Owl & Ibis - A Confluence Of Minds

Mural (8-by15 foot) by Elizabeth Janes (1938-39) depicting the arrival of Cherokee Nationin Oklahoma in the 1830s, on display at the Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City. The  Trail of Tears  was part of the Indian removal, a series of forced displacements and ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Tribal members "moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade.” Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes – the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory. The forced relocations were carried ou...

  Many thanks to Doug Nichols for his outstanding presentation at the October 30, 2021 Owl & Ibis - A Confluence. Doug called his talk "Will Electric Vehicles Serve a Major Role in Reaching Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050?" Doug's comprehensive coverage of electric vehicles (EVs) focused mainly on passenger cars.  Here  is a link to his Apple Keynote slideshow. It takes a few minutes to open on a PC but it and the videos it contains will open and play. During his talk Doug covered the following topics and much more. Most of the information contained in his narration is contained in his slides.  Battery life, safety, recycling, and recharging at home and on the road. Ongoing battery research & development and information about component minerals and mining industry providers. EV cost by vehicle and manufacturer, and the steady downward trend in cost to consumers. EV operating and maintenance costs. Comparison of EV and ICE (internal combustion) emission...

Web users view the web in many different ways. I view it as "America’s Attic."  This introductory episode to the  Exploring America’s Attic  series explains this metaphor.  And it clarifies how search engine tools such as Google allow anyone to quickly and efficiently search America’s Attic for the ingredients to create small miracles for friends and family. Click  here  for Part 1, Small Miracles. In this video I share the basic details of a few Google-fied miracles I have performed for my own family.  Although they are interesting in themselves, I share them in particular to perhaps inspire some viewers to consider using these miraculous tools to explore America’s Attic themselves, and bring smiles to their own friends and family. No, these aren’t big, flashy “supernatural” miracles, but small intimate miracles nonetheless. Proven to be that by the smiles and gentle joy they brought to people I care about. Miracles that couldn’t have been done in 199...

  This is for anyone who has never made a presentation at Owl & Ibis - A Confluence of Minds and thinks they might like to but need a little encouragement and want assistance. It is also for those who have presented in the past and would like to branch out in their method of presentation for their next go. I encourage everyone to make a presentation at least once. There is a great wealth of knowledge and wisdom among those of you who attend or who have shown an interest in the Confluence. Among you are parents, professors, teachers, artists, engineers, lawyers, musicians, singers, students, diplomats, social scientists, Burning Man attendees, Dark Mountain followers, economists, geneticists, independent scholars, natural philosophers, counsellors and psychotherapists, authors, poets, librarians, military veterans, pilots, medical doctors and other health professionals, humanitarian assistance workers, political activists, world travellers, fluent speakers ...

Kudos to Mona Leiter for her top-notch Owl & Ibis – A Confluence of Minds presentation on October 2, 2021. In her “Computers and the Internet: The World They Have Created – Is It Worth It?” Mona was superb in presenting objective information about the history of computers and the Internet, her analysis of its impact including her personal experience, and her point of argumentation in answering her question “Is it worth it?” What follows is a note from Mona with links to material she presented. Great job, Mona! Jim }:> & ~:)  ~ ~ ~ NOTE FROM MONA LEITER Here are some related links to my Owl & Ibis presentation on Computers and the Internet. 1. A video essay about the movie 2010 which was the sequel to the classic 2001.  This essay features spoilers.  So if you think you might want to watch the movie first go ahead and then this is a great essay about it.  This is the movie where Hal the computer has a redemptive story arc.  I really love 2010 and o...

Kudos to Fran Stewart for her August 28, 2021 Owl & Ibis presentation,  An Interactive Intro to Writing Your Memoirs . Fran superbly introduced the Confluence to the various perspectives and methods of writing one's memoirs - memoirs as poetry, letter exchanges, narrative remembrances, choosing specific events to write about, prompts, and much more. For more information on Fran's approach to memoir writing including the classes she offers on the same, please visit her website  here . Great job, Fran! Thank you! Jim }:> & ~:)

  “…the collapse of the Afghan government showed that the U.S. had fundamentally misunderstood the people of Afghanistan and had tried to impose a military system that simply made no sense for a society based in patronage networks and family relationships.“  -  Heather Cox Richardson, August18, 2021 * What is the world going through? Neoliberalism ,  Modernity , Political Science vs. History and  Cultural Anthropology ? or Western Modernity and Progress vs. The Rest? or Modernity Blinders to Premodernity and  Postmodernity  vs. Cultural Human Nature 101? We in the US and most of the rest of the world that is separately following our way regarding faux liberal democracy or  autocracy ,  Enlightenment  ideals hypocrisy or rejection, and  ü ber-nationalist capitalism are leading humankind over the precipice of economic, social, and ecological collapse. Modernity is on its way into the dustbin of history. I thought I would never have su...

    K udos to Fred Benoff on his July 31, 2021 Owl & Ibis presentation, "Artificial Intelligence.!" A PDF copy of the slideshow is available  here . Fred did a masterful job presenting a complex science and technology topic. In a concise manner he covered: deep fakes misinformation the connection between AI and the activity of neurons and neural networks AI biases and mistakes AI applications in medicine and transportation AI ethics the future of artificial general intelligence (human-like) and artificial super intelligence (greater than human intelligence) the use of AI in war and terrorism the possibility of humans losing control of AI  The discussion that followed was far-ranging and thought provoking. Thanks, Fred. Great job!

  © Gary Larson (1985) Fieldnotes refer to qualitative notes recorded by scientists or researchers while conducting research “out there” in the field, during or after their observation of a specific organism and its activities, or any other phenomenon they are studying. Such notes are intended to be aids to memory and as documentary evidence that supports the understandings researchers come up with about the object of their study. I have written informally in my journal and more formally in ethnographic fieldnotes for decades. After completing my anthropological training in the 1970s, I thereafter regarded everyday living among my fellow humans as an opportunity to learn something about being human, and to learn something about how to be a better human myself. Writing in a journal and recording fieldnotes helps me remember and aids my ability to study and benefit from my professional and personal experiences. I hope to benefit or gain something from doing this in terms of cultivati...

    The Rise of the Truth Industry Jem Bartholomew June 28, 2021 New Humanist The article linked above says much about the modern times we live in. The estrangement we feel from our fellows. The degree to which we are manipulated by others through mass media over which we have little to no control. The writer makes a distinction between disinformation and misinformation. Disinformation is media content that is deliberately false. Misinformation is content that is accidentally false. The truth industry is an information ecosystem that emerged in the 21st Century to combat disinformation and misinformation on social media. Fact-checking began in print media newsrooms in the early 20 th  Century. Fact-checkers now also include independent, post-media dis-/misinformation exposure efforts that began in the 2000s. Culled from the article, here is a sample of things dis-/misinformation independent fact-checkers are trying to do: document, expose and combat mis- and disinfor...

Peggy Noonan with President Ronald Reagan  Bill Maher Diagnoses Liberal 'Progressophobia' Peggy Noonan June 21, 2021 Bill Maher I don't share Maher's view presented in Peggy Noonan's piece linked above. That being that ultra liberal progressives are "deeply destructive" as Noonan puts it. They are a nuisance but can only be understood comparatively within the raucous din that is US society. With the exception of Antifa, liberal progressives are not prone to preemptive violence, gerrymandering, voter suppression, denying that institutional racism exists, and attending rallies bearing Nazi and white supremacist insignia and chanting "you will not replace us". Preserving white privilege and dominance is not on the liberal progressive agenda. For the most part, ultra liberal progressives can be ignored and out-muscled/out-maneuvered by the Democratic party mainstream. Consider the approaches to governance taken Pelosi and Biden. There is nothing, not...

Sincere thanks to those who attended my June 27, 2021 Owl & Ibis Zoom presentation, and for your participation in the far-ranging discussion that followed. The following are links to the slideshow. MS PowerPoint (contains music, videos, and slide animations): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AZGFOsPxgmqtzdanWQ_lYHbBv-n-poPz/view?usp=sharing NOTE: The slideshow works best using MS PowerPoint. See the attached narration, Slides 12 & 13, for when to click on the video images to start them.  All other transitions in the slideshow are automated and need not be clicked . PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JrQvbXhFvF2PAWZMOjxxMLXVoOQerX0S/view?usp=sharing N arration: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tiFpbVfmyAdK5Nn92OVYlOMOeedLu8ii/view?usp=sharing Jim }:> & ~:)

  Photo: The Hedgehog Review Scientific Authority and the Democratic Narrative Jason Blakely Fall 2020 The Hedgehog Review The essay above has some merit but I think some of its claims go a bit far.  The statement "the various voices that advance various [moral] goods must be given a fair hearing" is one. Another is "W hen it comes to the stories informing public policy in a democracy, scientists and nonscientists, experts and laypeople, must be on equal footing. Batshittery, TV punditry, conspiracy theories, disinformation, intelligent design, theology, medical quackery must all stand on an equal footing with science, reason, and humaneness as learned from history, anthropology, and philosophy in forging the way forward in a democracy? I think this is a large part of the reason humankind is in the paralyzing dilemma, confusion, and peril it is presently in. The widespread public misinterpretation of  cultural relativity  and  false equivalence  are be...