Taking Out the Trash on a Day of Rest

 Today was one of those days when I felt the oppression of living in the summer heat here in Arizona. It was Sunday, and I was restless. But there was no way to go for a walk of any length. In the afternoon I went outside, breaking my Sunday day of rest to take out the trash early. They would have collected it via the trash service at our day four hours later. I justified breaking the day of rest to do a physical chore on the grounds that someone else would have to do it later. 

It was a heavy bag. As I walked down the outdoor hallway to the stairs, I felt the stirring of the air. It had that feeling of a furnace blast. Later I would learn that the temperature had peaked at 114. So we had the "eleven handle" on the temperature at last, a little later than usual this time of year.

That explains how, while using the fan this morning while reading on the porch, the electric fan had felt like it was blowing a bar-b-cue grill fire in my face. 

I took the bag down to the dumpsters which are in a small concrete pen the walls of which are as high as the dumpsters. There are two dumpsters, one for recycling and one for normal trash. Without thinking, I slung the heavy trash bag into the dumpster for recycling, and only realized my mistake a few seconds later. I'm more used to using that one, heaving the box of empty San Pelegrino bottles we get from Costco. Mineral water is very tasty in the summer, but I try to drink normal tap water with ice as much as possible.

In this case, my muscle reflex took over to sling the trash bag into the recycling. I looked at it in the dumpster. There was already a bunch of crap in there. I am not above climbing into the dumpster to retrieve something I have thrown in their by mistake, or immediately regretted it. But I past the point where I could do that without a step ladder of some kind. I would have to do that in the blazing sun of 114 degrees. Nope. I will have to let the trash bag stay in the recycling. Rationally I know that recycling is mostly bullshit anyway, and other people do this all the time, people being people.Nevertheless there is a desire in me to play by the rules as much as possible, whenever I can, so that if I need the grace to bend them or break them, I will be aided by cosmic fate when I do so, having not squandered it on idiocy.

Moral of the story is to have waited for the trash butler in the evening. That is their job. It is I who have the rule about the day of rest and should have obeyed it. But the truth is that I just couldn't stand the heavy trash container anymore and wanted it out of the house, but I was impatient to wait until evening. Maybe I wanted an excuse to go out in the heat and stretch my legs. That's why it takes self discipline for rules like no physical chores on the day that celebrates "the Eighth Day of Creation."

Two Dollars Short at the Chuckbox

 The AI lab in the engineering building where I work most days on the ASU campus was dead today. For the first couple hours, I was the only person in there. Finally someone else, a graduate student, came in around 10. I stayed for another hour before deciding to head home.

I decided on a whim to check out a place I'd found in Tempe while exploring near campus the week box. It was an eatery of some kind, called the Chuckbox, and it looked to be an ancient relic of early times set amidst the more modern 21st century architecture of Tempe, just across University Boulevard from campus. I recognized immediately it must be a landmark familiar to generations of ASU students. Given that so little of old Tempe survives--even things that would have been there in the 1990s---I resolved to visit it, and today seemed like the perfect day. Even though it was exactly in the opposite direction to where I park, I thought it would be no big deal to walk up and have an early lunch on my way home.

Campus was empty as I walked through it going north instead of south as usual. Among the few people I saw were two students on the lawn in front of Old Main, in gym workout clothes practicing a cheerleading routine. The muscular young man was throwing a blond girl with a pony tail into the air and catching her. It was picture perfect, so classically collegiate, although they looked to be broiling in the sun. 

The Chuckbox was only a couple hundred yards from there, across the street from the the campus First United Methodist Church on the north side of University. I came upon the back door, out on the parking lot, which had neon signs like a beer joint, including the Cardinal mascot of the local NFL franchise. It looked like a real dive. I went around to the front and it looked exactly the back. Very weathered and classic look. I pulled open the door, and to my surprise found it very crowded. Almost all the tables were taken. There a modest line to order. One placed one's order with a young man at the start of a cafeteria style line along the back. I listened as the two girls in front of me ordered, so I could do so without being too awkward.

The ancient flattop grill was right next to where one ordered. One could see the classic mishapen patties frying there. It reminded me of a similar place in Austin near the UT campus, where students had ordered hamburgers for generations. I felt at home. I ordered the "Big One" and the suggestion of the young man I got cheese and said cheddar just to speed things along. He took the top of a hamburger bun and stuck two cellophane frill toothpicks into it of different colors which I discerned indicated the type and number of patties, as well as the type of cheese. There were already several such buns in progress. 

I took out my credit card, but the guy ignored me. Then I saw that the young women who had ordered before me were standing by the grill, a little on the far side of it. I saw the sign saying "wait here for your order".  So I did. It took only a few moments for the one of the guys tending the grill (there were three of them) to flip the patties onto a bun in a disposable container and place them in reach by the grill, announcing the type of burger. The young women picked up their to-go orders and headed down towards the place where you picked up the sides one ordered. I had ordered onion rings, because I have always loved onion rings since I was a kid, and this place felt comfortable that way, as it would have existed even when I was a boy.

Shortly my burger was place on a plate on a tray, as I had chosen to dine-in. Then I went down and saw my onion rings in a metal slot under heat lamps. Thankfully the order was smaller than I feared it might be---just the right size for one person for lunch and not a huge basket. I also picked up a coke from the fountain.

Then I walked up to the guy at the register, and only then do I notice the sign which says in big white letters "CASH ONLY" and explained that it helped speed up the process. It hit me that I 'd seen the cash only sign several times, even on my way in, and it hadn't registered on me!

Uh, oh, I thought. I hope I have enough. The total came to seventeen dollars and seventy-five cents. I put down my tray and dug into my wallet. I saw my folded cash in my wallet. I explained my situation to the guy at the counter, saying I had totally spaced on noticing the sign and that I hoped I had enough. He said there was a cash machine by the door.

I took it out my cash and counted it quickly. Two fives and six ones. I was almost two dollars short.  I told him that, and that I would be willing to go to the cash machine and get the rest, but he just waved it off in a nonchalant way and told me make up for it next time. I offered to put the drink back, but he waved it off. I handed him what I had---sixteen bucks and left with my tray to find a seat. I was both relieved and humiliated. It seemed unlikely I would enjoy the meal. 

As I ate my burger, which was as tasty as I hoped, and sitting among the people at the other tables, I reflected how for me, in such situations, it always seems to work out that I have just enough to cover the unexpected shortfall. Somehow I get granted that grace, over and over in my life. This was a strange exception, but I tried to think it was for a reason. If only I hadn't taken that fountain drink at the end! At least I would have a reason to come back, to make up the money I'd shorted them. 

Then it hit me that I had seen a one dollar bill loose lately, one that I had received but had left out of my wallet, and that had even gone through the wash. I had it in my backpack at one point. So I dug into my backpack but no such luck. Then I just tried my left front pocket, and I felt cash in there. I pulled out two one dollar bills, as if it were a magic trick.

Without wasting a second, I sprung up and hurried back to the register. I handed the guy the two one dollar bills in triumph. Now I could enjoy my meal.  The onion rings were great too. Just the right crunchiness.

 I took these shots before entering. Notice the prominent red and white sign in the second video. 

Here's one of the grill I snuck while waiting for my order.

Snack selection at the Cloud Innovation Lab

 

Cliff bars for the taking. 

First rain on June 1 since 1914

Miracle Rain

 The rains kept going all night. I was sure they would clear out, but the tropical storm that was generating all this kept churning, wherever it is in the ocean, and sending moisture up over us to fall on us. The first recorded rain in Phoenix on June 1 since 1914. That one hundred and eleven years since it rained on this date. And did it rain. By the evening, there were puddles--many of them.

In the middle of the night when I woke, as I often do, I heard the rain outside. It is a vertical rain, the water falling straight from the rooftops onto the pavement. There was little rain on the windows, as there was almost no wind. My rice paper screen stood all night long on the patio, and the books behind it were dry (I thought about this in the middle of the night and got up to check). 

As I write this here, the sky is getting light and yet the rain is still falling on the pavement, like the sound of a frying skillet, popping and crackling. It is delicious. It could end at any moment and never return, and this rain will become legendary. Such are the things I savor.

Requiem for a Saguaro

On the way down to the park, I was greeted by this horrible sight. This is the second fallen saguaro I have seen along this street in the last six month, the previous one being toppled in the median a little behind where this photo was taken. My initial thought why could't it be those wretched teddy bear chollas that visible down by the yellow pedestrian walk sign, right where you're supposed to cross (but will get possibly killed if you cross there). The chollas are a public menace were planted by some sadist right where one's hand might collide with them while walking on the sidewalk. Seriously, I would vaporize those if I could and hunt down the person who had the brilliant idea to put them where people and animals walk. But this is just my sadness talking about this fallen saguaro.

 

Cool Wind Bath with Droplets

As I write this is, it is raining. It is raining enough that I can hear the splashing of water dropping from the tiles roofs of the buildings of the complex, falling onto the asphalt pavement. 

The skies had been grey all day since first daylight. Overnight we had gotten a dusting of water, but it was the kind that dries on your car leaving a layer of filthy residue. After breakfast I heard thunder and hoped for real rain, but it seems elusive, teasing us all day with the possiblity.

The air felt muggy as well, which made for uncomfortable feeling of suspension. An hour ago, in mid afternoon, I decided to go out walking in the park. As I crossed the street I could see to the south many dark clouds, but from their position they would not come our way. I decided to inspect my former little hiding spot, the ironwood, where it rises beside the sandy bottom. Since the development of the park, the sandy bottom no longer becomes a stream when it rains so it is losing its character over time. The pink blossoms have fallen off the ironwood by now. I used to bring my three-legged stool and sit beside it, but now I would feel on display, visible from all sides, including the nearby area that is being used for the staging of the construction on the rest of the undeveloped desert. The pieces of my old habitat remain but it has lost its character as a retreat.

I then walked around the pond to the shelter. There was not a soul in the park beside me. I sat on one of the picnic tables looking out towards the south and the dark clouds. As I sat there I got lost in my thoughts until I felt a cool rush of wind coming into my face. The temperature droppped and it no longer felt muggy. As I waited, I began to feel raindrops on my face as well. It was glorious. The sprinkling was just enough to be comfortable. I sat on the table and took a wind bath, feeling the droplets and not minding getting wet.

But I didn't really get wet, and my skin and my clothes dried as quickly as the drops landed on them. It was like a bit of perfection to feel the wind and the droplets, and to be sitting there in an empty park. I probably stayed over forty five minutes, doing nothing else than enjoying the wind and the droplets and the dark clouds.Then I walked back to the street entrance of the park, feeling my back almost getting damp from the rain.

,,, according to FOX 10 Phoenix, Phoenix is experiencing rain on June 1st, 2025, which is the first time it has rained on this date since 1914. This rare event is due to moisture from Tropical Storm Alvin. The previous time Phoenix received measurable rainfall on June 1st was on June 1st, 1914, when 0.02 inches of rain were recorded. 

Have Multiple Textual Sources

 One key insight I've gotten from this notetaking project with quantum field theory is a confirmation of a hunch that using mulitiple textual sources is key.  I have at least half a dozen top-flight monographs on QFT that I've been collecting over the years in anticipating of trying this out. Yes it does work. One key trick was to go to the preface of each book and begin reading until one hits a basic description of the subject of the book, which might include a definition of the terms, including the subject itself, e.g. "what is quantum field theory, and why do we study it?"

Having multiple such sources, one can read all of them simultaneously, at these these key sections like the preface. Somehow doing this allows one's mind to more easily build a standalone understanding of the subject in one's one mind. With ChatGPT, you have another such source, which can connect all the sources together, by asking about certain passages in these books. That's what I've found, at least.

Even if they say virtually the same thing (which they don't), just having the subtle variations of syntax from one author's expression to another forces the mind to develop an understanding that accommodates both variations. One has space of interpretation, not fixed to a particular wording. This is necessary for an understanding, when you put things in your own words eventually. For now you have to rely on someone else's but having multiple sources is like having multiple legs of a table.

The Aha Moment

 A marvelous Saturday, much of it spent studying physics, basically building up one while side of a 11 x 17 card stock while sweltering on the humid porch. I guess I could turn on the fan at some point and be less miserable. Notes came from ChatGPT, and a couple quantum field theory books I am using. ChatGPT is amazingly helpful because I can stop it and have it explain anything I don't understand, drilling down until I find the bedrock of understanding.

Today my 11 x 17 portfolio arrived by delivery that I ordered online.  I'ts cheap and plastic but it will do the job for now. I can carry these card stock cards into work or wherever I go without holding them awkwardly and spilling coffee on them (which is not the worst thing to happen, but it's nice to keep things in proper order).

A good start to fill one-side of an 11 x 17 card with some notes. I will keep going this way using as many cards as I need. Then when I have as many as I care to have, I can look at them and see if I can make them more concise, maybe fitting them on few cards, maybe even just a single card front and back. This way of learning physics is going to work for me, I see. This is not just learning the subject of quantum field theory after thirty five years of trying. This is figuring a whole new way of learning any advanced topic. This last idea---this is what feels like a real breakthrough. Whenever I reach such a moment as this, I get get carried back to similar aha moments, including one I had while doing my optics homework on the floor of the house of a good friend of mine in Salem in the spring of 1988, on a lazy Saturday like this. It was at that  moment that for the first time I thought I could be a physicist. Today reminded me of that, in a very good way.

 

Main Street Skysong

 

A view of the shade structure  at Skysong in Scottsdale. Th is is the central intersection of the "main street" of Skysong. The structure looks to the be same kind as at the Denver Airport.The receding street in front ("main street") connects to Scottsdale Road, a main artery through the city.There one finds restaurants in a small complex. Most of the buildings along the main street seem to be connected to ASU, but not all. The 1950s diner office hangout is behind me from the view, and down a block on the main street. The deli and coffeeshop is across the main street to the left, on the corner. The cross street leading to the right goes to the parking lots where I park. The cross street leading left leads to a complex of apartments, including senior living ones, and a hotel, I think. 

Mamma Mia

 Yesterday when I came into the parking lot around the Gammage Auditorium, where I normally park in the same spot every day, I found the entrances flanked by orange cones. As I drove through the maze towards my usual spot, I could see metal fences blocking some of the roads around the auditorium. Large touring buses were parked along one side of the building. 

When I came back in the afternoon, one of the buses was idling with its door open. It looked to be a nice touring bus. The curtains will pulled back obscuring the inside. As I came around to the far side of the auditorium where I park, my questions were answered. There I saw a large semi trailer parked about fifty feet from my spot. It was in the same spot as the trailer that had been parked there when I first started working here two months ago. On the side of that trailer had been an advertisement for the show that was in residency at the Gammage that month: Wicked.  The giant graphic on the trailer showed the green witch whispering to the white girl, as in the poster. It's a good place for an advertisement as everyone driving by along Mill Street can see it.

Now the new trailer was revealed the new touring show: Mamma Mia!. It showed the main character, a bride, leaning forward and laughing in her wedding dress. The text beside it said "You already know you're going to like it." 

The effect of seeing this was jarring on me. It took me back to the day I went into Manhattan for the first time after 9/11. I was in the Staten Island terminal of the ferry and got to the stairwell that descends to the boat. Here there was a large opening, a paneless window that looked out over the harbor towards the city.  It hit me that the sky would be blank there, where I expected to see the twin towers. Right next to that window was a poster for the same show, Mamma Mia, then playing on Broadway, with the lead actress in exactly that same pose.

There is something magical after the arrival of the troupe of performers and crew for the touring show. It reminds me of what it must have been like to live in a town in Europe centuries ago and see a theater company arrive in town. Everyone would have been excited and talking about it. 

The residency of the show here is fairly short---only through Sunday, as I just learned by looking it up. 

We Are All Prompts

 Today was one of those days when I glimpsed the next rung down on the ladder towards civlizational madness caused by AI. It comes in the form the release of Google Veo 3, its next generation of LLM.

The hoopla I have seen over this new tool centers on how it is a big leap in the accessibility of AI generated videos that are realistic.  That is, one creates a video simply by using prompts: "make me a video of kitten fighting with a tennis ball", "make me a video of a person talking about how they are an AI generated character, created from a prompt." This last genre has hit the Internet in the form of TikTok videos based on this theme. There are videos are people complaining, getting angry, or depressed etc, over the fact that they are not real but are generated by a prompt using AI.

This has immediately led to a new meta-consciousness idea about our reality. How do we know we are not generated by prompts in the same way inside a simulation? This is an idea with legs. It will become something people talk about even more than before.

In most cases, there are still subtle signs in the video, uncanny clues, that tell us that this is probably AI we are seeing and not a real person. But it is getting harder, and in some cases one is fooled by the AI versions, especially the ones of people being interviewed on the street, which is a popular TikTok genre that AI seems capable of mimicking quite well.

No Reading Glasses

 Driving into campus today felt downright odd, as I hadn't driven that in to Tempe almost week. Instead I'd been going into Skysong, which is the ASU complex in south Scottsdale. As such I let my my wander and almost missed by exit.

The campus was utterly dead. Hardly anyone is around this week during break. I wonder when the summer session starts, and how busy it will be. I remember at Texas, there hardly seemed to be any difference during the summer. Things just kept moving along. But not every place can be Texas.

I got in super early such that only the campus Starbucks was open. It's open when everything else is closed. So now I have a Starbucks cup on the desk next to me instead of one from the Bagelry, which has moved its opening hours to a later time during the summer break. I thought I would sit at one of the shaded metal tables by the library and enjoy taking some physics notes. I was quickly disabused of this notion in realizing that I had neglected to bring along any of the many pairs of reading glasses I own, in various strengths that suit my eyes at various times in the workday.

No way could I work without reading glasses. It would be torture. What to do? I thought I might have to go back home, but I have been cooped up there all weekend and it felt good to be out in the world again. I wanted to interact with my co-workers. Then I realized that I could just buy a new pair. Where's the nearest Costco? Too far away to be practical I learned. But there's a CVS nearby to campus, on the northwest corner where downtown Tempe starts, so I walked there. I found a pair in a strength I needed. Twenty-seven dollars! I can get a package of three for that at Costco.

As I do in such cases, I fret about my stupidity and think: how can I make sure this never happens again? Leave a pair at my desk, maybe. But not this pair. Some other pair.

Girl Mode

 In the lab this morning early and people started finally coming in after nine. One of the Indian guys was asking my boss, who is also Indian, about some advice regarding a job interview process he is going through with a major Wall Street trading firm, the name of which everyone would recognize. 

Being that I'm only a few feet away, it's impossible not to listen, and they don't care if I do. I liked that my boss told him, "And if they ask you when you can start, you say right away."

He asked my boss for some background on how we use certain architectures in our system, so he could answer questions he anticipated receiving in his interviews.  My boss went into a long digression about how system works in various regards, which I found extremely interesting, to the point of making a few notes as he spoke.

Then the subject veered over to LLMs (the core of AI at the moment) and how they work. As I've mentioned elsewhere, one of the big worries people have at ASU is "bias" in the responses. There is a whole team, almost all women, whose job it is to find bias in answers and correct for it. Usually I would tune this part out, as I don't care, but unexpectedly I found myself fascinated when he provided a concrete example.

"ChatGPT is biased against girls," he said. I wanted to hear this. "If you tell it you want to write a Python function, and you tell it that you're a boy, it will give you a simple direct answer. But if you tell it you're a girl, it will assume you need more help and provide a more detailed step-by-step answer, and it will encourage you at each step. You can try it for yourself. So that's a bias you need to correct for."

So the assumption is that girls need more help than boys to write computer code? ChatGPT is not programmed with this in mind. It had to have learned it from the corpus of material on the Internet. I pointed out that this is precisely the point of all those "help girls learn STEM" programs, which explicitly assume that girls need more encouragement.

So it's sexist not to give girls explicit encouragement. It's also sexist to encourage girls, because it assumes they need encouragement. In a way, ChatGPT is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, based on all the programs for getting girls into coding. And yet it's biased---in exactly the way it's supposed to be. Except we don' t want that either. Yikes.

The takeaway for now is that there is a "Girl Mode" with ChatGPT. Just tell it you're a girl and it will give you extra help on technical topics. 

Memorial Day Physics

 

Cambridge University Press 2023. It's a nice volume, already with my pencil markings, and coffee stains on the last few pages. Baptized, as my French friend Jean would say. The books I use look used.

Spent Memorial Day bashing my head against a physics topic which is arguably the most advanced topic in theory, and upon which the validity so much of current particle physics depends. It's called renormalization, and the book I was reading today is called, fittingly enough Renormalization. It was published only in 2023. It's from Cambridge University Press, which is a great publisher for physics monographs and makes high volume books. I acquired it because it was recommended by ChatGPT for my self-study course for next year's conference.

I won't bother to explain what "renormalization" means beyond saying it's a very sophisticated way to remove unwanted infinities in one's models of particle physics that would otherwise invalidate the entire theory (because you can prove anything if you allow infinities).  By these sophisticated processes, which some dissenters think are sleight of hand, or even fraudulent, one can arrive at predictions---supposedly.

This is what I have to master if I'm going to useful in my field. I would not be attempting this without ChatGPT to help me, but with AI, I flip into the mode where I am convinced I can understand anything if I approach it the right way.

I have several modes for studying a physics subject from a book---top down, or word-by-word.  Both are appropriate at various times. In this case, it turns out the author provided an initial introductory chapter of only three pages long (!) that summarizes the entire subject. This is a dream, to have this. So I am going word for word, understanding everything in those three pages. Literally that will halve the entire effort in learning this topic. That's the thing I realized about word-for-word. It's not necessary for the entire book. But if the introduction is good enough, that's all you need to learn word-for-word. The rest maybe you can do top down, once you get down the introduction.

Unfortunately most books don't have introductions like that. But this one does. 

I was taking notes from the book out on the porch. I'd go out for a half hour and push ahead another sentence or two, taking notes on a piece of 11x14 card stock. Then I would take a break before returning later. I would look at my pencil notes and erase and rewrite them to suit my understanding, and make them more concise. 

Most importantly, I have set the process in motion. I can get up tomorrow morning and while drinking coffee, I can push ahead another sentence in the intro. Then I lean back in my rocking chair and review the whole thing, putting the new information into place with the other parts I know.

By the end of the week, I want to be able to teach a course on this subject. I have wildly unrealistic expectations of my own abilities that way, but even if I fall short of such a goal, I will have gotten very far. And the knowledge will stay with me, even if I don't retain all the details. A year from now I can open up this book and I will read that introduction. It will be almost obvious, everything in it. 

Although the book is new, and in many ways cutting edge, it's interesting to note that the material in it is over forty years old. That's how much physics has been stuck for decades. In fact I first remember reading about the "renormalization group", a topic within renormalization itself, thirty years ago as a graduate student. I had pulled out an advanced text from the library which was an anthology of papers from a recent conference on the subject. I saw there was an article written by the great Steve Weinberg on the subject of the renormalization group. I got only half a paragraph into it before being hopelessly overwhelmed. But I remembered that in the opening sentence, he had made a joke, because Weinberg was that way. He stated that the first law of conservation of information is that "you can't get anywhere by grinding equations."

It's a joke of course, a play on real conservation laws (like ones for energy and momentum). But even then I understood what it meant. It meant that to discover new physics, you need to do more than perform mathematical tricks. You need to bring new insight into the mathematics. 

I mention this because it was no long after that when I ran into Weinberg into faculty mailroom. I was in there using the departmental copier for my course (illicitly, as it happens). I had been in there and in walks the great Weinberg, so it's just me and him in this little room. I think to myself, "I've got to say something to him". Into my head pops that incomprehensible article about the renormalization group from his chapter of that anthology book. So I look at him and address him like a colleague, out of the blue, with all the confidence I can muster:

"Is it true that the first law of conservation of information is that you can't get anywhere by grinding equations?"

He cracks a big smile and chuckles. Then he goes off with his mail. It was my moment with the great Weinberg. I took his year long course on quantum field theory, but this was the only private moment I ever had with the man. 

One thing about me is that I never give up on anything. It may take me decades, but I keep going. Now I am on the verge of actually understanding the renormalization group. Weinberg passed away four years ago. It is up to me to be his legacy, and the legacy of all the other great minds I knew then. If not me, who?

Extraordinary Phone Call

 I just off the phone with my friend Lars, aka Okki. He had called via Whatsapp on Friday but I had missed his call, so I called him back, figuring he was in South America and it would be later in the morning. 

It was a short call, as I could tell I caught him perhaps at an awkward time. If it is he who calls, it is usually at time when he is being social with others, or by himself, having had a beer or two, and we talk for a long time.   But his vibe on the call today was subdued. It is one of those things with me, making a phone call to a friend or a relative. I may really want to talk to them, but I can so easily talk myself out of it, thinking maybe it's not a good time to call, and the other person will have to pretend like it was a good time to call, when in fact it was not. But lately I've been reading how people, especially young folk, are getting averse to making phone calls and it has begun to seem awkward to them, and something they avoid. Hearing this, I realize that phone calls are a thing that is becoming out of step with our times, so now I want to make phone calls. That is how it works for me. What's the opposite of cutting edge? That's me.

But Okki---he'll talk to me anyway, even if it's not a great time, because he is so extraverted, and give me an update on his life. I am very comfortable around him because he does so much of the "work" of friendship that way, not just with me but with everyone. He's also around people, coming and going in his house, going back to when I met him in 2011, and he was living in a mobile home park in Boulder, at the end of Valmont Road where it backs up to Boulder Creek.  We would go out on his back porch and have beers while watching the creek flow a few feet away. It felt like the best place in Boulder. Okki is the kind of guy who would stumble into that kind of situation.

He is no longer in Patagonia, which where he called me from last winter, but in Ecuador, at some town at 3100 m altitude. He had meandered through a list of other South American countries, which included a stay in Brazil for a month. He is looking for a place to settle down which is cheap, enjoyable, and where he can make his retirement funds stretch enough to support himself. He and Stefan had traveled many times together to Brazil, so he thought Brazil might work for him, but the heat got to him. He needs altitude and coolness. I told him I understood and mentioned that it was coming up to the worse time of year for heat here. 

He had just arrived in Ecuador two days before (the day he called me), and of course he had already made friends---a Frenchman and a Canadian he met on the bus, and also an American woman who knew of possible properties he could rent. He had stayed in Ecuador during the pandemic--in fact he got trapped in an apartment in the capital--while thinking about settling down there with his pension. He was even willing to tap into his 401K. The tax burden of various countries is now strongly on his mind. Perhaps Ecuador will work for him after all, but if not, maybe Portugal. 

In the meantime there are semi-legal cannabis dispensaries in Ecuador.

After fifteen minutes (a short call for him), he tipped off that he wanted to call that American woman this morning to maybe seal up the apartment deal. If he can rent an apartment, he can start Spanish lessons (once again) to maybe get residency.

The next time. I hear from him, will he still be in Ecuador? Who knows. But in the meantime I actually made a phone call to a friend today. That by itself is extraordinary.

That Time of Year

 The news here has been the buzzing the last few days about a 31-year-old woman who died in the preserve on Wednesday. She had started out in the morning at a trailhead near the one where I did my recent hike, and had climbed to the top of a rock formation called Tom's Thumb, which is visible from my walks. They found her body the next morning about 600 yards from trailhead. Cause of death unknown. She was in good condition and had done this exact hike several times before. She was always known to carry lots of water. From her pictures, though I see no hat and just a sports bra for her top. No sleeves. 

I'm not saying she'd be alive today if she had been more covered up, but it does spring to mind as a possibly deadly error in the sun. But we'll find out more.

Evidently a 33-year-old man died on a trail in the Superstition Mountains about two weeks ago. And two people today were rescued off Camelback Mountain.  

Now Say the Line -- Forty Second Street (1933)

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/experience-s1/

I left out one important thing in that previous about this movie, which is how does Marsh get Sawyer across the finish line so she can act in the part of the leading lady? 

At first it seems hopeless. After several terrible attempts on her part to say that line, he asks her, in desperation: "have you ever been in love? have you ever kissed a man before?"

She looks at him with the doe eyes of a baby sister and says no. Marsh is gobsmacked. How can this possibly work? After a beat, he does the only think he can think of: he grabs Sawyer and leans her back into a passionate kiss. Then he sets her back on her feet in place. She is slightly dazed but rather happy in the moment, and Marsh, now the director again, says to her with conviction, "now---now say the line!!" 

She does, and Ruby Keeler does the transition perfectly---still innocent but very much with believability that she is meeting her sweetheart. 

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/jim-didnt-tell-you-here/

Even then Marsh has to drive her to exhaustion learning the numbers:

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/i-cant-i-cant-s15/

Then before the curtain comes up, Marsh gives her one last pep talk backstage, full of clichés. He has reached his limit of what he can do for her, and the show. She just looks at him with the solid confidence of young woman, as if to say Of course, Mr. Marsh, I've got this.

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/sawyer-listen-me-you-listen-hard/

The curtain comes up. She nails the line:

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/why-jim-didnt-tell-you-here/

And she becomes an star.  She knocks it out of the park in her first number, and backstage Marsh grabs her by the shoulders and tells her good start. But you've got keep at it. Then realizes he's shaking this tender flower. She doesn't need his help anymore. He can let her go.

She repeats that line one more time, at the very end of the show-within-a-show, when she is the honeymoon train with Billy (Dick Powell). Here the line is a throwaway, perhaps impromptu on her part, and she delivers it back as her normal person, without affectation, because this is genuine on her part as a woman:

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/billy-it-grand-of-you-come/

Bonus: Ginger Rogers at her finest sarcastic wit as Annie, with Una Merkel (as her pal Lorraine) sliding in at the end to giver her a pat on the back

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/it-must-have-been-tough-on-mother-not-having-any-children/

Ginger Rogers is probably my favorite actress of that era, if you ask me, but I have a special fondness for Una Merkel, who remained a character actress for the 1930s, typically the extra blond in an ensemble cast. Here she is delivering one of her most memorable lines from 42nd Street:

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/all-right-get-in-line/

Remember that 1933 is still pre-code. 42nd Street is not particularly bawdy by standards of that day (compared to say, the Jean Harlow movies of that era), but it does remind one sometimes that the Hays code has not yet been enforced--both for imagery and story lines--as it would be starting in the middle of 1934.

Rogers and Merkel have a Vaudeville duet routine throughout the movie. Here is an off-color joke that would have sailed by the children, but that adults of the era would understand:

https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/i-always-said-she-a-nice-girl-shes-good-her-mother/

They have alternate lines in "Shuffle Off the Buffalo" and a newlywed couple probably being destined for divorce. That line would not be allowed in just a little over a year.

Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers in 42nd Street. 

Merkel had a long career, acting up through the 1960s on television, and being nominated for an Academy Award in 1961 for Summer and Smoke, based on the Tennessee Williams play. None of this I knew until just now, but now I will be looking out for her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Una_Merkel

On Being Grand -- 42nd Street (1933)

Recently I got an email and the person writing it used the word grand. Immediately I felt a bond with the writer over the use of this word, as it one of my favorite old time words. It became so during my spate of classic movie watching 2006-2008, from all the 1930s movies I watched. I watched so many movies from that era that I began to feel like I lived in that era, and spoke with the kind of sensibilities people had at the time, at least as portrayed in Hollywood movies.

"Jim, they didn't tell me YOU were here. It was GRAND of you to come."  

--Ruby Keeler as Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street (1933). 

 On the short list of my all-time favorite scenes in cinema history. 42nd Street is a movie I've seen maybe a dozen times, mostly because it comes on and I watch it until the end. It premiered at the Strand Theater on Broadway on March 9, 1933, which means it came out five days after the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt as President. That is no accident. The movie was part an effort by Hollywood to help Roosevelt's program for the country.

The story:

In the midst of the Great Depression, an aging producer-director, Julian Marsh (played by Warner Baxter), together with a verteran Broadway producer, persuade a Midwestern rube investor to cough up money for a Broadway show.

Marsh (Baxter) has lost everything he had in the stock market crash and needs someting akin to a miracle to pull off an exit into anything but the poor house.

The investor agrees on the condition that it will have plenty of chorus girls. Marsh and the New York producer are thrilled. Word goes and there is a huge casting call for chorus girls. They are all excited at the possiblity of working again and as they arrive for auditions, we see them recognizing each other. Among them are two blonds, played by Ginger Rogers and and Una Merkel, veterans who know most of the room. There is also a spunky little brunette Sawyer, played by Ruby Keeler, who is away from home and in the city for the first time, her wide eyes radiating innocence. The blonds will wind up taking her under their wing, and helping her survive each cut of the auditions.

Along the way Sawyer also bumps into the leading man of the show-within-a-show, played by Dick Powell (not to be consued with William Powell of the Thin Man series).  Powell's character and Sawyer become quick friends, and now she has an ally and protector.

Rogers is at the top of her game for this phase of her career. Her character, Annie, aka Anytime Annie, has just enough innocence left to believe she can find happiness. At the auditions, she is posing here as upper class, with a monocle as a prop, but all the other girls know it's an act to catch a meal ticket. Playing opposite her is the other blond, Una Merkel, the pride of Covington, Kentucky, tall and lanky and with a cornball accent. Merkel is so distinctive looking that one thinks of her physicalness as being her character. Slowly they are whittled down through the calls, the piano pounding and the director Marsh fretting over every detail like he's made a bet with the devil that he needs to cover.  He is relentless, never breaking a minue from the steel resolve to get the show to its premier as have an opening night success.

 

The show itself is a revival in the style of Florodora, an old style comedy that had debuted in 1899 in London, and known for its women with pretty white lace dresses of the Edwardian style, and parasols and flower swing sets. The idea is that people want nostalgia for happy times. 

 The very last girl to make the cut is the innocent spunky Sawyer. She almost sleeps through being picked for the last slot because she has worn herself out, and has been sleeping in the theater as much as possible to save money. 

Meanwhile the leading lady who is playing opposite Powell is ready to retire. She only wants to get out of show business and settle down with her secret boyfriend, who is also a dancer but not welcome at the theater. This is because the leading lady has actually been making herself available as the public escort of the rube investor. He considers her his girlfriend, even though she despises him. The investor by the way is played by the ultra cuddly and loveable Guy Kibbee, a great character in probaby his finest comedy role.

. The leading lady and her secret boyfiend secretly plot to run off with each other and get married, scuttling the show if necessary. She's played somewhat as a bitch with her attitude, but one is sympathetic to her desire to quit show business and have a normal life.

Halfway through production, the director Marsh (Baxter) is watching one of the vintage 1899 musical numbers from the audience, the girls all with little white parasols, and the dancers are going through their paces.  He suddenly gets disgusted and tells them to shut the whole production down. This sucks, he basically tells them. It's not 1905. Give the audience something they want. So with a couple weeks until the show opens, they will retool it with new numbers with contemporary appeal. And here Hollywood itself will undergo a revolution.

I love this scene Baxter as marsh throwing the script down in frustration---not the last time he will do that: https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/wait-a-minute-wait-a-minute-s14/ 

Here now we see the famous Busby Berkely numbers being rehearsed.  Not only do we have the first true backstage musical, but the first scenes that show the power of the movie camera combined with choreography of a large number of dancers, sometimes show from above.

"Young and Healthy". Powell blasts it out in his supernatural trumpet-like tenor voice, while singing to super blond Toby Wing, who never speaks but is simply adored amidst a sea of other girl's legs.  I'm full of vitamin A!---the first vitamin to be discovered, and named only 13 years previously.

Opening nyight approaches and the numbers are set. Marsh discovers that the leading lady is sneaking off to see her boyfriend. He is afraid she will elope and leave them high and dry before opening night, which is tobe a preview not on Broadway but in Philadelphia (to the groans of the cast). So Marsh scares off the boyfriend. The leading lady freaks out. In the hotel she sprains her ankle. No way will she be able to go on stage. So her problems are over. She rebukes the midwestern rube investor who has been paying her freight in the show. He pulls his money. The show teeters in the balance. Marsh is losing his mind.

On the night before the opening, he casts about for a replacement. There is no suitable understudy available. At that moment the blonds step forward and nominate innocent Sawyer, and they are backed up by Freddie, the leading man, who has fallen for Sawyer, as she with him. With nowhere else to turn, Marsh agrees to give her a shot. He takes her into a rehearsal room in theather with the music director and hash out her lines and her numbers all through the night and next day. Her dancing is impeccable. She has the chops for that. And she can sing. But her acting is lousy. Ruby Keeler pulls off a great performance making that believable.

Her intro happens in a line were she is with friends and she runs into her crush, Jim, who is also sweet on her. Marsh has her run the line and it is a disaster.

short clip: https://clip.cafe/42nd-street-1933/jim-didnt-tell-you-here-it-grand-of-you-come/

He pushes her and never lets up, believing in her, until she makes it believable. He brings out the star in her and sends her on stage like a nervous father. His entire life now rests with her. She succeeds and the show is an amazing hit. She is now a star. She and Freddie are co-stars and in love. The show closes with the title song, which blurs the stage and movie reality in an impossible way, ending with a shot of Keeler and Powell closing the shade on their honeymoon train (within the show on stage). 

The last scene of the movie is Marsh outside the theater, sitting on the fire escape listening as the crowd files out the doors into the alley. Having never broken stride the entire movie, he has let himself relax, hunched over on the stairs in exhaustion. He is listening to the conversations of people coming. From this we learn the audience thinks it will be a hit. One remarks that Marsh is genius for discovering this new star, and the someone else says, no he was no genius, it was all her. We know he doesn't care about any of that. The show is a hit. He won. Everybody has won. Even Annie (Ginger Rogers) is happy being the new girlfriend of the rich midwestern investor, and he scurries after her obeying her instructions. Life is grand.

 

We Won -- I was wrong

 A couple minutes after the last post, I saw one of the guys in the lab (they are all Indian twentysomethings but me) stand up the stretch and began lean on his scooter that he had brought in. He spoke to the other guy, and I realized it was good time to ask if they went to Empower.

Wow! Yes they had. They had sat down near the front. They were Team Villain, who had the idea for the personalized podcast for professors, the one with the skit. They were all on stage, my coworkers, and I never noticed them, even sitting on the floor near the stage. How'd that happen?the v

The other guys agreed with me that the right team had won, the one with the idea for streamlining the university's vendor onboarding process using AI. It was clear and straightforward, with a tangible benefit. It is the one I would invest in, if I were investing, I told them. It turns out it was built on the fly that day with the very tool we are all working on---"My AI Builder." So a win for our team, in a way.

Funny how I had everything wrong. I usually have everything completely backwards, as far as my assumptions of a situation, except in the times I don't.

QC 174.5 --- My Happy Lunchtime Place

 

This is the original edition of Mandl & Shaw published by Wiley in 1984. Wiley is a great publisher. In physics you can often judge books based on the publisher. There are thirteen chapters in this edition. A fourteenth was added in the 1993 revised edition, "The Standard Electro-Weak Theory", which I found at only after this one, so I had to go back and add that chapter into my notebook listing.

Very quiet in the lab today, on the day after the Empower Conference, that we were all supposed to attend. My boss is not here.  I was the first one in today and propped upon the door. The two other guys that are here---I could have asked them if they went, when they came in, but I let the opportunity slip.

They are both seated near me, and the times I have gotten up I look over to them to make eye contact but they do not look up. When someone is focussed, you are certainly allowed to interrupt them, but making someone stop in the middle of, say, coding, is like flagging down a car in motion to ask a question of the driver. There is an implied etiquette that doing that should be worth it, making them stop their train of thought. Writing computer code often feels like doing a giant crossword puzzle where you have to keep the last twenty answers in your head without writing them down yet, but keep solving the rest of the puzzle based on what's in your head. At least it feel that way to me. Also that is my personal etiquette only. Other people have same one, no douht, but not everyone does. It's not like it's a known thing that people talk about, that one should interrupt only with good reason.

If someone looks up and makes eye contact, then it's ok to ask frivolous questions like, "so did you go to Empower yesterday." But that has not happened. When it does, I'll pounce.

I brought my conference badge in with me today and I'm going to leave it on my desk, my proud trophy. Tomorrow is another thing I have to attend, not only campus in Tempe but across the river at some fabulous new facility in Scottsdale with a snazzy name, where all the soft stuff happens for the project, like project management and graphic design. The room where I work at the moment is about as primitive as it gets, as far as labs. It's like being in the boiler room of a ship instead of up on the main deck. But this is where I am. I guess I needed to come back to a place like this, to reconnect to it.

Over lunch I went over to Noble (the Noble Science and Engineering Library, that is) to take notes from the table of contents of a famous quantum field theory book that I do not want to purchase at the moment, as I've maxed out by budget for that. I took with me my notebook in which I write down the table of contents of physics books, using a standard way I do it, plus impromptu variations whenever I feel like it. I got half way to Noble and realized I did not know the Library of Congress number. I've learned they do not have terminals anymore and you need your own device so I went back to the lab to look it up on the ASU library website using my laptop. I was ashamed that I don't even know the general LoC section for books on quantum field theory. I ought to know that. It's QC, specifically the QC 174.5 section.  Once I was in the library I ran up the brick stairs, trying not to make too much noise. Running up stairs is a great exercise, especially as you get older, ,as you want to preserve your ability to spring out on your legs. I found my book and took it to a table by the window that looked out over some glorious tall pines. I copied out the table of contents into my notebook in decent penmanship, and also made sure to write down the LoC number of the book.

Fork 'em Devils --- Inevitable Fidgeting Ahead

 This morning, coming into work, I managed to drive past the donut shop without stopping. Once was fine. Two days in a row and it threatens to become part of my morning routine. It is a goal of mine not to make donuts part of my morning routine.

At the moment I am outside in pleasant morning air, sitting at a metal table under the PowerParasol shade ramada in front of the Student Union. Nearby a couple dozen folks are milling about, most of them standing in front o the entrance of the Student Pavilion for the ASU Enterprise Technology summit. Most people are wearing badges. I too have a badge, a handmade one since I am a late registrant. It's always good to be frank in such situations, as when I walked up to the table and said politely, "Hi, I was told I am supposed to be going to this event. I didn't register. What do I do?" and if said correctly, people go into helpful and forgiving mode.

So now I have a handmade badge, my name written in black sharpie. Us late registrants will be let in at 9:15, a half hour after folks already registered. I have never been inside the Student Pavilion. During commencement, they put up metal detectors at the entrance, I guess to assuage the fears of violence from parents attending various ceremonies. I am picturing the worst for the auditorium---all the seats taken, having sit on the floor with my back against the wall, or on carpeted stairs, the way we used to for colloquia in the UT physics departments when someone famous came to give a lecture.

Worse would be a seat in the middle of a crowded row, with both seats taken on either side, which will make my inevitable fidgeting rather obvious.

Update 9:15 AM: I am inside. So it's way worse than I thought. Auditorium is a ballroom and everyone is sitting at round tables crammed together on the floor. No carpet. Floor looks marble. Every single seat is taken, except for a few stray ones, but who knows about those. People are standing in the back in clumps near the coffee and fruit displays. So do I stand all day?

For sanity I go to the to the far side and all the way to the front. The university head of something or another is giving an intro keynote telling everyone why the past year was glorious, especially with automation, a word I hear a lot as he talks. Growth in this and that. Commitment to our charter. Ability to support knowledge to community around us. Workshops. Partnerships. 

I take everything out of my cushioned backpack and place it on the floor against the wall. It has been a talent of mine since I backpacked across Europe to be able to make myself at home on the ground anywhere at anytime. At least no one is paying attention to me. I can sit and type on my laptop all I want and no one cares. I am the only one sitting on the floor. I am free.

Update: 10:19 AM. A couple panel talks. Soft topics on AI, like how it helped build a Holocaust curriculum for Arizona public schools to satisfy a state mandate. The difficulty of getting humanities scholars to collaborate and how AI can help. One of the biggest challenge for AI, we learn, is making sure it has the correct opinions on things like diversity. A woman speaks about how the German department is using ChatGPT in an innovative way. Then she opines how, as everyone knows, America is shutting itself off from the world now, and that means people won't want to learn foreign languages. Harumph. I ignore the rest of her talk and go back to web surfing on my laptop until she is done. Now there is a talk about the very tool my team is building--"My AI Builder" and how one can use it to build bots for one's personal use. The woman on stage is the young Indian woman who, on my first day, walked me over to the Student Union so I could get my Sun Devil Card, explaining that although she was a Patel, her family did not own motels, as do many people with that name.  I pretended not to know what she was talking about. As she talks, I go fetch some Greek yoghurt and coffee from the back of the room, then return to my floor perch. Another guys is now sitting on the floor, by the coffee. I feel like I am influential.' 

The young Indian woman gives the mike to her older white colleague named Roger who talks about how the tool allows medical students to interview AI-created patients. Are they going to use the talking robot head I saw in the lab? No it's an AI generated man on the screen describing his symptoms being dizzy. Obvious dehydration. The demonstration goes off the rails when the human doctor acts him about chest pains and the AI patient ignores the question and describes unrelated symptoms. The doctor asks him "what do you think of ASU?" The AI patient says, "ASU. Oh, great school. Number one in innovation!" That gets a huge laugh from the room. Nice touch, team. "This is not about replacing humans," Roger says. Persona-based interactions---that's the term he uses. Gotta remember that.

The black female host of the program comes on. She repeats the joke that got the laugh: "we all know that because AI said ASU is number one in innovation, we can totally trust it." A mild laugh ensues. A white woman comes on to speak on "sustainability" and praises the audience for bringing reusable cups. She goes through a slideshow on using recycling correctly, and how we all have a responsibility to make ASU number one in sustainability. That's the thing I see everywhere here---ASU is #1 in everything! It's even on the side of the shuttle buses. Now the serious part. People are not putting things into the right bins on campus. AI is arriving that with screens above the bins that will tell you. Paid for by the campus sponsorship with Coca-Cola. Sounds lovely. Instead of throwing things in the bins, you will hold it up the camera and it will tell you. Can't wait to use it. It will be called Oscar. One already partially installed, somewhere on campus. None are fully functional yet, she says. Next year she'll give an update. Ironically we now have a five minute break and people are making their way to the trash bins to throw away breakfast items, all of them no doubt thinking about Oscar talking to them about their trash. I notice I have spilled coffee on the floor. Dang.

Update: 11:05 AM: Back from break. People making their way back to tables. Before the break there was an awkward moment when the host instructed everyone in the audience to raise their hand who had an empty chair next to them. "We have people standing in the back," she says. Thankfully she does not say "...and sitting on the floor" because basically that would be calling me out personally, and I do not want to move at this point. A white woman academic gives a talk about offline digital libraries. Access to information is a human right, she says. She bemoans that half the world's population cannot access the Internet. The lucky half, I mutter to myself. 

The talk is about a solar-powered curated digital library device that creates a local wifi hotspot to be distributed in places without the Internet. Important that people get the correct information (a constant theme in all talks, and one I had to be explicitly educated about after getting hired). Up to 25 users can connect to this solar powered device. It won a prize at SXSW. To connect to it, you have to type in "10.10.10.10". I laugh. Any tech person knows that's a local Ethernet address. At least people will be educated about that.

 A white guy with a British accent talks about "signals of change", where we notice changes in the world. One he noticed was thirty years ago when they turned the Internet on at his university in Britain. The second was when they installed AI (an LLM) and turned the Internet off, and they got all the same information from AI.  Now he's talking about bias and ethics. AI needs to be controlled. If so, it can be put onto those solar library wi-fi points that the girls in African villages can use, with everything translated into their local language. It always comes back to helping girls in African girls by educating them. If you can show your project does that, you are golden. Grants ensue. Awards are bestowed. We become #1 in everything. He ends and we all applaud.  I realize the whole idea of that solar powered digital library wifi hotspot project is irrelevant. Starlink is going to bring Internet to all of Africa long before that product is distributed. The African girls are going to want the whole Internet. Gated versions of the Internet never work. People hate that.

The host introduces two white guys to talk about "Agentic AI at ASU". I'm already bored. Bring back the solar-powered AI agent, please. 

Turns out the Agentic AI innovation is a bot on the website called "Parky" that will tell you the nearest parking lot to any building on campus. Ironically I use the parking lot furthest away, and park on the far side of the auditorium, so I have the longest walk into where I work. But of course, I'm a horrible malcontent, and a manifest troublemaker. Nothing is meant for me.

Then I realize, maybe I can ask it about the lot I use. The sign says visitor parking and permit parking. Does that the whole giant lot around the auditorium, I've wondered, or is it sectioned off? Everyday I park in the same spot directly below one of the visitor parking signs, so I can be sure. But can I park anywhere in the whole lot? There has been no one to ask. Where would I go? I can ask Parky! I go online and try to find Parky. Google is no help, and no one has given the URL. No sign of Parky on the ASU parking website.  Parky is a shy AI bot, like the noble roadrunner. They leave the stage. The host comes on and scolds us for not applauding the 81% rate on something in mumbled words I didn't understand. I applaud anyway, at least putting my hands together for visual effect.

A white guy comes on stage. Spark Tank Challenge. A contest to pitch ideas about AI products. The first group exercise of the day. Each table gets a focus to discuss this. Oh no, this means everyone is supposed to be at a table! No, no. Too late for that. I'll sneak out after lunch, I tell myself. Nothing is meant for me. He dismissed us for lunch. I audibly prompt him the line he forgot to add, "...and we'll meet back here __in__( X minutes)__at_(time of next session)". No one hears me. Toastmastering is dead. Oh I get---Spark Tank is like Shark Tank, the t.v. show where ordinary folks humiliate themselves pitching business ideas to billionaires. Sparky is the mascot of ASU, a real life Sun Devil with a pitchfork. Fork 'em Devils is what one says, by analogy to Hook 'em Horns. Everybody wants to be Texas.

Eventually I see people lined up across the room. It hits me that "lunch" means that they are serving lunch and that as official attendee, I am allowed to partake. So I pack up my backpack again and head off to recon the lunch situation. I take my yoghurt container and coffee cup to throw them away, getting obsessed with finding a place to put down the metal spoon I found for the yoghurt, but in a place where no one will pick it up. There are two waste bins, one for "compost" and the other for "recycling". Without Oscar's help, I drop them both into "compost" and only realize that was completely the wrong choice. Instead I will create the urgency for Oscar to become real.

Turns out there are multiple lines for lunch, none of them long. I move towards one and there are two other people also moving towards it. We all freeze, like ships trying to enter a harbor, awkward at who will be first, as if it matters in the least. But this a university campus and everyone wants to be sensitive to each other's considerations to the highest degree. I hate these kinds of standoff, so I break off and walk at an angle, slowly, giving all indications that I forgot something I need to do elsewhere, and the others move into the line. Then I circle around and get behind them.

Today's lunch is wraps. I hate wraps, at least the kind they serve at these functions. The cards indicating the types of wrap are written in small script font that I have to get close to to read.The first is vegan and gluten free vegetable. Surely we can do better than that. The next is gluten free dairy free chicken. Oh, my. The next two turn out to be chicken and jack, but still gluten free. I grab one and pull out of line. The chips are next, and people moan that the chips are gone. I head to the cookie tray at the end. There are two trays, one of vegan gluten free cookies, and another of "assorted cookies." There are many vegan gluten free cookies left, but only a single "assorted cookie" which is a classic flat sugar cookie, the kind that these kinds of banquets excel at providing. . Rejecting the gluten free cookies, I move towards the sugar cookie. A white girl is standing across from me looking at it. I can tell she senses my interest in it, so she does not make a move towards it. Realizing this, and being a gentleman, I state out loud "oh yes, gluten free and vegan. I'll have one of those," and I pick one up and put it on my plate. I say this so she can hear me, and there are a few others who an hear me. So I say in that way that is on the border of irony and non-irony, so that someone could not be certain if I am joking or not, and nobody will get offended. I often live my life in that liminal space. I gravitate towards people who understand that. The girl takes the sugar cookie.

With food in hand, I head out one of the side doors into the outdoor area, having seen others do that. How will I get back in? Who cares. I find an empty metal table next to one of the royal date palm stumps that were decorated like podiums last week for commencement. I have two wraps and a cookie. I try one of the wraps, having failed to remember which is which. As I eat the first one, gnawing on the layers of wrap to get to the chicken, almost eating the brown paper in the process, I reflect on my nature that demands I be a subversive at such events. Why at any presentation, no matter what it is, that seems vaguely corporate, do I revert to being such a troublemaker, at least in my mind, pushing back against everything being said? What's wrong with me?

Back in 2000 when I was working for Barclays in Manhattan, during our initial training I was sitting next to a Chinese American guy I had befriended. I got bored during the presentation and wrote something funny and flippant for him on his notebook that vaguely subversive. He politely smiled and then erased it before anyone could see it. What's wrong with me?

I don't know which is worse---corporate or university academic. The former always feels like a cult where people pretend to care about the company values and mission. The second already knows all the answers and is cocksure they are correct and other people need to be educated about it. Both are nauseating in their own way and my nature is such as to see the rough edges of all these things, and to call them out, at least in my mind. 

I cannot eat the second wrap. The layers are too thick for my teeth to penetrate cleanly. Being a physicist, I realize multiple ply wraps are a menace, so I unwrap the remaining one half way so I can eat it. It tastes the same as the other, which is that it has no taste at all. I take one bite of the vegan gluten free cookie. Like all such products it puts up a brave front as you first taste it, but the follow-up is less than ideal as it sweeps across one's tastebuds. I throw the rest of it in the trash--into the bin marked "Landfill", without any assistance from Oscar. I get back inside when someone opens a side door. I rush swiftly to it before it closes and re-enter the same way, by the same serving table. 

When I come back inside, there is a "Zero Waste" slide on the screen with details instructions about what to do with waste. Highlighted yellow words and blocks of text in color. "Think Before You Throw". Compost, Recycle, Landfill. Where have I seen those words? Landfill. How I love that word now. There is no landfill bin indoors, as there is on the patio. This is the future. No more landfills. So now I love landfills.

12:09 -- My butt hurts sitting on the floor. Maybe a chair would be good after all. But that means participating in the promised corporate-academic struggle session. As long as I'm not at a table, then I am gosh darn independent.  I am determined to be a ninja spy, ready to flee into the darkness the minute I am noticed. My strategy is to sit so openly by the stage that I can only be there for a reason. Fill in the blank. If called out, I will mention my handicap, namely that I can't stand being around other human beings, even though I love them, as I am commanded to do. Do you think that will work, if I say it earnestly enough? It is literally the truth.

The music lowers. A white gentleman in the front takes the mike. He gives instructions about somebody please do something, involving the post-lunch activity. I literally have no idea what he just told us all to do. Nothing is ever for me.

Are you saying the rules don't apply to you, Matt? You know where that attitude ends up, don't you? Haven't you learned your lessons? Do you need another health crisis of some kind to remind yourself? No, please. I didn't mean it that way. I just meant, well, honestly I don't know what I meant. Maybe I did mean that after all.

I ask myself: how quickly can I scoop up the notebooks and books I have on the floor and slide them into my backpack along with my laptop, if I need to escape? I brought a clipboard and that complicates things. Maybe I should rearrange the stack, it will be easier. I would love to open the George Saunders short story collection I brought, but the light is too dim. Everything is meant for the eyesight of twenty-somethings.  

The more I look around, the more this place reminds me of the Cat Cavern at Willamette, which is where my path to being a physicist began, among other things, when I signed up for my first physics class. When I was in Europe that previous summer,  I had neglected to respond with the card asking my intended major, and they had randomly assigned me as my advisor the chairman of the physics department. He had to sign my registration card, of intended coursework. On a whim, and wanting to make a friend in the faculty, I signed up for his first semester physics course. I was there to get a classical education, after all? Could I call myself an educated American gentleman if I did not know physics? It was as easy as that to decide.

Now I sit on the hard marble floor with a Ph.D. listening to academics talk about being ASU being #1. Don't you see where your attitude gets you in life?

"We'll get started in three minutes....blah...blah...get started with the challenge," the man with the microphone says. That's clear enough. I start packing up.

12:26 I stand by the door in the back of the room while the large white guy who spoke before lunch gives instructions to the tables for the Spark Tank Challenge. The idea is to come up with a pitch for an AI product idea based around a specified theme. One then shares with the table. They will decide which is best and that will go on the next round, and people will come on stage. Eventually there will be a winner. We are take forty five minutes for the first round at the tables. I definitely made the right choice. The fuck if I'm going to share my good ideas that way. Not that anyone will steal them, because nobody does that, but rather they might like it, and say what a good idea it is, and I will go on the next round, where I lose to something that is more diverse. But even getting that far will disgust me. I don't want their approval. How horrifying it would be for them to think my ideas are good, these strangers. I would have to hate my own ideas, and then what would happen to my retirement plan?

I grab a glass of lemonade and, lo!, now there are real cookies, so I take a sugar cookie and head out the time. I do in fact want to see the followup of the Spark Challenge, once I no longer have to participate. Dang it's getting very hot out here. How long until I'm safe to go back inside? I had been musing about things to say, if accosted and summoned to join the group struggle session, especially by the type of academic persons who expects to be obeyed by the likes of me? 

Sorry, I have to stay over here. I have morbid claustrophobia. A medical condition. That might work, yes.

My stomach now doesn't feel so good. Wraps. Lemonade from a mix. Chobani yoghurt. A cookie plus a bite of another. They took away the coffee! There should always be coffee available at an intellectual conference. A proper full service hotel would never make that mistake, even after taking lunch away. People need to be jacked to think properly.

Still a half hour to go. I remembered he said that they are going to switch tables around in a second round, so we get to share more ideas with different people. My number will remain at zero shares of ideas, thank you very much. Maybe I can walk around campus. I could go into Hayden and read Sendak's My Brother's Book again. Or track down James Russell Lowell's journals like I wanted. Or I go to the Noble (the science and engineering library) and copy out the table of contents of one of the classic quantum field theory books that I don't currently own and don't want to buy. That's the secret to learning physics. Memorize the table of contents before you start. Learn it like lines of poem that you can recite, or like lines from a monologue in a play. The less you understand the words, the better it will work. Just freaking learn them and over time your brain will build the architecture to understand what the words mean. Not overnight, but it will work.

The ambiguous space between ironic and not-ironic. I think about that phrase again, about where my consciousness tends to live, and where I greet the world from. It's a defensive posture. It's for protection. But how ironic is it, to use the term not-ironic to mean "straight". Unironic? Or does it mean that? Dang it's really hot out here on the patio now. 

1:01 PM. I'm in the Hayden Library, officially playing hooky from the conference. It is cool inside. There are no public terminals for the catalog. One must use one's own device. Bit by bit the libraries are being deconstructed until they become empty spaces with comfortable chairs. I know where the Sendak books are, but how about James Russell Lowell? How about I just walk the stacks and let my eyes roam. Yes, let's do that. 

Now I'm on Level Four. I almost got to Sendak corner but my eyes landed on the Hollywood section, on a biography of George M. Cohan. Next to it I see Twenty Years on Broadway, written by Cohan himself. I think about the Cohan statue in Times Square, in the heart of the theater district, and how one day they will pull it down like they did the statues of Robert E. Lee. So I take the book off the shelf and sit down at table, and it is propped open with my leg as I type this. 

On the title page is written Twenty Years on Broadway and the years it took to get there: THE TRUE STORY OF A TROUPER'S LIFE FROM THE CRADLE TO THE "CLOSED SHOP" By George M. Cohan. On the opposite page is a lithograph of Cohan in his prime, with a wry smile. Published by Greenwood Press, Publishers, Westport, Connecticut.

Westport, you say? That's where Lucy and Ricky Ricardo lived in I Love Lucy. It's also where Samantha and Darrin lived with Tabitha in Bewtiched, at least after the initial episodes in Manhattan. Westport was one of my first stops after finally fleeing Staten Island. I had to check it out.

Page 1, Cohan writes: Chapter 1: How it Came About . 

Until a few minutes ago, I had no more idea of ever writing this story than I had of growing a Vandyke beard. 

I can hear this is the voice of James Cagney, who played Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, which I have seen about eight times. 

I then skip to the very last page. Cohan closes the book with:

With these few remarks, I now wish to announce my immediate and permanent retirement from the literary field.

followed by a short quote from the play "Peck's Bad Boy," which if you saw the Cagney movie, you know is the role that young George made his own while touring with his family, the Four Cohans on the Vaudeville circuit. There used to a circuit for entertainers to make a living. Amazing. Anyway, the quote is:

"And so he snuck off, all alone by himself, and nobody didn't see him no more"

CURTAIN

Now how the heck is this the quote I wind up stumbling upon, of all sentences in this vast library?

1:58 -- I am back in the ballroom. I got too curious about the Spark Tank Challenge to wait any longer. Leaving the library I felt how the heat was now getting uncomfortable. In the cool Student Pavilion, coming in from the lobby into the ballroom I saw a young woman, a catering employee, pushing car with metal urns on it towards one of the doors. Coffee has arrived! Perfect timing.

I have to force myself to hang out at a distance while he sets up the urns, so as not to hover over her. Then minute she leaves I pounce with my cup. Should I now hang out at the door? I decide to check out the building. I go down the side wall. In the noisy auditorium people are at tables talking, and walking about. With my coffee in hand, I decide to check out the building. I go along the side wall opening the doors, checking to make sure I can get back into the ballroom. In one I find a short hallway to the outside and a storage room. I explore the storage room. Chairs and tables are stacked. I find a back entrance to the alley by the stage, coming and going through the divider doors unnoticed like the spy I am. The the guy with mike announces the first round winners of the Challenge. He announces the names of the teams, chosen by each table. They are the goofy fun names that people came up with. As one is announced, all the people, all men, at the table stand up and cheer raucously. People are really into this. 

The man says there will now be a second round where people can pitch their ideas to another table, and they get two minutes this time, over the course of the next thirty-five minutes. I look at the elevated stage, the portable kind erected for such events. I notice how easily I might slip underneath and take a nap behind the short black skirt curtains. I could listen to the whole shebang above me in peace. But what if the stage collapses in a freak accident? That would be ironic and tragic, when they found me. What on earth was he doing there?

Wanting to explore the other side of the room, I move in front of the stage. As I pass the monitor on the floor, in a narrow opening, a guy at one of the nearby tables points at me and says "there it is!" loudly. I jump like cat. Turns out he's pointing at something behind me. That kind of thing happens to me all the fucking time, like the world is trying to freak me out.

On the other side of the room, I check out a few more doors. Another store room with coaxial cables bounded in loops on hooks. Nothing interesting so I move on. This is a boring building, on the scale of zero to Nancy Drew. No apparent mysteries.

By now there are many empty tables in the room. People have left or clumped together. Thinking it now safe to take a seat, I find an empty table and sit down, kibutzing on the conversations at neighboring ones. 

Perusing the room, I had looked for my coworkers, scanning the tables without making eye contact, lest I be spotted and unable to escape. I see no one I recognize. I begin to think I'm the only sucker in the lab who actually showed up here.

On the wall, I notice the large projected graphic, ten feet tall, of human hand. I had been staring at it all morning while sitting on the floor. I had thought it was a hand making the peace sign, with two fingers extended. I suddenly notice that all this time the pinkie is also raised. Only the ring finger is held down by the thumb. For a second I am confused and then I realize this is the official hand sign of ASU, mimicking the trident pitchfork of the Sun Devils.  One does this while thrusting one's hand forward, as if stabbing one's opponent, who is perhaps not a person but some form of oppression or self-limiting belief. I make the hand sign while I sit, forking the air. It feels awkward.  Fork 'em devils.

A view from the floor of the ballroom inside the Student Pavilion at ASU, on the afternoon of Empower 2025, the eighth such annual event. Here we see the judges of the Spark Tank Challenge listen to the AI project pitches from the team "The Strawberry Sparrows" during the second round of the challenge. In the background notice the Fork 'em Devils hand sign projected onto the wall. 

2:56 PM -- I am on the floor again, at almost my original location, as I need the power outlet to keep my phone and laptop alive. I am tired and I want to head out. But I want to see the end of the challenge. I want to say I stayed. I want to hear the winning pitch. So far I have heard no announcements other than the funny names of the winning teams. But now the judges are on stage...

One by one the teams go up to the stage:

Tech Echo --- three minute pitch. ECHO stands for Employee Companion for Holistic Operations, the guy says. Silence. Confusion. Who is supposed to talk. C'mon guys. Get it together. Somebody talk, or at least tap dance. Get it the old Vaudeville try, like the Four Cohans. My butt is getting sore.

ECHO--wait they have slides? Are the pitches all based on existing projects? ECHO is designed to promote every employee's growth, he stays. Integrates with Zoom and Slack. I'm about to barf. I suddenly remember the guy this morning who went off an a tangent about how LinkedIn was the combination of all good things about social networks, and how the young people really loved expressing themselves on LinkedIn. How more out of step with these people can I possibly be? 

I shouldn't have eaten that second cookie. Any questions for ECHO? I want to raise my hand and ask what is the fucking point of this? But that would rude. Is this a real project that people are spending resources on? The coffee must be kicking in because I'm getting feisty again. Or just punch.

Next team. Some stupid name I can't remember long enough to type it. If they don't grab me, I'm out of here. An autonomous research agent that simulates experiment and uncovers insights. No slides. A lab partner that never sleeps, he says. Data from experiments is dumped in a collective pool of scientists around the world. Hypothoses are automatically generated by AI. Gaps are identified in various research data. This is a terrible idea. No one wants to share their data like this. The guy presenting this realizes this and tries to justify when someone would want that. But no one will ever want this. It might as well be a portal for sharing your excess grant money.

But these are original ideas after all. The first team actually had made a slide deck. I bet they win.

I look at the room. Most people have left. I'm actually one of the last ones here. I feel embarrassed about that somehow. Fork 'em, I'm staying to the end, or at least one more team.

Team Villain is on stage. A guy runs to the stage. A woman speaks. Their pitch scenario: Imagine being a professor. Too many emails arrive in the morning. Meetings. Classes. Professors are overwhelmed. They provide a small skit. Clever! Their solution: an AI generated personalized podcast for professors each morning to keep them focussed and on track. Daily clarity in minutes. They have a slide deck but weren't using it. Now their presentation is falling apart. They need to click a link that isn't there. They can't find it. Finally a slide with the link. Prep Cast. That's the name of their soluton. That's the AI generated podcast that stressed out professors will listen to when they get up each morning, to destress. Riiiiiiiiiiight. The professors will be doing that for sure, lassie. The AI voice starts on a simulated Prep Cast. Tells the professor that students are struggling with module two. OK maybe this is interesting. No. I still don't think it will work. An interesting idea. But no one will have time to listen to it. Back to the skit. The professor character says thanks to Prep Cast, my day is organized. Old school advertising from the Golden Age of television. I love it. This team should win.

Team Top Gun. Their idea is about using AI to reduce time of vendor onboarding by the university. Vendors are classified by risk, and flagged for further review. It is clear and concise and serves as specific need. Probably the most practical and useful idea. Too bad they didn't have a funny skit to show it off.

"We have our last team..." oh, thank God.

Team Elite Eleven Plus-- Project is called "Career Spark". Support every student's career journey, especially first generation students without business networks. Who has a business network? ASU's career-powered eco system. Example student: young woman of color who needs resume optimization. Puts students at the center of their career journey. All the right buzzwords and phrases. Interview simulation. Career Advisor bot that looks like a robot in the graphic. Robot, dear robot, tell me what my career should be.What student doesn't obsess about this already? At least they did in my day. Are students that hapless?

Now the judges tally the scores. Scores? First we have audience applause-o-meter.  I applaud for the Team Top Gun, the sensible vendor onboarding tool. Team Elite Eleven Plus, the last, wins the applause of meter by a huge margin. 

Now the guy on stage is thanking people for the day's event. WE ARE ALMOST DONE! Thank God. He bids us to recycle around our tables. A good sign we are minutes away from adjourning. We wait for the judges. A woman yells from the audience, "tell us some jokes, Kyle". I like her spirit. 

"We couldn't decide on one winner so we chose two." the judge says, First is Top Gun, the vendor onboarding bot! Tied with is the last team---the diverse career bot by the diverse team.

That's it. Music plays.The house lights up up. People move to the exists. I am sitting on the floor. My hamstrings have started to hurt and my tendons are going numb from sitting on the floor. I wonder if I can walk.

On the way out I passed the "compost" and "recycle" bins. Both are heaping will all manner of random garbage, in total defiance of the rules they keep mentioning. Oscar's going to come and kick your ass, you waste scofflaws. As I head out the door I notice there are bowls of popcorn. I grab a paper bowl and fill it. As I do I fumble the bowl and the popcorn goes all over the table. No one is watching, but I dutifully sweep up all the popcorn with hand and pour them into my bowl. I may be a malcontent but I am not going to abuse the catering staff. I'm not going to be that guy. Finally I am out the door. It is so fucking hot now. 

Good job, Devils. We forked 'em indeed.