Marilyn's Photos - Dec 4 2025 - Enter a New Era

 

What new era would I be referring to?  It is the era of a degree in Artificial Intelligence.  It used to be Computer Science way back in the 1970s.  Then we introduced Information Management in the 1980s.  Then it was Management Information Systems. Business Intelligence followed.  So doesn’t it make sense that we can now get a degree in Artificial Intelligence.   We had a hierarchy for this - data management, the lowest level, then information management, then knowledge management and finally wisdom.  Ha ha!  To think we can actually figure out wisdom. What would we learn in the Artificial Intelligence education program?  wrote course outlines when I worked at Ryerson (renamed the Metropolitan University of Toronto) and I doubt if I could not have written the program key points for the Rotman program.  I don’t think I made up that much crap for the entire program of courses let alone a six-week virtual e-learning experience.  The overview is HERE.  What about the last “key takeaway” - like something from 1984: Create a structured road map to drive AI adoption and apply gen AI to foster innovation, cultivate a data-driven culture, and mitigate resistance to change Can we find amusing things in all this?  I really wanted to find an “AI walks into a bar joke “ that is funny.  I hardly found one joke. Here it is: “An AI walks into a bar and orders a byte to drink, but is told the bar only serves bits.” Just below it was this overview of  a youtube video titled “A guy walks into a bar” and the subheading is this: “Hilarious jokes about a sandwich, panda, cowboy, cat, time traveler, priest, rabbi, monk, amnesiac, $5 bill, tennis ball, ghost, conspiracy theorists, cornstalk, and weasel. That’s a joke right there. Our picture today is tree bark - this was in Pasadena, and with a bit of colourizing, it looks like sand banks at the seashore.  I am so impressed with all the kinds of surfaces and textures that trees have.

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Marilyn's Photos - Sep 13 2025 - Find the ... in the picture

 

I am attracted to these puzzles that ask you to find something out of pattern.  In the first one it is find the 21, and the second one find the reverse 3.  What kind of puzzles are these?  You might think you just go look up a list of puzzles and find the name in the list.  It is too long a list in Wikipedia to be repeated here.  HERE is the link. Puzzles have been around since ancient times.  The first one that Wikipedia documents is the Chinese nine linked-rings puzzle from 475 BCE. riddles were known in Greek mythology.   And what about this Wikipedia entry - the list of puzzles that cannot be solved. It is HERE. This makes me think there isi also a large number of unanswerable problems and questions. Here's the answer to these:  "They are sets of questions that should not be thought about, and which the Buddha refused to answer, since this distracts from practice, and hinders the attainment of liberation. Various sets can be found within the Pali and Sanskrit texts, with four, and ten (Pali texts) or fourteen (Sanskrit texts) unanswerable questions," Isn't that the nature of puzzles - compelling and demanding.     I found this picture that I took quite a while go in my Lightroom database yesterday.  I don't quite remember the where and what of the original thing with this graffiti  - likely a floor or wall.

And a model railroad picture today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Marilyn's Photos - Sep 3 2025 - This Week's Astonomical Events

 

The astronomical events this week start September 16th according to AI Overview. Isn't that 2 weeks from now? So instead I went directly to a space website - starwalk.space - to see the September calendar with something going on up there all month long.  There's a Full moon - Blood Moon - a total lunar eclipse on September 7th visible across Australia, Asia, Africa, Russia and Europe.  Parts of western North America and other places, except us.  Then there's a partial solar eclipse on September 21st.  You will need to go to New Zealand and Anarctica. Or wait around and the next solar eclipse is in 343 days - Aug 12 2026 - visible from Russia, Greenland, Iceland and Spain. Doesn't that make you nostalgic for the total eclipse of the sun that we had early in 2025?   I know that the AI Overview needs to be removed from my searching - I shouldn't trust its results as being factual.  Google Safari does not allow for the AI response to be turned off.  There's an easy answer - switch to DuckDuckGo to turn it off there.  Now I get a nice listing of sites with a calendar of astronomical events.     As I start to use DuckDuckGo more, I observe it to be less of a shopping experience. The most sponsored products on google?  Google AI tells me that it is:  beauty and personal care, home and living, electronics and smart home, hair care, retail and e-commerce platforms and sunscreen.  I actually think it is gutter cleaning.  Somehow that shows up every day.  I expect you might have a product that haunts you regularly.   Ask the question of the most sponsored products on google using  duckduckgo.com and a different list of results happens.There are articles explaining how Google sponsored ads work, there's information on how shopping results are generated, and so on. A short-term fix for the invasion of AI.  I'll take it while it is here.   Here's one of those pictures to guess what it is.  It is a detail section of an outdoor sculpture in a botanical garden.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 5 2025 - Where's Waldo Now?

 

Where's Waldo?  How old was he in 1987? It looks like it started out as Where's Wally? in the U.K. and Where's Waldo in the U.S.  The originator/author is Martin Handford. As the series goes on, Wally progressively becomes harder to find, reducing his size on the page and surrounding him by more characters.  There were 225 characters in the first book to 850 in the last book's first page.  There's a great picture of attendees at the 2011 Where's Waldo? World Record event in Dublin, Ireland - all dressed as Wally/Waldo. In 2009 a re-creation took place in Chicago, featuring all the characters hiding throughout downtown Chicago.   Waldo came to mind after I saw this dog picture in the Bing feed - find the cat in the picture.  Is there only one cat?  Are all the small-eared ones cats, or just the one with whiskers?

Here's the opposite sort of picture - a little bit of found grunge.

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Marilyn's Photos - July 30 1015 - Back-to-back

 

The games were played back to back. That's how we think of back-to-back or back to back.  Or it could be meetings.  Or watching movies, or having interviews, or...booking 51 back-to-back cruises on the Princess Cruises' Coral Princess.  After that finishes, the article says they will get on the Crown Princess for another year. They won't say how much they've spent, but claim it is cheaper than a retirement home.  That's the headline about Marty and Jess Ansen from Australia, who have spent over 450 days on board. They wanted to "catch up" on the cruising they missed during the Pandemic.  Another article headline said they did this instead of retiring to a nursing home.  In the same article another permanent cruise ship passenger, Ryan Gutridge says it is cheaper to live on a cruise ship.   "As reported by Business Insider, Gutridge claimed that living on a cruise ship for 300 days costs roughly the same as paying rent for an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 2023, his base fare budget was about $30,000. Since he has racked up so many days at sea, his drinks and internet are free, thanks to his Crown & Anchor Society perks. Because of his benefits, he said he'll spend even less money cruising than in the past, even if he's cruising more." So we find another one of those 1 in 8 billion moments.  I have a "1 in 8 billion club".  The first person in it is the oldest marathoner, Fauja Singh, who died at 114 years old a few weeks ago.  His was an inspiring story.  And this cruise story?  I didn't promise the 1 in 8 billion club would all be pretty, did I?   Yesterday's summer camp activity, with all that heat, was to take another image through the "fun cycle".  This image is from the Minneapolis Botanic Garden from a few years ago.  It is a white sculpture reflected in black water.  Using the temperature slide, it was turned to a nice blue, manipulated it in Flexify and then arranged into collages. Blue seems to be quite cooling. Then I read about the 6 foot Tsunami waves that travelled from Russia to Japan, Hawaii, B.C. and the U.S. Pacific coast.  It caused the evacuation of millions of  people in Japan.

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May 30 2025 - Spelling Bees Turn 100

 

Are Spelling Bees a U.S. phenomenon?  They turned 100 this year, or so an article says.  We can't know anymore which articles are news and fact and white are click bait headlines. So I thought this was something to check out. I find that the anniversary refers to the annual United States National Spelling Bee.   I don't remember this in public school. But then, I don't have vivd public or high school memories.  But wouldn't I remember attending a spelling bee? I don't even remember the expression spelling bee.  We had the Science Fair for maths, engineering and science.  There was the Kiwanis Festival Competition for music and the arts.  There were debating competitions.  So it is likely spelling bees were more of a minor activity in Canada. The  U.S. Spelling bee is the Scripps National Spelling Bee and participants came from U.S. and other countries.  It is very complicated now, with many rules, rounds, quarterfinals, semifinals, and so on.   Back in the early days the first place prize was either $500 0r $1000 - that's a lot in 1925.  And today?  First place gets $50,000.  I wonder if that even covers the costs involved.  There's a Spelling Bee of Canada now. It says that over 70,000 children have participated in the competition.  There are 26 regions competing.  The Canadian winner gets around  $10,000.   We older people raise an eyebrow, don't we?  The elevation of a spelling contest as a national entertainment when so many people can't spell simple words with correct grammar.     An abstract today.

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Marilyn's Photos - May 16 2025 - Michelin Stars

 

There's big news on the Quebec restaurant scene with 9 Michelin Star awards in Quebec.  Michelin certainly has made a business of judging restaurant quality.  They review 17,000 restaurants annually.  There are 151 three-star restaurants globally.  There are 26 Michelin-starred restaurants in Canada - 25 with one star and one restaurant with two stars.   Michelin ratings started out as a service offered by the tire company in 1889 for car owners in France - a guidebook for hotels.   Independently-reviewed restaurants were added in 1920 and stars emerged in 1926. A 3-star designation is the top level.  Even today, the Michelin Guide supposedly does not make money.  Instead, it is estimated that it "increases tire sales by 3%".  And it sells Michelin Guides - about 250,000 a year. The Guide runs events and licenses the ranking system - e.g. TripAdvisor.  And countries pay for coverage.  That's what I found out when i initially asked Pearl Morisette about "star status" - their answer was they had to pay Michelin to make the trip and do the assessment. No promise of a star for that investment.  Most restaurants have 1 star.  A star adds about 20% more traffic to the restaurant, 2 stars gets 40% more business and 3 stars gets 100% more business.  And how do the restaurants react after getting their star?  The article I read says they increased pricing to signal new status, revamped menu language to more sophisticated terms and ingredients.   Would you like to be a Michelin guide "inspector?" You would eat around 250 anonymous meals a year which Michelin calls a table test.  travel involves 150 nights in hotels, 600 total visits and 1,000 reports.  And then there are the chefs who "walk away" from their stars.  Too much work, tired of making complex multi-course menus, get back to cooking simple dishes, The full article is HERE.  A rust abstract today.

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Mar 13 2025 - Beer Wars

 

The CBC has an article about a Presidential Pack of beer available from Moosehead Brewery. " A beer a day keeps the chaos at bay."  That's 1,461 beers in the pack. It is mean to cover the current president's term.  The company wanted to "tap into" Canadian pride.  They made 5 the packs, and then 5 more, and who knows where it will end?  There are more than 100 people on the waiting list. The quality of the beer will decline before the year's up so I guess there are party plans for Canada Day.   Since the revival of the I am Canadian beer ad, beer has gained stature. What other products could compete?  There's ice wine, maple syrup, nanaimo bars and poutine.     The last time I went past the neon display at the Toronto Convention Centre, it was all turned off.  Too bad.  Here's a motion blur abstract from when they lit.

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Mark 9 2025 - Jack Sprat

 

Jack Sprat.  Who was that?  Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean. And so between them both, you see, They licked the platter clean. "Like many nursery rhymes, "Jack Sprat" may have originated as a satire on a public figure. History writer Linda Alchin suggests that Jack was King Charles I, who was left "lean" when parliament denied him taxation, but with his queen Henrietta Maria he was free to "lick the platter clean" after he dissolved parliament—Charles was a notably short man.An alternative explanation comes from the popular Robin Hood legend, applying it to the disliked King John and his greedy queen Isabella. The saying entered the canon of English nursery rhymes when it was printed in Mother Goose's Melody around 1765, but it may have been adopted for use with children much earlier. Here's the 1639 version:  Jack will eat not fat, and Jull doth love no leane. Yet betwixt them both they lick the dishes cleane. And today?  The Jack Sprat diet plan uses a guided day-by-day approach geared to gender, size and physical activity level...yes, it is a low-fat diet. Time for a Spring diet of colours.

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Feb 16 2025 - Let the Blizzard Begin

 

There's a tiny moment between 5:45 and 7:00 where there isn't a forecast.  Starting at 7:00am it is snow, snow, heavy snow. Well, actually, the forecast says "blizzard".  Look at the radar - so many colours of blue, then there's green and red. Red is for ice.   So it is blizzard until 1:00pm today when it becomes snow again.  It moves to light snow, then snow, then scattered flurries, then blowing snow. We're starting to move into Monday morning with a mix of sun and clouds - rise and shine it is 7:00am and your holiday weekend has been a long weekend forced to stay-at-home - a "Snoliday."   And what is a blizzard?  Three components are necessary - "high winds at least 40 km/h, visibility less than 400 meters and lasting for 4 hours.  That's the Canadian definition. And if we get a ground blizzard?   "Another type of winter storm is called a ground blizzard. This is when gusty winds—often 50 to 60 miles an hour—lift up snow that's already on the ground. Both types of blizzards can cause whiteouts, a condition in which so much snow is blowing so fast that it's hard to see anything." The worst blizzards in history were in Iran in 1872 and in Afghanistan in 2008.  Iran's was the deadliest blizzard in recorded history and dropped as much as 26 feet of snow, completely covering 200 villages. The Storm of the Century was in 1993 in the U.S. Toronto's great snow storm of 1999 is not covered in Wikipedia.  It is remembered for bringing out the military to clear the streets.

A watercolour abstract today. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca