WOTY?

Every year at this time arbiters in every genre name their best. Country entertainer? The Academy of Country Music gave the honor to Lainey Wilson. Book? Barnes & Noble plucked "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store" off their bedside table. And on a smaller, though arguably more competitive stage, Dave Campbell's Texas Football website singled out DJ Lagway, the quarterback of the Willis High School Wildcats, as "Mr.Texas."

While the above look back and honor the standouts from the past twelve months, there are others that look forward, prognosticating those that will rise about the horizon. In SUV's, Motor Trend sees the Chevrolet Blazer EV as the car to have in 2024. American Girl named gymnast and horseback rider Lila Monetti as the "IT" girl doll of next year. And Pantone, the arbiter of all things color related, said the "Peach Fuzz" will rule the next calendar cycle, with one style critic noting that perhaps it is hoping to rachet down the rhetoric, and make 2024 a time "not for bold decisions, but for communicating a sort of vague pleasantness."

One of the most eagerly awaited pronouncements came from the Oxford Dictionary, and their Word of the Year, sometimes referred to as WOTY. Every year they choose a word that is "judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year and to have lasting potential as a word of cultural significance." As the dictionary that many consider to be the most historically authoritative, it carries a certain amount of gravitas. And so it was a bit of surprise that rather than go with one of the other finalists including "Swiftie" (an enthusiastic fan of Taylor Swift), "situationship" (a romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established) or "prompt" (an instruction given to an artificial intelligence program, algorithm, etc., which determines or influences the content it generates) the winner was "rizz."

A noun defined as "style, charm or attractiveness, or the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner," it is taken from the middle part of its parent "charisma." They note it's an usual way of forming a new word, though not unheard of, with other examples being "fridge" (refrigerator) and "flu" (influenza). As with many new ways of speaking, it was driven mainly in usage by a younger generation, personified by 27-year old actor Tom Holland ("Spider-Man" in three movies) who, when asked about his fame, answered "I have no rizz whatsoever, I have limited rizz."

The selection is not without its challengers. Dictionary.com went with "hallucinate," as in when chatbots produce false information as truth. Merriam-Webster chose "authentic" with the publication noting that it was not so much a new usage as the constant questioning of what really makes something – cuisine, voice, style, – authentic. And Collins went with two initials with no punctuation which have become the buzzword of technology and which some see as the next inflection point in everything around us, "AI."

And then there are those who have a stake in the matter. Food giant Kraft rolled out a marketing campaign pushing their Kraft Real Mayo product. Its central premise was to make "Moist" the WOTY. In a press release they said "Kraft Real Mayo is proof -everything is better ‘Moist.' Sadly, the internet hasn't always agreed. That's why we're hacking the Word of the Year competition by searching ‘Moist' as many times as possible, to redeem this polarizing-yet-velvety-smooth word." Thankfully, their pleas fell on dry ears.

Of course, all of those terms are English-centric, be they British or American. But it's a big world, and other regions and languages keyed into other trends and expressions. In a closely watched event in Kyoto, Japan, the top Buddhist monk at the Kiyomizu Temple used a brush to write the kanji character of the year on the temple balcony. It was "Zei" which translates as "taxes," reflecting a national interest in the country's economic situation. In Australia, some promoted "password child" as the winner, which refers to the kid seen as favored over his or her siblings because their name is used in the parents' passwords. And in Taiwan there is "Shan Dao Hou Zi" which translates as "Mountain Roadmonkey," referring to a motorcyclist who becomes an influencer. 

To be sure any choice is subjective, regardless of the field. Whether it's music or sports, food or fashion, one person's standout is another's also-ran. But no matter what word atlas you favor, with all that is happening in the world it would be hard to argue with the top dog in France. There, teens have adopted a catch-all answer in response to the question of "Quoi?" or "What?" When asked, the word most often on people's lips these days is "Quoicoubeh." While its etymology is in question, there's no mistaking its meaning: "Who knows?"

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to learn new words, on a more than yearly basis. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What Just Happened

No, it's NOT Saturday morning for those who follow along

You might be confused, but, no, you're not wrong

But before you bolt for the exits to rest and recharge

Thought we'd glance back together, review by and large

For it seems ever faster the pages get turned

And snap! It's all over, or so we have learned

There were highs, there were lows, strange things and weird 

Another year has gone by, the calendar cleared

Some things felt real good, many others did not
Before we jump to the next, let's consider the pot
The stew we all swam in, the things we did taste
Some we wish we could savor, others spit out in haste

The Bill's Hamlin heart stopped, a miracle came from that dread
While it took 15 tries for McCarthy to come back from the dead
A spy balloon got punctured, some banks popped as well
Trump again broke the record, 91 charges rung the bell

The writers - they struck, the actors did too
Fires raced through Lahaina, Hunter's problems just grew
And as if Russia and Ukraine didn't create enough of a wedge
Hamas, Israel and Gaza put the world even more on the edge

A sub went to the bottom, a freight train derailed
Fires up north made it so you couldn't inhale
And in tragedies less weighty, both worthy of skits
George Santos imploded, Bud Light took a hit

But all was not bad: Barbie set the world on pink
With a lighter shade of the same, Messi's Miami did blink
Spain's ladies won FIFA, Charles finally crowned King
Taylor showed how it's done, her tour was THE thing

If a buzz word did dominate it was just 2 letters: AI
Whether Chat or with Bard the expectations are high
Almost nothing untouched: text, pictures and sound
How we shop, how we learn, the potential unbound

As always some models, their time came to an end.
They lived life to the fullest, they helped set the trend
Tina Turner, Roslyn Carter, women who showed how it's done
Tony Bennett, Matthew Perry, Jimmy Buffet, just some

So much more has happened, too much for this space
Next year looks to be crazy, blame the presidential race
They'll be conflicts and tragedies, even more from the fringe
Adding insult to indignity, it's tempting to cringe

But hope lives eternal, it's trite but it's true
And all we can do is the best we can do
It starts with ourselves and how we reach out to others
And treat all those around us as sisters and brothers

So as we look to the new year, try a smile to start
And resolve to do better, to lead with your heart
So thanks here for reading, and as we open a new door
Peace, Love and Happiness and a hopeful ‘24

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Marc Wollin of Bedford thanks all for spending some time in this space. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Almost Drowned

I saw my whole life pass before my eyes. All the people I knew: gone. All the plans I had for the future: gone. All the photographic memories I had of people and places near and dear to me: gone. And all because I dropped my phone in the toilet.

I had just landed on the second stop on a two-city work tour and went to use the restroom. If you've been in a public restroom (and I'm sure you have) you know that the stalls are not exactly large. Add to that a rolling suitcase, a backpack and a coat, and you need to be a contortionist to get all inside. I managed to get in, but now had to get out. However, the door was jammed. I yanked on it, and it popped open, throwing me off balance. And that's when I heard the sickening sound of electronics falling into water.

Studies show that some 25% of people have dropped their phone into liquid (toilets, pools, sinks, etc.), so the protocol is fairly-well known. Turn it off and shake off any excess moisture. Open it if possible and remove batteries and any other parts. Shake it some more, then use tissues to wipe out any drops. A coolish hair dryer can also help. And if you can, bury it in rice to suck out the moisture. Praying also helps.

I immediately started that last one first. (Actually I cursed, then reversed course.) In a flash I reached down and pulled it out and shook it off as quick as I could. I flew to the sinks hoping there was a hand dryer with hot air. Alas, paper towels was the best I could do. I grabbed a bunch, swaddled it tightly and hustled out to find a quiet seat where I could perform electronic CPR.

I peeled off the protective case and wiped it down. Coincidentally and unfortunately at the same time, I had just ordered a new phone because I noticed that the back of this one was splitting open due to a swelling battery. That also meant that what was once fairly-well sealed was not anymore. The entire side was open, enabling the dunk to coat all the innards. I pried the back open further and started vigorously shaking it. I think those waiting for a nearby flight to Cleveland thought I was having a seizure.

I was able to slip some towels in the open back. Seeing as how it was already broken I pulled it up further, cracking it but exposing more. I continued to shake, and blew gently across it. I had no rice, so this seemed the extent of my toolbelt. I pressed the power button, but the screen remained black. I started to contemplate my future.

By now it's a fact of life that our phones are our lifelines. They contain everything we need on a daily basis. And that's even more true when you're on the road. I wasn't sure what hotel I was going to, what time I was supposed to meet anyone, even how I would get there. All the keys to my world were tied up in a six-inch slab of plastic, metal and components. I started to contemplate my next steps: getting cash, a regular cab, finding a phone store to rejoin the living.

But then my watch vibrated with a new email. As it was connected to the phone, that could only mean that they were talking. Which also meant that while the screen was blank, the brains must be OK. I shook some more, blew some more and pressed buttons some more. A flicker: the screen flashed on, the off. That meant it was functional, even if it wasn't functioning. Maybe it just needed some time to recover. I repeated each of the steps, adding some encouragement ("C'mon, c'mon, you can do it!") And then some 30 minutes later, like a cat shaking itself off after a fall, it flickered to life. I tentatively pressed a few buttons. It all seemed to work. I might just have escaped, cracked back excepted.

As I said, a new phone is on the way, and I will certainly make sure it is secured the next time I enter a restroom. But accidents do happen, and you do the best you can. I'm just wondering if I need to add some Uncle Ben's to my traveling kit.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is usually pretty careful. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Too Much Is Not Enough

Food. Clothes. Alcohol Those are just some things that consumed in moderation are fine. But they also have the possibility of being indulged to the point of abuse, though some are more troubling than others. A glass or two of wine is fine, but if you're doing a bottle or more in a sitting by yourself you might have a problem. On the other hand, you may have a thing about buying shoes, but if you have the closet space and the financial wherewithal to pull an Imelda Marcos, it's only a problem if your spouse objects. 

Our modern world has offered up even more opportunities to overdo it. Up until 50 years ago you couldn't abuse video games or social media because they didn't exist. Now both are part of the daily routine for large swaths of the population. And while most indulge their interest a little less at some times, a little more at others, there is a subset of the populace who are so locked into screens that they are unable to look up for fear they might miss something.

In and of themselves, these electronic items aren't inherently addictive in the way of nicotine or opioids. That said, there is research indicating that the dopamine burst you get from scrolling Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook can suck you in as much as a hit of cocaine. Still, the generally accepted belief is that with each of these hooks it is up to the individual to decide how much is too much. 

And then we have television. Back in the day TV shows were doled out by the networks a week at a time. No matter how much you wanted to know what Fonzie would do next ("Happy Days"), or if JR was going to cheat again on Sue Ellen ("Dallas"), you could consume only so much. After your allotted and scheduled 30 or 60 minute dose, you were forced to go cold turkey until the next week. It didn't matter how much money you had or who you knew, nothing was going to tip you off as to what Crocket and Tubbs were going to wear next ("Miami Vice").

Then came 2013, and Netflix dropped an entire season of "House of Cards" in one go. While some traditionalists watched an episode and then changed the channel to "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," many stuck around and clicked right into episode 2.  Still more welshed on their dinner plans and settled in for episode 3. And a number of true diehards put some cereal on the counter for the kids in the morning, moved back their early tee time, and stayed up all night (spoiler alert!) to see Frank Underwood accept the nomination for Vice President some 13 hours later. Or as producer Beau Willimon said, "Our goal was to shut down a portion of America for a whole day."

While it took two years for "binge-watch" to be named a word-of-the-year, it was a habit that quickly became ingrained in the populace as other streaming services followed suit. The so called "episode dump" became a normal way of releasing shows as practiced by Amazon, Hulu and others. And even if it wasn't a new show, the behavior took root in that people shotgunned one episode right into another and another of a program they latched onto, devouring 5 or 8 or 10 installments at a single sitting.

But then these same distributors realized that they were blowing their multi-million-dollar investments in a single puff of popcorn. More than one person took a trial subscription, binged on a season of "Orange is the New Black" or "Stranger Things," then cancelled. And so the hybrid release was born. They might post a few episodes of a show to reel you in, then go back to weekly releases to string you along. It's hard not to liken the practice to a heroin dealer giving out a free hit, then hooking their customer for life. Or till the season-ending cliffhanger, whichever comes first.

Yes, you know you are being played, but you can't avoid it. Still, compared to other binges and addictions, this one is relatively harmless. It only takes your time, and while that's not nothing, for most it is manageable. Now if you could only say the same about ordering from Amazon, you might get your life back.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't binge watch anything. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Lessons Learned

It was Sunday morning on a visit to our youngest son and his wife, and he and I were driving to get fresh cider donuts for breakfast. On the way we chatted about the upgrades to their house, their life in their new location and other non-essential topics. Once we got to the farm we picked up a dozen assorted (plain, glazed and sugar-cinnamon dusted) and a half a gallon of milk. He swiped his card and we got back in the car to drive back to his house. The roads were quiet, and the windows open. And then he dropped it on me. "I know you taught me otherwise," he started. Not sure where this was going, I braced myself. He continued: "I don't keep the receipts. I do scan our statement and check that all looks correct. But I don't keep the receipts."

Wow. Kids today.

If you're a parent, you spend a lot of time teaching, imparting, demonstrating, modeling the behaviors and skills you hope will stand your kids in good stead as they go forward. Some are overt, such as tying your shoes or telling time. Others are much softer, such as the way you treat other people or deal with a problem. Of course, the most important thing you hopefully taught them was to think for themselves. They should look at the options and evidence at hand, use the good sense they have combined with the guiding principles you have taught them, and then make a decision which is in the best interests of themselves and the people around them. In probably more cases than not, that probably aligns with what you would do if you were them. 

But as they settle into their own lives, they likely come up against some very minor tenets you hold dear but which in truth were perhaps fickle, obsessive-compulsive or just plain random. Some are based on the different approaches of a mate or partner. Some are driven by technology and time. And some are just personal choices that they look at and wonder "Why the hell did mom always do X?" 

Indeed, I can think of two examples from personal experience. One ticks the board for me, one for them. 

In the first case, my father taught me to always back into a parking space, a procedure I taught both our boys. And in fact, research shows far more accidents occur when backing out of a space as opposed to driving out forward. (Don't think he knew that, but no matter: thanks, Dad). On the flip side, when we visit their homes or they come to ours, they immediately take off their shoes, something we never did nor do. In this case research supports their approach not ours: it keeps the street grime and germs from being tracked around the home. That said, be it generational or otherwise, it's a practice that hasn't filtered up. Or as an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal put it, unless our footwear is covered in "snow, mud, blood, condiments of any sort, lava, excrement, concrete dust, or biomedical hazardous waste" we typically leave them on if given a choice. 

There's an old story of a young woman whose mother taught her the "right" way to cook a chicken was to cut off the wings and legs and cook them separately. It was a method she swore by, passed on down to her from her mother when she learned to cook. One day the young woman thought to ask her grandmother how she came to settle on that approach as the best way to make a bird. Her old woman smiled and said the reason was simple: when she first got married, she only had one small pot.  The only way a chicken would fit in it was if she trimmed it first. It worked, so she just kept doing it, and taught it to her daughter. And so a family tradition was born.

Maybe it's the way you make coffee. Or how you organize your kitchen. Or how you pack for a vacation, arrange your closet or hang a picture. The way you do it is absolutely the best. Until it isn't. You should only hope that when it counts and your kids become the teacher, you're smart enough to learn the lesson.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to keep an open mind. Except for shoes. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Not So Secure

Thanks to Vladimir Levenshtein and the ZXCVBN algorithm, I only score a 72. 

I try, I really do. When I sign into a new website or get prompted by an old one that my password is out of date, I try really hard to come up with something new and unique. Since I use a password manager to remember all my entries, my criteria has less to do about remembering those strings in my head, and more about manual entry. After all, while the software stores them and spits them back automatically when needed, I often have to input them myself on the go. And so my guiding principle isn't trying to remember some unwieldy sequence, but how easy it is to type. I have to hunt and peck "H%8;aw#_h!", but can bang out lOvE2eAtPeanuts! like a champion touch typist.

However, hard as it is to believe, hackers and their tools are smarter than me. According to a recent appraisal of my passwords, my score is firmly in "C" territory. True, it is better than some, while worse than others. But that is scarce comfort, considering that while I thought I was outsmarting would-be thieves with cute ditties I was doing no better than little Billy in the third row.

To be fair, some of that was not my doing. Your password health is made up of three factors with the first being compromised web sites. Since the first computer virus known as Creeper was discovered in the early 1970s, the speed of hacks has increased at warp speed. Now, 30,000 new websites on average are hacked every day, with over 53% of US citizens affected by cyber-attacks in 2022. According to IT Governance, a data protection company, there have been 953 incidents this year so far. In those incidents over 5.3 billion records have been exposed, with a single one related to the cyber security firm Darkbeam suffering a breach of over 3.8 billion records alone. So yes, there's a reasonable chance that someone has your info besides your spouse.

But in the areas I do control, according to the aforementioned metrics, it seems I'm not doing so good either. While I think I'm being clever, creating various passwords which to me are unique, Vladimir says otherwise. Named for a Soviet mathematician, the Levenshtein Distance between two words is the number of single-character edits required to change one word into the other. For instance to make "kitten" into "sitting" substitute "s" for "k", "i" for "e" and add a "g". That's' a score of 3, and to data scientists (and hackers) it means those two words are practically the same. And an analysis of my passwords finds lots of those close cousins.

Then there's the unpronounceable ZXCVBN score. It assigns a number to passwords based on how guessable they are. And since humans generally pick patterns they can remember, and therefore easy to predict, it's easy for a computer to do the same and figure them out. Think about how your phone prefills your Google search, or the next word when you are writing an email. Same idea here: a score of two or less means it's easy to suss out, as it would take less than a million guesses to nail it. That's a walk in the park for a computer. And yup, I'm guilty of that as well.

Put it all together and you get my middling score of 72. As I said, worse than some but certainly better than others, like those whose passwords routinely make the list of the most common ones. In 2023, number one was 123456, with 123456789 close behind. Rounding out the top five were querty, password and 12345. Is it any wonder that estimates of a cyberattack every 44 seconds leads to more than 800,000 people being hacked a year? 

But as the old saying goes, you don't have to be faster than the bear chasing you, just faster than the person you're running next to. And so if you make it harder or more time-consuming to be broken, the thieves will give up and move on to easier prey. So I guess I will go back to the vault and see if I can add a few special characters here, pick a strange combination there. It might be the only time in my life where my intentional misspellings rate an "A."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford thought he was more secure. Guess not. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Maestro Matt

While it's more than you can count on one hand or two, the fraternity of individuals who have conducted at Carnegie Hall is relatively small. As one of the most famous musical venues in the world, only the best get to perform there. Fewer still get step to the podium and command those arrayed before them.

While Matt Muller studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and plays drums, he built his career on the other side of the curtain. Starting off in North London, he learned the ropes backstage, eventually becoming a Stage Manager. His skills have taken him to numerous theatres and studios, including BBC dramas with such notables as Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Ralph Feinnes. He also has traveled the world managing various theatrical tours, and has worked business conferences where he helped shepherd CEO's and rock stars around the stage.

Still, all of that is decidedly out of public view. He did have one brush with fame, but it was due not to his talents but his daughter's. Mae Muller is a singer songwriter on the pop music scene, racking up top 40 hits as well as being selected as the UK entry in the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. Earlier this year, she was playing Kentish Town Forum in North London. As she told the crowd, her dad was her biggest supporter and fan, and she wanted to pay him back just a little for his belief in her. So she invited him on stage to play drums with the band, a one song gig for him in front of an adoring crowd.

Still, that was a supporting roll, and while that venue is well known, it hardly carries the gravitas of Carnegie Hall. That's not to say that Matt isn't familiar with world class venues. For the last 7 years he has served as stage manager for the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras. This set of ensembles is made up of top-flight musicians specializing in historically inspired projects across a variety of repertoires, including sacred music, semi-staged operas and chamber works.

This year they had performances at top opera houses and halls in La Cote St Andre, Salzburg, Versailles, Berlin and London, after which they embarked on a North American tour. That excursion took them to Chicago, Ottawa, Princeton and New York City, with a performance at Carnegie. As always, Matt was charged with getting the ensemble's orchestra and singers set up and staged for rehearsals, then managing their performance from backstage.

The New York leg of the tour corresponded with his wife Caroline's birthday, but she was home in England. On that day Associate Conductor Dinis Sousa was putting the group through its paces, rehearsing them for the evening. The UK-based Portuguese conductor has the kind of pedigree you expect of someone on a stage of this magnitude. In addition to the Monteverdi ensembles, he has worked with other esteemed orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra and the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Being a valued and well-known member of the team, Matt thought he might call in a small favor. He went to Maestro Sousa, pointed out the significance of the date, and asked if perhaps the ensemble might sing "Happy Birthday" to his wife as a surprise while he recorded it to play for her when he got home. The maestro went one better: he asked if Matt wanted to conduct it. As Matt put it, "Er, conduct the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists at Carnegie Hall in New York? Hold my beer." 

Matt took the baton and stepped to the podium. With a flourish befitting Bernstein or Toscanini, he led the orchestra and choir in a spirited performance of the classic. In pics of his debut that a friend took you can't help but see the twinkle in his eye as he waves his arms for all he is worth, performing perhaps the finest rendition of the classic ever heard on the Carnegie Hall stage.

There's an old joke about the guy at the circus who sweeps up after the elephants. A spectator notes what a horrible job it is, and asks why doesn't he quit. "What?" he says. "And give up show business?" Matt's job backstage is far from pachyderm cleanup. But now he can add a new title beyond the supporting ones of stage and production manager to his show business resume: Maestro.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves being backstage. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Music From the Machine

The ghost in the machine of the moment is artificial intelligence, most notably as it is applied to text to create human sounding responses. Best exemplified by ChatGPT, the idea is that computers sift through millions of samples of man-made writings and learn to mimic it when prompted. Ask the system how to build a bench or an itinerary for a vacation in Mexico, and rather than get a list of websites you get a dissertation that seems as though it came from a carpenter or a world traveler.

While the initial efforts were focused on words, it didn't take long for developers to widen their focus. The next iteration involved pictures. It was the same idea: scour the internet for images of anything and everything, then use those examples to create new images that mimic real ones. So type "dog with a bone on Mars in the style of Dali" into DreamStudio or Midjourney, and you'll get a picture that looks as if Salvatore was taking his pooch for a walk on the red planet.

These image generators are also why the alarm bells are ringing over the creation of so called "deepfakes." While you can easily type in "picture of fruit floating in water in the style of Picasso" it's just as easy to enter "picture of Joe Biden at a bar doing shots as if taken by a paparazzi."  At this point the result might not be perfect or fool anyone, but as the systems get better it will be harder and harder to tell the fakes from the real.

The latest frontier is with sound. We're already seeing it with voice samples: in New York City they're using artificial intelligence to reach city residents through robocalls in a number of languages. But it's not just a random foreign speaker. They took Mayor Eric Adams' voice, sampled it and recreated it with him speaking in different tongues. So depending on your location in the five boros you might hear Hizzoner in Spanish, Yiddish or Mandarin, none which he actually speaks.

On the melodic side they are using the same approach as ChatGPT, just with music. The developers set their systems to scrape millions and millions of samples of songs available online, from classical to jazz, from pop to rock, from rap to country. They deliberately do not associate the songs with groups or artists for copyright reasons, but rather with a specific genre. And once they have that database, the building begins.

The process is the same as with pictures or text: describe some kind of music, press a button, and sit back to watch the machines build you a riff. Type "meditative song, calming and soothing, with flutes and guitars" into Google's MusicLM program. The computer thinks for a bit, and out comes a 20 second or so track that sounds like it could be from a group like We Dream of Eden or Phil France. Or try "up-tempo jazz that you can dance to in a smooth style" and out comes a Kenny G-esque sample. 

At this point the tracks sound artificial and half formed. But it's important to understand that what you are hearing are not samples of music that fit your description, but rather newly composed tunes never played nor heard by anyone anywhere. It's only a matter of time before the programs improve to the point that when you type in "danceable power pop that has positive vibe as if sung by a former Disney princess" what comes out sounds like the backing track to a Demi Lovato top ten hit.

If you're counting, that's words, pictures and sound that can be created by computers and passed off convincingly as crafted by flesh and blood humans. That leaves touch, smell and taste as the last frontiers for machine generated senses. One wonders if in some garage somewhere there is a tech toying around with his computer connected not to a keyboard, brush or instrument, but to a refrigerator and an oven, and typing in "hot food that blends tomatoes, cheese and spices in an irresistible package similar to but not as greasy as pizza." I bet we'll be eating the result before the end of the decade.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has tried creating computer columns, photos and songs. None are that good. Yet. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jumping the Croc

Up until 2007, if you wanted to listen to music you plugged your headphones into an MP3 player. If you wanted to reach someone you called their flip phone. And if you wanted to look for a flight you waited until you got to your desk and pulled up a Yahoo! Travel search page. It took the genius of Steve Jobs and Apple to smoosh all those capabilities and more into a single device that you could not only carry in your pocket, but looked good to boot. And the world has not been the same since.

Combining two or more things successfully into a new winning pairing is tough, though easier in some fields than others. With food there are multiple examples: spaghetti and meatballs, rum and Coke, chocolate and peanut butter. Some twofers are outside of the mainstream but still have found a following, like olive oil ice cream, or chicken and waffles. And still others try for a toehold but never really land. Some say the combination of Pepsi and milk or "Pilk" tastes like a melted ice cream float. Others say it just tastes like, well, pilk.

The one other area where that kind of invention works is fashion. In fact, the very essence of that field is to take existing garments and styles and combine them in new and interesting ways. As with edibles, there are some examples which might have seemed revolutionary at first but now are as classic as a blazer. Witness the whole athleisure trend, whereby items worn for sports have been retailored and restyled to be donned every day in almost every situation. Or hybrids such as the shacket (jacket and shirt), jeggings (jeans and leggings) or the relatively new coatigan (coat and cardigan) have each found a following. In each case two disparate items or looks were bolted onto one another, run through a blender and emerged as a distinctly unique item, at first scorned and derided, and later accepted as part of the fashion canon.

Occasional individual brands try and do the same thing, taking their signature attributes and grafting them onto line extensions. Ugg used to be a generic term for a rough looking sheepskin boot from Australia before it became a global footwear powerhouse. Not content to rest on its cushy wintertime soles, there are now Ugg slippers and sandals in various materials, heights and styles. The same goes for Burberry or Coach. While their origin was in a very specific item, now you can get that name and look on a not just a scarf or handbag, but on a hat or pair of kicks, neither of which leaves any doubt as to its original pedigree.

And then there's Crocs. Founded in 2002 as a floatable shoe for water-based activities, the brand has grown to become a consumer darling. These days you can get the classic clog-styled closed-cell foam shoe in a myriad of colors and variations. There's the open-toed sandal version like the Mega Crush, or a wedge like the Brooklyn Tortoise. Each tweaks the original design while retaining the basic anatomy of the brand to give you footwear more appropriate for other activities.

But in what might be a Croc too far comes a special release as part of the company's "Croctober" promotion. While there are boot versions of the original, they are shorties which seem like they might make sense on a rainy day. Not so much for this latest frankenfootie. For the low price of $120 you can purchase the limited edition Classic Crocs Cowboy Boot, which "features a signature Crocskin texture, metallic disco desert embroidery details, and a spinning spur on the back so you can really kick up some dirt." One reviewer described them as "love child of John Wayne and the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters. They're so confused about their identity that they've become the fashion equivalent of an existential crisis."

In a 1977 episode of the sitcom "Happy Days," the Fonz jumps over a live shark on water skis. It was taken as a sign that the series was trying too hard to attract attention, a condition thereafter referred to as "jumping the shark." Has the shoe company tried a little too hard and jumped the Croc? Your call, but perhaps other footwear is in order if you are going to Texas.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford does not own any pair of Crocs. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Hot, Hotter, Hottest

While he certainly didn't invent Cajun and creole cooking, few chefs have done as much to popularize those cuisines as Emeril Lagasse. Despite being born in Massachusetts, he is as much associated with the flavors of New Orleans as Mardi Gras and the French Quarter.  No "hint of this" or a "touch of that", the spices used there are decidedly in-your-face. Nothing exemplifies that more than his catch phrase as he cooks, where throws a little more spice into the dish while putting up his arms and yelling "Bam!" 

When asked what was in that "Bam!" he described a secret blend called "Essence of Emeril." Not really a secret, as you can buy it by the jar at your local grocery store, it is a combination of salt, paprika, spices, garlic, onion and black pepper. "Being me, I always kicked it up a notch, which means I would always elevate the spice level or the complexity of a particular dish. So, it was always like we're going to kick this up a little bit."

It's also true that one man's heat is another man's merely smoldering. To really raise the intensity many turn to other preparations such as Tabasco or Frank's. Indeed, an entire subcategory of condiments exist under the heading of pepper-based hot sauces. There you can find an almost endless variety from mild to downright incendiary. But while the low end might be a matter of taste, as you rise up the scale it becomes an objective measure of intensity. Back in 1912, pharmacologist William Scoville developed a system used to this day, wherein he dissolved a pepper in alcohol, then diluted it with sugar water. The result was given to five trained tasters in decreasing concentration, until at least three could no longer detect any heat. How many times it had to be diluted times 100 translated into the eponymous Scoville unit. 

So you start with bell and banana peppers that have no heat, and clock in at zero Scoville Heat Units or SHU. At the other end of the scale is the pure form of capsaicin, the active chemical in peppers that causes the sensation of heat in mammals (birds don't feel it). It registers at 16 million SHU. Along the way you have jalapenos which rate between 2500 and 8000 SHU, and serranos at 10,000 SHU. Higher up the scale are Bird's Eye Chilis, which are found in Thai and Indonesian cuisine and run to 100,000 SHU, and Habaneros in Mexican and West Indian food at 150,000 SHU. Beyond that it's less about adding flavor or bite, and more about adding pain.

Aficionados (also know as masochists) have tried for years to see just how hot they can go. Up until this month that meant the Carolina Reaper pepper. Developed by Ed Currie of South Carolina in 2013, the Reaper held the world's record for the hottest pepper at 1.64 million SHU. By comparison, the pepper spray the cops use is 1.6 million units and bear spray is 2.2 million units. Try putting that in your chili.

But Currie didn't stop there. He kicked drug and alcohol addiction, and considers the kick he gets from the heat a natural high. And so for the past decade he has been cross breeding the Reaper with others, trying to perfect a pepper that delivered "immediate, brutal heat." And this month he succeeded, releasing Pepper X, which has been rated the hottest pepper in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records, with an average rating of 2.69 million SHU.

What does that mean in in terms of taste? As one of only five people to actually eat an entire Pepper X, Currie said "I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came. Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain." Natural high indeed.

While Pepper X is not yet available commercially, Currie has other seeds and sauces on sale through his store. There you can get Angry Irishman Franken Sauce or Smokin' Ed's Chocolate Strawberry Hot Sauce. Just be aware that all his products pack a punch. Put in Emeril terms, they take "Bam" up to nuclear explosion level. Which also helps to explain Currie's company name: PuckerButt Pepper Company.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers Frank's Hot Sauce. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Lost Then Found

While we take thousands upon thousands of pictures these days, most exist only electronically. We might print out one from a wedding or a family reunion, but most never see the physical light of day. But before the advent of mass market electronic photography in the 1990's, we printed every picture because that was the only way to see them. While some were framed or put into albums, the vast majority disappeared into shoe boxes stuffed into the back of a closet. Regardless of where they resided, however, they almost all had one thing in common: they weren't labeled. Maybe there was a first name and date on the back, or something like "Our House," but just as likely they were anonymous.

As the generation that owned these historical artifacts downsized, moved or died, these historical records got shuffled and displaced. Eventually they might surface at a garage sale or antique shop. But most had no provenance, no trail or documented history. Indeed, most had little import and were worth next to nothing. Nothing, that is, except to the people who took them or were in the photos or related to those people. And that's where Aaron Turner comes in.

It started when he helped his grandmother sort and organize her pictures and discovered old photos of friends and kids she babysat for in the 1950's. He helped her research where those people were, package the photos up, then sent them out with a note saying that perhaps the recipient would appreciate these relics. The response was overwhelming: letter after letter came back, thanking her for her kindness. That instilled in him a keen sense of history and pictures, and led to his hobby of finding old photos and reuniting them with their owners or their descendants.

It started with an eBay store in 2001, where he bought and sold old items, earning enough to pay for college. But occasionally an old picture caught his eye. It might contain a handwritten note or an unusual name, a fragment of an address or something interesting in the background. Based on that scanty evidence he researched them using old maps, records and whatever he could find online. When he made a match he did a "cold mailing," sending the picture off with an explanatory note, with no request or expectation of payment. Needless to say, people were surprised to receive an item in the mail from their past from someone they didn't know. Was it a scam? Nope: it was just Aaron doing something he liked to do. 

By and large the result was delight and astonishment. He received hundreds of letters thanking him for his efforts, along with donations to his cause. As a hobby it became all-consuming and self-sustaining, so much so that he eventually quit his teaching job and got a second Masters degree, this time in library science and archival studies. Along the way he broadened his lost then found efforts, reuniting not just photos of people with their owners, but pictures of old houses, church and school programs and circulars, CB QSL cards, diplomas, and other personal mementos that would have been otherwise lost to history.

Occasionally Aaron will come across an entire old album from one family. Maybe it was misplaced or accidentally sold as part of an estate. If he can figure out an interested party, he will send them a note, explaining who he is and what he does, while offering it at cost. He takes pains to explain he is not extorting people for their old possessions, but reuniting them, and it's their choice to buy or not: "I am not wealthy enough to just buy and give it to you. I invest my own time and do the research it takes to figure out who these people are and then find you for free because, well, I just like to do that."

Aaron calls his efforts "random acts of genealogical kindness." But it's something more. He also volunteers at the Ohio Genealogical Society, curating their yearbook collection and writing articles for their bulletin, and speaks to local groups about the need to label and archive an individual's precious personal historical artifacts.  Otherwise, all those treasures will be lost and forgotten. Thankfully, Aaron likes to find them, and help us remember.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has a number of photo albums, but needs to label them. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Who's That Lady?

If you had a baby girl way back in 2014, you might have named her Emma or Olivia or Sophie, the top three choices for that year. Or you might have dug deeper into the list, and gone with Harper (#19), Elizabeth (#44) or Sadie (#62). Had you gone just one step further in the rankings you would have chanced upon Alexa, a lovely name meaning "defender of man." A perfect name for a young girl with a promising future. 

And then came 2015 and the general release of Amazon's Echo.

The smart speaker that began the revolution gave you the option of answering to a "wake" word of "Amazon," "Echo" or "Computer." But most defaulted to the name of its underlying personal assistant software and called it "Alexa," tainting it for every generation to come. And now you have to go to all way to #536 to find that same name in the list of newborns.

Since then multiple AI based assistants have been rolled out by various companies, and the vast majority of them have female identifiers. Many use names not in general circulation, such as Siri (Apple) and Cortana (Microsoft). But the point of these things is to make them as human as possible, so calling it Vlingo or Brainia puts it one step behind before it even gets going. And so new systems are tagged with monikers more in the mainstream, with the hopes of having them feel like old friends rather than alien invaders. 

The latest example for this is the fast food arena. With 50% to 70% of customers opting to use the drive-up window, companies are looking for ways to streamline that process. And since that scenario is the perfect environment for an AI based intelligent voice response system (a limited list of choices, people talking directly into the microphone, no need of visual human presence), most are at least experimenting with machine-based ordering systems. Which brings us to Julia.

Julia is the computer ordering persona at hamburger chain White Castle. They have plans to roll her out to 100 drive-thru lanes by the end of 2024. She functions like a standard-issue human, asking for your order, telling you the total and then directing you to drive forward to the delivery window. She does have backup: if at any point she gets confused or a customer requests it, an actual person can come on to assist.

Julia joins Tori, the AI ordering system installed in some Panera locations. And while it doesn't have a nom-de-service, the AI ordering system in place at almost half the Checkers and Rally's fast food locations is also bilingual in Spanish, and capable of recognizing and responding in either language. Other players are also testing various systems across the country, including McDonald's, Taco Bell and Del Taco among others, with names to come. One benefit is that AI assistants are less shy about upselling to higher margin items, with the result that Popeyes says drink sales completed with their voice response system have actually increased. Assertive young women to be sure.

It's just one more instance of AI gaining a toehold in areas where human labor used to have no equal. And in the case of Julia, she is not just an order taker, but a lady boss. If your order includes fried foods, she might pass the request off to Flippy 2, a robot specifically designed to work the deep fryers. With no human intervention, it takes the raw chicken, potatoes or onion rings, drops them in the bubbling grease, cooks them to perfection then dumps them out in a tray to be packaged for customers. And her staff may expand: over at Jack In The Box, Flippy is joined by its sibling Sippy, an automated drink filling system.

Alexa and Julia are merely the latest in a throughline that began with HAL in Arhtur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but they certainly won't be the last. Hopefully each will advance the state of the art, and become a force multiplier rather than take a Terminator-esque detour. But it's worth noting that the AI assistant Samantha in Spike Jonze's "Her" didn't go rogue because it murdered other people, but because it dated other people. We can only hope that our biggest problem with AI assistants won't be domination, but heartbreak. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is learning how to use voice commands with more things. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Yo Yo Yo Safety

I can't remember if I locked my car. I can't remember if I closed the window in the bedroom. I can't remember if I left the lights on downstairs, or which side the fork goes on, or what the color was of the shirt I wore yesterday. But ask me the lyrics of a particular song from Steely Dan or Fleetwood Mac or Stevie Wonder that I first heard 20 or more years ago, and I can recite it back no matter how nonsensical it seems. From Talking Heads: "We are vain and we are blind / I hate people when they're not polite / Psycho Killer / Qu'est-ce que c'est ? / fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better." Just be happy you are merely reading this, and can't hear me singing it.

For many, music is like that. It seems to dovetail with our brain waves in a way that makes it not only easier to remember but actually unforgettable. Back in the 1970's an advertising executive named David McCall noted this very phenomenon, wherein his young son couldn't remember his multiplication tables but could belt out the lyrics from the Rolling Stones. He pitched an idea to then ABC programming exec Michael Eisner (later head of Disney) to develop a Saturday morning series for kids in which educational concepts would be put to music. "Schoolhouse Rock!" ran in multiple iterations on and off over the next 40 years. Songs such as "Naughty Number Nine" on multiplication, "Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla" about pronouns and "I'm Just a Bill" about the legislative process helped countless kids sing their way to a passing grade in math, English and social studies.

Now the Consumer Product Safety Commission is trying the same tack to get their messages out. Sure, they have PSA's that run on broadcast outlets, print ads and online reminders about food safety, health and a bevy of other topics. But figuring you should fish where the fish are, they have ventured into the music world where so many people old and young spend a great deal of their time. And rather than drop a product recall, they have dropped some tunes, in the form of an album called "We're Safety Now Haven't We."

In styles such as K-pop and hip hop, the songs are freely available to download and remix. They address bread and butter safety issues for younger people such as wearing a helmet when you ride your skateboard, using your cell phone responsibly and using fireworks safely. There are also tunes reminding you to check the smoke alarm in your home and to ride your ATV with the proper equipment. 

The lead track is "Protect Ya Noggin'" reminding listeners to tie their helmets on tight: "Ok let me flip scripts / Kick push, then I kick flip / I can do this all wearing lipstick / I got on a sick fit / Just one more accessory / Let me pick the helmet that will tie it all together please." It's also recorded in Spanish, where the hook "En la- en la calle / estés alerta / no seas cabeza hueca" translates as "In the - in the street / be alert / don't be an empty head." Then there's "Going Off Like Fireworks," which bows to the fact that people may use them, but need to do so safely: "Yea, we burning bright bright / So hot we might ignite nite / Smokin hot like noone else / gotta step back before I burn myself / Oh you're dangerous like dynamite / Let's set it off / Let's watch it light." And "Phone Away" repeats over a techno beat "You gotta put your phone away / On the sidewalk / On the dancefloor / When you're riding."

No, there're not "Hotel California" or "We Will Rock You" or "I Want To Hold Your Hand." But then again neither the Eagles, Queen nor the Beatles ever tried to write a song about smoke detectors, so some slack is due. But if they help make a dent in accidents involving young people, it's an effort worth making. The messages aren't new, it's just a new way of delivering them. After all whatever you do, you have to yo yo yo, do it safely. Word.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is always looking for new music. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Unidentified and Unexplained

It has all the elements of a story that takes over the headlines for days. A voluminous investigation just published that interested parties have been chomping at the bit to see, but satisfies no one. Accusations of a coverup, wherein a whistleblower's concerns seem to have been ignored and lawmakers demanding answers on this very topic. And physical evidence presented by experts to policymakers which raise as many questions as it answers. And yet, because it doesn't include the name Biden nor Trump, it's all buried below the fold on page 23. I know, it's hard to believe, but there are other things in this world besides our latest political goings-on that should be raising eyebrows. Or in this particular case, maybe it's not of this world. And that's the point.

First, the report. More than a year in the making, it was penned by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They set out to investigate, from a scientific standpoint, the reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP, a successor term that includes both Unidentified Flying Objects or UFO's, as well as other events and sightings that cannot be "immediately identified as known human-made or natural phenomena."  The panel of 17 independent scientists held hearings, reviewed evidence and heard from witnesses and experts. Their findings, released this month, acknowledges the unexplained nature of the events, but says that the lack of any rigorous formal observation and measurement make it all but impossible to be certain of anything. Or as put by Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, "While there are numerous eyewitness accounts and visuals associated with UAP, they're not consistent, they're not detailed, and they're not curated observations that can be used to make definitive scientific conclusions about the nature and the origin of UAP." To help advance the discussion, the panel recommends appointing a Director of UAP Research, as well as leveraging and integrating the various existing observational systems to provide better data to study.

Then there are the whistleblowers and accusations of a coverup. At a House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing held in July, multiple allegations of the covering up of UFO encounters and evidence were introduced by a trio of whistleblowers. In response to the allegations, six Congresspeople sent a request for more information to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. The IG wrote back this month that it "has not conducted any audit, inspection, evaluation or review" of the alleged UFO programs. Incredulous that there might be other, more pressing matters to focus on, committee member Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn) said it was a "coverup." In a tweet he wrote "The IC IG office did nothing to look into the information they received from David Grusch on UAP crash retrieval programs? They have no information they can give to Congress???" This in spite of the fact that he also noted in another context that "other things are going on. The, you know, with the looming shutdown and all that other stuff." 

Finally, the evidence. South of the border, lawmakers in the Mexico were also holding hearings on UAP's. As part of that proceeding, they were presented with "alleged remains of non-human beings" in the form of tiny "bodies," displayed in glass cases with three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials recovered in Peru. He said that he had them analyzed at Mexico's National Autonomous University, and that they were about 1,000 years old. Said Maussan "I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that all possibilities are open for any scientific institution to investigate it." Congressman Sergio Gutierrez, from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's ruling Morena party, said, "We are left with reflections, with concerns and with the path to continue talking about this." 

Taken together, it would seem that our new AI overlords are not the only alien presence we should be worried about. But at this point it's all a distant sideshow to the main event happening in Washington. Until then, keep your eyes peeled for more stories about the unexplained, and be ready to call home when that which has been flying below the radar pops above it, both figuratively and literally.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has never seen a UFO. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Send It Back

The mantra for many things used to be "one and done." The idea was that you made a deliberate choice about something and called it a day. You considered the options, weighed the pros and cons of each item or action, and then picked a single direction to take and accepted the consequences right or wrong. Of course, once you made your choice, occasionally it turned out not to be the best approach, and you had to backtrack and take another stab at it. But for reasons of money, time or simply convenience, the goal was to at least try to get it right on the first go. Or as one associate put it, "The older I get I only want to do things twice once."

That approach has changed in so many areas. Take photography. Used to be that you lined up a picture, considered the composition, made whatever adjustments you thought made sense, and snapped the shot. And that was it. Maybe you took a second snap for safety. But since you couldn't see the results until after you paid to develop and print it, all of which cost real dollars, you tried to get it right the first time. Now pictures cost nothing to take and you can see the result instantly, so there is literally no good reason to take just one. And so you take multiples of multiples. Check your phone: I'll wager that nearly every picture you have includes numerous options of the same. You likely haven't deleted any, save the ones where you put your finger over the lens. 

Perhaps the biggest change is in shopping. If you needed a pair of pants, you looked at the ads in the papers, reviewed the items already in your closet, and then headed to a store. You perused the racks, perhaps pulling out several pairs and putting them back before selecting a few possibles. Then it was a trip (or trips) to the dressing room to see how big your butt looked in the mirror. After several attempts you settled on a winner and paid for your purchase. Once you got home you tried it on for your partner, and only if they didn't say "what were you thinking!!???" you kept them.

No more. Whether it's clothes or accessories, home furnishings or sports equipment, you start not from the position of "that's the one I think I want" but rather "these are the ones I want to try out." While the TV is playing the background or your other is making dinner you scroll through different websites, looking at pictures, reading reviews and checking out prices. Then you order this one and that one, knowing full well that you have no intention of keeping them all. They show up, be they shoes or dresses, ipad holders or coffee cups. You try them all out, select the one you like, and then bundle up the rest to send back.

Online merchants have had to completely retool their economics and work flows to accommodate this change. In the brick and mortar world, retail returns are in the 2% to 10% range depending on the category. In ecommerce it's more like 20%, with some categories of apparel approaching 40%. By some reports, the annual retail value of returned goods in the US is approaching a trillion dollars.

That has also led retailers to change how they handle returns to optimize the economics. In many cases that has meant making consumer take their "free" returns to a central spot for drop off rather than individually shipping each item back. And in an increasing number of instances, they are telling you just to keep the item while they credit you. Someone has done the math, and the cost to ship back an unworn pair of socks and get it back into the supply side is way more than any profit margin.

If you're like me, you've added a new requirement for anything you buy online. Sure, it's gotta look like it will fit or work for my use, that's a given. But it's also has to be able to be sent back at no cost and with no explanation for a full refund. Because while it may be better to give than receive, it's best to be able to return. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford will often buy two options. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Objection, Your Honor

At present our legal system is getting a workout all over the country. Front and center are the various actions related to Donald Trump, be they related to the 2020 election (DC and GA), document possession (FL), business expenses (NY) and sex (NYC). In Washington, the federal government is taking a swing at Google, while in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is swiping at Disney. And challenges to laws on abortion rights, migration, climate change and a host of other hot button issues are making their way through the courts in Texas, California, Alaska and all points in between.

However, not withstanding Trump's line of "I'm being indicted for you," most people will never be involved individually in a lawsuit. While there are a reported 40 million civil actions filed every year, most involve businesses (Walmart alone gets sued 5000 times a year) and specific groups of professionals (doctors and landlords, for instance). As such, outside of estate issues, the majority of folks rarely have to consult the more than 1 million lawyers in this country with regards to settling a dispute.

The one exception involves a type of lawsuit that you likely have been involved in for a problem you never knew you had. Called a class action, it's been around a long time, first appearing as "group litigation" in medieval England around 1200. It went through various iterations, with the current form being codified in 1966 under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That laid out that numerous people wronged by the same entity could be bound together and sue for damages even if they didn't know each other. Unless they decided to opt out, they could be represented by a single individual, and partake of any settlement that was reached. 

Those lawsuits are for a wide variety of transgressions, including securities violations, workplace issues, consumer complaints and increasingly, cyber breaches. You probably have gotten notice that you are a part of one or another in the form of a letter or email that states that unless you elect to go it on your own that you have been aggregated with other fellow sufferers, a group of people you might not even have known existed. In most cases you need to do nothing other than fill out a form that confirms that you did buy the electric toothbrush that was supposed to stop tooth decay, or bought the stock believing that that the company had a market for those rain proof boots. All it took was one dissatisfied consumer or investor to stand up to Big Footwear Inc. and call their bluff, and you each get a $20 gift certificate towards your next purchase of galoshes. 

The latest for us was involved our electric kettle. We had bought it paying no real attention to the brand or design. It had good reviews, heated water as advertised, and that should have been it. But the brand was Muller Austria, and the company's logo stamped on the bottom included an Austrian flag. Well, it turns out that one consumer took that to mean that it was designed and/or manufactured in Vienna or its environs, and made her purchase based on that representation. (I guess she thought that those who make Linzer tortes have a better handle on how to boil water.) Nope. It was merely a name, in the same way that Haagen-Daz isn't from Holland, but Brooklyn. She sued, and as we had also been purchasers, we were smooshed together with her and others. Rather than get into a protracted battle, the parent company of (now just) Muller settled with all similarly and egregiously wronged, writing each a check for $7.50, and dropping the "Austria" and flag graphic from their name. And just like that, I am a successful litigant.

As the grandson of a lawyer and the father of one, I appreciate the complexities of the legal world. But as a civilian, I also find it a strange universe with its own language, customs and sense of time, much of which make questionable sense. It all adds up to make me want to avoid interacting with it if at all possible. Or as Mort Zuckerman put it, "I decided law was the exact opposite of sex; even when it was good, it was lousy."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to settle things in person. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Prescription: Pizza

Based in Basel Switzerland, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, or MDPI, publishes hundreds of peer reviewed scientific journals encompassing a multitude of fields. Most of the stuff is highly technical in nature, catering to niches that appeal to only the hard core faithful. Typical of their offerings is "Agronomy," which focuses on all thing related to crops and planting, and includes such page turners as "Elucidation of the Genetic Diversity within Some In Situ Shea Germplasm in Ghana."  And no, other than the reference to an African country, I have no idea what that all means. 

That's just one example of their bread and butter. In the "Journal of Nanotheranostics" they focus on "exploring nano-enabled theranostics for personalized health care" (your guess is as good as mine). "Photonics," which is dedicated to optics and light, has an article this month on "Slightly Off-Axis Digital Holography Using a Transmission Grating and GPU-Accelerated Parallel Phase Reconstruction."  And in "Urban Science" you can catch up the "Current Plastic Waste Status and Its Leakage at Tam Giang–Cau Hai Lagoon System in Central Vietnam." Keep that in mind when you plan your next guided tour.

However, there are also occasional articles that seem more understandable (at least on the surface) to a lay audience. For instance, with all the focus on social media, the yearlong study in "Youth" titled "'She's Pretty in Her Pictures but in Real Life She's Ugly': School Pupils Negotiating the Blurred Boundaries between Online and Offline Social Contexts" is of interest. Speaking to our Amazon fixation, the journal "Economics" has one called "Buy Now Pay Later—A Fad or a Reality? A Perspective on Electronic Commerce." And the journal "Sport" was somewhat prescient, publishing just before the finals of the FIFA Women's World Cup a piece entitled "Emotional Intelligence in Spanish Elite Athletes: Is There a Differential Factor between Sports?" Perhaps the head of the Spanish Federation should have read that before he "celebrated" with the team.

Occasionally you find one that speaks directly to you. As I get older, my component parts are hitting their half-lives and not working as smoothly as they should. To combat that I try and get enough rest and regular exercise. And yes, I watch what I eat, trying to balance what I enjoy with what is good for me, not always an easy equation. Enter Dr. Roberta De Vito, the Thomas J. and Alice M. Tisch Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science at Brown University. Dr. De Vito and academic colleagues in her native Italy took to the pages of "Nutrients" to give me hope. Their article? "Does Pizza Consumption Favor an Improved Disease Activity in Rheumatoid Arthritis?"

Let me be clear: I don't profess to be able to follow all the science. They write about how "multiple robust linear and logistic regression models were fitted with the tertile consumption categories," and for each available pizza-related food item/group how "stratified analyses were carried out according to the disease severity or duration." But I did understand the conclusion: "Participants eating half a pizza >1 time/week (vs. ≤2 times/month) reported beneficial effects on disease activity, with the significant reductions of ~70%." My takeaway: pizza is good for your joints.

To be fair, the study focused on fresh, simple pizza, the classic Pizza Margherita. And they admit they don't factor in toppings, especially if they are fried or highly processed, such as eggplant or pepperoni. But they are unequivocal that within the given parameters of the study that the ingredients in pizza contribute to reducing inflammation in the sampled population. Wrote Dr De Vito, "These beneficial effects were likely driven by mozzarella cheese and, to a lesser extent, by olive oil, even though we were unable to assess the possible contribution of tomato sauce." She also notes, "larger and longer-duration intervention studies are still needed." I take that to mean that the jury is still out on hot peppers. 

The rallying cry these days is "follow the science." And so feel free to debate vaccines or climate change or the efficacy of masks. I for one will put my faith in Dr. De Vito and her colleagues. And I can only hope that their next study validates my contention regarding the rumored mental boost one gets from chunky peanut butter. If so, I'm good till at least 100.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to look at trade journals. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Beyond Tab

Think of it as Wordle. Except with just 4 letters. And it’s all about soft drinks. And your starting word is "diet."

Like many, I try and watch what I eat, with health being the main driver. That means more chicken and fish, less red meat, less fried foods, less sugar and and and. That’s not to say that I don’t have a burger and fries on occasion, or a piece of cake or candy. And summertime is ice cream time: the full-fat, full-flavor stuff in a cup or cone from a roadside stand or a specialty shop that costs way more than it should. But, hey, it’s summer!

The same can be said for the beverages I drink. Fortunately, my default choice is usually plain old tap water, so no major issue there. That said, I enjoy a glass of wine or a mixed drink when at a party or out with friends, and some studies show that that occasional indulgence is actually good for your metabolism. The same can’t be said of the odd milkshake or soda, but again, consumed sparingly as a treat, a can of Dr. Pepper is hardly cause for alarm.

In both of these areas that theme of "health" also includes weight. Not only do these various choices bode well for my general well-being, they also are less likely to add to my general tonnage. On the other hand, the exceptions noted usually do the opposite. But even there one can choose healthier options, be it turkey burgers and sweet potato fries, fruit sorbets and low calorie sodas. Not that I’m on a diet per se, but an ounce here and once there and pretty soon you’re talking not being able to button your pants.

Reduced calorie beverages have become a powerhouse category for this very reason. Since the appearance in 1958 of Diet Rite Cola, which was originally stocked among medicine as opposed to soft drinks and marketed "as an option for diabetics and other consumers who needed to limit their sugar intake," the category of diet beverages has exploded. 

Up until now, that is. More recently the word "diet" has slowly been disappearing from the soft drink aisle. There are still some behemoths taking up shelf space, with the two 800-pound gorillas (maybe a bad refence in this context) being Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. But beyond those, beverages with lower or no calories have been not so much phased out as reformulated and rebranded, (and here is where our Wordle reference comes in) using the "e" from "diet" to become "zero."

It's a change that has been driven by Millennials and Zoomers, who view soda in general as unhealthy, and diet as another kind of four-letter word. According to Greg Lyons, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Beverages North America, "Younger people just don’t like the word diet." Additionally, the term traditionally has more feminine connotations, driving away a certain market segment of young males. That doesn’t mean they want the extra calories, they just don’t want the association with something less than macho. And what is the same thing as no calories? Zero calories. And a whole new-ish category was thus created.

So now there is Coke Zero, Mountain Dew Zero and Sprite Zero. If you compare their respective labels to their diet twins you will not find much difference, though the flavor profiles are slightly tweaked with the zero versions generally being a touch sweeter and closer to their full-bodied siblings. Or as listed on Coca-Cola’s website, "Coca-Cola Zero Sugar looks and tastes more like Coca-Cola Classic, while Diet Coke has a lighter taste because it’s made with a different blend of flavors." Either way, the calorie count for both is nada.

It's hardly a surprising shift. As one exec once remarked about the future of then electronics retailer Radio Shack, "No one buys radios anymore, and no one likes shopping in a shack." If no one wants to be on a diet, then no one will want to drink diet soda. But zero? That may mean nothing, but nothing has become good: zero waste, zero clutter, zero hassles. What’s next? Playing modified Wordle again, from "diet" to "zero" to "hero," and we did it in three. The only question is how long it will take before we see Coke Hero. You heard it here first.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers Diet Coke to Coke Zero. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Same As It Ever Was

Every summer for nearly a decade we have been fortunate enough to have friends who have invited us to join them at their beach place. They are very kind, inviting us for a weekend of conversation, good food and relaxation. The location has changed over time, and the weather dictates our exact schedule. But the basic outline of our getaway includes all the normal vacation to-do's: bike rides, barbecues and as much ice cream as we can stomach.

Of course, the main event, and one of the highlights of having a beach vacation at a beach house is you get to go to the beach. Every group that has a similar experience, be it family or friends, has their own set of rituals and rhythms involving what they bring and what they do, but it likely involves a subset of certain activities. Chairs, umbrellas and blankets are schlepped. Locations are scouted. Base camps are set up, and then the festivities commence. Those include people watching, dozing, walking to the water's edge to cool off, and jumping in the waves. Cold drinks and salty snacks are consumed, supplemented by trips to the snack bar for hot food and cold ices. If kids are involved there is likely a bucket and shovel component, be it to build a castle, dig a hole or bury a sibling. And perhaps highest on the list is sitting, staring at the ocean, doing nothing, and not feeling guilty about it. Rinse (quite literally) and repeat.

Our outing this year was no different. But as I looked around I was struck by the similarity to the same type of outing we had done more than a dozen years ago with other friends, the same as when we had visited relatives at the shore 15 and 20 years ago, and before that when we had rented assorted houses and taken our kids away for a week before school started. Come to think of it, it was the same when we were kids, and our parents did the same with us. Indeed, I suspect that with some very minor modifications, it was no different for them and their parents, and on and on back fifty and even a hundred years.

That's something you can't say about almost anything else. There is no space, no activity, no part of our lives that has remained essentially unchanged for a decade, let alone the last century. While the pandemic certainly had massive impacts, well before that things had changed and shifted, some faster than others, but unmistakably different. Work? Decentralized and remote to be sure, but driven by technology the workplace of today is unrecognizable from fifty years ago. School? Classrooms are still there, but teaching methods and modalities have evolved way past composition books and weekly readers. Transportation, entertainment, shopping: the list is endless and the changes mind boggling.

But the beach remains the same. There are of course cosmetic changes. Swimming "costumes," especially for women, have changed. Umbrella technology has advanced, branching beyond simple sunshades to entire cabanas that fit in a carry bag. Games have evolved, from simple throwing a ball to sand darts and paddle games and other bouncy things. But if you were to drop a turn-of-the-century person into the middle of Jones or Seaside or Rehoboth today, odds are the only thing that would make them feel out of sorts would be the bikinis.

As if to reinforce the static nature of the environment, where we were I noted a lifeguard standing up on his chair and signaling the next station. No walkie talkies or cell phones here, he was using flags to spell out something in semaphore like it was a naval exercise in 1922. I went over and asked if that's what he was indeed doing. "Yeah," he replied like I was an idiot, "beach semaphore." It's also worth noting he looked just as bored as lifeguards have for eternity, something else that hasn't changed.

Sometimes you need a simple place, one that you don't have to constantly adapt to. The shore in all its iterations provides that refuge. No new app, no new software, no battery that has to be charged. As simple as one of the characters in this summer's hit movie, "Barbie." As Ken says, "Yeah, because actually my job, it's just Beach."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford hates using anything above SPF 15. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What Took You So Long?

Maybe you hit "Send" a minute ago. Maybe it was five. Maybe it was an hour or a day or a week. Makes no difference, the question remains the same: why haven't they responded? Don't they know that you have put your entire life on hold pending their reply? You could have moved on to other important things, like writing that proposal or making dinner or letting your girlfriend know that you will be wearing the blue dress this weekend. But no, there you are, tapping your fingers. The world might not have stopped spinning, but what happens next is your particular corner of the planet is on hold, pending your phone pinging.

That wait to complete a communication loop is an unfortunate corollary of having 24-hour access to virtually everyone all the time. After all, access is one thing; availability is another. Ever since phones were invented we have had the ability to at least try and contact someone whenever we wanted. However, there was no assurance that they would be in a position to be on the receiving end when we made the call. The remedy to that missed connection was simple: you hung up and tried again.

The invention of the answering machine changed that balance. No longer was the burden on the caller. Rather, they could leave a message, shifting the responsibility to continue the interaction from the caller to the callee. It was then incumbent on the second party to ring back the first to complete the exchange. But while it shifted the obligation from one side to the other, it also shifted control. Rather than responding in the moment, you could consider the request, formulate a response, or even delay calling back until circumstances or further information helped to dictate the reply.

The advent of different methods of communication didn't change that dynamic, it only gave it more avenues to play out. Additionally, this asynchronous interaction fostered an evolving set of metrics, determined by both modality and use case. Or as Diana Ross would have put it more simply, it's all about how you reach out and whom you are trying to touch.

Phone messages usually have the longest window. Whether it's a business-related call or a friend seeking to finalize arrangements for an upcoming get together, you have a solid day or three to respond without looking like you're hiding. And that's if anyone even leaves a message. Just as likely they will let it ring a few times, then hang up before it goes to voicemail and switch over to an alternate pathway. The one exception is mom: she will leave a message, and she will expect a call back before the sun next sets. 

Next up in the hierarchy (or down, depending on your point of view) is email. This has evolved to be for more formal back and forths, be it swapping recipes, detailing a weekend away or a proposal for a kitchen remodeling. In business the expectation of a response is 24 hours; with family and friends you probably have twice that. Any longer and things will likely escalate to the next avenue, with a terse "check your email.”

That next avenue (actually more of an expressway) has become the de facto default for many: the text in its various iterations, be it SMS, iMessage, Whatspp or other variant. Perhaps symptomatic of our society's wide craving for instant gratification, this is where we expect the fastest response time, with the relationship between the parties suggesting the expected speed of reply. If it's business related you have a day. If it's family you have the afternoon. If it's friends, you have 10 minutes. And with your best BFF's, the "Chinese Food Standard” applies: ready (or in this case respond) as soon as the phone is hung up.

As with many things, it's all about context. Were Einstein to tailor his famous explanation to the situation at hand, it might go like this: when the water is squirting out of the faucet and you have to wait for a call back from the plumber, every minute seems like an hour. But when your sister iMessages you demanding to know how come mom gave you her pearl earrings, every hour can seem like a minute. That's texting relativity.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries not to look at his phone every time it buzzes. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Don't Fix That

If you are a parent, you are constantly imparting little bits of knowledge to your kids about how to make their way in the world. The hope is that by the time they get to be practicing adults they will have a reservoir of best practices that will carry them through life. Usually based on your own experiences and learnings, they run the gamut from theoretical to practical, from emotional to physical. It might be how to balance a checkbook or treat a spouse, how to make lasagna or fix a flat tire, how to pack a suitcase or water the plants. 

It starts as soon as they are born, as you first model behavior, then teach specific skills, then show by example and hope they pick up the cues. By the time they start to leave the nest you've pretty much done all you can do. Sure, there's the occasional call to mom or dad with specific queries, such as when to add bleach to the wash, or what that recipe was for hummus, or tell me again how to fix a leaky faucet. But usually offering unsolicited advice long distance is a fool's errand, likely met with bored affirmation meant to keep you placated, perhaps resembling how you treated your own parents. On top of that, the advent of the internet has meant there is another authoritative source for much of that same information, complete with diagrams and no war stories. 

Still, when one of our sons called home on a recent weekend, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't offer up one piece of advice that somehow escaped me over his more than three decades on this planet. To be truthful, I thought I was done with imparting life-lessons. I knew whatever I had told him to that point had either stuck or not, and he was doing just fine on his own. Still, I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't pass on an imperative. Whether or not he honored it going forward would be up to him, but at least I felt that I could live out my days knowing I had done my best.

As relatively new homeowners, he and his wife had spent the last year or so dealing with all the usual fun and games that come with being lords of your own domain. They were successful working their way through whatever challenges cropped up, certainly no better or worse than we did when we were in their shoes. But having just flaunted one of my own personal maxims, and paid the price dearly, I had to lay down one last relevant marker.

Never do home repairs on a Sunday morning.

We're not talking about changing a lightbulb or hanging a picture. We are talking anything that directly relates to your home's infrastructure, be it plumbing, electrical, or other things best handled by a skilled tradesman, but which seem like you could tackle on your own and save a few bucks. I know it's tempting to go at it on the weekend when you have the time and quiet to replace that light switch or deal with that drip. And I'm not saying you can't replace a leaky toilet valve or upgrade a thermostat on your own. It's just that no matter how simple it seems, the potential exists for it to go south. And if it does, and it will, getting help is that much more difficult and expensive on Saturday or Sunday.

In my case it simply involved turning off a toilet supply line. Simple, that is, until the valve broke off in my hand, spraying water everywhere. The only option was to shut off all the water and call a plumber. On a Sunday morning. At 830AM. On Father's Day. You would have thought that by now I would have known not to play with plumbing out of regular business hours. Obviously not.

Thankfully we got a guy relatively quickly and the problem was fixed, though it cost twice what it should have. So much for heeding my own advice. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days." Right you are, Ralph. Just don't do it on a Sunday.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford hates plumbing. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What to Watch/Listen/Read

One of the defining notes of our age is how everyone can be a publisher of content. No more being beholden to a major media conglomerate for our news, entertainment or reading material. With precious few limitations and restrictions, now literally anyone who has access to the internet can create programs or publications and make them available to any person to read, listen or watch. That's not lowering the barrier to entry, that's eliminating it.

That has meant that the supply side has exploded. Comparisons are hard to make as the landscape has so completely changed. But as a point of reference consider the shape of the television broadcast industry. As late as the mid 1970's, if you wanted to curl up and be a couch potato, your choices were one of three commercial networks plus what we now know as PBS. Added to that was a smattering of UHF and cable outlets with very limited reach, most of which were just rebroadcasting the major networks and producing almost no original programming. And of course, there was no internet. 

Fast forward to the present day and there are hundreds of channels and networks, including specialty providers like ESPN, Home Shopping Network and CNN, and boutique providers like Hulu, Netflix and BritBox. And that doesn't even count YouTube, where most of the content comes from individuals vs. companies. At last report there were more than 114 million YouTube channels. To that smorgasbord are added more than 150,0000 new videos every minute. At an average length of 4.4 minutes, that's around 330,000 new hours of content for you to watch every 60 minutes. If you started to watch just what is up there at this moment (putting aside that more is added every second), it would take 17,810 years to get through the current postings. Better make sure your phone is charged. 

It's the same for whatever medium you examine. Art, books, audio, poetry: with no gatekeepers needed, the deluge continues. There are sports, true crime, fan fiction and a host of others, not to mention virtually every sub-sub-sub genre of those you can think of. Most of these efforts garner audiences numbering in the single or double digits at best, with just a few breaking out to achieve widespread consumption. But that doesn't stop creators from putting them out there, and hoping their piece is the one that catches fire.

There are even new art forms that didn't exist a few years ago, let alone have a distribution platform. Up until about 2000, if you wanted to listen to a program that was audio-only, you turned on the radio. Then "podcasting" made an appearance, enabling users to download and listen to any show when they wanted. And today, according to podcastindex.org, there are north of 4 million audio-on-demand programs available for your aural pleasure. Indeed, someone (maybe you) is listening right now: as of 2023, 42% of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to a podcast in the past month, up three and a half times from 10 years ago.

While exact numbers are hard to come by as distribution is fragmented, the most popular programs garner huge audiences. The runaway leader is "The Joe Rogan Experience" with around 11 million downloads per episode, followed by "The Daily" from The New York Times and "This American Life," usually heard on National Public Radio. A good bit further down the list is "Weird Parents" featuring episodes like "Should You Let Your Kids Swear?", "Podcast But Outside" where the hosts set up in different locations and interview random strangers who walk by (and pay them a dollar for appearing), and "What Ever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's", a topic which requires so much explanation that they are currently breaking the 300 episode barrier. 

This all means that we have an embarrassment of riches as never before. Whether you want to read, listen or watch, your problem isn't having choices, it's making them. Thankfully you have nothing better to do, right? Which leads to the existential question: did we have so much free time with nothing to do that we created podcasts? Or did we have to create podcasts because we had so much free time and nothing to do? And if the answer is neither, then who is listening to all this stuff?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford can't take enough long walks to stay current on his feeds. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.