XXXVIII. On The Road to Better Things?

Quick note: The prisoner exchange this week was a big deal, not only for America as a world leader but that we insisted upon the release of Russian journalists imprisoned by their own country, including Pulitzer prize-winner Vladimir Kara-Murza. Like Alexei Navalny, who I wrote about in an earlier issue, Kara-Murza refused to leave his country when Russia returned to being an autocratic state. I have high hopes that Kara-Murza and the others who were freed will use their pens as swords and make valuable contributions to the cause of freeing Russia from Putin.

When I think back to my early days of education, it was a real treat to see anything on film. This was the age of the cart with the projector, and the teacher would pull the screen down and load the reel of film. It was a welcome respite from routine instruction (and now I realize it was a break for the teachers as well). I still believe we have not figured out how to marry modern education with modern technology. We’ve gone from projectors to smart boards. In the future, there will be choices between traditional methods of learning and “AI-enhanced” delivery. If a learner does better with less stimulation and more human dialogue, a traditional delivery method may be more suitable. Yet if a student is inspired more by visuals, a teacher will be able to audible requests and get example lessons, videos, and pictures in a matter of seconds. Instruction in group settings will remain, but with the potential for lessons to be individualized to each student and even more self-paced. In these instances, the teacher will become more of the facilitator, while AI interacts with the students, knowing how each learns best.

We don't know how these things will play out, but we are in an era where we are breaking old models. To that end, this is another issue focused on visual news that resonated with me. Whether thinking about what’s in our phones and cars to robots at home to a new age of warfare, the civic-minded individual will keep abreast of changes that will change everything. I hope you enjoy this issue.

Before we move on, I also want to share a story with you from Mark Hollis, the Director of AARP Texas and a long-time journalist from here in the South. I share his story here because we have leaders doing everything they can to sew division and keep Americans angry with each other. Here’s people helping a stranger. You can visualize the angst and anxiety that Mark went through. And this is the leadership lesson to remember: There are good people everywhere. Don’t forget that. As Mr. Rogers always said, look for the helpers. Here’s Mark’s story:

We were at 34,000 feet and over the Rocky Mountains on our trip home from Oregon two weeks ago when the pilot on our Delta flight announced that we had reached cruising altitude. At that precise moment, and not long after our plane had departed the Salt Lake City airport where I rapidly downed a Burger King Whopper and lemonade during a tight layover, and while suddenly sweating profusely and appearing weak and grey, I felt a sense of dread, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I tapped Lilly on the shoulder and mustered energy to tell her I wasn’t feeling well. In what then confused and further worried me, she looked toward me and said she also wasn’t feeling well. Oh shit, I thought. The plane is in trouble. I quickly looked around to see if other passengers were falling ill. But no, they looked fine, and frankly, so did Lilly. But for me…No exaggeration, I truly felt like I was about to die.

Seconds later, I think many other nearby passengers had the same thought: That Mark was about to die. Spoiler: I didn’t die but I went black. Totally fainted in my seat. In medical terms: syncope. With my eyes apparently somewhat open and rolling, a nearby passenger yelled out (incorrectly though sympathetically) that “He’s having a seizure!” (this accounting from Lilly as I was passed out). And with that pronouncement, nearly half the plane started freaking out. Lilly and others hit overhead buttons for assistance, and flight attendants scrambled to assist me. 

Shortly, I awoke…groggily. Vomit was filled in my mouth and nose. It was filled in the yellow oxygen mask that flight attendants had put over my face. It was on my shirt, my lap, my sides, on the floor and on Lilly.

A man was on his knees in the aisle applying a blood pressure monitor to my arm and he’s simultaneously scooping puke from my crotch into a garbage bag. I learned later that he’s an Austin anesthesiologist (and an acquaintance in Lilly’s running group). Flight attendants had called out for a doctor onboard.

In the bedlam, flight attendants pressed Lilly to answer questions about my medical history on a cell phone device. An attendant desperately — and to no avail— tried reaching a medic on the ground via a satellite phone. The doctor is barely talking to me, knowing that I’m still an unreliable source of information. Lilly and he stay calm and communicate with one another as I gradually recover. 

A flight attendant repeatedly quizzes the doctor, Lilly, and even me: “Do we need to divert? Do we need to divert?” 

I was probably the least capable person of answering, but I was feeling better and told all that I thought was okay now. Just not comfortable, embarrassed, and unclean. 

Still hot and messy, the group stripped off my soiled shirt and jacket. A passenger across the aisle offered to dig out a shirt of his for me but before he could open the overhead bins, a big 20-something guy threw back to me a T-shirt — a Star Wars “Yoda” themed T that I’ll cherish. 

It seemed like a long flight home. I then contrasted from overheating to feeling chilled and shivering. There were no blankets onboard. A saintly flight attendant gave me her own jacket to wear—-even as I was still smudged in vomit stains. 

I declined the airline’s offer to have paramedics meet us at the gate in Austin. I accepted a wheelchair ride to baggage claim. 

I didn’t sleep well that night at home. The next morning, at Lilly’s insistence, we went to the Austin Heart Hospital ER. They took me seriously. Blood tests, chest X-ray, monitoring, and two weeks of wearing a heart monitor…All signs are: it was NOT a heart attack, not a blood clot, maybe food poisoning, maybe low blood sugar and dehydration. But my regular doctor who I saw today is convinced it was caused by my rapid downing of food at the airport, warm body temperature of heavy shirt and jacket, and induced by the rapid plane ascent that pushed blood to the stomach and away from my brain.

All said: I love and appreciate my wife for the care provided. I’m very grateful to the doctor onboard and for the compassionate help from Delta Airlines flight attendants, and nearby passengers (and most certainly, the older couple who told me that they were praying for me throughout the ordeal).

Safe travels!

Mark Hollis

• We already know the importance of sleep. Here’s your chance to invest in napping….

• The danger of blending personal faith with public service.

• Creativity is normal for kids, but not expected as adults?

I don’t want readers to forget that our history includes at least one civil war. Watch the trailer for this interesting piece on a new documentary film coming this week. Knowledge is power, and staying one step ahead will always be necessary to maintaining freedom for all. If one looks across the world, our form of government is one of many and has no guarantee of sustainability.

Don’t take it for granted with actions that have no basis in facts.

War-making has gone through another enormous change in a short amount of time. From the 9/11 response to Iraq and Afghanistan, we will no longer see huge amounts of soldiers go in first. It will be swarms of drones and other technological innovations that lead the way. I see great danger from the ease and the remoteness in which to make war and cause troubles. That’s a different issue. What I want you to pay attention to in this on-the-ground video is the experience of people who have been bombed, as they try to find their neighbors, and belongings, and figure out what to do with their pets and livestock. This is the face of war, which is all the more reason that diplomacy must be given as much financial and political support as our killing capabilities.

There’s a bit of nickel and lithium in your smartphone, and most certainly in your hybrid or electric vehicle. This short video from the conservative Wall Street Journal explores supply and demand and the importance of good public policy to drive private markets in a direction sustainable for the country. For several security reasons, we must be able to source and build the major items our economy depends on. World trade is good, even necessary if it creates a mutually beneficial co-existence, but there’s no leadership in depending upon other countries that are bad international players for something we can produce safely and securely here.

As we used to hear growing up, the future is now. We are quickly entering a world where tech will go from something we sat in front of, to something in our pockets, to something moving around and living in our house with us. While this robot is a proof of concept, there is enough interest, research, and investment that, within a matter of years, various robotic helpers will enter the market. I believe it will take up jobs such as monitoring inmates or being companions to the sick and the elderly. Such tech will handle routine prep jobs. These advances will cause some anxiety, so it will be critical that public education and protection of jobs (unions will be equally critical) occur. It won’t be MAGA to worry about, it’ll be a new party of Luddites and zealots clinging to some outdated and imaginary past because we have not valued people having quality jobs enough. Watch this video so you understand.

I was in a recent conversation on a podcast about AI and creatives. It remains to be seen how AI and artists will co-exist. The technology will only continue to evolve to where you will have the ability to create an entire music video with original music by writing a sentence in a prompt. Words completely created the video here. No tech skills needed. It is game-changing stuff.

Changes like this will unsettle many people, especially creators and the music industry. As we modernize, some of the old ways of doing things, including certain expectations, need to change for us to have a peaceful transition. Thinks like Yang’s universal basic income do not look all that crazy when you see how much AI will cover what humans are used to doing. Our economy and measures we use must strengthen to protect gross national happiness instead of the gross national product or we are going to have real growing pains with AI. Speaking of Yang…

Andrew Yang is a great American. If you watched and listened to him on the campaign trail, he’s a sincere guy and his ideas are smart and sensible for the country. This is a new talk he put together. I pay attention because he got the attention of my sons. They have read his books. I’m proud of that. We talk a lot about being a good citizen in our house, and Yang is a superb role model. Here he presents a new political primary model that would work much better for us, and I say that as a long-time Democrat who has voted on both sides. We are simply not getting good quality candidates in the current system, so our system must adapt to being more fair and democratic. It’s working in Alaska and it can work in other states, too. This is the way forward.

I’ve written about a 4-day workweek, but here’s a school district piloting a 4-day school week. The video gives an excellent overview of a school district that has tried it and the pros and cons. I have long supported a 4-day workweek as the model for an advanced nation. Schools might consider the same. If a 4-day week stimulates students and supports teachers, we should try it, though other impediments need addressing first, including smartphones in the classroom, and curriculum-based testing that suffocates creativity and downgrades the quality and freedom of teaching.

It was in 1981 when my middle school friend Tommy Efford talked about watching MTV at his house, and I remember thinking, what is that? What are you talking about in music videos?? His neighborhood had cable access and had these channels I had never heard of, and I can remember going to my friend’s house and his older sister saying to me, “What, you’ve never heard of MTV?” We would not have cable television for two more years and in the meantime grew up watching Friday Night Videos for our music video fix. That wasn’t the first time I felt nieve about something, but introducing cable television and MTV into teenage homes certainly helped to usher in the culture-shattering 1980s.

This is a video of the legend David Bowie taking it to MTV for its lack of diversity in the videos. This is recent history and you can get a good sense of how profit-making kept structural racism in place. I found the responses to his questions rather weak, and it was clear that Bowie was not convinced. Take a watch of this interesting piece.

And Now….

I am gaining new readers every week, so thank you for sharing. Until next week, keep reading, practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.