Detect and Protect

It was first invented for Android, later picked up and refined by Apple, and now it's spread to almost all smart devices. Should you have the bad fortune to be in an auto accident, your phone or watch can sense the event and reach out to emergency services. Using inputs from the device's gyroscope, accelerometer, microphone and navigation systems, the feature determines that it (and the person it is attached to) has been in a crash. After flagging it on the screen and giving the owner time to stand it down, it will automatically dial 911 to get you help.

While it seems the stuff of a marketing campaign, there are actually numerous anecdotal examples of the system at work. Wrote one poster "Tire blew out and I hit a telephone pole going about 70. Head against the wheel, continuous honking, smoke coming for the car. Felt the little haptic that authorities were being called. This was in the middle of nowhere so if it weren't for the watch, who knows how long I would've been there. Next thing I know I'm being hauled away in the ambulance." Another couple's car slipped off a gravel shoulder, plunging trough some trees and winding up upside down. When they crawled out their phone had already called for help, and rescuers were on their way.

Impressive to be sure, but there have also been a large number of false positives reported, with crews responding to non-existent emergencies. Extreme sports enthusiasts, with their quick stops and starts, sudden changes in direction and frequent yelling seem to trigger the system, as do roller coasters and skiing. Even the phone falling during your weekend bike ride can cause the stimuli needed to initiate the sequence. Once started, it's like a scene from any "Mission: Impossible" movie where you have to disarm the countdown before it blows up, or this case, dials for help.

Just as we're told it has the potential to change everything else, AI advances should help reduce those miscues. Using a larger data set and computational ability, the hope is that the systems will be better able to differentiate between a real crash and a ride on the Anaconda at Kings Dominion. But the same type of sensory input, large language modeling and ability to synthesize a possible outcome offers the tantalizing possibility of other "detectors" which could be useful in less life-threatening situations. All we need is some 15-year old coder to stay up late and crank these potential million-dollar ideas out. To wit: 

Repeat Story Detector. Much like how the "Shazam" app is able to listen to any song and identify it from its melody, beat and lyrics, this feature monitors incoming audio, like stories from your friends. When it detects a single voice talking for more than a preset period of time with only bored "uh hmms" from the device owner's own voice (as likely acknowledgment that it's been heard before), it triggers its Large Language Data Set function to compare that stream of words with all the others it has heard from that same voice. If it finds a match, it initiates a self-call, enabling the device owner to politely interrupt and say, "Whoa... great story, but I have to take this!" 

Spoiler Detector. You must first input your favorite streaming shows. The app then uses its audio capabilities to listen and track your viewing habits, keeping a record of how far along you've gotten in the series. The detector then reads ahead in any emails, texts, articles or posts you call up. If it contains a spoiler with the identity of Lady Whistledown's revealer, or what happens to the White Worm once they get to Dragonstone, it sounds an alarm and blacks out the offending passage.

Amazon Equity Detector. This app uses AI to keep scan all delivery services that have your address, including USPS, UPS, and FedEx, as well as Amazon's own system of independent operators. It tabulates all deliveries directed to your home, and aggregates them by addressee. If your total exceeds that of your spouse or partner for a given week, it automatically puts a hold on a variable number of packages while also alerting you so you both receive an equal amount, resulting in fewer accusations of overshopping.

Can't Carry A Tune Detector. Singing along is fine, unless the person singing can't carry a tune in a basket. This app can be set to tolerances ranging from "Slightly Off Key to "Caterwauling." It compares voices singing nearby to whatever MP3 file is playing. If it is not the owner's voice, and it is outside the selected tolerance, it begins to skip and produces a false "WiFi Lost" message. It then changes to a feed of the local NPR station. Once it no longer detects the trigger voice in the vicinity, it returns to playing music.

There's nothing wrong with technology jumping in when a catastrophe strikes and summoning help. But our everyday crises are also ripe for problem solving, and potentially more useful. It's a matter of focusing on what we really want and need, as opposed to what some developer thinks we need. Or as author Joanna Maciejewska put it, "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is not sure what half the features on his phone are for. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Today Tom Sawyer

 Four weeks ago I was at a resort running a high level retreat for CEOs, athletes and political types. Three weeks ago I was in Florida directing a large corporate annual meeting. Two weeks ago I was directing a remote crew in London for an interview between a CEO and a noted historian. And last week I was directing a sales conference, an orientation for a firm's 800 summer interns, and an event sponsored by a financial company aimed at high level lawyers. 

Today I am painting a fence.

When Tom Sawyer responded to Ben with "Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" he had a different goal than me. He was goading Ben into taking over his chore (and getting Ben's apple). My mission was merely to paint the fence in time for some weekend visitors. Still, after a month of high pressure, high stress projects, I would agree with Tom's assessment if not his motive.

To be accurate the fence was less a fence than a privacy screen I had installed a bunch of years back. I had fabricated two segments, one on each end of our deck, with the goal of screening those particular lines of sight to the neighbors. Not that either was that close to us or that they spent any time staring at our space. The screen itself was not solid, but rather made of wooden lattice with some decorative hangings on it. Rather than seal us in it gave us a little more solitude when relaxing in the backyard.

When I created it I also stained it, and it had subsequently been repainted when we had the entire house done. All was fine until earlier this spring when a large tree from the neighbor's yard crashed down in a windstorm. It bounced off our roof, ripping some shingles, trashing part of the gutter and destroying a segment of the deck railing. And yes, one section of my carpentry project was smashed to bits. 

Over several weeks we got the tree removed, the shingles repaired and the gutter replaced. Some talented carpenters rebuilt the destroyed deck. They also carefully examined the undamaged section of my DIY screen and faithfully reproduced a new one to match, albeit with much better workmanship. When done, save for a tear in a screen door and a dent on one side of the grill, you would be hard pressed to know that anything ever happened.

Except the new lattice and railing were raw wood and pale as my legs after winter. The guys who built it said it had to season a bit before we finished it. Give it a month, they said, then it could be painted. Those weeks had passed, and we had invited some friends over for a summer get together, hopefully on the deck. And so it was time to put the finishing touches on the reconstructed segment.

I put on some old clothes, found a can of stain in the garage and grabbed a brush. I plugged my phone into a speaker, dialed up some tunes and set to work. The nice thing about painting raw wood outside is that you don't need to be a professional. A litle drip here, a splatter there, it makes no difference. The worst you can do is drip on the existing deck in the same color: a quick swipe with a rag or brush and the splotch blends right in. After a month of jobs involving budgeting, coordinating, preparing paperwork, teams and precise execution, this was the polar opposite. And highly welcome.  

I started at the top corner and worked my way across and, then down. I picked where I wanted to go next with no consultation. No one shadowed me, no one second guessed me, no one asked when overtime would kick in, if we had approval to do it that way, or needed a vegan meal. I stopped when I wanted to, sang along loudly to the songs I liked, and steadily proceeded to finish one side. than the other. 

When I was done, I stood back and looked at the result of my work. There were a few drips here, small brush strokes there. I was covered in sweat, and had stains on my hands and arms. My tee shirt had as many splotches as the pachysandra below the deck, and I would have to even out the railing on a second pass. But on balance it was a task started and completed with no supervision nor clients to answer to, with a passable result. Tom once again: "Well I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" Mine was more of a dark oak color vs. white, but other than that, I'd have to agree. Even without the apple.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't mind doing chores that that have a start and an end. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

"It Could Be Worse"

As a parent there are a myriad of things that one needs to teach their kids. First there's the practical stuff you need to function in the world. This ranges from how to tell time and to tying your shoes to getting onto an escalator. Then there're the life skills that you'll need as an adult. This includes basic kitchen operations to navigating from one place to another to selecting an outfit appropriate for the weather. And depending on the family's locale there are specifics related to the environment. City kids have to learn to negotiate the subway, suburban kids to drive and how to park at the grocery store, and country kids the control of nature both domestic and wild.

You also need to go beyond skills to attitudes. Here it's less about teaching specific actions than modeling absorbable behaviors. Kids watch the way the way the adults around them act and react, and absent any other input, copy that behavior. On the surface it's not that complicated; tolerance, respect, caring and a host of other soft skills may be hard to teach beyond platitudes, but are easy to demonstrate in action. Of course, there's also the downside that living your hangups and shortcomings out loud can speak louder than words. It's not just about shrieking when you see a spider, or swearing when you lose a parking space. If you are uptight and rigid, that there's a reasonable chance your kids will follow that lead. Likewise if you are a pushover or overly laid back they may assimilate that approach. To be sure, there are multiple factors at play, all of which add up the eventual personality that your kids will develop. Indeed, sometimes they head the other way just for spite. But if you're a pessimist or an optimist, there's a good chance that attitude will rub off on them and their approach to the world.

The vast majority of people fall somewhere in the center of it all. To be sure there are hot button issues which engender more strident approaches based on culture, religion, ethnicity and the like. But most of us want our offspring to least start somewhere near the middle, and use their heads and their hearts to negotiate the complicated factors they will face. To that end we recognize that we don't know everything, and so seek out third party sources to share with them to develop the skills needed as they grow into adults.

For sure, easy access to all things online has changed the equation somewhat. Not a good cook? No worries: you can easily call up a video on the how to make a passable meat sauce. Not a fashionista? Lots of places to go showing how to pair a scarf with a sweater to make a stylish outfit for any occasion. Not handy? Tutorials abound on everything from repairing a leaky faucet to hanging a television on the wall. Just as importantly there are phone numbers of advisors and companies to help you do all of the above. Directing your progeny to any of the above doesn't make you a bad parent, just a resourceful one.

Age appropriate books are certainly another source of wisdom and instruction. (We'll leave aside the battleground that these have become over social issues.) These fall into four categories with many overlaps. Concept books don't so much have a main character, problem or plot, but rather a concept or skill as the central theme, such as the alphabet, colors or shapes. There are Predictable books, where repetitive words or phrases help build language skills. Narrative books have a story which leads usually to a positive solution, where characters deal with fears, friends and new situations. And Informational books present accurate, factual information on any number of topics. 

While these efforts can broach adult topics (and that's where much of the current discourse is occurring) there are still certain subtleties that they don't touch upon. My wife and our friend Carole, both with years of experience in the education world as well as being mothers, suggested titles for any number of which could help children deal with the world as it is. Call it a fifth genre: Realistic books. Their list of prospective volumes includes "Try To Enjoy," "At Least It's Not Raining," "Does This Taste Funny to You?," "I Should Have Brought a Heavier Sweater," and the sure fire best seller "How's YOUR Stomach?"

It's a little Jewish mother, a little Italian mother and a little of your own mother (assuming she's not one of those) all mixed together. And it might be just the tome your offspring or grandchild needs to cope with what will come their way. While they haven't penned it yet, Susan and Carole's edition of "It Could be Worse" might make a perfect birthday gift.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has written for all ages. 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 Fresh?

When the lunch break was announced I needed to catch up on some calls and emails, so didn't get to wander backstage right away for a bite. When I finally broke free I found an assortment of sandwiches, including turkey, veggie, roast beef and tuna. There were also chips, cookies and fruit, so as lunches go it wasn't too bad. I chose a half a tuna sandwich and a bag of chips, and wandered out a back door to get some air. I found a spot in the shade and perched on a bench away from the hustle and bustle of the job to catch my breath for a few minutes.

When I was done I threw out my garbage and headed back in, intending to grab a cookie for the afternoon. As I was standing by the food tables considering my choices (chocolate chip or sugar) I ran into one of my team. He was shaking his head and looked a little put out. "Everything OK?" I asked Hugo. "If you haven't had lunch, don't eat the tuna." Uh oh. Too late for me? He seemed all right and looked unsettled, though not unwell. "I had a tuna sandwich, and after I took a bite and put it down, a tiny worm fell off the lettuce." Unsettling to be sure. But at least it wasn't half a worm.

For all the news about the growth in prepared foods, packaged meals and the dangers of highly processed items, we all say (or at least pay lip service to) the idea of eating more fresh foods. That can be proteins that aren't formed, as in chicken drumsticks as opposed to nuggets, as well as fruits and vegetables that come straight from the tree or the vine vs. a can or a bag. That's not to say that all processing of food is bad. Flash freezing of vegetables and meats extends their life and convenience. Dehydrating or canning foodstuffs enable us all to enjoy items out of season, or from locales where getting them to consumers in a fresh state is impractical or prohibitively expensive. Bread is a processed grain, milk needs to be pasteurized, and ice cream is simply way better than just frozen milk. But the idea is to get as close to the origin as possible, doing only what is needed to get it from the source to you.

And yes, getting fresher stuff does mean that you have to occasionally put up with the realities of where it comes from or how it is produced. While the modern food industry is a marvel in how it butchers, picks, packages and transports the things we eat, it is impossible to accomplish that level of sanitary washing and preparing without a few misses along the way. Coupled with that is the simple fact that the less processing you do to the end product means there is more possibility of "contamination" along the way. That the word is accurate if not unfairly pejorative, as there is no evil intent or sloppy work in the process. But when there are thousands of people producing about 350 million metric tons of meat and 1.17 billion metric tons of vegetables a year, the odd worm (Hugo's probably weighed less than a tenth of a gram) will indeed slip through.

Last year when we were in Japan, we decided to have our last night's dinner in our local Kyoto neighborhood. We chose a sushi place where we sat at the counter and watched the chef. I ordered a variety of sushi, while my wife asked for the sashimi special. Hers came with multiple small dishes, presented in a beautiful array of colors and shapes. Finally, a gorgeous platter with an assortment of pieces of fish was put before her. We both admired it, and each began to enjoy our dinner. She used her chopsticks to take a bite of one piece of sashimi, then put it down and turned to take something else. Out of the corner of her eye she noted some movement. She turned back to see that same piece twitching just a bit. She dropped her sticks in horror, looked at the chef in front of us, waved her arms and shrieked, "Too fresh! Too Fresh!" He looked over, smiled, quickly reached across and grabbed the offending piece and took it away. It came back shortly thereafter on its own plate. Grilled. It was delicious.

You might like your steak rare, your broccoli crunchy and your apples crisp. Just know that to get that might mean you find the occasional unsettling evidence of its former existence. Hugo's worm just proved his lettuce was fresh, and my wife's sashimi twitch the same. Too fresh or still fresh? It's just a matter of degree.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to eat fresh food when he can, but also likes a good hot dog. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Send a Message

If you use the metric of legislation proposed, the current 118th Congress is slightly behind, though more or less on track with its most recent predecessors. While the 117th lists over 17,00 bills on the Congressional website, and the 116th over 16,000, the current body posts just 13,220. However it's just June and they have several months to make up the slack. And these guys and girls are nothing if not prolific in trying to push a point of view.

On the other hand, posting a bill and giving it a name doesn't count as actual legislating, it's more performative theatre. During President Obama's second term, the 113th and 114th Congresses passed 196 and 329 bills respectively, while the 115th and 116th which took place during President Trump's term passed 442 and 344 bills. Even the 117th which took place during President Biden's first term pushed 362 bills out the door. The current 118th? As of this writing, just 64 bills became law.

Included in that measly number are bills that hardly distinguish themselves as standout policy benchmarks, with nary a Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 among them. There's HR 3947, "To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 859 North State Road 21 in Melrose, Florida, as the ‘Pamela Jane Rock Post Office Building,'" and HR 1096, the "250th Anniversary of the United States Marine Corps Commemorative Coin Act." True, there were the tortured votes that kept the government open or avoided a default, but those were hardly high-minded statements of principle. Taken as a whole, it is apparent to legislators of both parties that this was not their finest hour. "This is the most ineffective congress that we have seen," Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) told reporters. Or as Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) put it with tongue firmly in cheek, "Those post offices aren't going to name themselves."

No, they aren't. However, if you view the exercise not in actual rule making but in messaging, these folks are aces. Most of their efforts never stand a chance of actually being enacted, but that's an antiquated way of looking at it. In fact, the driver for much of the proposed legislation is not to actually pass anything (and that might not be desirable at all in any case), but rather to make noise about a position, give it a catchy name that makes for a good tweet, watch it go down in flames and then yell about it as loud as possible. Blame the hyper-partisan atmosphere, whichever political party you don't belong to, the presidential election cycle, the solar eclipse and/or Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce... all of them may have something to do with it... but no matter, that's the state of play.

Which brings us such gems as HR 7673, the "Liberty in Laundry Act" which places limits on the authority of the Department of Energy (DOE) to prescribe or enforce energy conservation standards for clothes washers. There's also HR 1640, the "Save Our Gas Stove Act" which places limits on energy conservation standards for kitchen ranges or ovens under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. And there's HR 4003, the "Let Freedom Sing Act" which prohibits any regulations on the singing of the National Anthem on any Federal property. While these were all sponsored by Republicans, the Democrats practice the same type of "gotcha" legislating, even if the names such as HR 5048, "Protecting Our Democracy Act" and H.R.9497, "International Violence Against Women Act" sound reasonable while hiding provisions that make them unpalatable to a wide swath of voters. 

Just like gerrymandering, each side draws the contours of the bill to be as favorable to their constituency as they can, while excluding the points of view of those in opposition. And the names reflect that, eschewing the gray of every issue in favor of its black and white essence. Only bills that both sides can agree on in some limited way can garner the bipartisan coalition that passes for a majority these days. Even bills that seem to be slam dunks such as S4029, "Ban Chinese Communist Party Access to U.S. Military Students Act of 2024" or HR5925, "Make Putin Pay Act" have enough wiggle room in them to make passage difficult. 

Bold messaging is in, and bold action is out. If you want something to pass you need to take baby steps and be very sure that it will rile up no one on either side. It's only a matter of time before the only way to get something through is to bow to reality and call legislation what it really is, i.e. the "We Think China Is Bad, But Voters Love their iPhones, Tik Tok and Cheap Deck Lights So Let's Be Very Careful What We Do Act."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford has no legislation he has sponsored pending. His column appears weekly via email and online http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/ and https://marcwollin.substack.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.