hands with a wet towel, and management finally put in paper towel dispensers instead. A coworker expressed relief that he no longer had to share an unsanitary towel. I replied, "I'd rather share a towel with a man who washes his hands than share a doorknob with one who doesn't." His face reminded me of how I'd felt about bare feet on the sticky floor. |
My wife is a woman of many talents, not least of which is her ability to disappear for long periods of time at the supermarket. I'm not talking about a long shopping trip while I wait at home. No, she can turn the corner at the end of the aisle and utterly vanish for five or ten minutes at a time while I wander around in confusion. These odd events usually coincide with my picking up a heavy, awkward, or frozen item. And no matter how many times it happens, I never seem to learn. In spite of my determined vigilance, she still manages to pull it off. For example, she'll say, 'Oh we need a bag of potatoes' and then disappear with the cart as I walk back to pick it up. I can walk every aisle in the entire store, dangling a ten-pound bag of spuds, without ever seeing her. Or, she might say 'I forgot the milk. Will you grab a gallon and meet me at the checkout?' only to vanish entirely. I'm left holding the jug for what seems like hours as my hand slowly goes numb. Our supermarket has about a dozen aisles with open space both at the front and at the back. I've tried to outwit her by standing at one corner and watching, but ten minutes can pass without her ever rounding the end of an aisle. And it doesn't matter whether I'm near the registers or back by the meat counter. Wherever I am, she's not. I've even considered asking the staff if she has an arrangement to duck into the back and watch me on the surveillance cameras, but I'm afraid they'll think I'm paranoid. I'm not a paranoid! Really, I'm not. But if you see a guy at the supermarket, holding a frozen rump roast with a puzzled look on his face, please give him a little wink and nod in the direction of the woman hiding her cart behind the bread rack. He really needs to get a clue. |
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