Dear Dog Owner, Please explain…

The trash can is 95 steps from where the poop bag was deposited. I counted. 

Johnson’s Law of Dogs: There are no bad dogs, only bad dog owners.

I am genuinely curious. Why do dog walkers bag their puppy’s poop, but then leave the filled bags along the path or tied to a tree branch instead of placing it in a garbage can? 

This is such a common sight that there has to be some sort of reasonable answer.

Dog owners who make the effort to bag their canine’s do-do obviously have a conscience and understand their responsibility to keep our environment clean and safe*. They do, after all, begin the process of removing the waste.

But why go only half way? And might leaving poop in a plastic non-degradable or slowly degradable bag, be even worse than just leaving the leavings in nature?

The standard excuse made by bag droppers is that they intend to pick the bags up at the end of their hike but sometimes forget. Given the number of doggie baggies I see in any given week, owning a dog must exacerbate memory loss. Is it really that onerous to carry a small filled bag for the rest of the walk?

So my question remains - Why do dog walkers go just halfway in being good environmental stewards? And why might any of us make only half the needed effort to accomplish a worthwhile task?

*"Dog poop can contain E. coli, Giardia, worms, pharmaceuticals, as well as several billion fecal coliform bacteria. It can spread diseases, such as Parvovirus, and pollute soil and the water we drink and play in." (Leave no trace.)

Mental exercise

Watching a loved one experiencing mental decline*, results in a person’s concern for their own cognitive status grow. Looking for ways to prevent, or at least slow, the inevitable slide into senility becomes important. 

Lately, I’ve been spending a bit more time each day trying to do some mental gymnastics by playing games and solving puzzles online. 

For as long as I can remember (I think starting in the late 1970s), I’ve worked the scrambled word game Jumble first thing each morning. (According to Wikipedia it was started in 1954 and appears in over 600 newspapers.) It’s a pretty rare day that I don’t solve this one.

Lately, I’ve started to play the daily Connections game on the New York Times website. (See above.) Placing 16 words into related groups of four usually has me scratching my head a bit, but I “get it” more often than not. And I feel very proud when I make no mistakes. I share my results - the good ones, anyway. I’ve tried Wordle and I don’t find it much fun.

My friend Heidi and I have a habit of alternately giving and receiving the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz in the daily paper. Between the two of us, we probably average an 80-90% success rate. Recalling trivia is gets tougher as one ages, I believe.

Perhaps even more important than working a few puzzles is finding time to read a few challenging articles or chapters from a non-fiction book. Yeah, I read my share of thrillers and scifi and pop lit, but a good book on a serious topic supported by research is good for the noggin.

Finally, I write a bit each day. That may be my best indicator of mental acuity. With puzzles, some days are harder and some days are easier and I am left wondering if the difficult days are due to tougher puzzles or a slower brain. Given that many people get the Connections solutions on days that I don’t, leads me to worry that my brain may not be hitting on all cylinders every day. Perhaps my loyal blog readers can tell from my entries when I am thinking clearly and when not.

Is exercising one’s cognitive abilities simply an exercise in futility? Perhaps. But like physical exercise, when done well, mental stretching can also be a pleasure. Take your brain for a walk today by doing a puzzle. It can’t hurt. 

*My Mom’s memory has become increasingly poor over the past couple years, leading to her needing to be in an assisted living apartment. Tough to watch a once bright and independent individual now need daily support.

The Luddites of AI

In his book The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World*, Simon Winchester reminds us that technological advancement has not always been well-received.

The employment of mass production of woolen and cotton textiles in the early 19th century displaced many manual workers who were understandably upset by the loss of their livelihoods. An uprising was supposedly led by a “King Ludd” in opposition to automation, and from that uprising we retain the term “luddite".” Which, of course, means a person who resists technological change.

The journalism industry has lately been expressing concern over the impact of artificial intelligence on their business. Social media platforms are being accused of pilfering content from traditional news sources without recompense. (”The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work”. New York Times, Dec 27. It’s reported that both the number of traditional publications, especially small local newspapers, and the reporters and editors who work for them has substantially decreased in the last few years. And technology is seen as the cause. 

“... having people, not machines, tell the human stories of the city and the world for other humans to read should stay that way.” New York Daily News summarizes in a recent editorial.

Is this truly a threat to good journalism and its effective distribution  - or are we experiencing just another case of luddites fearful of being terminated by The Terminator? 

A major difference between today’s replacement scenario and the days of factory automation is that the work that may be done by AI instead of humans is that it will be intellectual labor, not physical toil. A robotic arm attaching a fender to an auto body does not require insight, empathy, objectivity, or contextual knowledge. A good reporter does. Can AI know and compose basic news stories without boots on the ground, being where the news happens?

Or might AI actually be better? Could a bot attend a school board or city council meeting, record it, and then distill the content? Could a bot analyze and summarize congressional actions, supreme court decisions, or presidential activities? Could a bot be embedded in a police force to report on crime or in a courtroom to describe trials? All in a style that is understandable and lacking bias.

And could AI provide editorial comment that is actually more balanced than the current humans writing these thought pieces now? Were I programming an editorial AI I’d ask it to always write two editorials on a subject, each reflecting separate sides of an issue, giving readers a more balanced view of issues.

I find myself somewhat torn about AI, finding it both potentially promising and perilous. But I don’t want to be classified as a Luddite. For now, AI gets the benefit of the doubt from me. 

Despite my spell checker just wanting to replace “doubt” with ‘donut” in the last sentence

* My grandson recommended this book to me. His senior high school English class teacher assigns books based on each student’s career interests. And Miles is interested in pursuing a career in engineering. The book is much more interesting and readable than the title suggests.