The Batsignal Beckons

 

If you're ever feeling old and in the way, tossed aside and forgotten by contemporary society, hang on for a little while longer.  Pretty soon, they'll need you.  Most people don't know this but there is a tome in the University of Florida Library titled "Really Old Guys Who Might Know Stuff."  I know this because the other day Miss Emma of the UF History Department got hold of me and asked if I would come over to Keene-Flint Hall and participate in an oral history study about what it was like to have a business in Gainesville in the very old days when people lived in caves and ate dirt. 

There must be some mistake, I told her.  What she needed was a really old person like Methuselah or George Swinford.  "You're the oldest business owner we could find," she said.  "Everybody else is dead or lives in Idaho."  I sussed out that I wasn't being called upon to deliver any pearls of wisdom or canny social commentary on the swingin' sixties---they just wanted me because I was there.  I asked Emma if she was sending me a UF parking pass since I was such an antique.  She said no but she'd be holding a $2 parking space for me in back of the WAWA.  I told her I'd be the guy in the green Duesenberg wearing the "Muskie For President" shirt.

I showed up on time and there was Miss Emma, smiling and waving her arms like an airport marshaller guiding his plane to the gate.  We went across the street to a small Gothic-style brick building at the north end of Newell Drive that was built in 1910 and looked like it.  Inside, there was a large room with a table, chairs and a camera.  Emma tried to make me comfortable, but I told her I was an old hand at these interviews and had once been on Larry King's old radio show.  I don't think she knew who Larry King was.

Richard Allen, Bill Killeen and Harvey Budd at the Circus

Where Did You come From, Cotton-Eye Joe?

Miss Emma wanted to know how and why I came to Gainesville and how I chose the location for the store.  The Circus was located at 10 SW 7th Street, just off University Avenue, right next door to Buchholz Junior High and across from where Steve Solomon would set up shop with Leonardo's 706 several years later.  The previous tenant was Standard Fertilizer Company, which still owned the building.  Right next door at 8 SW Seventh was Cecil Shannon's auto salvage palace with automobile engines in various stages of disarray spilling out the door.

Emma: "Why did you choose that location?

Bill: "It was $75 a month, close to the university and had six parking spaces in front.  How do you beat that?  It was such a good deal I was terrified the little old lady who owned the place would discover what we were doing in there and throw us out.  As soon as I had enough money to buy the place, I got everybody's favorite realtor, Louis Bliziotes, to make the deal.  I didn't want her to even see us.  The building was huge, about 30x80 feet, plenty of room for what we needed." 

The building was also a mess, just an empty shell raised a few feet above the ground.  There was an enormous cooling fan in the rear.  The first and last time we turned it on, it sucked all the posters off the wall.  There was nothing inside except a tiny, dingy bathroom with a toilet and a sink.  A fat man wouldn't have been able to use the toilet.  The wiring in the place was an arsonist's delight with a big wad of skrunched together wiring at the fusebox.  Before we got it fixed, we turned the power off at night so the whole mess didn't burn down.

Emma: "What did you sell?

Bill: "At first, pretty much just the posters, blacklights and color wheels to accentuate the day-glo colors on the posters.  You couldn't call up the HippieMart and order inventory, there were no wholesalers.  My housemate Dick North began making pot pipes with lamp parts and plumbing screens and a couple of local guys made bongs.  You could get limited kinds of incense from Indian wholesalers.  Before long, the underground comics appeared, also a number of counterculture newspapers like the 'L.A. Free Press' and the 'East Village Other.'  We also found books on growing marijuana, identifying psilocybin mushrooms, etc.  The first day we were open we made $27, the second we doubled it.  The third day, the Gainesville Sun put a picture of Pamme Brewer on the front page with a rose in her teeth.  We never made less than $100 any day after that.  Within six months, wholesalers were manufacturing all manner and make of paraphernalia and we were grossing $1000 a day.  My lawyer said I was a genius.  I told him no, I was just in the right place at the right time." 

Our Town

Emma wanted to know what the town was like in the sixties and seventies, what businesses there were.  The population of Gainesville was about 85,000 in 1967, but it was a very quiet eighty-five thousand.  There was no Oaks Mall, not even a Gainesville Mall, which opened three years later on NW Thirteenth Street.  The current Butler Plaza extravaganza was a rinky-dink airport.  I know this is a troubling shock, but there was not one single pizza place in town.  The only food delivery operation was Alan's Cubana, a clambox-sized building perched right next to Gainesville's lonely skyscraper, the Seagle Building.  Silverman's  department store was the kingfish downtown and The Primrose Inn, which opened in 1924, was the place to dine.  If you dropped in around noontime, they were feeding the juries from the nearby Alachua County Courthouse.  Donigan's was the go-to haberdasher, especially for frat boys who required Sego shirts, preferably striped.

Emma: "What effect did the opening of the Subterranean Circus have on other businesses?"

Bill: "Not much at first.  Who's going to worry about a hippie place that sells mostly posters?  When we started selling clothes, however, people noticed.  In the space of five years, "straight" clothes took a dive.  Everybody wanted bellbottoms or some other jean style and the boys, who previously had few choices in clothing, bought Cossack and Nehru shirts.  The Circus was the only place which sold this stuff, and we could get it far more quickly than potential competitors.  Eventually, our clothing business got so big it outgrew the Circus.  We had to buy Cecil Shannon's space next door to open Silver City in 1970."

Emma: "How did the success of the Subterranean Circus affect Gainesville business in general?"

Bill: "It changed the whole business dynamic.  In those days, all the businesses were run by older people.  Clothes and several other things were bought by retailers on credit from the manufacturers via Factors, who had to approve their credit.  If you were young and unestablished, credit could be a problem.  The manufacturers wouldn't take cash.  But the new hippie wholesalers would.  And when a 27-yeat-old guy with no business background opened a store that promptly thrived, other young people jumped in.  Doug Bonebrake opened a health food store called Mother Earth, Ira Vernon and Steve Tannen opened a jean shop named Tuesday Morning.  Before long, the Morning Glory Juice Bar opened up, then Snuffy's burger joint, all of these on University Avenue between the Circus and campus.  Across town, George Swinford opened a bar called Lillian's, which survives today under different ownership.  There were numerous other businesses opened by kids.  Sandal shops...record stores...you name it.  Jeff Meldon and Jim Forsman bought the old Florida Theater and started bringing big-time musical acts to town.  Finally, the inmates--us--were running the asylum, and we ran it for a long, long time." 

Patty Wheeler, Danny Whiddon, Guy Thibaut and Debby Adelman afront the store

"And The Folks You Meet Ain't Always Kind...."

Emma: "When you opened a counterculture shop like the Subterranean Circus in a southern town like Gainesville, was there any opposition from the general public?"

Bill: "Oh yes, indeedy.  The fourth day we were open, I got to work to find a large concrete block thrown through the window.  We remade our facade, eliminating all but a small space for plexiglass windows.  Gene Whitworth, the State's attorney, busted us a couple of times, once for selling classic Kama Sutra artwork , another for "pornographic" underground comics.  He lost in court both times.  There were narcs in and out all the time; one of them was Wayland Clifton, the future Gainesville Police Chief.  There was never a more obvious covert agent than Wayland.  The City Commission, led by a clown named Gary Junior, made a huge effort to pass laws that would close us down.  We printed up t-shirts which read JUNIOR SCUM and gave them away.  People were wearing them all over town.  Forty years later at the Last Tango we got a Subterranean Circus Day proclamation from the Gainesville City Commission.  C'est la vie."

Emma: "As time passed, how did the attitude of the local population change?"

Bill: "Even rednecks want to be cool.  As time went by and the Vietnam war went from "necessary" to "troubling" to "outrageous"...as the new music and art and fashion generally took hold...as young kids fell in love with the new wave and demanded a lessening of the reins...hippie stuff became a symbol of the revolution.  Even if you weren't a hippie you could hang out on the fringes and flash the colors.  Psychedelic stuff became cool.  If you ranted against it, you looked like a Neanderthal." 

Gainesville Swings Like A Pendulum Do

Emma: "You must have had a lot of satisfaction...rags to riches and all that."

Bill: "We did, but we were naive.  We thought everything would keep getting better.  The Liberals were in charge of the government, pot was becoming generally accepted, mere users weren't getting busted much anymore, your parents were asking for advice on what waterbeds to buy, the paraphernalia industry was booming.  But nothing lasts forever.  Chinks in the armor appeared.  Communes, once thought the ultimate edenic lifestyle, began fraying.  Free love was great until it was your girlfriend who spent a weekend with Ishmael, the sandalmaker.  Hard drugs began knocking off a few of your friends.  You discovered it was impossible to read 'Gravity's Rainbow' if you were stoned.  Nobody can live in a crashpad forever.  We learned the pendulum always swings back...and sometimes it swings back hard.  The Subterranean Circus was a moment in time, a glorious moment for most of us.  We were in our adolescence or just past it, at the peak of our powers, blessed with strength and beauty, and life was an open road.  Almost noone of who had the experience ever regretted it, there will never be anything like that era again.  We feel sorry for everyone who never got to drink the wine and smell the patchouli."

Emma: "Thank you, Bill."

Bill: "Thank YOU, Emma!"

That's all, folks...

bill.killeen094@gmail.com

  

 

         

   

Saving The World

Those of us who attended Catholic schools first heard the subject broached in seventh or eighth grade and later in high school.  “Some of you will have a calling we call a vocation,” revealed sister Louise Clara.  “Something deep inside you that draws you to consider the priesthood as your course in life.  There is nothing more pleasing to God than one of his flock going out into the world to save souls and bring them back to Him.  Literally, a religious career is helping to save the world.”

‘Holy shit!’ I thought.  'I’m glad that’s not happening to me.’  I slowly eyed the room, looking for victims of this calling, even finding a few likelies such as the Blanchette twins whose mother volunteered them and herself for numerous sucker jobs at the convent.  I felt better than ever that my long-planned baseball career had caused me to refrain from joining the choir boys, who later inevitably became altar boys, a sure early trap leading to one of those “vocations.”  Saving the world seemed like an enormous bother and there were no guarantees you’d even make a dent what with all those Protestants, Jews and Hindus out there.

Throughout my early life, it seemed someone was always saving the world, but it never seemed to stay saved.  Early on, the Americans saved the world from Hitler, then Jonas Salk saved the world from Polio, and after that Luke Skywalker saved the world in Star Wars.  Even bacteria once saved the world, for crying out loud (See: War of the Worlds).  Later, young Greta Thunberg, an avid climate advocate, took her swings at the plate to mixed reviews. This business of saving the world never seems to end.  The latest candidate taking the plunge is perhaps the least likely of all and we don’t like his chances.  Or hers, either.

Ziz LaSota To The Rescue

"Oh dear, what can the matter be?  Johnny's so wrong at the fair!"

Once upon a time in the cold expanse of Alaska, a homeschooled child stared out at the aurora borealis and wondered if the world was real.  Years later, that same child---taller than most men, cloaked in black, calling itself Ziz---would terrify Silicon Valley’s Rationalists, faking death, wielding a sumurai sword and leaving six bodies in its wake.  Such is the tale of Ziz LaSota, the transgender AI doomsday cultist who believed humanity would perish under artificial intelligence…unless Ziz saved it first.  We all have our doubts about the intentions of AI but LaSota wasn't taking any chances.

LaSota’s early life as a boy was unremarkable: eldest of three, his father a university instructor, homeschooled through lonely Alaskan winters.  But teenage depression twisted his mind inward.  Puberty felt like death.  Ziz wrote of being “horrified at being overwritten by a new self.”  Horrified or not, LaSota soon identified as a trans woman with a revised agenda.

Logic became the new religion.  LessWrong and the Rationalist forums were the new sacred texts.  Ziz  decided AI was the harbinger of humanity’s doom and dropped out of the University of Alaska graduate school in 2016, arriving in California’s Bay Area ready to “save the world.”  Alas, Silicon Valley is a cruel temple for prophets.  Ziz was just another zealot in a city full of them.  LaSota declared faith in the Sith, the dark side order in Star Wars.  You gotta start somewhere, right?

Ziz called Rationalists “master Jedi.” The community tolerated the eccentricities since they, too, believed AI could destroy us all.  Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman-Fried all had passed through the Rationalist forge.  But Ziz took it further with a blog listing categories of people to be “airlocked.”  Oh-oh.  LaSota advocated radical veganism, sleep deprivation rituals and violent moral tests, recruiting a cadre of mostly transgender and nonbinary tech aspirants from Google, Oracle and NASA.  They called themselves the Zizians.  To them, Ziz was the messiah the anti-artificial intelligence universe had been waiting for.  So here’s the payoff:

2019—Zizians don Guy Fawkes masks and robes to disrupt a Rationalist event in California.  No guns were found, but SWAT stormed the venue.  Arrests followed.  The Zizians chanting was described by police as “speaking in tongues.”

2020---In Vallejo California, landlord Curtis Lind was stabbed with knives and a samurai sword after demanding unpaid rent.  He shot two Zizians in self-defense, one died.  Ziz faked death by falling off a boat, the obituary running in Alaskan newspapers.  (Y'gotta give the gal 'A' for effort.)

2023---The parents of Zizian Michelle Zajko were found dead in Pennsylvania.  Bullets matched Zajko’s gun, but evidence fell short.  Ziz was arrested with Michelle in a hotel but bailed out and quickly disappeared.

2025---Lind was stabbed to death before he could testify against the group.  Days later in Vermont, two Zizians fired at Border Patrol agents.  One agent and one Zizian were killed in the shootout.

Rationalism has always prided itself on logic untainted by emotion, but Ziz turned logic into madness.  Rolo’s Basilisk, the infamous AI thought experiment predicting torture for those who don’t create AI, haunted LaSota, who believed that any attempt to stop AI would condemn her to eternal torture by future malevolent superintelligences.  The solution: don’t back down, escalate and airlock the doubters.  Eliezer Yudkowsky, the Rationalist guru who warned Ziz of AI extinction, called LaSota’s descent “sad,” writing that one’s weirdness attracted even weirder people, some of whom turn out to be “genuinely crazy in a contagious way among the susceptible.”  No shit.

Today, Ziz LaSota is no longer saving the world, but instead sits in a Maryland jail undergoing a court-ordered mental competency evaluation.  She faced federal charges for possession of firearms and ammunition as a fugitive from justice and both state and federal charges tied to homicides across multiple states.  Ziz is not accused of wielding the murder weapons, but prosecutors say LaSota orchestrated the violence.  The Rationalist community is left with a bitter aftertaste.  Was Ziz simply an unwell person who found justification for her madness in an AI apocalypse theory or did Rationalism’s own doomsday fetish birth a new Ziz?  The Rationalist blogger Zvi Mowshowitz wondered if LaSota would have simply created another cult if AI philosophy hadn’t ensnared her.  “I give it a 55% chance,” he guessed.

But who knows?  And who cares?  For Ziz LaSota and others of a similar bent---sometimes you just gotta Save The World.

Operation Cat Drop

In the late 1950s, a large area around Sarawak, Borneo was sprayed with DDT to control malaria.  The DDT killed wasps that had previously left caterpillars in check, which led to an alarming caterpillar boom that quickly damaged homes throughout the area.  The DDT also poisoned insects that the local cats ate, leading to the death of virtually all cats in the area.  Without the cats to serve as traffic cops, the rodent population exploded.

This was obviously another job for England’s elite Royal Air Force, which had already saved the world---or at least London---from the German Luftwaffe in World War II.  On March 17, 1960, if was raining cats, if not dogs, on Bario in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak.  From a height of 400 feet, the RAF parachuted twenty-three felines into town.  The cats were packed expertly into wicker baskets and all of them survived the flight, which landed smack in the middle of the war zone.  Subsequent to the operation, Mr. John Seal, chief operations officer of the Sarawak Civil Aviation Department sent a congratulatory telegram to the RAF.  “We are delighted with your magnificent job on the delivery,” it stated.  “This army of cats from heaven has quickly put an end to the problem and saved our little world.”

The London Times suggested a new motto for the Royal Air Force; “Saving the World, One Cat at a Time.”  After brief consideration, the advisory was wadded tightly and heaved.

The Real Heroes

Has anyone actually saved the world?  Edward Jenner has a claim to it with his pioneering work on vaccination against smallpox in the late eighteenth century.  The vax led to the eventual eradication of the disease, saving millions of lives.  Norman Borlaug, an agricultural scientist, undoubtedly saved at least a billion people from starvation via his work in developing high-yielding, disease-resistant crops.  Carl Bosch and Fritz Haber, developed the Haber-Bosch Process, which allows for the mass production of ammonia in fertilizer.  ScienceHeroes.com says the process allowed production of enough food to save billions of people.  Plaudits to all of them, but save the world?  Probably not.

The closest people to planet savers are likely two Russians.  In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Defence Forces, was on duty when a Soviet early-warning system indicated an American missile attack.  Instead of following protocol and launching a retaliatory strike, he delayed any action, correctly suspecting a false alarm.  Petrov’s good sense potentially averted a nuclear war.  Then, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet submarine officer second in command, prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo during a tense standoff with the U.S. Navy.  The captain of the sub and the third senior officer wanted to launch but the order required authorization from all three and Vasili refused.

You know that Doomsday Clock, the brainchild of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists…the one that CNN is always telling us is rushing headlong toward midnight?  Right now it’s 85 seconds to midnight, almost the closest it’s ever been to catastrophe-time.  Back in the days of Stanislav and Vasili, it was one second to extinction.  Let’s give those Russian boys a hand…and maybe a dacha on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

That’s all, folks….

bill.killeen094@gmail.com     

Alice In Wonderland

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of a bad Patriots season can stay the Fearless, Fighting Killeens from the eventual completion of their appointed rounds.  Resilience, good genes and a spot of luck have carried Bill (85), Alice (83) and Kathy (75) through all kinds of weather without breaking stride...until now.  Recently, we got word that Alice (the Republican) had a mass on her brain and would soon be on that midnight train to Georgia, or wherever the Cosmic Arranger sends lapsed Catholics who obeyed the rules and stayed out of jail.  Alice was not too worried about this because she seldom fretted about much of anything and this new annoyance was a just another bump in the road.

As kids, Alice and I were stuck with one another, like it or not, on snow days, vacations, trips to Salisbury Beach or to see relatives.  Alice loved the beach, thought one day she might be one of those California Girls, and she eventually was.  At Salisbury, she inevitably headed straight for the roller coaster, went further out in the ocean than she was allowed and wrote a book on how to annoy one's brother.  In grade school, she was a good student and brought home a plethora of As, but at Lawrence High School she discovered boys and was occasionally found smoking with bad girls behind dumpsters.  She went to the prom with Sonny, a bright and cheerful fellow, but wound up with Bob, who none of us knew from Adam.  Before we knew it, Alice was married and lived in California.  Except for vacations, she never left, winding up in a very nice condo in Camarillo, "where the weather is always perfect."  She had kids and they had kids and they had kids and the green grass grew all around, all around, the green grass grew all around.

I Saw Alice Kissing Santa Claus

When we were kids, the hullabaloo surrounding Christmas extended from at least a week before the big event until well after New Year's Day.  Our friendly house was constantly full of rotating guests, hearty drinkers all, moved by the spirit of the season, carousing late into the night by the light of the brilliant tree and the candlelit windows.  On Christmas Eve, my sister and I were sent upstairs to my Grandmother's half of the house to avoid the tipsy conversation and the raucous clatter, but also not to be caught off guard by the sudden appearance of Santa Claus, who famously grows apoplectic when children are not nestled all snug in their beds prior to his arrival.  Alice was a big fan of Santa.  As far as she was concerned, anything extraordinary that happened between mid-November and the end of January was due to the influence of the Jolly Old Elf.  Snow on Christmas Eve?  Santa, of course.  Our Dad gets Christmas Day off from work unexpectedly?  Santa again.  Alice gets a better doll than Celia Hart, across the street?  "Well, Santa knows she was bad and I was good!"

By the time I was five, I was pretty sure Santa Claus was a parental fabrication, the logistics of the situation being what they were.  All those countries.  All those kids.  How could Santa possibly do it, even with the capable assistance of all the elves in Europe?  I kept quiet until a year later, not wanting to shatter my sister's illusions.  When she was four, however, I tried to explain the science of it all to Alice...the incredible numbers involved, the troubles with possible headwinds, the petty jealousies which sometimes occur in the best of reindeer families.  She was having none of it, and she had her unimpeachable answer.  "Magic," she said.  Santa Clause is magic.  So how is a six-year-old boy supposed to argue with that?

A few minutes after our discussion had run its course, there was an unexplainable noise on the roof above us.  Alice dived for the covers and advised me to get in bed quick, which I did.  I mean, no matter what you think you know, there's no sense in taking chances, right?  And who the hell else could be on the roof?  The next morning, Alice and I crept downstairs to get a look at the vast panorama that Santa (or someone) had wrought.  My heart caught in my throat when I spied a large, shiny lump of anthracite at the top of my stocking.  My sister was giving me the stinkeye.  "He knows what you were thinking, Billy, and that's your warning" she said in her best scoldy voice.  Let me tell you, there's nobody as smug as a four-year-old girl who's been proved right by the likes of Santa Claus.

The Achilles Heel

One of the great joys of Alice's and my early years was the occasional summer weekend automobile excursion to fun-filled Salisbury Beach.  The whole family traveled on narrow, winding country roads past colorful little farm produce stands, cluttered antiqueries with fascinating junk piled to the sky, past fried clam shacks and miniature golf palaces full of dinosaurs and windmills, over the meadows and through the woods all the way to the sea.  The first hint of Salisbury Beach was its iconic rollercoaster jutting out into the coastal skies, available for viewing miles from the beach itself.  It always brought out the same reaction from my crusty grandmother: "That damn thing is dangerous.  Too rickety, hasn't been fixed in years.  Some day one of those cars is going to fall right down into the street."  To which Alice would always whisper, "But not when I'M on it." 

The first thing anyone heard after dismounting their cars in those days was the siren song of Salisbury's famous carousel, our obligatory first stop.  No matter how many times we went to the beach, my Mother always took pictures of her kids on their favorite horses.  It was a ritual not to be questioned without getting a rare frown from Marie.  You didn't want that frown because when it arrived Tom Killeen was on his way to the rescue.  After the merry-go-round, it was off to the ride of your choice.  With Alice, it was always the rollercoaster.  It was an addiction.  She would have ridden it all day if funds allowed, careening left and right, screaming bloody murder.  When she was about ten, she told me "If I had all the time in the world I would find a place full of rollercoasters and move in next door.  It would be like Heaven."  Later in life we would find out such desires are called wretched excess.  

While Alice was soaring through the sky, the rest of us went over to the Ferris wheel.  My Mother loved it so I always went with her while my Father read the sports pages of the Boston Post.  We didn't wait for Alice because the innocent, serene Ferris wheel was anathema to her.  "I know if I get on it will stop at the top and I'll be stuck there and never get down," she said.  No amount of reasoning would change her mind.  She was aware that the wheel behaved admirably every time my Mother and I rode, but that was no consolation.  Alice had read once of a faraway Ferris wheel that faltered and left its riders stranded for the better part of a day, and she wasn't taking any chances.  "She'll get over it," promised Tom Killeen.  But she never did.

When we got older, I approached Alice every now and then about going up on one wheel or another.  "Nope," she'd say.  "It's just waiting for me to give in.  It knows I'm onto its tricks.  The Ferris wheel is the work of the Devil."  She carried her grudge into adulthood and beyond.  Her husband just smiled.  Her kids begged her to go.  Her friends heaped ridicule on her fears.  Nothing could dent her resolve.  Then one day, visiting New England with her small grandchildren, the lot of us went to Canobie Lake amusement park in New Hampshire, an old favorite haunt from childhood.  Walking by the Ferris wheel, the grandkids pleaded to take a ride.  Alice was reluctant to let them go up alone, but she had spent the better part of her life avoiding her nemesis.  "Come on, Alice," I prodded.  "The kids want to go and this isn't your 1950 Ferris wheel.  It'll be fine.  What are the odds?

Reluctantly, she caved.  We all strapped in, the music played and the Canobie Lake Ferris wheel took our bucket up into the sky.  Until it didn't.  After two or three revolutions, it stopped--right at the top--finally capturing its long-awaited prisoner.  Alice glared at me with anger and disgust that I could play a part in her ride to perdition.  What could I say--first, Santa Claus and now this?  It took about half an hour to get us down and half a year for Alice to stop grumping about it.  Two years later, an unknowing friend on the West Coast grabbed her enthusiastically and said, "Hey, let's you and me go on that Ferris wheel!"  Poor thing.  Alice chased her off the end of the pier.  

Next Of Kin To The Wayward Wind

"In a lonely shack by a railroad track, she spent her younger days.  And I guess the sound of the outward bound made her a slave to her wanderin' ways."---Gogie Grant

Alice always liked to travel, and emigrating to California was just a start.  Despite being a woman of modest means, she was determined to get out of the house as often as possible and any mode of inexpensive transport would do.  Alice became a master of the Cheap Trip, investigating all manner and make of bargain flights and dubious hostelries.  She would pore over mountains of literature to discover optimal travel times, absurdly cheap fares and rickety carriers.  She was not above riding steerage class on a Sumatran garbage scow if it got her where she wanted to go.  The redeye to Borneo?  "Where do I sign up?"  Alice was willing to ride in swine delivery vehicles, strap herself to the wing of a rusty airliner if the price was right and the authorities looked the other way.  She maintained it was safe to go anywhere if you wore a flak jacket, carried a two-shot derringer and a bottle of Lysol.

Alice traveled across Europe, but loved Ireland the best.  The natives are warm to all visitors but treat Killeens like long-lost family and fear no excess in behavior.  Alice was such an  enthusiast for the auld sod she once turned herself upside-down to kiss the Blarney Stone, and they still tell sordid tales of her activities in the raucous pubs of Tipperary. 

Perhaps her second-favorite destination was nearby Mexico, which she visited often with her California amigos.  On one unfortunate occasion, she was deep in a surly canyon when she broke an ankle. Now, you can see the accompanying photos of Alice, so it's obvious she was no fashion model; there would be no hoisting her over two shoulders and carrying her out.  Rescuers had to resort to a dolly, strap her in and drag her uphill.  After that her pals hauled her around town on a hotel luggage rack.  Not a fan of the Mexican Kwik-Fix, Alice wouldn't hear of south-of-the-border repair.  When she finally got back to California the doctors had to put her back together with bolts and screws. 

A few minor inconveniences, including her advancing age, never deterred Alice.  To celebrate her 69th birthday, she and Kathy took a Gulf of Mexico cruise which included a stop in Belize.  She told her sister that everybody celebrated their 69th birthday by riding the portside zip-line, also known as a flying fox, aerial runway, death slide or Tyrolean crossing.  The zip-line, as we now know, is designed to enable a user propelled by gravity to travel from the top to the bottom of an inclined cable, usually made of stainless steel, by holding on or attaching to a freely moving pulley.  They may be short and low, intended for child's play, or long and high, sometimes used as a means of accessing remote areas, such as a rainforest canopy.  Or they could be used for entertainment, like scaring yourself to death on your 69th birthday.

Kathy, after much fretting ("Hey, it's not MY 69th birthday!") finally agreed to the zip-line experience.  Alice went first, thoroughly versed in the importance of the zip-line braking procedures.  If you brake too soon, she was told, you have to pull yourself in, hand over hand.  If you brake too late you will have slowed down enough for the Belizean "catchers" to haul you in.  We should point out here that the men of Belize are a smallish lot, not to be mistaken for burly Samoans.  When Alice came blasting in without even slowing down, she carried her tiny Belizean grabber several yards down the landing field before stopping.  "All in a days work," he assured his apologetic passenger while limping off to the medical tent.  "How much is a good tip?" Alice asked Kathy.  "You don't have enough," she replied.

Farewell, Adelita!

Siobhan and I visited Alice in California several times, the last in 2021 when we were to meet her for dinner near Santa Monica's famous pier.  She fell in the parking lot on the beach, bloodied up her head and arm and gained the attention of EMTs from the local fire department, all of whom looked like actors from Baywatch.  After receiving more than enough attention, she was asked which hospital she preferred to be taken to.  "Oh, none," she said.  "Can you just take me to the restaurant up at street level?"  They did, and we all had a splendid dinner, Alice bleeding through the bandages a bit to the anxiety of the waitresses.

In 2025, Kathy and Alice visited their brother Bill in Florida, spending a few nights in our little guest house and cavorting around St. Augustine, Silver Springs, the World Equestrian Center in Ocala and the Hippodrome in Gainesville.  A great time was had by all.  At our frightful ages we were grateful for another opportunity to celebrate our good fortune and tell sordid and hilarious tales of the old days on the not-so-mean streets of South Lawrence.  

When Alice learned Siobhan and I were going to Paris this year she called to tell me she'd lost her tiny Eiffel Tower statue bought years before on her own visit with Kathy, and asked if I would find a replacement.  It was one of the first things I did when I got there.  She called in late July, thrilled to have her new trinket.  It was the last time I spoke to her.  Alice died Tuesday morning at 1 a.m. with her granddaughter Kelsey at her bedside.  Kathy, Siobhan and I were scheduled to leave for California a couple of days later, thinking we had plenty of time.  The best laid plans of mice and men....

Practicing and even lapsed Catholics think differently of death than some others.  If they've observed protocol, they might wind up in that great amusement park in the sky.  If not, well...

If my calculations are correct, Alice is a bit east of Newburyport, Massachusetts right now, headed toward the sea.  In about five minutes, she should get her first tiny view of the salty skyline of Salisbury Beach.  And what shall this California Girl, this adventurer, this daughter of Santa Claus see reaching up to the sky in the distance?  Will it be the heavenly glow of the rollercoaster or the snarling lip of that ever-lusting Ferris wheel?

There are no answers, only mysteries.

That's all, folks....

bill.killeen094@gmail.com  

      

  

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