S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 14

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Mining asteroids with robots is common and sometimes the orbit of the rock is changed to facilitate extracting the valuable metals. 

One Monday morning, a car bomb detonates in Manhattan. As law enforcement officials scramble to find who's responsible, it becomes clear that it was a distraction. Terrorists have hijacked an asteroid and put in an orbit to hit the Earth. Suddenly the race is on to stop it. 

While FBI agent Juanita Flores pursues the bombers, astronauts Howard Drayden and Johnny Park put their lives on the line to save millions. Can Flores find who is responsible while Drayden and Park endeavor to avert the disaster in time?

Get ready for your space adventure here.

Amazing Gasoline Vehicles

Corvette Z06It's been a while since I posted about cars. And while electric cars seemed poised to take over the world, there are still some amazing gasoline-powered vehicles.

First is the Corvette Stingray and the Corvette Z06. The latter has 670 horsepower and a track-tuned suspension. It goes from zero to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds. And there will likely be a ZR1 variant with more than 670 horsepower, as in over 800. Then there's the Corvette Zora (named after Corvette engineer Arkus-Duntov). It could have both 1,000 hp and an extra luxurious interior to maybe compete with cars such as the Ferrari 812 Superfast luxury cruiser.

And the Corvette E-ray is a hybrid that uses electric motors and a small battery to enhance performance. There is nothing green about this car. Well, except maybe one of the available colors.

Other amazing vehicles include the Ford Raptor R pickup with a Mustang Shelby engine making just over 700 horsepower. It was built to compete with the Ram 1500 TRX which has a 703 horsepower engine. Both are off-road capable if that's your thing (I'm more of a pavement guy).

I'm going to ignore in this post Ferraris and Lamborghinis and other hypercars. Keep this somewhat affordable.

The BMW M5 and the Audi RS7 are both high-horsepower sedans with the last of the V8s. Unfortunately, Audi is going all electric soon as penance for VW's diesel emissions scandal (Audi is owned by VW). 

I would love to own a Corvette Z06 again. But I can't justify it. Plus, I'd need a bigger garage.

If you want to spend a lot of money, there's the 986 horsepower Ferrari SF90. Also a hybrid like the Corvette E-ray, it actually gets decent mileage for a supercar. But it costs over half a million dollars!

How do you feel about high-horsepower/fast cars? A relic of the past or a great send off for the internal combustion engine? Let me know in the comments below.

DVD.com is Going Away

I got an email on April 18th saying that Netflix will be discontinuing its DVD service and only have streaming as of the end of September. This after 25 years. I've been on Netflix/DVD.com since February of 2002 or 21 of those 25 years. It's how I watch new release movies and older movies I might have missed.

I don't know what I'm going to do now after the service ends in late September. I might have to figure out how RedBox works. Or something. It seems to get all the new released movies on streaming you have to subscribe to about four services (Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, and HBOMax). Plus maybe Netflix. I already subscribe to Disney+ (for Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel) and Paramount+ (for Star Trek). 

I'm really not happy about this at all. But I understand that it's probably not making as much money as Netflix's streaming service is. It's a decision that is best for the company, but not for its customers.

I've been a very loyal customer for 21 years. I put up with them delaying new DVD releases for four weeks. I put up with them throttling me (not sending me new releases) because I sent back movies too fast and too often. I put up with the time it took to get a disc mailed to me going from one day to five days.

And "mailing the movie" is sort of a ritual event in my household. We drive through the Post Office parking lot to the mailbox and put it in. Then, if the weather is good, I drive down the interstate practicing on-ramp and off-ramp road racing. Going to have to figure out a way/reason to do that.

Do you use DVD.com for movies? If so, how do you feel about this move. Let me know in the comments below.

AI Writer

Last week I talked about an AI girlfriend. Which while amusing, isn't very threatening. I doubt they will replace real girlfriends for most people.

But AI is not just for fake girlfriends. I asked the chatbot ChatGPT to write a love story. This is what it wrote:

Once upon a time, in a small village, lived a beautiful young woman named Ava. She was kind and loving, always putting others before herself. Ava had many suitors, but her heart longed for someone special, someone who would love and cherish her for who she truly was.

One day, while she was walking in the forest, Ava stumbled upon a young man who was injured. He was lying on the ground, and Ava immediately ran to his side to help. The young man's name was Jack, and he was a traveling musician. Jack had been attacked by bandits while on his journey, and Ava had come just in time to save him.

Ava took Jack to her home and nursed him back to health. Over the next few weeks, Ava and Jack grew to be very close friends. Jack would sing for Ava every night, and she would listen in awe as his beautiful voice filled the room. Ava was struck by Jack's kindness, his passion for life, and his love for music.

As Jack's strength returned, he knew that he couldn't leave Ava's side. He had fallen in love with her, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life by her side. Jack mustered up the courage to tell Ava how he felt, and to his surprise, Ava felt the same way. They both knew that they had found something special, something worth holding onto.

Ava and Jack were soon married, and they lived happily ever after. They traveled the world together, singing and playing music, always finding new adventures and new ways to love each other. And every night, as they drifted off to sleep, they knew that they had found their true soulmate, their one true love.

Years passed, and Ava and Jack grew old together. They still laughed, they still danced, and they still loved each other as much as they did on that fateful day in the forest. And as they held each other tight on their final night, they smiled, knowing that their love story would live on, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps and find their own true love.

Not great. As a friend of mine pointed out, it's all telling and no showing. But it's a start. How soon until AI puts writers, lawyers, doctors, referees, etc. out of business? Maybe I'm glad I'm old and won't live to see it. Or I might. It might happen faster then I think.

What do you think of the story? Is AI going to destroy writers' jobs? Or other jobs? Let me know in the comments below.

AI Girlfriend

An AI girlfriend adWhen I saw the movie Her  (not to be confused with She ), I thought it was entertaining and an interesting concept. If you haven't seen it, a man falls in love with his computer's voice-interface operating system.

The internet has allowed people to pull out of real life to be more engaged with people across the world. Between social media and chat apps such as Discord, and now there's VR chat apps, people can live in cyberspace and not the real world as much as they want (or can). 

Lately on Facebook, I've been seeing ads for, no kidding, an AI girlfriend. I could see this really appealing to some people. Shy, introverted types like me. (I don't need an AI girlfriend, I have a real-life wife.) 

Reminds me of this Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot" and the "hygiene movie."

Is this the future? People interacting with AI more than other humans?  There's no angst (does she love me back?). Not awkwardness, probably. Maybe also AI psychologists and AI doctors and AI lawyers. This is a disturbing trend in a way and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

How do you feel about the AI trend? Is this the future of less human-to-human interaction and more human-to-computer connections? Let me know in the comments below.

Movie Review: City Lights

I sometimes review movies long after they've come out. Usually because I don't see them until they become available on DVD.com (né Netflix). But this one might be a record. I'm going to review a movie that came out in 1931.

City Lights is a film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin. Despite the fact that movies had sound (i.e., were "talkies"), City Lights has no dialogue. The soundtrack only has music and some sound effects. Dialogue was minimal and handled by intertitles as would happen in a silent film. 

When I watch very old movies, especially comedies, I usually find them trite and corny. I recently watched The General, made in 1926, and it had that problem. In fact, I found it boring.

But with City Lights, I laughed a lot. Just shows the genius of Chaplin that his movie is funny 92 years after it was made. The story line is a little ridiculous, but that just sets up the humor. Chaplin is a tramp (as usual) who a millionaire adopts, but only when he's drunk. The tramp is in love with a blind flower girl (a woman who sells flowers on the street; it was the Great Depression, after all) and uses the millionaire's car and money to impress her. 

This movie was laugh-out-loud funny. I recommend checking it out (it is available on DVD.com).

How do you feel about old comedy movies. Do you find them boring or corny or funny. Let me know in the comments below.

The above photo is being used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act: fair usage.

The Downside of NIL

I already wrote about what I don't like a  (NIL) in NCAA sports. But there was something I didn't think about until I read an article in a paper magazine (not available online).

School boosters are using NIL as a recruitment device. A player choose a certain university to play football at because the boosters promised him $13 million in NIL money. I mean, we might as well just give up and start paying college football players like we do NFL players. Wave $13 million in front of an 18-year-old kid and he'll probably ask "Where do I sign?" (Wave $13 million in front of anybody and they'll likely ask "Where do I sign?") 

And what happens when after his first successful year at that school, he gets a better offer and uses the transfer portal to go to a new school? 

What happens when Phil Knight figures this out and manages to get huge NIL contracts with Nike for good players to go to Oregon?

This will put the best players not at the best schools for them and their football career, but at the schools whose boosters can come up with the most NIL money.

As much as I loath NCAA micromanaging sports recruiting (which it is doing less of since a Supreme Court decision), I think it should put a stop to this kind of big money dealing when it comes to 18-year-old kids. If you waived $13 million in front of me when I was 18, I would have jumped at it even if it wasn't the best thing for me.

How do you feel about this abuse of NIL? Should the NCAA put a stop to it? Let me know in the comments below.

Elevators

I must have a subconscious fear of elevators.

When I'm awake, I have no problem with elevators. I ride in them all the time.

But when I'm dreaming, elevators are scary. They never work right in my dreams. And who dreams about elevators, anyway?

A recent dream I had I was at a military facility and there were two elevators, one for officers and one for everyone else. I took the one for officers (I never was an officer in the military). It was fast. So fast that when it went down, your feet left the floor. But it was so fast, it didn't stop long enough where I wanted to get off to get out the door. So I had to go back up (my knees bent as it went so fast). I don't remember how I got off of it but then I was talking to my brother about guns in the dream.

Elevators in my dreams never work correctly. They take me to the wrong floor or the wrong part of the floor (moving sideways, apparently), or even the wrong building or a totally different place as if they were a portal of some kind. And this is a recurring theme in my dreams. I don't have elevators in every dream (lots of cars, though), but when I do, it's not going to work right.

Do you have recurring themes in your dreams? Do you think I subconsciously fear elevators? Let me know in the comments below. 

We're So Spoiled

Vinyl RecordA while back I got a song stuck in my head. The only line I remembered was "There'll be one child born to carry on, to carry on." So I googled it. I found out that it's a song called "When I Die" by Blood Sweat & Tears. (The song came out in 1968.)

I clicked on the YouTube link in Google to hear the song. And I heard seemingly random pops and clicks in the recording. Being an older fellow, I immediately realized that the YouTube video was recorded off a vinyl record and the pops and clicks are what vinyl records develop if they aren't cared for lovingly. And maybe even if. And we used to put up with it because that was the only way to enjoy music other than listen to the radio (where you didn't have a choice of what to hear).

Later cassette tapes came out but they had "tape hiss." And, yes, I'm ignoring 8-tracks.

I remember when CDs came out and I first listened to them and they were amazing. No pops and clicks and the music was as clear as anything. The first CD I bought was Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits because it had "Money for Nothing" on it. I also bought it on cassette so I could listen to it in my car.

CDs lasted a good long time (maybe 20 years or so) before digital music came out on iPods. Now we can download music or stream it. But it all sounds good compared to what we used to have. We are spoiled these days.

And yes, I know, some people are going back to vinyl. Don't as me why.

Do you remember vinyl records? Or 8-tracks? Let me know in the comments below.

Name, Image, Likeness

The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has, in its wisdom, allowed college sports players to market their name, image, or likeness (NIL) for money. This is a big change from before when the NCAA wanted to protect the amature status of their players to the extent that buying them a round of golf or giving them a fruit basket was enough to get the University of Washington Huskies into trouble for "recruiting violations."

The NCAA is, for some reason, the unquestioned, all-powerful leader of all college and university intercollegiate sports. Never quite understood why.

Not sure how much I like this NIL stuff. One Gonzaga University basketball player has done multiple ads for a Spokane Indian casino. The ironic thing is, Gonzaga is a Jesuit school and the player is working with a casino.

I suppose this is a way for players to make a little money. But in some cases, it could be a lot of money. Just depends on how marketable the player is. I've heard of college sports players hiring agents for this purpose. 

Also, for years the NCAA and the universities/colleges have used the players' NIL for promotional purposes without compensation to the player. Now maybe they will have to.

But I see large possibilities for abuse and exploitation of young students. This is an experiment that will have to be borne out.

How do you feel about NIL? Does it worry you or not? Let me know in the comments below.