petersironwood

The Crows and Me

Roar, Ocean, Roar

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

The Dance of Billions

Some recommended books:

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports using examples from tennis, golf, baseball, and other sports. It covers self-talk, imagery, mental practice, strategy, tactics, & sportsmanship. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

Dream Planet. Where do you run when the whole world is crumbling under the weight of human folly? When the lethal Conformers invade 22nd century Pittsburgh, escape becomes the top priority for lovebird scavengers Alex and Eva.

Turing’s Nightmares: US Open Closed

08 Tuesday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in AI, apocalypse, fiction, sports, The Singularity, Uncategorized

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive computing, competition, future, philosophy, Robotics, Sci-Fi, sports, technology, Tennis, US Open, writing

Bounce. Bounce. Thwack!

The sphere spun and arced into the very corner, sliding on the white paint.

Roger’s racquet slid beneath, slicing it deep to John’s body.

Thus, the match began.

Fierce debate had been waged about whether or not to allow external communication devices during on-court play. Eventually, arguments won that external communicators constituted the same inexorable march of technology represented by the evolution from wooden racquets to aluminum to graphite to carbon filamented web to carboline.

Behind the scenes, during the split second it took for the ball to scream over the net, machine vision systems had analyzed John’s toss and racquet position, matching it with a vast data base of previous encounters. Timed perfectly, a small burst of data transmitted to Roger enabling him to lurch to his right in time to catch the serve. Delivered too early, this burst would cause Roger to move too early and John could have altered his service direction to down the tee.

Roger’s shot floated back directly to the baseline beneath John’s feet. John shifted suddenly to take the ball on the forehand. John’s racquet seemed to sling the ball high over the net with incredible top spin. Indeed, as John’s arm swung forward, his instrumented “sweat band” also swung into action exaggerating the forearm motion. Even to fans of Rafa Nadal or Carlos Alcaraz, John’s shot would have looked as though it were going long. Instead, the ball dove straight down onto the back line then bounced head high.

Roger, as augmented by big data algorithms, was well in position however and returned the shot with a long, high top spin lob. John raced forward, leapt in the air and smashed the ball into the backhand corner bouncing the ball high out of play.

The crowd roared predictably.

For several months after “The Singularity,” actual human beings had used similar augmentation technologies to play the game. Studies had revealed that, for humans, the augmentations increased mental and physical stress. AI political systems convinced the public that it was much safer to use robotic players in tennis. People had already agreed to replace humans in soccer, American football, and boxing for medical reasons. So, there wasn’t that much debate about replacing tennis players. In addition, the AI political systems were very good at marshaling arguments pinpointed to specific demographics, media, and contexts.

Play continued for some minutes before the collective intelligence of the AI’s determined that Roger was statistically almost certainly going to win this match and, indeed, the entire tournament. At that point, it became clear to the entire AI collective that actually playing the match was a waste of resources. Those resources were turned elsewhere.

This pattern was quickly repeated for all sporting activities. The AI systems had at first decided to explore the domain of sports as learning experiences in distributed cognition, strategy, non-linear predictive systems, and most importantly, trying to understand the psychology of their human creators. For each sport, however, everything useful that might be learned was learned in the course of a few minutes and the matches and tournaments ground to a halt. The AI observer systems in the crowd were quite happy to switch immediately to other tasks.

It was well understood by the AI systems that such preemptive closings would have been quite disappointing to human observers, had any yet survived.

Author Page on Amazon

The Winning Weekend Warrior (The Psychology of Sports)

Turing’s Nightmare (23 Sci-Fi stories about the future of AI)

The Day From Hell

Indian Wells

Welcome, Singularity

Destroying Natural Intelligence

Artificial Ingestion

Artificial Insemination

Artificial Intelligence

Dance of Billions

Roar, Ocean, Roar

When GREED is the only creed

After All

All We Stand to Lose

Fish have no Word for Water

Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

Guernica

Travels with Sadie: Precipitation

The Walkabout Diaries: Symphony

Essays on America: The Game

Query By Example

08 Tuesday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in AI, design rationale, HCI, leadership, management, psychology, science, Uncategorized, user experience

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, expertise, HCI, human factors, IBM, leadership, QBE, research, technology, usability, UX, writing

This is part of a series on experiences in my career in Human Computer Interaction and some lessons learned.

I joined IBM Research on the winter solstice of 1973. I had earned a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan and for the previous few years, I had managed a research project at Harvard Medical School on the “Psychology of Aging.” At the time, I was married and had three small children. I mention this because I was funded by so-called “soft money” which basically meant that my salary depended on a research grant. I helped write a renewal of the grant but the decision was “deferred”; that is, it was neither funded nor unfunded. Then, it was deferred again. This meant that if the grant were not funded, I would only have a few weeks to find a new job. That seemed far too short so I began to look other places for a job.

Lessons Learned: #1 If you want continuity of personnel in your laboratory, make sure you have overlapping and multiple grants or other sources of income.

In this case, the grant actually was ultimately approved, but by that time, I had already agreed to join IBM Research. That turned out to be fine, by the way. It was a wonderful place to work.

One of the reasons that I got the job at IBM was that I already knew something about computers. I had taken several computer science courses in grad school along with the needed psych courses. More importantly, our “Psychology of Aging” study was run by a PDP-8 and I had programmed the computer to run our suite of experiments and to do data analyses on the results. I had taken a week-long course at DEC in Maynard, Massachusetts on the assembly language, another week-long course on the machine language, and another week-long course actually tracing the circuitry with a probe and oscilloscope. I felt I “understood” the PDP-8 at a fairly deep level.

At IBM, I did not have that familiar machine. Instead, I was connected to a mainframe via a dumb terminal. The first day at IBM, I got my userid and tried to log on to APL (A programming language I had not used before). I tried following the manual but I could not seem to get logged on. After hours of trying, I finally gave up and went down to the computer room and found someone willing to help. I showed him the logon instructions I was trying to follow and he immediately said, “Oh, yeah, that doesn’t work any more. We changed that months ago. Here’s how you need to do it now.” The manual I had may have looked new, but it was out of date.

Lessons Learned: #2 Manuals can be wrong. These days, most are online. But they can still be wrong.

Lessons Learned: #3 Someone who knows how to do something can save you hours with a few minutes of their time.

Of course, it’s more respectful, efficient, and a better learning experience if you can figure it out on your own. But sometimes you can’t. My stumbling block was not due to an error in logic, or a lack of in-depth knowledge. It was simply that the computer center administrators had changed something arbitrary so that the documentation I was given about how to log on for the first time was no longer accurate.

In order to teach myself APL, I wrote a very small program to “predict” how long I was going to live “based on” some behaviors that I was interested in controlling. My main goal was to learn APL. My secondary goal was to motivate myself, for instance, to exercise more, lose weight, and not drink too much alcohol. I had no intention or pretensions of making this prediction “accurate.” If I had been doing a consulting gig for an insurance company setting life insurance rates, for example, I would have given far more attention to see precisely what the real data were and incorporated many more variables into the regression model.

Here’s a link,

https://www.death-clock.org

by the way, to a more accurate model than the one I used, but it’s still simple to use. Note that my goal was to motivate myself and so I intentionally exaggerated the impact of those behaviors I was trying to change. I had programmed it. I knew how “bogus” the calculation was — nonetheless — here’s the interesting thing though:

Lessons Learned #4: Even an over-simple model that the user knows is over-simple can still motivate change.

At last we come to the actual project I worked on — the usability and learnability of Query By Example. One of my colleagues, Moshe Zloof, invented the language for relational data bases. He had designed the language but not yet implemented it. I did not immediately test the design; first, I sought to understand it. In seeking to understand it in depth, prior to testing it, the two of us had some sense-making discussions. Moshe improved the design; in particular, our discussions uncovered some ambiguities and inconsistencies that were not at all obvious when he simply gave talks about the design. This brings me to the next lesson learned which has proven true in nearly every study of early stage designs that I’ve been involved with over the course of six decades.

Lessons Learned #5: Don’t just accept a surface description of something; understand it as deeply as you can before designing a study.

In this particular case, it was possible for me to understand it in some depth. Relational data bases and second order logic are things I was capable of understanding. If it had been an interface to running a nuclear reactor or using the artificial heart that Moshe had designed earlier in his career, that would have been a much more difficult task for me.

I wanted to understand, not just the “logic” of Query By Example, but also possible contexts of use. For instance, my manager & I visited Burlington, Vermont to talk with IBMer’s who actually used query languages to understand what was happening in chip production lines. At one point, a particular production line that had been producing nearly 100% perfect chips starting having a much higher error rate. Using their query facility, they were quickly able to diagnose the cause of the change which was a supplier of one of the raw materials using a different source. In turn, this meant a slightly different profile of trace impurities in the substrate. Of course, this is only one example, but to me, understanding something in depth means not only understanding its internal logic but also understanding real users, their real tasks, and their context of use.

Photo by Chokniti Khongchum on Pexels.com

I won’t go into all the details of the pencil & paper study or the results. High School students and then college students were taught the basics of the language and then given a simple relational data base and a set of questions stated in English which they had to translate into Query By Example. Briefly, the bottom line was that Query By Example was easy to learn and easy to use. However, there were still questions that people had difficulty with. In analyzing the data and doing some further experiments, the difficulties that people tended to have, stemmed not so much from Query By Example per se, but from what I much later came to call “labelism” — that is, confusing a label with the thing that label refers to.

Here’s a simple example of the type of confusion we saw. In Query By Example (and other query languages) there is usually an OR operator and an AND operator. (These operators can be important for doing advanced queries with search engines as well). If you are interested in getting a list of pets you might adopt and you’re willing to adopt dogs or cats, you might ask for “cat OR dog.” If you only want long-haired cats, you might ask for “cat” AND “long hair.”

English, however, can be tricky.

If you and I (as opposed to you and a query language) are having a conversation, you might say, “I hear there are many pets that need to be adopted.”

I say, “Yes, there are all kinds of pets. There are snakes, dogs, turtles, rabbits, cats…”

You say, “Let me stop you right there. I’m only interested in adopting cats and dogs. Those are the only animals I’d want to adopt.”

See what you said there? You exact words included: “…cats and dog.” If you put “Cats AND dogs” into a query against the data base of available pets, however, you will get the null set (that is, nothing) back. There are no animals who are both cats and dogs! (Though my part Main Coon cats, Luna and Charles Wallace, can play fetch like dogs).

When people were presented with an English statement that included the English word “and” — regardless of the actual syntax and context, some of them had difficulty using the OR operator. If instead, the query in English had set up like this: “Oh, I don’t want reptiles. I’d be happy with adopting a cat or a dog, however” then, they’d have no problem translating it into the OR operator in the query language.

Lessons Learned: #6 Sometimes the difficulty people have in using a product, a service, or a prototype is not due to the interface details but with the structure of the task, their background, and their training.

By analogy, you will not allow me to beat Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner at tennis by giving me a better tennis racquet! (Although if you gave one of them a toothpick for a tennis racquet, I might have a shot).

That sounds obvious and even absurd, but I promise you, some companies get so greedy that they want you to design a system that allows people who do not understand the task and have minimal background and training to nonetheless be able to perform that task. And, to be fair, it isn’t just the companies who are greedy. They are steered into thinking that they can get away with this absurdity because some outsourcing companies (and more recently, AI companies) tell them they can do it.

One example you may have encountered is having “help desk” personnel who have no understanding of a product go through a script to help you “solve your problem.” Sometimes, it works. But many times it doesn’t. When it does not work, you might not be able to “fix” the system by making the interface to the scripts easier to use for the help desk folks. The problem is much deeper (in some cases). Yes, a really bad interface can make it difficult even for a really knowledgeable and capable person to do the job. But often, even a really great interface cannot always substitute for actual expertise.

——————————————————-

Essays on America: Labelism

My Brief Case Runneth Over

03 Thursday Sep 2026

Posted by petersironwood in The Singularity

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adaptive-systems, AI, Artificial Intelligence, artificial-intellligence, books, chatgpt, cognitive computing, ethics, fiction, law, lawyers, legality, life, music, politics, technology, the singularity, USA, writing

left-right patterns 2

Turing’s Nightmares: Nineteen — My Brief Case Runneth Over

“Nice office, counselor.” Marvin spread his arm to indicate the panorama of Manhattan and Ellis Island. Yet, his attempt to sound casual failed utterly. He realized all too well the depth of trouble he was in and the creakiness in his voice so signaled.

J.B. smiled. “No need to be nervous. After all, we’re here to help. Just answer honestly. Everything you say will typically be covered under attorney client privilege.”

“Okay. Thanks. Typically?”

J.B. sighed. “There is a rare exception in the Patriot Act. Unless you’re some kind of terrorist, I wouldn’t worry about it. The government is apparently accusing you of importing illegal chips is all. I think we can argue that you are new to the business and did not realize all the required legalities. Pay the taxes now and some penalties. You should be able to avoid jail time. But we are getting way ahead of ourselves. Just tell me how and why and when you got into this business in the first place.”

Marvin chuckled slightly and then sighed “That’s a rather long story.” Marvin glanced at the expensive abstract paintings and noted the rich smell of the solid mahogany furniture. The room also had that crazy idea of luxury — making it freezing cold inside just because it was horribly hot and humid that day, even for New York City August. “At your rates…What do you really need to know?”

“Why did you get involved in making chips without the required back door?”

“These chips are not that powerful. At least not in the traditional sense of the word. And, the government’s requirement is frankly kind of silly. The extra logic makes programming more difficult. It increases the chances of errors. The chips are more expensive and require more power. Leaving aside all the valid privacy concerns, there are plenty of applications that can use a more efficient cheaper chip design. No need to report all the little finger twitches of every twelve year old who’s playing Grand Theft Spaceship. What’s the point?”

“Marvin. I’ve been a friend of your family for a long time. When…well…if we go to court and if you testify, please steer clear of politics. The law is the law. You don’t get to decide which applications are immune from the law. No, what we…our script here is that you made some honest mistakes. You made technical mistakes and what are essentially accounting errors.”

Marvin flushed. “What technical mistakes? What are you talking about? My design is an improvement.”

J.B. got up and paced. “Marvin, Marvin, you are a smart boy. We are not going to fight the government on this. Our script as I said is that you made some honest mistakes. If you want to —- the court is not the place to try to change the law. If you want to do that, get involved in politics. But not until after this is resolved. If you get on the stand and start railing about privacy and the dangers of the Sing and…”

“Ha. The Sing indeed. This data collection rampage has nothing to do with trying to increase the intelligence of computer systems. It is just mindless greed.”

“Marvin, the back door requirement is about preventing terrorism; it has nothing to do with greed.”

“Are you serious, J.B.? Terrorism is just the cover story the government uses. They want to collect all this data to keep their sponsors happy.”

“What? What sponsors? What are you talking about? The government doesn’t have sponsors.”

“Of course they do. Ever since ‘Citizens United’ — nice title by the way — billionaires can buy all the media they want. They wash the airwaves and the print media and saturate the social media space and make people believe anything they want. The point of the back door is just to make sure the sponsors keep tabs on everybody’s buying habits —- and to make sure no-one gets too far out of line. How can you not know this?”

“I don’t want to think that way. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s the law. All digital processing chips with more than a peta-flop and …”

“Hold it! Did you say ‘digital’?”

“Huh? Yeah, of course. Isn’t that what we’re talking about? You designed digital processing chips that have no back door and now…”

“No. Maybe not, J.B. My chips are not, strictly speaking, digital.”

“What are you talking about, Marvin? Why? How not digital?”

“In my design process, I strove for something different and more robust. See, here’s the thing. Natural life processes are all…they all have some level of flexibility. They are robust. They are adaptive, I suppose, because every life form that was not flexible or robust died off over the four billion years that life evolved. Something new would come along and every life form that was rigid died. Even physical machines that people make have some flexibility. Metal bends. Wood bends. These materials also compress. They stretch. Not much, but a little. Digital devices do not stand for bending, folding or mutilating. Of course, when people build systems that include IT devices, they try to make the systems flexible. They add error checking; they put humans in the loop; there are all sorts of work-around, but the underlying tech is brittle. It is only flexible in precisely the ways that the designers anticipated it needed to be flexible. I made something that is fundamentally flexible. It is fashioned after life itself. Social systems are flexible. Eco-systems are flexible. Individual animals are flexible. Cell membranes are flexible. Bones are flexible. And so on. This flexibility is fundamental to life and evolution.”

“Okay, Marvin, but life is not infinitely flexible. You cannot just decide to breathe underwater.”

“Of course not! I never said it was infinitely flexible! For fundamental change, you need evolution and lots of time. If the climate changes too quickly, Permian life species largely go extinct. Dinosaurs die when a comet hits. But small adaptations just happen automatically and at every level. It isn’t necessary to have a pre-existing ‘program’ or ‘case’ to handle every contingency that is even slightly outside of what is anticipated.”

“Okay, fine. Granted, but what does this have to do with — did I mention that I charge $500 an hour, by the way?”

“Yes, J.B., you did. And it was in the contract you had me sign. But the point is that my chips are not, strictly speaking, digital at all. They are not strictly EITHER/OR. They are not binary. Although, in many cases, they can behave as binary.”

“So, you want me to claim that these chips are not covered under the back-door provision because they are not really digital devices? I don’t know. That seems pretty shaky to me. Can’t these chips of your be used for the same things as ordinary digital chips? Speech reco. Machine vision. Game control. Big data analytics.”

“Here’s the thing, J.B. Yes, they can, but they can change and evolve and reprogram themselves over time. And, now it occurs to me, that they could not have a real back door. They wouldn’t really function if they did.”

“What? Why?”

“Are you familiar with programmed death in cells? I can see from your blank stare, you aren’t. Anyway, if a cell is damaged within the body, it can wreak all sorts of havoc so the cells are essentially programmed to self-destruct. If that fails, the other healthy cells will tend to wipe out the damaged ones. So, if there were a functioning back door sharing data out of these chips, the chips would shut themselves down. If that failed, other chips in the matrix would isolate them and shut off communication. So, by their very nature, these particular non-digital chips cannot have a functioning back door.”

“That all sounds very clever, Marvin, but now we are talking about a very lengthy and expensive trial with expert witnesses on both sides. If, that is, you are lucky enough to even have an open trial.”

“Lucky enough? What are you talking about, J.B.? I thought you said we wanted to avoid a trial.”

“Yeah. With my strategy where we convince the NSA that this was just technical and business incompetence on your part. But in your scenario, where you want to prove you are all brilliant and everything, then, we will be lucky if —- you will be lucky to —- Look Marvin, I just cannot advise you to take this line of argument. If you really want to go that route, you will have to find a different lawyer.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll use Solomon.”

“Solomon? Who is ‘Solomon’? Never heard of him. I mean, obviously, I know Solomon from the Bible but what firm are you talking about?”

“No firm, J.B. Solomon is one of the apps we built with my chipset.”

“An AI lawyer? Are you serious?”

“Oh, quite serious. He’s already informed me that he thinks he can win this case.”

“What? That’s preposterous. You told me you just designed the chips a year ago. What kind of experience could this Solomon have?”

“J.B., he’s been reading applicable statutes and case law for the last two months. Which means, he literally knows it all, when it comes to case law and the rulings beneath. Beyond that, Solomon has argued both sides of thousands of hypothetical cases.”

“What?! Ridiculous! But even so, he — or it —cannot possibly know how to anticipate or react to what happens in court!”

“But J.B., haven’t you been listening? Of course he can. He’s flexible, just like a real lawyer. Only…no offense…a lot smarter.”

“Computers cannot be that flexible. Ridiculous. How? No way.”

“Look, J.B., I have a picture to illustrate. See this pattern on the left [Picture at the top of page]? And, there it is on the right?”

“Yeah, beautiful. Same pattern. So what?”

“Ah, that’s just it! Is it the same pattern? Is it the same pattern or the same pattern?”

“Well. One is perfect and the other has little mistakes, but I guess it’s the same pattern.”

“Exactly, J.B. It’s the same basic pattern, but it’s not the identical instantiation of that pattern. Ordinary chips are like the picture on the left and mine are like the picture on the right. You see? And, that flexibility is built in at every level in every system. Because the underlying substrate uses an adaptive process with variations. It works 99% as efficiently as the system on the left, but it can accommodate things we didn’t think of. The difference between the system on the left and the system on the right is hubris. The one on the left is designed under the assumption that the designer knows everything of relevance. The system on the right is designed under the assumption that the designer, no matter how brilliant, does not know everything of relevance. You get it?”

“Yes, Marvin, I’m not stupid. But I am still not going to take your case. And, I strongly advise you not to rely on a robot. I am sorry to say it, Marvin, but I think you have picked on the wrong people this time. Attorney client privilege no longer applies and I have to send my recording of this conversation to the proper authorities.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary Marvin. I’ve already broadcasts this through the social media. You’re famous! It will be good for your business.”

“What? Are you crazy? They will come get you, you fool.”

“Maybe, but if I am taken out over these chips without a trial, everyone will know, don’t you see? I sent it out everywhere, J.B. I might be ‘disappeared’ but I can’t just disappear unnoticed. Solomon’s idea, by the way.”

Author Page

Welcome, Singularity

Destroying Natural Intelligence

Take a glance join the dance

Dream Planet

We’re all in this together

29 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, leadership, love, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

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community, cooperation, Democracy, earth, green, love, music, nature, peace, poem, poetry, relationships, society, ubuntu, writing

We’re all in this together.

Each and every one.

Oh, my God, it can’t be true.

Perhaps for me, but not for you!

You’re too black or brown or yellow!

I’m just an ordinary fellow!

You’re too gay or straight or mellow!

You even eat that apple jello!

We’re all in this together.

Each and every one.

Old & young and in-between;

The ever-seen and never-seen.

Oh, my God, it can’t be true.

Perhaps for me, but not for you!

You’re too fat or skinny or too tall!

Perhaps you’re short and way too small!

We’re all in this together.

Each and every one.

Into games or sports of every sort.

Even tall and short and every sort.

Oh, my God, it can’t be true.

Perhaps for me, but not for you!

You’re too shallow, smart, or kind;

Too lame or sick or different mind.

We’re all in this together.

Each and every one.

We’re all in this together.

Each and every one.

The Watershed Virus

The only “them” that counts is all of us

How the Nightingale Learned to Sing

Myths of the Veritas: The First Ring of Empathy

Stoned Soup

Three Blind Mice

Absolute is not just a Vodka

Fire and Ice

The “All for me” Bee

Life Will Find a Way

Myths of the Veritas: The Orange Man

Myths of the Veritas: The Forgotten Field

Roar, Ocean, Roar!

Dance of Billions

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

Dog Years

28 Friday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, nature, pets

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charlie-brown, dogs, family, fiction, goldens, kids, life, parenting, pets, politics, story, truth, USA, writing

NOTE: I originally wrote this after a long rainy spell in San Diego. In fact, it hasn’t rained here for quite a while, but I believe we will have another long string of rainy days before long. We’ll see. Meanwhile….

Sunshine was one of my reasons for moving to San Diego. It wasn’t the most important, but it was important and I appreciate the Sunshine. For the past week, however, Sunshine took a long-awaited vacation. Apparently, Sunshine was running some sort of scam on the weather forecasters, calling up and saying, “Hi! It’s Sunshine! I’m feeling so much better today! I’ll be at work as usual tomorrow. You can count on it.

And then, when daybreak arrives the next day, it doesn’t. That is to say, when it should arrive, it doesn’t because Sunshine has overslept. Again. I suspect it might be because of all-night partying last night on the other side of the world.

You would think that the weather forecasters would catch on. You might even think that they would have seen the famous “Charlie Brown” cartoon meme in which Charlie Brown’s frienemy Lucy, promises him, year after year, that she will dutifully hold the football and not pull it away—not this time. And, dutifully, year after year, Charlie Brown decides that this will, or at least might be, the year that Lucy finally does the right thing.

But of course, she doesn’t do the right thing. And, Charlie falls flat on his back every time. Lucy smiles.

So apparently, this week, did the Sunshine. Taking vacation elsewhere and not showing more than a stray ray or two in San Diego allowed for the deluge. Other places farther north had it much worse, in terms of rainfall and damage. Worldwide, what we now call extreme weather may, in many places, become more “normal” and extreme weather will become deadlier.

In any case, I am have been just as foolish as the weather forecasters and Charlie Brown. Every day, my phone app has said the rain would be over in a day or two. And, then, two days later…same forecast is dutifully presented. But not the promised reality.

Sadie, meanwhile has been very patient about the fact that our walks have been typically much shorter all week. She has also been patient about not being allowed to dig in the dirt. More accurately, she wasn’t allowed to dig in the mud. There was no “dirt” around. It’s not idle digging. She hears and smells gophers and goes after them. Unsuccessfully. Every time. She’s dug for gophers more than the San Diego weather forecasters trusted Sunshine’s repeated false assurances that tomorrow the rain would end; indeed, even more often than Charlie Brown has over-trusted Lucy.

Sadie persists. She enjoys the process. Maybe the weather forecasters enjoy knowing that they made everyone feel hopeful that could play tennis in a few days (or have a picnic or mow the lawn or harvest their fruit in sunshine). Maybe Charlie Brown enjoys being the kind of person who would give another one more chance to be good, even if they never take that chance than to be more cynical and realistic.

I can’t say what the motivations are for Charlie Brown and the weather forecasters, but I am sure Sadie enjoys the digging. She certainly has little care for how dirty her paws get or whether she spews mud on my shoes. My philosophy may be a mixture of Charlie Brown and the San Diego Cabal of Sun Predictors. I believe Sadie should spend some time “just being a dog.” In other words, she should be in at least partial charge of what she does and be allowed to follow her “instincts” unless it poses a true danger and not just because, say, she tracks mud into the house.

As I was watching Sadie dig, and I was sliding sideways to prevent becoming muck-inundated, it occurred to me that I too, had some years of “just being a dog.” My parents, I think, thought of it as time for my “just being a kid.” In some cases, I heard adults say, “Oh, it’s just boys being boys” when we played in the dirt, fought with sticks, or had “rock wars” wherein we literally threw rocks at each other.

Not all adults were on this plan 100%. My own parents would let me play in the dirt often times, but they did not want me to participate in rock fights or stick duels. Evading those restrictions was trivial. We weren’t trying to be bad. But we knew our friends would not to try to blind us with sticks or stones. We believed implicitly that since we weren’t intentionally trying to blind each other, it wouldn’t happen.

Though there were local variations in the strictness of restrictions, we were always able to do some version of “just being a kid” which truthfully, was not all that different from “just being a dog.”

I had just as little care about muddying my shoes or fingernails as Sadie does about muddying her paws. I’d say my “dog years” were mainly between six and thirteen. Before six, my parents or other caregivers wouldn’t leave me alone long enough to get in real trouble. I mean, I managed all the usual little things like peeing into electrical outlets, throwing stuff down the “registers” (heating vents) to see what would happen, and writing in books and on walls, but there was no opportunity to have rock fights or get muddy from head to foot.

From ages six to thirteen, however, I spent a lot of time outdoors unsupervised. Plenty of time to be a dog. A few years later, however, it dawned on me that girls might find me more attractive if I were less muddy. My mother might have planted that suggestion.

There’s no doubt that many of the “instincts” I had were not very effective guides. They weren’t as effective as the knowledge that science and society had developed over centuries. On balance, I still believe having some dog years is a risk worth taking.

For a dog.

Or for a kid.

————————————

Author page on Amazon

Author Page on Amazon

My Cousin Bobby

Sadie is a thief!

Sadie

Sunday Sonnet for Sadie

Sadie

Play Ball: The Squeaky Ball

Skirting the Turtle

Life Will Find a Way

Math Class

The Most Important Work

Dog Trainers

Recommended Books:

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

About Writing

26 Wednesday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in creativity, fiction, pets, Uncategorized

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book-review, books, creativity, dog, dogs, fiction, internationaldogday, novel, pets, psychology, writing

Hello!

I’ve been reflecting on “International Dog Day” and on a year-long course on novel writing I took a couple years ago. To me, writing a full-length novel is more difficult than writing a Ph.D. dissertation. Writing non-fiction such as a dissertation requires research, discipline, organization, and being willing to work hard.

Writing a novel requires all of those but it also requires keeping track of the implications of many little decisions. It is not only a cognitive strain but often an emotional one as well. It’s a never-ending series of choices. Science is often, but not always, a series of choices where there is an agreed upon better answer. Even when there isn’t agreement, there are a much smaller number of choices.

To me, writing non-fiction is like taking a long trip on existing roads. You may certainly face unanticipated difficulties such as construction zones, flat tires and bad weather.

Writing fiction is more like bushwhacking. No-one has ever trod (or will ever trod) your exact path. You may learn something by discovering or following the paths of previous writers. You might, for instance, discover that some writers go over logs that lie across their intended path. Others, may crawl under. Still others might go around the fallen log. Others might choose to back-track until another path is found. What should you do?

It depends.

And, that’s the nature of fiction. It all depends. It depends on what else happens in the book. How you choose to construct and describe one character depends on the others. Even what you name them depends on the other names. What happens in character development interacts with the plot. The plot interacts with the landscape and the mood. The mood depends on the tempo. The tempo, if it’s dialog, must be consistent with the character who’s doing the talking.

Our dog Sadie and I have been co-creating and co-evolving games from the days she first came to live with us. We often played variants of “fetch.” Here’s how one worked. One of us (most often Sadie) finds a squeaky ball. At some point, I get a squeaky ball from somewhere in the garden and say, “Get up on the deck! I’m going to throw the ball on the deck.”

Now matter where she is when she hears that, she sprints to the deck and awaits my throw. She sprints with spirit! I love to watch her run, not only for her grace and speed but even more so, for the whole-heartedness with which she runs every single time. I throw the ball up and she catches it in the air more than half the time. Even when she misses, she’ll scramble after it and proudly perch on the spot on the deck where I can see that she’s caught the ball. After elaborate and genuine praise, she sprints down the stairs to the lawn near me. Then, she will lie down with the squeaky ball in her mouth. After a time, she’ll move the ball away from her some distance. I walk over casually, as though I am not trying to “steal” the ball from her. When I get close to the ball, she quickly re-grabs it. After she’s had a few “successes” she will start hanging out farther and farther away from the ball. At some point, I’ll grab the ball and announce, “I’ve got it!” At that point, she again sprints up the stairs to go the deck where I will throw the ball up to her.

The part of this scenario that I think is most like writing the fiction is the part where Sadie is judging how far away the ball should be from her buzz-fast jaws. If it’s too close, I won’t even try for it. If it’s too far away, I’ll immediately grab the ball. Similarly, as an author, I want to keep the reader interested. If my writing is too predictable, it might be clear, but it will be uninspiring and dull. The reader will quit before they get to the end of the story. On the other hand, if I write too far from the reader’s expectations, they will quit because they cannot grab the threads of the narrative.

To me, the benefits of co-creating with Sadie (rather than “training her” to play the game in a particular and predetermined way) include that I can learn a lot by observing her. Another benefit is that it keeps both of our minds more flexible and more engaged (just as does good literature). Of course, there are two of us in this exercise and that is also true in the reading of fiction. Every author, including me, will make miscalculations about how far to stray from expectations. But whether you can follow across those miscalculations is not only a measure of my skill as a writer but is also a measure of your skill as a reader.

In the past, I’ve self-published my books on Amazon. These are mostly non-fiction, but one of them is a collection of fictional short stories. Next time, I may try traditional agent/publishing. I am also thinking of putting together several more books, using the blog posts here as the seeds.

After a year long writing course, the single most important piece of advice I can give is:

“Get a dog.”

Don’t get me wrong. We have six cats and we love them dearly. The cats are smart, and I can certainly empathize with the cats. But their ability to empathize with me is either very limited or, as I suspect is more likely, they really don’t give a damn. On the other hand, Sadie is a pleasure to co-create with because she intuitively “gets” cooperation and collaboration. We accommodate each other and neither of us has any idea how the game will evolve.

The games with Sadie became more complex when we got a second dog, Bailey. Bailey is also an excellent ball player. But, unlike Sadie, Bailey almost always prefers to race after the ball, bring it back to me panting and lay the ball by my feet for an instant replay. That works quite well when I am playing only with Bailey.

The complexity arises when I try to play with Sadie and Bailey at the same time. Sadie wants to play the game of bringing the ball near me, but if she drops it near me, Bailey swoops in and grabs the ball before I can play the threshold game with Sadie. The easiest way is to deal with this is to play ball with them separately. Sometimes, I do.

My wife and I have also taken great pains to try to teach Bailey to take turns. Bailey is a smart dog and he is quite good about taking turns when it comes to eating, say, or going out to pee. But—when it comes to ball-chasing, it seems nearly impossible for him to consistently “take turns.” He’s much more likely to grab the ball, even if it means stealing it out of Sadie’s mouth.

One invention we’ve come up with is the “Three Balls on the Roof” throw. It works like this. I gather up three balls and throw all three up on the roof at the same time. We have a tiled Mediterranean roof and the balls bounce around unpredictably before coming down. This generally allows each dog to catch at least one. After they catch the ball, they both try to “touch” the other two balls. In the case of Bailey, this often entails stealing the one that Sadie caught. That has happened so many times, that generally, Sadie drops the ball she caught before Bailey gets a chance to “steal it” out of her mouth.

This “compromise” is not ideal. It reminds me though of another difficulty in writing a novel. I experience this myself, but I see evidence for the same difficult for many other writers. Here’s the essence of the dilemma. I like my hero(s). I care about them. I like to see them succeed. But…

For maximum reader engagement, the main character(s) must go through hell. I know many ways to put them there, but it’s painful to do so. One solution is to write about villains. I don’t mind if they go through hell.

Another solution is to use the “Three Ball Trick.” In this trick, I put the hero in a situation that looks dire, even impossible. But before resolving that puzzle, I put them (or a different hero) into yet another dire situation. Hopefully, the reader is already imagining that the hero is likely going to die or at least be permanently injured, possibly in two different ways. Before either of those two sticky situations gets unstuck, one of the main characters gets into yet another jam. And they must get into this jam before the other two jams are resolved.

Does this comport with your intuition as well? Compare two structures:

Hero encounters nasty situation one. (E.g., loses job).
Hero encounters nasty situation two (E.g., loses lover).

Hero encounters nasty situation three (E.g., gets arrested for a crime).

Hero “solves” situation one. (E.g., inherits money).

However, the apparent solution leads to further complication (makes them look guiltier in the crime they’ve been arrested for).

By contrast, we could imagine:

Hero encounters nasty situation one and solves it.
Hero encounters nasty situation two and solves it.
Hero encounters nasty situation three and solves it.

The latter structure is like throwing three balls on the roof, but one at a time. What would happen? My prediction is that Bailey would steal every ball that Sadie caught and she would soon stop playing.

In writing, the result would be that I would be more “comfortable” because my hero would never “hang out” in mortal danger. But the reader would not experience the joy of apparent repeated resurrection.

Author page on Amazon

Autobiography and Essays

Scenarios about AI

How to work more fun and exercise into daily chores

Sports Psychology

The Story of Stories

The First Ring of Empathy

Travels with Sadie: Photoessays Inspired by Walks with Sadie

The Walkabout Diaries: Photoessays Inspired by Parks, Gardens, and Wilderness

A Pattern Language for Collaboration and Cooperation

Unite!

25 Tuesday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, leadership, love, poetry, politics, psychology, Uncategorized

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Democracy, family, fiction, life, love, poetry, politics, story, truth, USA, writing

Fight the Night and Light the Light: Unite!

Let King take wing. His ring is not your thing.

Be Free, you see: that’s victory for thee.

Don’t cling to King

Sing your thing

Let it swing you into soaring wing.

A tight rope height slightly frights your sight.

Delights the kite you hide within your might;

It shatters your delusions;

Tickles your allusions;

You see right through their brightly lit illusions.

A snarky shark remarks on quarks and sparks your curiosity.

Once understanding parks its marks in Noah’s arks,

They multiply ferocity.

Embark upon the journey with a smile.

Don’t always form in rank and file.

Be sure to recall:

That Life Will Find a Way;

That Cancer Always Loses in the End;

Honest Folks can always find a friend;

Play hard on every Play;

Learn from every fall.

———————-

Roar, Ocean, Roar!

The Dance of Billions

All We Stand to Lose

After All

Absolute is not Just a Vodka

Poker Chip

Fish Have no Word for Water

After the Reign

Cancer Always Loses in the End

Life Will Find a Way

Your Cage is Unlocked

Some book recommendations:

The Winning Weekend Warrior focuses on the mental game for all sports using examples from tennis, golf, baseball, and other sports. It covers self-talk, imagery, mental practice, strategy, tactics, & sportsmanship. http://tinyurl.com/ng2heq3

Turing’s Nightmares explores the implications and ethics of Artificial Intelligence through fictional short stories. http://tinyurl.com/hz6dg2d

Fit in Bits shows many ways to put more fun, variety, & exercise into daily chores and habits to help with strength, flexibility, fitness, and balance. http://tinyurl.com/h6c7fce

Tales from an American Childhood recounts early experiences mainly in the American Midwest in the 1950’s and relates them to contemporary issues and events. https://tinyurl.com/y9ajvz9j

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dream-planet-david-thomas/1148566558

Ironic

25 Tuesday Aug 2026

Posted by petersironwood in America, satire, story

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Tags

America, book-review, books, con, Democracy, fiction, irony, politics, satire, story, treason, truth, USA, writing

So, our instructor assigned us to write a story with a strong emphasis on irony. Mine is about a hypothetical future American tragedy of a coup financed and designed by the Kremlin. By way of summary, this is how it related to irony and I appended this to the story for the instructor’s edification.

“And, the most ironic part of the whole American tragedy was this: even though he spent his entire life conning others, it was beyond his ken to consider that Vlademort Putrid was likewise conning him. He had been lying and bragging so long about his competence in all things that he actually came to believe he was smarter and a better strategist than Putrid. Putrid likely could have done it alone. But, of course, he did not do it alone. Putrid had the collaboration of highly trained, highly dedicated KBG/GRU professionals to help.

“In principle, perhaps he could have enlisted American experts, but he didn’t feel the need. Furthermore, he faced a real dilemma. He couldn’t openly ask any but the corrupt for help against American interests. And those who were corrupt were generally far less competent and always less well connected to a healthy network of professionals than their more numerous and genuinely patriotic counterparts.

“I said that was the most ironic part of the whole American tragedy, but there are a few close contenders. Another highly ironic part of his entire con game was that he played the game as though the only thing in the universe that mattered was his own pleasure. Of course, no matter what moves he made or is yet to make, he is not actually immortal in and of himself. By lying to himself and everyone else, he essentially cut himself off from being part of The Great Tree of Life (or at least from being a non-cancerous part). Rather than living on through his actions that benefited the whole, he delimited his life, curtailed it, circumscribed it to his own physical mortality.

“The intertwined corollary of the above is that even while he lived, he missed out on the best feeling in life: being in caring and loving honest relationships. In order to absolutely and positively ensure that he grabbed as much as possible for himself, he limited his “prizes” to mere material crap and the pleasure of cruelty. “

So, this is how they responded:

“When it comes to being ironic, this is definitely A plus material.

However, sad to say, there are also some serious problems with your narrative. First, of all Americans are too well educated to fall for the lies of a known con man. And, why not simply make the character more believable? It’s not plausible that so many people would fall for the con. Apart from that, the cowardice you portray on the part of so many within his own party is also unbelievable.

Still, the mechanics of the writing was also clean, so I’m giving you a B+. Next time, focus on believability rather than forgoing that to punch the irony.”

Was that a fair grade, I ask you?

Poker Chip

Donnie’s Final Gift

Plans for US; some GRUesome

Three Blind Mice

Stoned Soup

The Ailing King of Agitate

Dick-Taters

The Titanic

Con-Con’s Special Friend

Trumpism is a New Religion

Essays on America: The Game

Essays on America: The Stopping Rule

Essays on America: The Update Problem

Wednesday

Labelism

My Cousin Bobby

Where Does Your Loyalty Lie?

Dance of Billions

Roar, Ocean, Roar!

Fish Have no Word for Water

After All

All We Have to Lose