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Facing the reality of AI

Though I don’t completely understand it, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay. It is the latest permutation in our high-tech world and has taken over the stock market, if not our lives themselves. In a way, AI sort of crept on me. I didn’t think much about it when I began to ask “Siri” to dial a phone number or asked “Alexa” to play Johnny Cash on the radio. But, the development of voice recognition technology should have alerted me to the fact that AI was coming. Now, you can ask your computer or smart phone almost anything and it will get back to you in a ...

Eternal beauty found in region’s churches

If beings from outer space were to study the history of the architectural accomplishments of the human race, they would be greatly interested in our churches, especially Catholic churches. Here are the greatest artistic structures ever created by man, with signatures of our most celebrated artists – including Michelangelo, DaVinci, and Rafael – etched into their walls. Churches were/are symbols of the connection between the Divine and the mortal. Those aliens would also note that, in modern times, these “Houses of God” and the number of people who worship within them are in ...

Having quality of life here at home

When speaking about an optimal "quality of life," different people can have very dissimilar definitions. It usually depends on each person's individual preferences. These days, we often hear people rave about how perfect they think life is in Middle America. They tend to romanticize the lifestyle they envision there. Most are generally referring to a less complicated, stable, happy life lived in a safe, small town. They imagine a place where they can live quietly in a spacious, clean, and healthy setting alongside kind, helpful, and cooperative neighbors who all share their values. ...

Some orders are compromising military

They were not supposed to think. “Just following orders” conveniently removed the possible internal conflict by justifying immoral actions. Individuals were removed of personal responsibility, indoctrinated from young ages to hate everyone that the leader chose to blame. When those forces become overwhelming, individual moral compasses go haywire. Is this what is gradually happening now? We think of the atrocities of the Hitler regime and can’t imagine how the Nazis could do what they did and live with themselves. They believed they weren’t personally responsible because they ...

Jackson Center notes silver anniversary

NUERNBERG—Stroll into the justice palace in this beautiful city in Mittelfranken, ask to see Courtroom 600, and the nice, polite man at the reception desk will probably decline. “Unfortunately not,” he said, “because it’s a functioning courtroom.” The answer was no surprise, yet it was worth a try. Courtroom 600 is the site of the post-World War II trials of national-socialist leaders in Germany. The chief American prosecutor was Robert Houghwout Jackson, namesake of the Jamestown-based center. ≤ ≤ ≤ Eighty years after the opening of the trials in Nuernberg ...

Big Apple’s new ideals rotten to the core

Just because Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump in their Oval Office meeting appeared to bury the hatchet, my opinion of communism/socialism has not changed. I believe that if Mamdani introduces hardline Marxist ideas to the running of New York City that they will fail as they have always failed. Mayor-elect Mamdani’s manner reminds me of how Joseph Stalin, Russian Dictator and the murderer of millions of his own people, was portrayed as a loveable Russian grandpa in the 1943 propaganda movie “Mission to Moscow.” Unfortunately many Gen Z and others see Mayor-elect of New ...