Two from my FB feed this morning
[ by Charles Cameron — well, three — what I read on FB, and what Chinese AI can now deduce about me ]
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First:
Carla Cahill‘s catch, I think, speaks for itself — the super blood wolf moon caught at exactly the right moment:
Carla writes:
Okay, I saw this jet coming, so I acted fast and got it along with the Blood, Wolf, Blue, Eclipse Moon!
The photographer’s gift is eternal alertness.
**
Second:
This DoubleQuote response to the #tenyearchallrnge showing a dying coral reef, via John Kellden and March for Science:
Friend Marshall Massey contributed this example:
I somehow suspect the photographer of the coral reef — the Great Barrier Reef? — didn’t mark the exact few “leaves” of coral he photographed ten years earlier, and then returned to those exact few leaves ten years later — I imagine he may have returned to the same rough spot where he — or she, why do I suppose a he? — had taken her first shot, and found a similar spot to take the second.
Or were there in fact two photographers? The similarity of the two photos almost convinces me of a single photographer with his eye on the same exact sport for years — his or her wife, lover or friends bringing sandwiches every day for ten years, sleepless nights under a cold moon..
Except both photos were presumably taken by a diver or divers, underwater..
Ah, the human mind!
And the forest / mine pair — were they taken at the same spot, roughly the same spot — or close enough to make a point, maybe a few miles apart, with the second shot positioned to include the truck..?
**
Third:
This was too rich to omit. Ali Minai wrote:
I don’t read or speak Urdu, so knowing Ali is an AI expert, I asked for translations from two AIs. FB’s in-house translator gave me:
It’s very short of the dead country.
The ironic is the same, yooo change.
Google Translate gave me:
History is very short of my country
Satyam is the same, the stars keep changing
Okay, those two give me state of the art, readily available AI capabilities. I then asked Ali how he would translate the couplet into English.. and gave my own best guess, sticking my neck out and working from similarities between the two AI versions:
History short-changes my native land —
ah, but truth’s the same, as changeable as the stars.
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Here’s Ali’s very gracious response:
Aha! Sense at last — English sense, that is.
I think this entire episode is a living, breathing testament to the state of the art in intelligence — artificial and embodied. Way to go, Ali Minai
**
Chinese AI looking for vulnerabilities to exploit will now think I’m an Urdu speaker, because I commented on Ali Minai‘s Urdu post. And ZP’s version of WordPress couldn’t even render Ali’s couplet except as:
??? ??? ?? ??? ????? ?? ?? ?????
??? ??? ??? ????? ????? ???? ???
— which captures my own sentiment when I first saw Ali‘s post exactly..
All in all, a rich morning’s education!
January 24th, 2019 at 9:20 pm
When my eye first caught the jet on the moon I saw a person on stilts; haven’t shaken off that image, actually. Must be that the “giant leap for mankind” stayed with me all these years. Man with Wings of Steel who travels the Leap Moon!
January 25th, 2019 at 4:41 pm
I could barely see him — I mean, the jet –n at first, because I have my screen at an angle which makes reading easier, and darkens dim pictures. But I saw she’d mentioned a jet, made my screen upright, and then voila, a semi-aura off light and in it, a jet with contrails..
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Her attention to the moment impressed me a lot once I saw what she’d done, and reminded me of Ansel Adams’ description of taking Moonrise over Hernandez — it had been a long and fruitless day, he saw what looked like a possible shot, pulled to the side of the road, got out, set up the camera (with assistants) couldn’t find his light meter at once, remembered the value for the moon, the clouds were closing in, took the shot, wanted to take a second shot to be safe, too late, the light was gone.. He caught iut just at the right moment, seconds later was too late for that secoond shot, and he still got the graveyard in the foreground perfectly lit.
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Various accounts from Adams and various others who worked with him:
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http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-anecdotes/
January 25th, 2019 at 11:18 pm
Thanks, Charles, for the Ansel Adams shot. Or, should I say, Mother Moon!
January 26th, 2019 at 8:17 pm
My pleasure, and by all means..