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The Replicated Man: AI and the Ghost in the Archive

I finally did it. I committed the act of digital suicide. It was a gesture of clinical curiosity and personal dread. I took twenty years of archives, every Boles Blogs entry, every “Best of” compilation, the discarded drafts, the love letters to lost eras, and I fed the entire body of work into the AI maw. My digital soul, offered up for digestion and analysis… psychoanalysis.

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On Not Giving an A++++++++++ Grade

Grade inflation is a major problem on college campuses, and it is the sworn duty of the faculty to carefully and cautiously grade all student work the same.  Students tend to expect an “A” grade just for showing up to class when, in structured reality, a “C” grade is what a student earns for merely meeting the minimum requirements for any course.  A “C” is a fine grade — but a lot of students seem to feel a “C” grade is the same as an “F” grade when it is not.  A “C” defines the middling ground for a course and that is the honest grade most students earn, even though faculty tend to inflate grading the middle just to keep the peace.

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The Strong are Saying Nothing

Robert Frost is one of our greatest American minds — and the delivery method for sharing his genius was the poem.  On November 17, 2005, I wrote — Humility in Adoration — for Urban Semiotic, where I described the moment Mark Van Doren introduced Robert Frost to adoring fans at Columbia University in the City of New York:

The lesson of Coriolanus was echoed decades later by the genius American poet Robert Frost in 1950 when he was accepting an award at Columbia University. Frost whispered to his good friend — and fellow genius — Columbia Faculty member Mark Van Doren, that he didn’t think he deserved the award he was getting, but he felt it would be rude to go against the will of the people who wanted to honor and admire him.

Van Doren smiled, agreed, and introduced the great poet to a Columbia crowd who provided a thunderous standing ovation for Robert Frost. Mark Van Doren used that private discussion with Robert Frost to explain Coriolanus’ downfall in human terms his Shakespeare literary students could understand. The learning we must curry from Coriolanus and Robert Frost and Mark Van Doren is how we must all willingly accept praise and compliments from others without questioning intent or assuming there is a hidden purpose behind the kindness.

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The Speech Patterns of Psychopaths

Life, generally speaking, is nothing like the comics or movies when it comes to criminal activity. Whether it is Batman or Spiderman or any other hero, criminals are ultimately fairly traceable and every crime can be solved — and criminals have simple patterns that can be traced and analyzed. In real life, it is a lot more difficult to recognize the patterns, if there are any, and crimes often are abandoned by the police.

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Why is Vern Yip Such a Bitch?

What is wrong with Vern Yip, and why is he being such a bitch?  I hate using the “b-word” — but sometimes there is the perfect time and place for its employment and now is one of those times.  We first grew to know and love Vern on “Trading Spaces.”  He was the best designer on that show, and we admired his caring for people and his brilliance in design.

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Cold Feet or Quitting?

How do you know when a collaborator is expressing the natural concerns of cold feet and when they are actually trying to quit a project? Few people are capable of being direct and blunt without being nasty.

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The Right Angle

It’s quite amazing to me how we can change our perception when circumstances change in a split second and we are forced to choose action or inaction, being thoughtful or not.

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Eliza Redux Therapy Theatre Will See You Now

Eliza Redux is the pinnacle of drama and medicine meeting to heal the world. 
Visit the Eliza Redux site during the right time frame and you, too, can begin a virtual therapy session to get down to the nut of what is bothering you.  Does the therapy session heal the mind or make it even madder?

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A Charlie Brown New Year

Last Wednesday, I took a hard but fast spill that jolted my being and got me thinking about the realities of the world. The fall itself took less than a few seconds, but I am still reflecting well on the lessons I learned from it.  I was walking to the subway on West on 96th Street in New York City with my friend Joe.  That is my standard method of getting to work in the morning. I felt in my pocket to see if I had brought my glasses and realized that I had not. Just when I was about to get irritated that I had not remembered my glasses, I slipped in a major way. If you have ever seen the Peanuts comics where Lucy pulls away the ball before Charlie Brown has the chance to kick it, you will know exactly how I
fell.

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The Art of the Inhuman Touch

If you’re feeling sad or wacky or off-center, do you need the human touch of a psychiatrist in your brain? Or would you be just as happy telling your internal ills to robot a for fixing as if you were a car in need of a mechanic?

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