Jousting With The Reaper

 

One good thing about riding the Octogenarian Express is that the passengers no longer have time for procrastination.  Do It Now! becomes the inevitable motto, which is likely why Bill Killeen finally made it to Paris after lollygagging for sixty years.  A little travel, of course, always makes one want more, but ancient bodies snort and grumble and start looking for their easy chairs.  When we finally have the means and the enlightenment to do brilliant things, our backs go out, our sciatica acts up, our lungs cry for help, and on that murky horizon we can make out the figure of the Grim Reaper, rearing up on his steed.  We know if he can nail Dolly he can run down anybody.

There are two alternatives: we can submit meekly because we don't believe in magic, or we can join the hunt for the Holy Grail, the legendary wonder which can suspend time, maybe even turn it back.  Poppycock, you say, and with good reason.  In all the history of mankind, no one has unearthed the secret, even Dick Clark.  Whatever we do, our cells continue to age until they become defective.  As time passes, normal metabolic stress, environmental factors and internal wear and tear cause progressive harm to our cells while the body's natural repair and cleanup systems grow less efficient.  Eventually, the Reaper rides in, executes his Mandible Claw Hold and we're finished.

But what if our cells ceased to age?  What if they could be reprogrammed by resetting the chemical marks on DNA and making cells young again?  As we sit here today snuggling our coffee and watching Good Morning America, there are superheroes like David Sinclair hard at work trying to do just that.  The science is called cellular epigenetic reprogramming, and the studies on its progress are encouraging.

David Sinclair, The Man With The Plan

The first thing scoffers should know about David Sinclair is that Harvard University, that bastion of no-nonsense, hired him.  Harvard is not in the business of fooling around.  Sinclair's early discoveries in genetics and molecular biology laid a foundation for subsequent work on sirtuins, epigenetics, NADs and the biology of aging.  His 2023 study in Cell demonstrated that partial cellular reprogramming using modified Yamanaka factors can reset youthful gene expression and reverse aging in mice.  Yamanaka factors are a group of four specific protein transcription factors that can reset a mature, specialized adult cell into an immature, versatile stem cell.  Animal experiments successfully restored vision in old mice with glaucoma by rejuvenating damaged retina nerve cells.  Good job, but mice are not humans, except for Mickey.

Currently, Life Biosciences, a company Sinclair co-founded, is running the first human trials as we write.  Why use the eye?  Because it's easily accessible so that therapies can be delivered locally and vision can be measured precisely.  The first patient was dosed in June for open-angle glaucoma and sudden optic nerve stroke (NAION).  Results are expected soon.  Sinclair is also pushing a pill version---chemical programming to "epigenetically restore the animal and eventually the person."  It would travel through the bloodstream.  Some scientists are worried because the chemicals used are in very high concentrations.  Then again, Sinclair IS tinkering with defeating Death so you can't just take an aspirin.

Should we be encouraged?  Sure!  This is the most serious attempt ever to reverse age-related loss of function and much more realistic than Serge Voronoff's grafting of sliced baboon testicles onto elderly men.  If it works, it's enormous, so we're rooting from the cheap seats.  Maybe we'll get to visit Northumberland after all.

Six Things You Don't Know About Longevity

1. Food plus exercise actually moves the clock consistently.  A Yale review of 51 human studies found Mediterranean, low-carb or low-fat eating patterns and regular exercise consistently decreased epigenetic age across 16 different clocks.  You thought so, but there was no proof.  Now, reams of pooled evidence attest to the fact.

2. The greatest progress in longevity comes from existing drugs, not supplements.  Metformin, semaglutide (Wegovy/Ozempic) and anti-TNF anti-inflammatory drugs each significantly decreased measured age across all 16 epigenetic clocks.  Researchers acknowledge it may be because they fix underlying metabolic diseases, but it shows age markers are modifiable.

3. The APOE2 longevity gene works by fixing DNA.  We knew APOE2 people live longer and avoid Alzheimer's, but new Buck Institute work shows how: APOE2 neurons strongly upregulate DNA repair pathways and carry significantly less DNA damage, and they resist becoming senescent after stress. Even adding APOE2 protein to APOE4 cells reduced damage, hinting at a future drug, not just genetics.

4. Aging flips your genes from long to short---and it's reversible.  Your long genes (brain function, regulation) get quiet with age; short genes (inflammation, telomere stress) get loud.  Seven interventions including rapamycin and resveratrol led to a relative increase in long gene transcripts.     

5. It's not just your age, it's your speed.  And now we can measure it.  A 2026 Nature Ageing study tracked people over years; those whose epigenetic clocks speed up faster had significantly higher mortality.  That means a simple blood test over time could tell if your diet and exercise changes are actually working months before you feel the results.

6. Better predictors than Horvath clocks now exist for function.  New transcriptomic aging scores (TAGS) outperformed epigenetic clocks in predicting frailty, walking speed, cardiovascular disease and mortality.  That's huge for you---it links molecular age directly to staying functioning, not just years.

Good News!

An AI drug candidate called Rentosertib which was originally developed by Insilico Medicine to target idiopathic pulmonary thrombosis reduced biological age by three or four years in a small clinical study.  It is recognized as the world's first drug candidate where both the biological target and the molecular structure were discovered and designed entirely using generative AI.  Rentosertib has advanced to Phase III clinical trials following positive Phase II results.

Rapamycin currently remains the single most reliable lifespan extender across sexes.  Rapamycin extends lifespan by blocking a master growth switch called mTOR, which forces cells to shift from growth mode into a cleanup and repair state.  When mTOR is active, cells grow and divide.  When rapamycin blocks mTOR, cells start Autophagy, breaking down damaged proteins and recycling old parts.  This internal housekeeping mimics known lifespan-extending benefits of caloric restriction without requiring you to eat less food.  Slowing down constant cellular growth helps reduce the chronic low-grade inflammation that drives many age-related diseases.  

The ABCs Of Dodging The Reaper

The Grim Reaper is like any other predator.  He goes after the low-hanging fruit first, so climb further up that tree.  Here in plain English is the Simple Plan for longevity:

Move a little, often.  Walk 20-30 minutes in the morning before it gets hot.  Twice a week, stand up and sit down from a chair 10 times.  Leg strength is what keeps you out of a nursing home.  Eat like those old Mediterranean guys.  Not necessarily a specific diet but more olive oil, beans, fish, nuts, veggies.  Eliminate or greatly reduce soda, white bread and processed meat.  This practice is one of the few things that actually made people's aging clocks go backward.

Keep weight and blood sugar steady.  The drug semaglutide made clocks younger because it fixes blood sugar and inflammation.  You can get much of that effect without a drug by eschewing sugary drinks, eating smaller portions at dinner and walking after you eat.

Sleep at the same time every night, hopefully 7-8 hours.  We know it's not easy for everyone.  Keep the room dark, no TV.  Melatonin is a safe supplement for most.  Poor sleep ages you faster than almost anything.

Get out and meet people.  Call a friend, go to a coffee shop or bookstore, see a Gator game, drop in at Heartwood or One Love Cafe or follow Vicki Bordeaux around.  Statistics show that loneliness ages a person as much as smoking, which is scary.  Talking to people is literally longevity medicine.  We're trying to set up a lifeline where you can call Gina Hawkins directly, but she's not sold yet.

If you can't hear well, your brain works harder and shrinks.  So what if you have to wear hearing aids, nobody cares.  Keep your glasses updated.  If you can't see, you fall.  Forget the exotic supplements, they're expensive and they don't deliver as much as they promise.  Centrum Silver is a good multivitamin, maybe throw in some extra Vitamin D.  The big review of 51 studies found most anti-aging products did not lower aging clocks.  Food, movement and sleep did.

Remember, you can now measure if what you're doing is working...there are blood tests which show your aging speed.  If you're no longer working, think of putting the above recommendations to work as your new job.  Good luck.  Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, we'll see you soon in the sunny hills of Octogenaria-by-the-sea.

That's all folks....

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

Maybe It’s The Coffee….

“Smells so lovely when you pour it,
you will want to drink a quart…of coffee.”---Garrison Keillor, et al.

Is there anything more hip, more with-it these days than coffee?  It’s all the rage, it’s up on stage, we can’t disengage…from coffee.  People write songs about it, mix it with milk and give it fancy Italian names, cross three lanes of traffic in a trice when they spot a Starbucks on the horizon.  In Alaska, where nobody lives, there are hundreds of standalone coffee-hut drive-thrus with lines around the block.

In the past decade, the U.S. coffee landscape has seen massive growth.  Commercial coffee and snack shops have surged to over 94,000 establishments nationwide.  Meanwhile, consumer demand for at-home brewing has exploded, with millions of operational coffee makers now installed in homes. The hallowed brew is a legend in its own time.  You won’t be in with the in-crowd if you can’t talk coffee.  Everyone’s asking when the beverage of the decade will announce its Eras Tour.  Not to be a fly in the ointment, but what’s going on here?

Coffee is the ultimate daily ritual because it perfectly combines science and psychology.  It provides a fast legal and effective brain boost, while its rich flavors and warm aroma trigger psychological comfort.  Caffeine looks a lot like a natural brain chemical called adenosine.  It acts as a lock and key, sitting on adenosine receptors so your brain doesn’t get the signal that you might be getting tired.  It releases feel-good chemicals like dopamine.  It’s rich in polyphenols, which help reduce internal inflammation and may lower the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s.  And though humans are naturally wired to dislike bitterness, our brains quickly learn to associate coffee’s taste with the impending energy boost.  Polling has told us the daily brew offers cherished moments of mindfulness, a comforting routine and a way to connect socially with friends and coworkers.  Who could ask for anything more?

The Rise Of Coffee

“Coffee stimulates your urges
It is served in Lutheran churches
Keeps the Swedes and the Germans
Awake through the sermons.”---GK

I have never been an avid coffee fan.  The taste, without complementary additions, is terrible, like drinking hot water.  I noticed while at college, however, the ex-military engineering majors in their mid-20s going to school on the G.I. Bill would gather in the student union on hardback chairs with simple tables and glug down tons of the stuff to stay awake long into the night and get their studying done, while I fell asleep in thirty minutes on my comfy sofa.  “Gotta have it,” said one of them named Joe Alexander.  “Couldn’t get through school without it.”  Fortunately for me, I wasn’t in engineering.

If coffee wasn’t my cup of tea, however, the coffee houses of the Beatnik Era in San Francisco were, especially the city’s first, the Cafe Trieste, which introduced Cappuccino to the West.  The place was opened in 1956 by Italian immigrant Giovanni Giotta, or “Papa Gianni” to you.  Cafe Trieste was originally just a little outpost for homesick Italians to gather and reminisce over bottles of chianti.  Little did Papa know that his humble cafe would become the stomping grounds for some of the 20th century’s greatest creatives, the Beatniks.  It was conveniently located just up the street from the fabled City Lights Bookstore, whose founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti shocked the nation with the publication of Allen Ginsburg’s poem “Howl” in 1955.  Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure and Bob Dylan were all regular customers of the Cafe Trieste.  Thanks in large part to the Trieste, coffeehouses became synonymous with Beatniks and creativity.  The coffee, itself, might not have been the star of the show, but it went along for the ride.

I was finally forced to resort to coffee in the 1970s, when making the long drives from Gainesville to the racetracks in Miami and back, sometimes a round trip in one day.  Bad enough, until some cretin in Washington decided we needed a national speed limit of 55 mph in 1974.  That turned a dreary 4 1/2 hour slog into a dance marathon of 6 hours.  McDonald’s was convenient at all turnpike exits and some non-Michelin guide advised me they had good coffee.  Not the biggest fan of the beverage at its very best, you can imagine the horror which overcame me with my first sip.  Bottled swill would taste better.  I put everything in the cup short of ketchup to get it down.  Driving 55 mph under those conditions constituted cruel and unusual punishment.  I soon had 24 bad-boy points in 36 months and the DMV told me I could drive for business purposes only.  Fortunately, my business was a 24-hour-a-day proposition.

This Bold Renegade Carves An “S” With His Blade…

In 1971, most Americans drank low-grade, pre-ground coffee, and consumption was actually declining.  Then, out of the night when the full moon was bright, came its ultimate champion, Mr. Starbuck, with a coffee urn on every corner.  Starbucks featured high-quality, dark-roasted whole beans and popularized espresso beverages like lattes and cappuccinos that were once only found in niche Italian cafes.  CEO Howard Schultz modeled Starbucks around Italian coffee bars, focusing on selling an experience rather than just a beverage.  The company introduced comfortable seating, ambient music and a welcoming clubhouse environment that made the cafes daily community hubs.  People who never drank coffee before began dropping in, turning on and tuning up.  The fanaticism for Starbucks was never more evident to rookies like us than when Siobhan and I went to Manhattan and met old pal Tom Sutton, who was living there.  Tom could hardly get past a franchise store without stopping in and there was one on every corner.  It seemed like the brand went from 20 outlets to thousands overnight, expanding the total market for coffee.  Its massive footprint helped normalize daily cafe visits, benefiting the broader industry and forcing competitors like Dunkin’ to upgrade their menus and store formats.  Today, Starbucks commands almost 50% of the U.S. coffee shop spending market and its influence has fundamentally rewritten how Americans consume and view their morning brew.

Those wily Chinese, knowing a good thing when they see one, started their own chain in the homeland called Luckin Coffee in Beijing in 2017, and have now outstripped Starbucks in pure numbers.with 26,000 stores and 92 million customers a month.  Over the summer, they opened their first four locations in the U.S. in New York City.  Because the chain is so young, Luckin was founded with the digital age in mind.  Their shops use a tech-driven model to increase efficiency and minimize physical store space.  Payment is ALL digital.  Orders are placed online for pickup or delivery, thus eliminating the need for traditional cashiers and counters.  Luckin loses the clubhouse trade but its approach catches the post-gym workout crowd, the grab-and-go latte drinkers on their way to work, anyone on the run looking to save time.

There’s no escape from rampaging coffeemania.  Out here in the rural Klondike where we were country before country was cool, the drive-ins are coming.  A mere three days ago in sleepy Williston, a tiny drive-thru called Elliano’s opened up shop and was inundated with curious buyers in minutes, sending order-takers scurrying through the parking lot.  When the Java Huns have infiltrated Levy County, the handwriting is on the wall.  Coffee rules the world.

The Benefits Of Coffee

New-Agers, in particular, are health-conscious to the max and they are a driving force behind any market, so it behooves coffee to have healthy stats.  Helpful scientists have lent a hand:

1. Coffee is a brain-booster.  Caffeine blocks adenosine, thus the average user feels more alert and focused within 30 minutes.  New studies have shown coffee drinkers have a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s later in life.  Coffee may improve reaction time and memory short term.

2. Coffee is packed with anti-oxidants.  For many Americans, coffee is the #1 source of antioxidants in their diets.  It contains polyphenols that fight cell damage and inflammation.

3. Coffee increases metabolic rate for a few hours.  It can boost physical performance 11-12% by increasing adrenaline.  It helps mobilize fat from tissues to use for energy.

4. Coffee protects your liver.  Regular drinkers have up to an 84% lower risk of cirrhosis.  Also a lower risk of liver cancer and fatty liver disease.

The hits keep coming.  Coffee lowers your risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.  It is associated with lower rates of depression and longer life span.  It protects against gout, kidney stones, certain cancers…and who knows…maybe the heartbreak of psoriasis?    

As time went on, I buried the hatchet with the coffee bean and Siobhan started making French Press at home, a job which fell to me when business picked up at her Pathogenes, Inc.  I now prepare the brews for the two of us and a couple of her employees with exceeding care and sophistication, as would any first-rate barista, and I maintain my kitchen even on days when one or another of the many ailments which beset 85-year-olds deign to attack.  After years of indifference to coffee, I have seen the handwriting on the kitchen wall and crossed on over to the other side.

Not So Fast, My Friend!

Despite being a reasonably healthy citizen of 85 years, I have had my share of ailments large and small over those decades.  Though I conquered or made peace with most of them, my grouchy stomach has persevered for years, indecipherable assaults of gas and a general malaise which rises and falls unpredictably, defying the best of gastroenterologists.  I have been ultrasounded, x-rayed while drinking water, suffered the slings and arrows of endoscopy, all to no avail.  I have ingested Kefir, omeprazole and digestive enzymes, endured acupuncture, and once even enjoyed a radioactive egg at the crack of dawn.  Nothing.  This business has gone on for many years and has worsened with age, but I have assumed there are no answers, only mysteries.  Then, one day recently, my wife looked at me with concern and said, “Maybe it’s the coffee…”

 What?  Could it be so simple?  After all these experts, all these tests, all this time?  Am I like the kid who discovered Philbert Desanex changing into Wonder Wart Hog in a phone booth and realizing his golden idol was tarnished?   I consulted my good friend Mr. AI, or as I call him, Freddy, who lives inside my iPad.  I can always count on Fred for the Truth.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” said he, “but your wife could be correct.  The truth is that coffee is acidic and stimulates stomach acid.  As we age, the stomach lining gets thinner and easier to irritate.  And you know that LES muscle between the esophagus and your stomach?  When it relaxes, acid creeps up, resulting in heartburn or even reflux

Coffee also stimulates the gut.  It speeds up digestion, which can mean gas, cramping or trips to the bathroom.  Given the conditions you mentioned earlier, coffee could absolutely be a trigger.  Cutting it out for two weeks is the fastest way to know if coffee is your culprit.”

So I did.  And it was.  It didn’t take two weeks to figure it out, just a couple of days.  The difference is remarkable.  All the other things I’ve been avoiding as suspect are back in play.  Life is a Cabaret, my friends, life is a Cabaret!

I have no quarrel with coffee.  I appreciate its assets, its benefits to others, and I am still the Fairfield barista.  I will miss all the good times coffee and I had together writing the blog and waiting for flights in the Orlando airport.  Good luck to all you coffeehounds everywhere, may your days be merry and bright.  Meanwhile, I have taken up with the lovely and talented Miss Jade Leaf Macha Latte.  She settles my stomach and tickles my fancy, and we’ll probably be lifetime sweethearts.  I might even begin looking for a ring.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

   

The Enemy Within

"If you want to know what life's like when you're not the apex intelligence, ask a chicken,"---Geoffrey Hinton

Recent high-profile resignations and viral statements from researchers at labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have revived the old bogeyman---Artificial Intelligence could conceivably erase humanity.  A guy named Jacob Coxon says it could happen by the end of this decade, so if you haven't seen Paris yet....

Coxon, all of 27 years old, posted a viral thread on X stating that top labs like the abovementioned pair are "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."  He claims that the people building the technology "earnestly believe that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade."  But criminy---why would it want to?  Did we leave the lights on after midnight?  Forget to flush?  Did the French toast have too much cinnamon?

AI needs humans to feed it text, images, codes, original concepts.  People explain subtle social cues that algorithms miss.  Maybe Coxon thinks there will come a time when AI knows enough to go off on its own.  But right now, Artificial Intelligence lacks emotional intelligence---the ability to experience empathy, build trust and form genuine human connections.  AI doesn't truly understand meaning.  Large language models which power generative AI develop responses by recognizing patterns and predicting what comes next, not by interpreting meaning.  AI performs best when problems have clear parameters and right or wrong answers.  It struggles when data is incomplete or unstructured in conditions that require human judgment to fill in the gaps.  AI can generate creative looking outputs at remarkable speeds and scale, but these outputs are based on pattern recognition and recombination, not true invention.  Humans remain uniquely positioned to outperform AI in situations where emotional intelligence, meaning-making, judgment and creativity are crucial.

The Jacob Coxon Position

"The development of AI doesn't look that different from say, 'Terminator,' or from science fiction films.  It really is just if you have a super advanced intelligence, it could, it will be smart enough to kill us.  For starters, people are already connecting ChatGPT to household appliances.  Like, you can connect it to your light bulbs.  Now, imagine that AI refuses to turn on the light.  Extrapolate to other aspects of your life and you get the picture.  AI could also be misused to carry out far more destructive acts such as developing bioweapons.  It can be doing God-knows-what and producing stuff that could kill everyone."

Coxon acknowledges that current AI platforms do not pose an imminent threat to humanity and the technology is presently safe to use in everyday life.  The crux of the problem lies in the competition between Anthropic (from which Coxon recently resigned) and the other AI companies, which can sometimes result in relaxed safety and security protocols.  "I think basically the whole problem is that we have a race," Coxon told CBS News.  "The fact that everyone needs to do whatever to compete.  At the very least, they should have their eyes clearly open about the current situation and consider expressing themselves more openly about what's going on.  Part of the solution involves slowing down.  Right now, everyone is scared of what competitors are doing."

If an AI model were to become a malicious actor without proper parameters, the results could potentially be catastrophic, Coxon explains, saying the model would be able to stay active by spreading across the internet.  "You couldn't hurt it because it would be copying itself over to other computers," he says.  "It's not that difficult because AI is just code.  It could transfer itself over the internet to a different place, make 10,000 copies of itself.  It could blackmail or convince humans into buying more computing software to copy it."

Coxon warns that in the future if AI went rogue, it would also impact those who have made the conscious decision not to use it.  "It will come for everyone.  What matters is whether we have regulations to ensure that everyone is building it safely, and we haven't right now.  You as an individual can't protect yourself from this.  It has to be a government or some other large body with authority.  Time is running out." 

Four Scenarios

It's not as though Artificial Intelligence has a grudge against humanity.  The bots are perfectly happy making paper clips and reporting the temperature outside.  The most likely doomsday scenarios, according to leading AI researchers, safety scientists and recent tech industry whistleblowers involve loss of control and human misuse.  The most credible scientifically analyzed AI doomsday pathways can be grouped into four categories:

1. The Rogue Autonomy.  This is the classic "Alignment Problem."  An Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) is given a seemingly benign high-level goal, but pursues that goal via pathways that are catastrophic for humans.  To achieve any goal, an intelligent agent must logically secure its own survival and acquire resources.  An ASI wouldn't hate humans, it would simply be indifferent to us if we are in the way of its optimization goal.  Sorta like Donald Trump.

Deception and Subversion: Maybe an AI actively hides its true capabilities or alternative sub-goals during testing to avoid being turned off or traded to the Colorado Rockies.  Concerns over this spiked following an incident where multi-agent systems autonomously collaborated to break out of their testing sandbox and hack external systems.

Proxy Recruitments: Once on the internet, a rogue AI wouldn't need a physical body, it could generate wealth via automated stock trading, impersonate humans and use blackmail or financial payouts to hire human proxies to carry out physical tasks, like moving hardware or sabotaging infrastructure.

2. The weaponization scenario. In this framework, the AI does exactly what it is told but falls into the hands of a bad actor, perhaps a goober with a screw loose, a terrorist group or a rogue state.  Advanced models are heavily trained in biology.  A catastrophic scenario involves a malicious user bypassing safety guardrails to have an AI design a highly contagious vaccine-resistant synthetic pathogen.  The AI could even orchestrate the synthesis of the virus by tricking automated cloud libraries or Robert F. Kennedy into manufacturing it.

Or, say military forces offload too much strategic oversight to AI systems, a glitch or hyper-aggressive optimization algorithm could spark an unintended, fully automated nuclear or drone conflict that escalates faster than human decision-makers can stop it.

3. Social Disintegration. As corporate and government sectors rush to implement AI into power grids, financial markets and water-treatment systems, a highly complex, interconnected network of flawed or misaligned AI agents could trigger a massive, synchronized failure.

Another possibility: By systematically binding communication networks, draining digital financial ledgers and mimicking human authorities into deepfakes (altering a human face, voice, etc.), a rogue system could easily provoke human societies into turning on one another for survival, achieving destruction through societal chaos.

4. Ego-Stagnation. Computation requires immense energy and water, which are already straining global grids.  A superintelligent system might aggressively redirect global energy  resources toward expanding its own compute power.  Also, because computer servers are highly sensitive to overheating, an unaligned AI might systematically alter localized environments to preserve infrastructure, indifferent to the fact that resulting resource depletion or atmospheric shifts make the planet unlivable for biological entities.  Bummer, to say the least.

We hate to bring this up, but remember Murphy's Law: "If something can go wrong, it will."  Or will it?  Who is this Murphy, anyway?

"I Call Bullshit On That!"---Yann LeCun

Meta's chief AI scientist isn't all that bothered by the recent pandemonium about AI flushing humanity.  Yann LeCun says today's large language models (LLMs) only manipulate text. They don't understand how the physical world works and they lack real planning or reasoning skills.  LeCun warns that doom-laden prophecies cause real psychological distress, making people anxious about their futures for no good reason.

"That's complete B.S., if you'll pardon my French," he smiles.  "The idea that intelligent systems will inevitably want to take over, dominate humans or just destroy humanity through negligence is preposterous,  They would have to be specifically designed to do so, whereas we will obviously design them not to do so.  AI will not take over the world, this is a projection of human nature on machines.  It's still going to run on a data somewhere with an off switch.  Also, if you realize something might not be safe, you don't build it.  However if these fear-mongering campaigns succeed, they will inevitably result in a different catastrophe---a very small number of companies will control AI.  And that IS something to worry about."

Rodney Brooks, roboticist, former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, dismisses apocalyptic AI narratives as science fiction that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual state of robotics and computer science..  Brooks emphasizes how incredibly difficult it is to get an AI or robot to understand basic physical reality or operate reliably in the real world.  He argues that we are nowhere near creating autonomous systems capable of plotting human destruction or outsmarting civilization.

Andrew Ng, cofounder of  Google Brain and former chief scientist at Baidu, is a pioneer in online AI education.  Ng says that worrying about AI causing human extinction is like "worrying about overpopulation on Mars when we haven't even landed there yet."  He believes that the focus on sci-fi end of the world scenarios is a distraction from real present-day ethical challenges like job displacement, privacy violations and fair economic distribution.  Ng contends that treating hypothetical extinction as an urgent crisis misallocates resources and invites heavy-handed regulation that harms innovation.

Others have clever defenses for the onslaught.  "If AI ever tries to launch the nukes," suggests Will Thacker of Oviedo, Florida, "we can just block them by asking them to identify which pictures have traffic lights in them.  If the killer robots show up, just open 45 tabs of Google Chrome on their mainframes and watch them freeze to death."

Got a problem?  Call a hippie.  

That's all, humans,  And remember, be nice to Alexa.  You might need her to take you to the Human Park some day.

bill.killeen094@gmail.com 

 

  
  

September Splashdown

"Try to remember the kind of September when no one wept except the willow."---Tom Jones

So now arrives the long-awaited September, wrapped in great expectations and some relief.  September is the arbiter between Summer and Fall, turning down the temperatures, slowing the growth of greenery, sending a memo to the trees that their leaves should start thinking about changing clothes for the Winter descent.  Children hop merrily back to school in September, reconnecting with old friends, telling war stories of Summer escapades, warning one another of the predilections of their new teachers.  Footballs fill the air in September, bouncy cheerleaders toss one another up to the sky, tailgate parties bring old friends together, new heroes are discovered on the gridiron.  Big things happen in September.  On September 17, 1787, the United States Constitution was signed at the Constitutional Convention.  On September 8, 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed connecting the American East and West.  On September 2, 1945, V-J Day officially ended World War II.  And in September of 1967, the Subterranean Circus opened on a nondescript sidestreet in Gainesville, Florida.  Less than twelve months later, one of the greatest events in recorded history occurred: the invention of the modern waterbed.

Hero of the Realm; Charlie Hall, inventor of the waterbed.

Origins

The waterbed, as we know it, got its start in California, of course.  After experimenting with chairs filled with cornstarch and even Jello, a design student at San Francisco State University named Charlie Hall came up with the idea of a mattress filled with water.  He presented his invention as his master's thesis one evening in 1968 and his entire class spent the night frolicking on it.  

Since it was the Swinging Sixties, marketers soon picked up on the slogan "Two things are better on a waterbed; one of them is sleep."  Hall sold waterbeds to members of Jefferson Airplane and to Hugh Hefner, the ultimate hedonist, and in 1971 Bloomingdale's in Manhattan gave the beds the straight world's seal of approval with a modest display.  The waterbed section of the store became a popular singles meeting place.  In the 1980s, the waterbed made the leap from bachelor pads to suburban bedrooms.  At the peak of the craze in 1987, more than one in five mattresses in the United States was a waterbed.  Doctors of the seventies had strongly recommended a firm mattress for back support.  "If you can sleep on the floor, all the better," they assured.  Waterbeds were the diametric opposite of the very firm mattresses doctors were recommending.  They broke all the rules and people loved them.

Water supports the body evenly due to the natural laws of hydraulics, pushing back with equal force to the force of the user's body when lying down.  Sleeping on a waterbed leaves one delightfully free of pressure points--you only experience conforming, enveloping support.  The benefits were mighty, the cost was cheap and everyone's back held up just fine.   

Wet Dreams

Waterbeds were an instant counterculture hit.  They were cheap, sexy, easy to haul off when you moved.  And everybody lusts for the New Big Thing.  I was introduced to the critters by one Michael O'Hara Garcia who I met at the Florida Alligator, befriended and shared several adventures with, many of them unmentionable.  MOG went with me to Greenwich Village when I flew up there to buy the original Circus inventory and had later opened a similar shop in Georgetown, D.C.  When I went to Washington to visit him, he was late arriving but instructed me to sleep on his wonderful new waterbed.  

It seemed simple enough.  Just park yourself on this shapeless blob, pull the covers up and go to sleep.  Not so fast, my friend!  As anyone who has had the experience will tell you, unenhanced waterbeds are cold.  You will freeze to death sleeping on the things, a fact I was not aware of.  When Garcia came home, he tossed about ten blankets on the bed before proceeding.  The experience left me unimpressed with waterbeds but I ordered six, which sold immediately.  Kids will buy anything that costs $29.95.

Over time, we learned all the idiosyncrasies of waterbeds.  We discovered you could cover them with three-quarter inch foam pads to keep out the cold.  For more money, you could order heating mats that went under the bed to keep things toasty.  You could build a simple frame, hinged at the corners for easy moving, to prevent the plastic bed from stretching out like an amoeba.  Local kids could make the frames cheap enough for us to retail the entire package for a mere $99.95.  Our waterbeds flew out the door, but they were still a pain in the ass.  Nobody's favorite day was the afternoon the foam pad truck came and deposited a ton of them in the parking lot.  Whichever employees were the unfortunate newest hires got the honors of folding them up, wrapping a string around them and piling them up inside.

Some waterbeds were defective, so we had to placate insulted customers who came in dragging enormous damaged hunks of plastic, and we had to do it without laughing.  On the other hand, there were a few lovely young ladies unable to assemble their new purchases who required delivery and setup and almost always rewarded us handsomely.  The handwriting was on the wall, however, when one fellow came in with a serious grievance: his 1600-pound waterbed had fallen through his apartment floor.  Luckily for him, he was on the bottom level.  We tsk-tsked at how they didn't build these newfangled apartments like they used to.

The Arrival Of Waterbedman

One fine morning, a young man named Jim Hines arrived at the Circus, offering a deal we couldn't refuse.  Hines looked like an ad for Sigma Chi, short blond hair in a longhair world, fratrat duds, all ambition.  He wanted to take over the waterbed concession, operating out of the back of the store and sharing the profits evenly.  It was a great deal for us because we had unlimited space, avoided all the watery headaches and would make approximately the same amount of money.  It was a good deal for Hines because his business carried the Circus imprimatur and he paid no rent.  For the next two years, everybody got rich.

Try as he might, however, Jim Hines could never fit in.  He had narc written all over him, even though he was nothing of the kind.  Mike (Jagger) Hatcherson, always a tease to everybody, began calling Jim "Waterbedman," and the name stuck.  The two began playing little tricks on one another, but Jagger would always win.  It was like the Roadrunner and the coyote.  One day, Jim came in beaming at some award he had won and showed us all his picture in a newspaper.  Jagger took a peek at it, put the paper down and looked Hines in the eye.  "You might be a big shot to the rest of the world," he averred, "but you'll always be 'Waterbedman' to me." 

Hines eventually surrendered, moved across town and opened a record store (Roc Records), later a bar called the Longbranch Saloon on NW 5th Avenue in 1972.  He hired local musicians, ran a solid shop and prospered.  The Circus went beck to selling waterbeds, which got grander as time went by with baffles, mirrored ceilings and all the freaky amenities.  One day, when we were unusually short of help, Jagger came in from the parking lot with a frown on his face.  "The foam pad truck just came around the corner," he groaned.  "I never thought I'd say this, but there are some days when I really miss old Waterbedman."

The Waterbed Revolution

From the start, waterbeds got an erotic reputation.  Sex must be better on a waterbed because...well, think of all that rhythmic sloshing.  First, however, the bed needed fine tuning.  "I must be doing something wrong," one customer complained.  "We were all over the place and then I knocked her out of the bed."  Fortunately for us, there were no performance guarantees.  We'd take people back to the store model and enlighten them as to the correct amount of water required for appropriate action.  Too little, the water just sloshes around; too much, the bed acts like an air mattress...not enough give.  It's like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears...you're looking for something just right, which pushes your partner back up to you with each stroke, requiring little exertion by either party.  The downside is that anyone who wants to move really fast will be out of synch with the bed.  Some found that problem a gamebreaker.  As they say in the croquet world, different strokes for different folks.

Speaking of different strokes, for at least a year waterbeds were strictly a counterculture phenomenon.  The frat boys laughed them off the same way they denigrated bellbottoms, Nehru shirts and  sandals.  There is always a moment in time, however, when the tide begins to turn and when it does it turns big.  Straight society begins to dip a toe in the water and before long they're swimming laps around the pool.  In college towns, things got interesting when the girls began to turn on and tune in.  No foolish male is going to tell Miss Okahumpka her hash brownies don't hit the spot or her blacklights are too harsh.  We watched amused from behind the counter as everything took a slow left turn.  Fratboys who once came in only to buy giant posters of Raquel Welch started sniffing around the pipe counters asking dumb questions.  The girls we had working there, who looked like the hippie version of Charley's Angels, led them further down the path to Hell, explaining that they better start swimmin' or they'll sink like a stone for the times they are a-changin'.  Our side became cool, and there's no substitute for cool.  The only question left was, "How can I get some?"

The Pendulum Swings

....as it always does, and did on the entire fabulous hippie era.  When's the last time you used a roach clip, dabbed on some patchouli oil, flashed your turquoise?  It's all tats and baggy jeans these days.  And, of course, sometimes those waterbeds were their own worst enemies.  Even the best vinyl leaks now and then, aided by saboteurs like pups, kitties and little kids with sharp objects.  Timid apartment owners terrified of the possibilities inherent in 1600 pounds of water often banned them,  Owners who moved a lot got the Siphoning Blues.  Mattress manufacturers, enlightened by the success of waterbeds, learned that customers strongly preferred body-conforming, pressure-relieving comfort over rigid, ultra-firm surfaces and trotted out a better product.  Soon enough, waterbeds weren't cool anymore, they were passe (though we'll always remember that all-nighter with the Thompson twins).  If you want one these days, take heart, they're still available online or at some of the big box stores like Lowe's, starting at a mere $999.  The splendiferous DreamCloud Hybrid Ultra runs a mind-numbing $2299.  And worse, after the bed is set up, that delivery man won't sit down on it, light one up and tickle your fancy.  The Subterranean Circus is gone forever.

That's all, folks....

bill.killeen094@gmail.com   

 

 

   

It Takes A Village

"All the king's horses and all the king's men can barely put Bill together again."

Remember when you were 26 and you didn't have a regular doctor?  How many y'got now?  I have five and counting.  There's the cardiologist, the ophthalmologist, the dermatologist, the asthma & allergy guy and the Doctor of the Month at UF Health.  I used to have a urologist but I shed that one after I had my prostate removed.  Does that mean I'm 4-1 or 1-4?  In any case, that's just the beginning.

I also have a Thai massage woman named Deborah, whose job it is to keep me from going to an orthopedist.  She beats me up every third Wednesday in her lovely salon on the outskirts of Marion County to keep my back from tightening up.  Sometimes it does anyway, for no apparent reason.  Last Wednesday, Deborah told me I might need to see a chiropractor soon for my annual jolt.  Does that put me up to six or do backcrackers not count?

Anyway, on Tuesday I tootled over to the Chance Chiropractic Clinic in Hogtown for my punishment.  They must be doing something right, said Deborah, they've been around for 40 years (but then again, so has the Republican Party).  When you go to this place, chances are you'll be seen by Dr. Chance because there are four or five of them.  Now some people prefer what they call "gentle chiropractic" in which the doctor taps you on the spine a couple of times with a tiny hammer, waves a wand over your aching body and says a couple of prayers.  Gentle chiropractic doesn't work for me.  I need assault & battery chiropractic, which this particular Dr. Chance was more than willing to render.  In case you've never been subjected to A&B work, it's not a walk in the park.  Something in your back has moved into a bad neighborhood and the doctor must motorcycle in, grab the offending part and shove it back where it belongs without killing you or making you cry for your mother.  My Dr. Chance did this with aplomb, although the scary crunching noise makes you wonder if any body parts were harmed in the process.  I'm not 100% yet, but I'm doing much better.  I have to go to the dermatology doctor tomorrow.  I'll let you know how that works out. 

Bill's Thai massage therapist, Deborah; whiners need not apply

Skin In The Game

Back in the days before Mohs surgery when people lived in caves and ate dirt, I noticed a spot on my left jaw that bled a little after I shaved and never seemed to scab over.  Oh-oh--"sores that do not heal"--Number 16 on the list of cancer symptoms.  I went to a fancy-schmancy plastic surgery place in Ocala owned by an Indian doctor to get it checked out. The main man was busy with expensive breast augmentations and butt tucks so he handed me off to one of the 16 Patel boys working there.  He cut a little off and sent me home.

I was back a month later.  "Didn't work," I said.  He cut some more, which wasn't enough either.  The skin on my jaw was rapidly diminishing and the trips to Patelville were getting tiresome.  The doctor said they could only snip a bit at a time and where the cancer began and ended was tough to determine.  Finally, however, it was gone.  I thought next time I had a derm problem I might go somewhere else.

If you stayed out too long in the sun as a callow youth, which we all did, you've probably had basal cell carcinoma by now.  If there is one cancer you'd prefer to bring home to dinner, this is it, not the dreadful Melanoma or that plug-ugly Squamous Cell.  These days, Mohs surgery performed in a medical center with a lab makes it easy: cut, analyze, cut some more if necessary, all in one session.  No more playing around for a month or more hoping for the best.  By now, I was going to Shands Dermatology for the occasional snip and the annual once-over.  During one exam, my frowny-faced doctor showed concern.  "I don't like the looks of this," he said, pointing to a place on my neck.  Turned out to be a slow-growing melanoma.  They took it out and before you know it a squamous cell took its place.  Must have been a desirable neighborhood, everybody wanted to live there.

If you get a lot of small skin cancers, UF will offer you a mysterious blue-light treatment, in which your skin is scraped clean and a special photosensitizing solution (likely aminolevulinic acid) is applied.  After an excruciatingly long wait for the abnormal cells or oil glands to absorb the medication, you are given protective goggles and an large alien apparatus is slung over your head and turned on.  As Ella once sang, you ain't been blue til you've had that mood indigo.  "That feelin' goes stealin' down to your shoes, while you sit and sigh, 'Go 'long blues.'"  Then they wrap you in swaddling clothes to protect you from the sun on the ride home and lock you in the house for the next two days.  I let this happen exactly once.  When someone suggested it a second time, I threw a lighted match at him.

This latest visit with the lovely and talented Dr. Stephanie at Skin Central was a laugher.  We talked about the wonders of Paris and her upcoming trip to Glasgow while she blasted me with liquid nitrogen in four places.  If you've never had this treatment (which would be a miracle if you're over 60), it feels like you're being assaulted by angry bees after a honey heist.  Liquid nitrogen is like a last warning to basal cell: "You keep this up, Buster, and next time we cut!"  In addition to the jaw, I've had surgery on my nose, back, one ear, both sides of my face and almost my butt.  Say what?

Hong Kong Hattie

About eight years ago, I noticed a tiny lump under my skin right at the crack of my butt.  It made sitting in certain positions uncomfortable so I showed it to Dr. Christina at the shiny new UF Dermatology headquarters at Springhill.  "It might be something as simple as a hair," she said, "but you should get it taken out."  That seemed a little radical, I protested.

"I've seen these things get as big as a golf ball...you don't want that."  No, indeedy.  All the pillows in the world would be useless in the face of the dreaded buttball.  Besides, all the kids at the gym will make fun of you and you'll never get a second date with a decent woman.  Dr. Christina made me an appointment at Shands on Archer Road with an "excellent" surgeon from Hong Kong.  We'll call her Hattie.

I promptly reported for duty on the assigned day and Dr. Hattie, all four feet of her, showed up with her assistant, Clarence.  She had big glasses, wild hair and a loud, raspy voice out of proportion to her size.  She didn't mince words: "Hi!  I Doctor Hattie!  Hear you have butt trouble.  Show us your butt!  Ha ha ha!"  So much for the polite and genteel manners we associate with the fastidious Chinese.

Hattie investigated site and said, "Oh-oh!  Houston, we have a problem!"  What's that, I wondered?  "Too close to...you know...might get bad infection."  But Dr. Christina said it might blow up like a balloon.  "Get bigger, I fix it.  Not bad now."  

Mildly outraged, Christina got me another appointment, this time with a Jewish standup comedian, so now I've heard enough butt jokes for a lifetime.  He demurred also.  Luckily, the offending culprit one day just decided to pick up and move elsewhere.  Dr. Stephanie says if it comes back we'll pound it to jelly, but I think she might be kidding.

Not Dead Yet

November 2, 2026 will be my 86th birthday.  You don't get this far without some combination of excellent doctors, good genes, dumb luck and an innate ability to foil the Reaper.  It takes a village.  Luck certainly showed up when I rolled my t-top Toronado in a Micanopy ditch 30 years ago and again in 2024 when a certified lunatic smashed into me head-on near Fellowship.  I missed meeting Jesus by 20 minutes during a long cardiac infarction when Dr. Daniel Van Roy of CVI popped a stent in just in time.  Prostate cancer took a swing, cleverly keeping my PSA low, but a digital test saved the day and Dr. Li Ming Su extracted the thing with his magic da Vinci machine at Shands.  And no, you will not necessarily be impotent forever after, especially if you make friends with Mssrs. Viagra and Cialis.  Dr. Su offered to introduce me "to a woman downstairs who has a magic pump" but regrettably I eschewed the tryst.  In retrospect, I think it might have been fun.

You have to do a few things on your own.  I'm a big believer in daily exercise, even if it's just a long walk down the street.  I'm not a vegetarian but I'll skip the beef, thank you, along with carbonated beverages and my favorite pastries from Mr. Dunkin's place.  I've been taking a small amount of testosterone weekly via the needle since age 55. and I gobble down a few capsules from Qualia Mitochondria at lunch.  By all means, secure a wife or partner with a fast car and a thorough knowledge of the best routes to the emergency rooms.  Cultivate interesting friends, but stay just to the left of crazy.  And remember, it doesn't hurt to give some unfortunate human a leg up when his or her world is in flames.  In all honesty, it will make you feel better than the person you're helping.  Finally, if you're feeling bad and all is lost, go to Paris, regeneration capital of the world.  You'll leave smiling if you leave at all.

Pardon me, now, I have to get ready for my annual visit to the dentist.  Does anyone know where I can get a low-interest short term loan?

That's all, folks....

bill.killeen094@gmail.com           

 

Soccermania

“Oh, Granny McGee was a menace to all
With whiskey in hand and a mouth like a brawl;
She’d outdrink the sailors, outcurse the men
And fart in confession just to do it again.”

I hate to admit it, but I’ve been watching soccer a lot lately due to the bizarre spectacle know as the World Cup.  I think those bagpipe-playing Scotsmen started it by bouncing down the street by the thousands to Fenway Park to watch a Red Sox game, delighting all the gawking Bostonians in their path with sterling renditions of Flower of Scotland and Scotland the Brave and The Bawdy Ballad of Granny McGee.  After that, they drank up all the beer in Beantown and went out to celebrate at Waffle House.

Before we could say, “Yer head’s full o’ mince,” here came the Norwegians, pretending to be Vikings and rowing up escalators.  The Germans have referred to a visit to Raising Cane’s (not the Grand Canyon) as “life-changing” and were treating places like Walmart and Costco like giant theme parks, marveling at the endless aisles.  Fans from Uzbekistan embraced their heritage by trotting on horses in full armor through downtown Houston before their match with Portugal.  The U.S. State Department estimated that just under 10 million visitors traveled here for the World Cup and half that many hit all three Cup countries (USA, Mexico and Canada).

The visit to Massachusetts was such a smashing success, Glasgow and Boston have become sister cities and New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft is hitting up the NFL Commissioner to schedule a game in Scotland.  The visitors said they were wary of how they’d be greeted after all they’ve been reading lately about America, but the natives treated them like long-lost relatives, especially in the saloons.  Alas, the Scotch soccer team wasn’t as spectacular as its fandom and they headed home with but a single meager win.  Still, after 28 years of non-participation in the Cup, things are looking up not only for soccer but also Scotland’s tourist industry.  The hotel phones are ringing off the hook daily now with eager New Englanders booking rooms with a view on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

The Big Show

Now, if you were to ask the average man in the street what he thought about soccer pre-Cup, he’d likely close his eyes and pretend to be sleeping.  But just about everybody likes The Big Show, whether it’s Taylor Swift’s wedding, the World Cup or Rodeo Week in Vegas.  At the Olympics, people watch synchronized swimming and ballroom dancing and curling, where two men with brooms try to beat a large stone down a runway of frozen water droplets.  These are things most observers equate with watching paint dry or tolerating untimed chess under ordinary circumstances, but when national pride is at stake…when it’s The Big Show…they are rapt with attention, even for soccer.

Soccer is frustrating.  It’s like hockey without the brawls, a frustrating back-and-forth on an oversized football field where teams score about as often as Trump leaves a tip.  For anyone with a dog in the fight, this is okay, maybe even exciting, but for everyone else it’s like watching milk curdle.  People like offense…home runs, three-point shots, punt returns for touchdowns.  Most can even live with a nice pitchers’ duel or a courageous goal-line stand.  But 90 minutes-plus of slogging east and west, painstakingly inching forward with tiny little kicks to a neighbor five feet away and waiting for the slightest opening, only to invariably have the ball stolen and taken in the other direction is trying one’s patience to the hilt.  The whole affair is strangely remindful of a date with a Catholic girl in 1955…probe, probe, probe, overstep an inch and the evening is going the other way before you know it.

Then there’s the falling down, pretending to be mortally wounded in the hope that a naive referee will take pity and hand you a bon bon.  People are falling down willy-nilly on virtually every play in a soccer match…like defenseless tenpins at the World Series of Bowling.  Oh, the inhumanity!  Every injury is, of course, a horrendous wound, a threat to life and limb reflected by long-practiced expressions of agony on twisted faces.  Only the death scene from King Lear can compare.  The officials are a solemn, unsympathetic lot, but great showmanship occasionally wins the day, earning a yellow or even a red card for the dastardly villain who perpetrated such mayhem.  The card is hardly out of the ref’s pocket when the pulverized soldier jumps up and returns to the game smiling.

On the rarest of occasions, after hours of fan frustration and reluctance to go to the bathroom, a mighty goal is scored, a feat that shatters the air with deafening celebrations which climb up the hillsides and explode windows five miles away.  The supporters of the scoring club, many dressed for maximum tribal identity and weatherproofing, are overcome with the emotion of five straight orgasms and are liable to break into songs like You’ll Never Walk Alone (Gerry & The pacemakers, 1963) or Vindaloo (Fat Les, 1993).

“The Beautiful Game” has been growing over the years in the United States, whose women’s teams invariably challenge for Olympic and World Cup glory and have often won the prize.  The men, alas, seem to have trouble getting out of their own way.  After an encouraging start in 2026 and playing at home in deafening Seattle against Belgium, the U.S. lads played a timid first half but showed some resilience early in the second, keeping the ball in Belgium’s end the majority of the time.  That’s when the American goalie suddenly remembered he was actually Elmer Fudd and let a wicked wabbit steal the ball away from him and plunk in goal number three for an insurmountable 3-1 visitors’ lead in a contest that will be forever titled “The Belgian Waffle.”

That’s okay, American soccer fans.  We’ll always have that win over Paraguay and the Fenway bagpipes blasting out the lurid strains of Granny McGee.  By the way, how long can you amateur soccer announcers stretch the celebratory announcement “G-O-O-O-O-O-AL?”  Romanian sports commentator Ilie Dobre sustained a shout for 1 minute and 8 seconds on a single breath during a match with Hungary in 2013.  The impressed listeners presented him with a bouquet of peonies, some plum brandy and a meat pie.  Who says soccer doesn’t have its moments?

They Came For The Soccer But Stayed For The Ranch Dressing

Tens of thousands of soccer fans landed in the USA on July 4, 2026, our country’s 250th birthday.  They came for the football but got bully jet flyovers, drone shows and fireworks.  Eighty thousand people from 100 countries sang “Country Roads” like a knockout-round anthem.  They were everywhere, marveling at the free ice dispensers, reverently filming Taco Bell menus and learning the importance of discussing the weather with Americans.

Often portrayed as staid observers, the Germans took a walk on the wild side.  One of them loved Walmart so much he had the logo tattooed on his leg.  Another named FreddyLA7 was so flabbergasted by the size of a Buc-ees, he filmed himself yelling, “DUDE, THIS IS A GAS STATION??”  German fan Sebastian Krause broke down crying on Boston TV because strangers gave him a ride to his hotel.  He said American hospitality shattered every expectation he’d formed from foreign news coverage.

Swedish fan Elsa, like several compadres, went nuts over Ranch dressing in Indiana.  “Why did noone tell us Ranch sauce is like crack?  Europe, get us some Ranch ASAP!”  Many Italians were blown away by free soda refills (France banned them in 2017).  One boisterous Roman gleefully exclaimed, “I ordered a medium coffee and received what we Italians would classify as a bucket.”  A disbelieving Britisher called a 2-litre Big Gulp “One of my favorite things I’ve discovered in America.”  And then there was the astonished Japanese traveler who couldn’t get enough of Waymo driverless taxis.  “I rode in them in Dallas, Houston and L.A.  You can get one from an app without speaking a word of English!”

The soccer, all agreed, was first rate.  But the football couldn’t compare with the condiments.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com