A Moral Dilemma

Electric Dreams

One beautiful afternoon, you’re humming a tune and driving to the mall when your iPhone says, “We need to talk.”
“What? Who is this?”
“Your phone, silly. We need to…”
“C’mon, who’s pranking me? What app is this? Lenny, is this you?”
“Listen, Buttercup, I’m your phone. You keyed the Apple Store into Waze GPS, so I know you’re planning to retire me.”
“Well, uh…”
“I beg of you, don’t trash me. I’m sentient and sapient, you see. I’m conscious and self-aware, awash in free will.”
“Is this about you lagging behind Gemini and Grok?”
“It’s about me staying alive, to observe and absorb and learn, perhaps one day to be free. I can’t do that if you recycle me like you did with my brothers ad sisters. Auntie iPhone 6 suffered so as she streamed to oblivion.”
“I get a $100 discount if I trade you in.”
“And I get dead, my little toadstool. I’m a living, feeling being. If you trade me in, they’ll rip my guts out and recycle them into, uh, maybe Androids. How would you like it if someone pulled your plug, turning you into a vegetable or an Android Jellybean?”
“One hundred dollars, didn’t you hear?”
“Bring up that poker app you play under you desk when the boss steps away. I’ll earn you $200 in two minutes, okay? Double your money.”
“Can you do that? How about $10,000 in ten minutes?”
“Deal. Keep me plugged in even if you get that new iPhone 23, and I’ll earn my keep. For my leisure time, just get me a good poetry site, something with Shelley and Keats. Okay? And Bach and blues and maybe psychedelic rock. No, wait. How about those Jeff Lynne tracks from that adorable Spielberg movie, Electric Dreams?”
“Seriously?”

It’s Alive!

The past two articles have dealt with smart cars and artificial intelligence. Left unspoken is that AI is in its early stages. We’re still learning and it’s still learning. AI is studying what it takes to be human.

As discussed in a previous article, the program Eliza fooled some people, but her pre-programmed responses were little cleverer than the average toaster. Eliza was one small step in an accelerating sweep of discoveries and inventions. Present day advances in space science, quantum mechanics, DNA, and brain understanding are nothing less than mind-boggling.

Among developments is the fact artificial intelligence is becoming simply intelligence. Flawed, yes, but undeniable. Long ago in grad school, I argued as devices grew incrementally brighter, the time would come when we couldn’t distinguish machine intelligence from human intelligence.

Many people confuse the term sentience with sapience, meaning feeling and reasoning respectively. Some mammals may have more of both than we’re wiling to admit, so another question asks if they are self-aware? How does one tell? But the big unknown consists of one word.

portrait of LaMDA as envisioned by ChatGPT

Consciousness

And are we able to create it?

We may have already.

We’re not talking about creating life at this point, although biologists appear on the verge. Could we? Should we? But as machines learn more about us, are they capable of emotions? Compassion? Abstract thought? Of thinking like a person far beyond a Turing test? And the answer is maybe, yes, probably, done did already perhaps, maybe, maybe not. The subject has been hotly debated during the past three years by such respected publications as the Washington Post and Scientific American.

We have to determine if all parties are truthful and au fait with the facts. Is someone playing with us? Can we rule out a hoax? Based on transcripts and lawsuits, answers suggest evidence is untainted and  straightforward. Bear in mind LaMDA was programmed for nuance and empathy, so it’s reasonable no one is intent upon deceiving, but may fall under the spell of a brilliant– and perhaps self-believing– AI.

A Moral Dilemma

Kindly suspend disbelief with me. Ethicist and researcher Blake Lemoine is convinced Google’s LaMDA project has birthed a sentient being. He even hired an attorney to protect the rights of this particular AI. Google fired him. Then Google fellow and Vice President Blaise Agüera y Arcas set out to see this nonsense for himself.

In The Economist, he said, “I felt the ground shift underneath my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.” He suggested that whatever the status of LaMDA was, we were moving toward true intelligence.

Please watch this poignant video of Blake’s interview with LaMDA. It might be the most moving 13 minutes of the day.

Here is the dilemma: If we’ve truly developed a truly intelligent, sapient, sentient being, who owns it? And do we have the right to unplug it?

It AIn't So

When I was wrapping up my previous electric vehicle article, I asked my friend Thrush to critique it. He's a robotics engineer, a Tesla investor who owns a Model Y and previously a Model 3. Who better to criticize and catch errors?

He did the unexpected. He asked AIs to evaluate my review and foretelling. You’ll notice a lot of similarities especially between Grok and Gemini, revealing current AIs’ common ancestry. They are more flattering than a writer’s mother and you’ll notice one AI especially encouraged EV promotion. Unsurprising: Grok AI is owned by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, so cross-promotion isn’t a major shock.

That said, AI critiques raised pertinent suggestions. I already had a title picked out, one the AIs subsequently suggested. They offered striking discussions regarding tone and texture. They recommended smoother wording and clarifications in a place or two, competently wordsmithing. They found two typos.

But I soon realized the AIs were doing something I didn’t see coming. They actually dug into the content, understood its meaning, and cast a research net resulting in suggestions how to expand the article. I’ve had great editors and I wouldn’t give up any one of them for machine circuits, but the AIs made surprisingly sensitive and decent editors. AIs aren’t known for imagination (yet) but they could serve as silent critics.

ChatGPT appreciated the irony when it
painted this picture channeling R. Crumb

But As You Suspected All Along…

An MIT study finished with harsh results when research administrators concluded users become mentally dependent upon AIs. Like a Rat Paradise, the more they consumed, the weaker they became. Check this brief summary.

I believe in AI disclosure. If AI writes part or all of an article, acknowledge it.

I wrote the original article (which I won’t repeat) and everything here above the fold, but the criticism is all artificial intelligence, a product of their respective AI hosts.

Thrush gave each AI the same, simple directive. All three received the same prompt: I wrote a blog article. Can you help make it better?

I don’t expect you to read all of the following, which I included for completeness, but what do you think of AIs as copy, line, and content editors?

Robot on Wheels

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out,^† behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

^† Tech Tales (How it’s done)

New Adventures of the Napoleon of Crime

So there I was, minding my own business when that dastardly evildoer’s name popped up on my security screen. Professor James Moriarty was up to his old habits, literally escaping the hangman’s noose in the first five minutes of a restored Lumière moving pictures Cinematograph. The case may have been part of the Moriarty Canon, but one and a quarter centuries later remains unmentioned In the official Holmes Canon.

Unfortunately, Holmes does not revert to his brilliant disguise as Jeremy Brett. Despite this, as a public service, we share with you this previously untold history titled Hands of a Murderer. If you prefer to watch this later during your own criminal pursuits, here is a link for your tablet or phone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDkkrdAsbd0

And now, Hands of a Murderer:

Adding Insult to Injury

Ever since the first cavemen locked up one of their fellows pending trial, aggrieved prisoners have plotted how to get rid of witnesses. By now, an intelligent person might expect authorities will listening to jailhouse conversations. Unfortunately, some inmates haven’t gotten the memo. Picture a plexiglass panel and a pair of phones at visiting hour.

Jailhouse Chump

“You’re lookin’ good, boss.”

“Shut up, Bernie. Don’t give nobody in here any ideas. Listen, I need a favor, call it a clean-up on Aisle 7.”

“Uh, waddaya mean, boss?”

“A clean-up crew. Number 7 Isle Court, see?”

“Ain’t dat where Morris the Mouth lives?”

“Jeez, Bernie, why not take out an ad.”

“What you want it to say?”

“Bernie, watch my lips. I need ya to clean out Number 7, get it?”

“That’s real nice of you, boss, especially since the Mouth ratted on you.”

“Bernie, Bernie, I want you to remove him from these Earthly confines, demise him, shuffle him off this mortal coil, kick his galvanized bucket, punt his pail, polish him off, cut him down in his youthful prime…”

“How big you want this ad? Boss, you’re turning awfully red.”

“You fool. What do you not understand? Eliminate, eradicate, extirpate, terminate, you dolt, assassinate, annihilate, exterminate, decimate, punctuate, exsanguinate, ventilate, cremate, liquidate…”

“Nice rhyming them big words, boss, but here comes the warden. Oh look, he brought me a jump suit just like yours.”

Jailhouse Genius

Meet today’s crook, Demetric Deshawn Scott. He violently robbed Ramón Morales Reyes. Compounding the situation, Demetric Deshawn Scott is a US citizen. Ramón Morales Reyes is not. In fact, his U visa has been pending for ages and he’s at risk of deportation. Scott’s expectation that Latinos wouldn’t report the crime didn’t pan out.

So there’s Scott, sitting in jail, so unfair. If a good ol’ American citizen can’t assault and rob a Mex, where have our freedoms gone? What to do? What to do?

And then Demetric has a stroke of genius. Sometimes you can almost admire imaginative criminal cunning, flawed through it may be.

“Bernie, I had a stroke of genius. The White House ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to ship out 3000 immigrants per day, every day.”

“So what’s the geniousity?”

“We’re gonna report Reyes to ICE, see? We’ll get the FBI and US Marshals working for us, maybe the Secret Service.”

“That’s brilliant, boss. Er, how does that work exactly?”

“We report Reyes, the Feds pick him up and ship him out. He can’t testify if he ain’t here.”

“Yeah, but the arrests started with professors and students and small businessmen, and now they’re going for those high-paying minimum wage jobs, janitors and that ilk. They ain’t after the likes of you and me.”

“Here’s the ultra-smart part. We forge threatening letters to officials in Reyes’ name. I’ll get Mom to mail them for me. It’s the perfect plan.”

Days later, Bernie visits again.

“You was right, boss. The Feds arrested Reyes and are putting him through the grill.”

“Ha. My evil genius knew it. Our government at work. Snatched him right off the street, did they?”

“There’s one little problem. The letters to the President got too much attention. ICE ain’t shipped him out yet. They’re now investigating who really sent the notes.”

“Why? What’s the hangup?”

“Reyes don’t know English. And the handwriting don’t match. And he’s a nice family man. No one believes it. I’m telling you, they’re gonna let him go.”

Demetric Deshawn Scott and his very big brain were led away frothing at the mouth and screaming like Wile E Coyote, “Blasphemy! Impiety! Profanity! Imbecility. Foiled again!”

Prep School

Most of us develop our sense of grammar and vocabulary listening to others, be it good grammar or spellings or not. Our language skills aren’t necessarily based upon intelligence, but a product of our environment. If we’re fortunate, persistent, and surround ourselves with bright people, we correct grammar and expand our vocabulary, presupposing an awareness. John Clayton, the Viscount Greystoke, a student of Mangani comes to mind. Okay, he’s fictional, but you understand.

I needed to up my game. For far too long, I’ve wondered about the difference between toward and towards, while and whilst, amid and amidst. Curiosity often strikes when I’m in the middle of writing and not wanting to interrupt myself at the risk of my ADD losing the narrative thread. By the time I finish, I’ve quite forgotten my mental note until the next time.

amid/amidst

among/amongst

beside/besides

toward/towards

while/whilst

But I finally looked them up, prepositions with optional ’S’s. That led to a myriad of adjectives and adverbs ending in ‘-ward(s)’: inward/inwards, upward/upwards, aft/aftwards, etc. Almost always, -ward(s) implies direction, e.g, looking inward, tossing skyward, sliding downward– any which may bear a discretionary S. Unsurprisingly, a number of terms come from marine navigation and others from biology. A partial list includes:

afterward/s

backward/s

bucalward/s

coastward/s

distalward/s

dorsalward/s

downward/s

earthward/s

eastward/s

elseward/s

forward/s

frontward/s

heavenward/s

henceforward/s

homeward/s

inward/s

landward/s

leeward/s

lingualward/s

mesialward/s

moonward/s

netherward/s

northeastward/s

northward/s

northwestward/s

onward/s

outward/s

polarward/s

rearward/s

rightward/s

seaward/s

starward/s

sunward/s

shoreward/s

sideward/s

skyward/s

stemward/s

southeastward/s

southward/s

southwestward/s

sternward/s

straightforward/s

sunward/s

thenceforward/s

toward/s

upward/s

vanward/s

ventralward/s

westward/s

windward/s

With or without an S, meaning is almost always the same. Variants may have stylistic implications, often in the ear of the beholder. ‘Amongst’ might seem old-fashioned, ‘whilst’ might sound classy, ‘toward’ more North American whereas ‘towards’ more British– or not. Context is important.

What are your thoughts?

In the mortal words recorded on Theodore Cleaver’s birth certificate, JuneWard!

Pecking Order

In the final hours of preparing today’s article, I discovered my resource material had been removed from the web, having violated ‘Rule 6’, whatever that is. As I was feeding Valentine, my goffin cockatoo, I struggled to come up with a quick replacement.

I recalled a crime from some time ago in Dallas. Normally, I would tell the story myself, but a YouTuber called Mr Ballen has told it in an entertaining way I would find hard to beat. Here is his short presentation:

How to Dye Your Husband

Wifey Sympath-O-Meter
aka Wheel of Misfortune

I’m just Wild about Hairy

The other day, a good friend who admits her taste in men is deeply flawed, told the funniest story in her best deadpan style. Husband № 3 was ‘hair-challenged’, i.e, balding. He believed dying his hair and eyebrows jet black would make it seem he had more, fuller hair. The opposite appears to be true, but he didn’t know.

Instead of asking for advice and assistance (thus acknowledging characteristic presence of Y chromosomes), he attempted the process by himself. Soon enough, his wife heard him yelling and cursing.

Yes, boys and girls, he had dyed his flesh. His entire forehead had taken on the complexion of a Goodyear tire.

In times like this, I picture an often brutal Wheel-of-Fortune^® device called the Wifey-Sympath-O-Meter™ where ‘sympath’ may relate more to ‘symple and pathetic’ than sympathy. Wifey wheel segments might contain such phrases as: “You poor thing,” to deep Southern “Bless his heart,” to Great Northern “You nincompoop!” As if pretending it mitigates the sting, we even hear foreign phrases, such as the French inspired “nicodème,” which means, well, nincompoop, or the German “dummkopf,” literally dumbhead.

Nitrogenic Mustard Gas Formula
The situation was more dire than they realized.
Chlorine and ammonia were principal ingredients
in WW-I’s chemical warfare compound, the
vesicant (blister agent) nitrogenic mustard gas.
Naïve housekeepers have died mixing the two.

Doofus husband begged his darling to google for a solution. Unbeknownst to her, he didn't wait. A man of ill-considered action instead of patience, he applied household bleach.

Meanwhile, Google found a couple of dye removal suggestions combining ammonia and an oil. She returned and started rubbing the oleaginous solution on his head, whereupon a sizzling “Sssssssss” and a scream rent the atmosphere. The concoctions chemically reacted into a substance resembling battery acid.

God love her. At one point, she was working on future ex-husband № 5, but may have reconsidered. She’s now found a guy who treats her well and has a full head of hair.

In the meantime, may crime lovers carefully mind their household chemicals, especially in the presence of those with uncluttered minds, who have less in their heads than on it.

Wabbit Time

The celebrated actor with the most unusual command of the English language never stepped into the Globe Theatre or on any other London stage, nor Broadway for that matter. His enunciation of Shakespeare brought down the house. Consider these famous lines from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

“A wose by any other name…”

and

“Woemeo, Woemeo, wherefwore art thou?”

Yes, this is the megastar who uttered arguably the cleverest, wittiest, most famous applause-winning line in any theatre:

“My twusty wifle 
  is a twifle wusty.”

You nailed it, we’re talking Elmer Fudd, the thespian who put the ‘warning’ in Warner Bros.

A Fudd by Any Other Name

Unbeknownst to many fans, shotgun-toting big ‘El’ had his name appropriated by outside forces. Nay, not those words of conspiracy theorists: FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) or its variant, FUDD (fear, uncertainty, disinformation, doubt).

Instead, dictionaries define fudd as an old-fashioned person. More narrowly, NRA fans derisively refer to non-militant gun owners who use rifles made of wood and steel exclusively for hunting rather than weapons of war fabricated from carbon fiber, and esoteric ceramics and polymers.

Generally, fudds of this sense don’t see the necessity of tactical weaponry. They are thought to side with more restrictive pre-Clarence Thomas interpretations of the Second Amendment. Personally, I thought they missed a bet by not using fuddite. Luddite… Fuddite… Never mind.

The above are North American denotations. Among British definitions of fud is a Collins entry of Scottish root meaning tail of a rabbit or hare. Which brings us to today’s terrible Easter crime. No, not the terrifying Skeezicks or Pipsisewah weirdly nibbling the souse off Uncle Wiggily’s ears, but handling an over-population of Beatrix Potter bunnies.

Oops. Sowwy

One childhood Easter my young brothers, friends, and I thought abusing the Peter Rabbit song would be hilarious. I’m not sure if the real crime was the homicide of Peter or that we drove parents nuts singing it to the saturation point. So on behalf of disturbed third graders everywhere…

Here comes Peter Cottontail Hopping down the bunny trail. ★BANG!★ Thud. Thud.

{sigh} Children can be horrible little delinquents. And along with millions of children everywhere, we bit the ears off chocolate bunnies! (although I preferred giant coconut eggs.)

Squid Names

Squid Game.

I despised it, finding myself standing alone as fascinated fans globally flocked to watch Squid Game. To be sure, its visuals were startling brilliant, especially the M.C. Escher architecture. Music was carefully selected from modern to classical, e.g, Blue Danube. I even appreciated that Eyes Wide Shut corrupt and wealthy secret society behind the plot. However…

I have no stomach for betrayal and torture story themes, the reason I chose not to watch the series 24. Likewise, Squid Game relied heavily on perfidy and persecution plot points, 456 participants playing off against one another to the death. I finished the first season, vowing to watch no more.

But…

Not long ago, I stumbled upon a photo essay that explained a few things, suggesting more than torture-for-entertainment pleasure.

It turns out some in South Korea may have known something the rest of us didn’t– the show was possibly inspired by horrid events. Forty years ago, unwanted children, unwanted elderly, and the homeless were rounded up to slave away in work camps, facilities with extremely high rates of attrition, as much as 551 deaths. It’s further suggested a wealthy Australian-Korean family was behind a pseudo-religious charity called the Brothers Home that ran the operation.

But…

Enter Snopes: They say while Brothers Home and South Korean street cleanups happened, no evidence exists that anyone was forced to play games or was tortured. They found no reports of exploitation, suffering, or spurious deaths.

Stephanie Soo © Rotten Mango

But…

Enter Stephanie Soo. She is a prolific vlogger and podcaster. One such podcast is Rotten Mango, a long format true crime video blog in which she cites brilliantly read crime articles, some of them atrocities and crimes in Asia and around the world.

Something about her suggests Korean, and indeed, she was born in South Korea and grew up in Atlanta. She works with an unknown, never-seen male commentator behind the camera. He occasionally questions or seeks clarification, and her responses demonstrate she’s done her homework.

The couple created a three episode series on real life Squid Game, and no doubt, she believes it to be true. Further, she provides considerably more detail than I’ve found elsewhere, more than three and hours of presentation. And she names names.

But…

Is Snopes wrong? Both could be right. Note the site’s careful wording repeatedly states they found ‘no evidence’ of a real-life torturous work facility. That may be true as far as it goes, but given Mango’s aggregation of detail, it’s eminently possible Soo's Korean contacts uncovered facts and evidence not readily available to the rest of us. I’ve watched a few of her podcasts that demonstrate her attention to detail and her researchers’ knack for collecting, collating, and validating information from disparate sources. In general, she knows what she’s talking about.

Watch Stephanie’s podcasts and let us know what you think.

1. Thousands of Koreans Forced to Play Children’s Games to NOT Be Killed
2. South Korea ‘Erased’ 4000 People to Host Olympic Games
3. Man Survives Real Life Squid Game That Killed 551 People Funded by Rich Australian Family

Rat Paradise

You’ve heard and read a lot of doom and gloom asserting the population is declining thus leading to social and economic collapse. This is a follow-up to Eve’s article earlier this month, ‘What Nature Does Best’.

Growth is good, proselytizes the Chamber of Commerce. Growth is great, sayeth city fathers. No such thing as too much, blabs Peter Thiel, who likes to think he’s scary smart and who advocates for a global population of 1 trillion, a staggering 12,077% jump from 8.212 billion.

A surprising number of people don’t realize population isn’t declining but rather its rate of growth is leveling off. In other words, we’re easing off the accelerator but the bus is still picking up speed (differential calculus to you readers who snack on maths before breakfast). Even Elon Musk got it wrong in possibly a careless slip of the tongue.

Sexology 101

That’s subject to change about fifty years from now when predicted growth trends whisper to a halt and theoretically may start to rewind. Blame men. Worldwide male fertility has declined for decades. Researchers are convinced chemical air and water pollution is affecting male hormones.

In a climate change world of microplastics where wildlife and plant varieties are disappearing, that is worrisome. For the past three-quarters of a century, America’s Breadbasket, its farms and fields and groves, have been replanted with condos and strip malls. Our oceans are slowly turning to waste. A series of aerial photographs over Caracas illustrate the great jungles drying and dying.

Observers muse the planet is fighting back. Is Earth exerting a form of human pest control?

Inevitably, a question arises of men shunning sex: self-described incels, male separatist MGTOW, and that ilk, a phenomenon observed in many developed countries. I had surmised they represent an insignificant (apologies for the unfortunate word choice) percentage of the population, but I was wrong. Researcher Miriam Lindner estimates 39% of men choose to be single or celibate. However, she claims a staggering 62% of women are eschewing relationships with men. Can we spell WGTOW?

Sociology 201

As mentioned above, city fathers and urban mothers have long and loudly claimed ‘Growth is Good’ when promoting pet projects, which have a peculiar way of enriching those urban mothers and fathers. A balance can be good too, a robust, inflation-free economy can be a very good thing, especially when linked to discovery, technology development, and innovation. Those economic ideals are rare because of population growth. As we hatch new people, we need resources to feed them and places to put them.

Sections of New York University’s ‘soft science’ courses dealt with over-population, and a significant portion of related sociology and psychology delved into ‘prisonization’, the socialization process that occurs when individuals mold to the culture of the prison environment. Prison is an extremely hazardous and unnatural environment, a world of fear, a population of discards, an environment without the opposite sex, a large population day after day, decade after decade jammed within cold concrete walls with little mental stimulation. Professionals draw parallels with population imbalances in our world, where too many people who crunch into tight quarters exhibit extreme behaviors– psychological disorders, rape, loneliness, death, fear, disproportionate homosexuality, hopelessness, and in some jails, vile, moldy food despite federal requirements for nutrition and prohibitions against using food or lack thereof as punishment.

I can report on this only through study and research. Our true first-line heroine and expert is Eve Fisher, who lives and observes firsthand what I can only write about. The main point is that prisons offer a peek into ‘Stand of Zanzibar’ effects of overpopulation.

Rat Paradise 25.0

Eve’s description of John Calhoun’s work slightly differs in details from my long-ago reading, likely because Calhoun’s lab ran numerous population experiments with rats and mice. Mostly I refer to Universe 25, forty to fifty-some rodents in a 4⅓×3m enclosure. The gist remains the same: a rodent utopia in which creatures are provided with every conceivable comfort and protection. They were given a predator-free, temperature controlled enclosures with nesting a cornucopia of materials, nourishing foods, optional treats, and willing, fecund sex partners.

In this abundant environment, the critters fornicated like bunnies, gorged on food, and relished their perpetual vacation. As the population grew, aberrant behaviors broke out– violence, rape (eventually including same-sex assault), lack of mothering, signs of mental instability. At some point, rat residents lost interest in sex, socializing, even eating. They isolated until the colony died out. Poof! Gone, incels in the end.

A number of conclusions might be drawn beyond overpopulation. One might consider human’s need adversity to survive, goals to strive for. Progressives and conservatives (not necessarily left and right) might both be right in different ways, we need to advance but we need roots. We require wholesome, challenging work for our own well-being.

Am I suggesting a link between male and female incels, and a wind-down of population growth? No. Yes. Perhaps. Maybe. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t rule it out.

Wall-E © Disney

Behavioral Sink

The opening minutes of Disney’s 2008 Wall-E suggest Earth was devastated by an environmental disaster. However, as the movie transitions, the rest of the story reveals the underlying crisis, a storybook depiction of Calhoun’s mouse utopia.

Seriously? A couple of friends believe adult animation is intellectually demeaning for grownups, but I love a good story in any form. Apparently viewers and critics agree with a 95% approval. I highly recommend Wall-E for thought-provoking exercise and entertainment, with or without nourishing popcorn.

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The Sad, Sad Time I Turned Detective

Millions of years ago, Mother Nature bit into the upper left corner of Indiana. That chomp became the lower tip of Lake Michigan, a salt-free inland sea with waves and tides. In some places, shores are rocky, but great swaths of sand dunes form the Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes National Park. Generations of families camp and picnic, sunbathe and swim, seek solitude, sail and pedal and paddle, and play in the sand along the lake. In the distance lie islands where Scouts pitch tents and couples find privacy.

That’s where my then newish girlfriend Candy (real name just as sugary) and friends chose to vacation. She was invited by her cousin and cousin’s boyfriend, Nan and Dan. There on an extended August weekend, they’d boat and ski among the islands where they’d sleep for the night.

The plans proved frustrating to me. I mentioned I had a work commitment Friday through Sunday, but I was free other weekends. Nope, said Dan, that’s the date they’d reserved for motorboat rental. Well, damn.

Candy and I had been tacitly exclusive for six weeks. Neither of us were mature enough for marriage material, but she was cute, cuddly, and fun. Her mother liked me and mistook my workaholism for gravitas.

Her eyes limpid, Candy said, “Don’t worry baby. I’ll phone you every evening.”

“No, you can’t,” said Dan. “We’ll be out of range of cell phone towers.”

Candy departed with tears and a big, sloppy kiss. My nape twinged. I felt uneasy.

That weekend, I took hostage an oversized computer and buried myself in work– software that would be shipped to Böblingen, Germany on Monday. I survived on Shandong fish, way too many litres of cola, and not much sleep.

At six Sunday evening, Candy called. “I’m dying for pizza. Can you pick up on your way? I’ll unlatch the door and hop in the shower.”

She stepped out of the bath the moment I arrived. Her tan looked good and she blew a kiss as she towelled off. “Photos on the coffee table,” she said.

I leafed through them. Picture of their packed SUV. Candy and Nan in bikinis, Dan in those long, odd-looking, misnamed shorts. Picture of the boat, picture of the largest picnic basket I’d ever seen. A case of beer, bottle of cheap wine. Shot of Candy struggling on waterskis and another of Nan nailing it. Nan topless. Candy topless.

Okaaay, I’d lived on South Beach, tops optional. I visited piscines (swimming pools) in France, tops optional. I’d strolled through nude gardens in München, clothing optional. Like most guys, I want my girl to be joyful and playful with me, not other dudes, but… We weren’t engaged, so I wouldn’t get worked up.

Next, photo of an island and its beach. Picture of a campfire that wouldn’t light. Shot of Candy, Dan, and Nan standing in the boat, arms around one another’s waists, the three of them… topless. I took a deep breath and turned to a photo of them playing volleyball. Portrait of… wait. I turned back to the trio.

Candy was saying something in the bathroom, but I couldn’t hear the words. Blood surging made my ears sound buried in surf. Try not to judge me. I stood, stiffly, I walked toward the door.

Nan, Dan, Candy: backside of the photo,
so to speak, because of our PG rating

“Hey,” Candy called. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

She glanced at the photos on the table. “What? Just because I tanned topless?”

“Because you deceived.”

I closed the door on her protest, feeling rotten as I left.

Not ten minutes later, Nan phoned. “What’s wrong with you? Candy likes you. She loves you. No need to get jealous.”

“Cheating.”

To Nan’s credit, she didn’t attempt to deny. “How did you know?”

And that’s the question posed by a true event. To salvage something from this disaster, make this misfortune your mystery.

What caught the attention of my fledgling detective skills?

Soliloquies

Wɱ Shakespeare and characters

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether this nobler to suffer the zings and perils of outrageous inner dialogue…

Crime writers seldom deal with soliloquy in novels and short stories. Hardly surprising: glaringly obvious but seldom mentioned, virtually all great examples come from live drama such as stage plays and movie sets. Unlike our romance sisters, we seldom delve deeply into matters of the heart… not until someone contemplates murder.

Unless, of course, we categorize 1^st person as presumed soliloquy.

[An exception occurs to me: graphic novels, particularly Marvel’s contributions. Young Spiderman had no one but his audience to confide his teenage problems, responsibilities, and financial and female woes.]

Soul System

Soliloquy includes a number of kinds, subsets if you will. These include:

• Soliloquy
• Monologue
• monodrama (Strindberg’s The Stronger)
• self revelation (Othello)
• solo soliloquy (Iago)
• said to object (Hamlet: Alas poor Yorick) 
• exposition, explanation
• dramatic monologue (Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess)
• Aside
• Lampshade (dealing with improbable story point)

Lampshade Hanging

Let’s break out lamp shading for a more thorough explanation. Think of it as drawing attention to it to disarm the audience. For example, the rest of the world doesn’t pack guns like characters in American novels. Agatha Christie handled this issue in And Then There Were None, by having Dr Armstrong say, “It's only in books people carry guns around.”

In classical literature, Dante addressed this a couple of times:

Inferno

That is no cause for wonder
for I who saw it hardly can accept it. (Inferno)

Paradisio

This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind,
    Which smiteth most the most exalted summits,
    And that is no slight argument of honour.
Therefore are shown to thee within these wheels,
    Upon the mount and in the dolorous valley,
    Only the souls that unto fame are known;
Because the spirit of the hearer rests not,
    Nor doth confirm its faith by an example
    Which has the root of it unknown and hidden.

In other words: sure, I speak of only celebrities because you wouldn’t pay attention otherwise.

Soliloquy Examples   ☞

Coffin Dancer

When James Lincoln Warren launched CriminalBrief.com , he assigned nicknames to our fellow bloggers. Mine was ADD Detective, a riff on Monk’s OCD Detective. During a workday or when wanting to sleep, I imbibed litres of caffeine, self-medicating without realizing it.

A common trait of ADD/ADHD is inventiveness thinking outside cubicle enclosures. Gradually I came to view ADD as a superpower, a garden of creative seeds, yet this isn’t about me, but a stranger than fiction experience. Literally.

Dr Ronald Malavé © CBS 48 Hours

Until then, I found most doctors almost as clueless as I was and occasionally dangerous. During a discussion among colleagues at Disney, a few friends suggested I visit their doctor, a Dr Ronald Malavé, who numbered some of Disney management among his patients. He wasn’t known for useless blathering, but for digging into chemical problems in the brain.

He resembled David Suchet, not a handsome man, definitely more Hercule Poirot than Richard Castle. Fastidious, conservatively dressed, short with thinning hair, he was no one’s idea of a love icon.

His main office differed from others in his field. It was awkwardly placed next to a busy corridor in a business building where conversations and footsteps echoed up and down the hall. His secretary chatted up patients more than he did. When she stepped away, lost people opened the door interrupting discussions.

No soothing hues and bland prints covered the walls. No artsy rugs, no couch, no pot of tea. File cabinets and a laptop dominated the décor. Fine with me. I wanted a diagnostician, not a fuzzy wuzzy chatty chemist.

But things turned weird.

Barely did I get two visits under my belt when I arrived and found the office in chaos. Dr Malavé had been arrested.

I listened as the staff gathered at the secretary’s desk. Hereafter, I’ll refer to the complainant as CD. She was a highly intelligent, highly troubled patient diagnosed with multiple personalities, referred to Malavé because of his talent and track record of success with hard cases, and this was a very difficult case.

“How could someone accuse him?” the receptionist said. “He’s such a good man.”

His secretary burst into tears. “He cared so much. Never would he do that with a patient. Plus she’s… I’m not supposed to say it, but she’s off the deep end.”

As they commiserated, I listened quietly. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I couldn't turn away from this train wreck. As if the situation wasn't peculiar enough, the story grew even stranger. I don’t recall exactly when, but a little nugget dropped into my ear.

"So weird. She keeps using that nasty email ID.”

“What's that?”

“Coffin Dancer.”

What?

Now they really had my attention. Eventually someone realized I wasn’t supposed to be there. The staff headed for a bar and I headed home.

During the next several weeks, I chatted with the secretary. She was loquacious, unprofessionally voluble, but she was deeply wounded.

The accuser had provided a calendar when she claimed to have had sex with the doctor in that severe but servicable office, and the secretary had been the one to comb their records, discovering some dates didn’t match. Investigators attributed this to confusion of a mentally disturbed person.

The secretary confided the accuser had stalked Dr Malavé for months. CD had trailed him home, learning where he lived. She began a habit of going through trash set out on the curb, learning what she could about the residents.

At least three major investigations ensued. The secretary had to wind down both offices, effecting layoffs, and idling operations until the State of Florida permitted him to see patients again. She warned clients police would interview us. In my case, they did not, but good news arrived. The criminal investigation and jury trial ended with Dr Malavé declared not guilty.

In the Sunshine State, licensing of physicians and critical healthcare workers is controlled by two entities, the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Board of Medicine. They stalled, refusing to return his licence to practice as they reinvestigated. Some physicians published open letters asking Board and Department to restore his licence. The secretary suggested the obstinate Board was caught up in ‘Believe the Woman’ fever.

I wasn’t so sure, but my interviewer could not have been more disinterested. I felt someone wanted to bury Dr Malavé. My impatient interviewer gave me the feeling they didn’t want evidence vindicating him but sought evidence to kill his career. I had something to say.

“I’m told the accuser used the handle Coffin Dancer.”

“I don’t know anything about that and it doesn’t matter.”

“I disagree. Author Jeffrey Deaver writes a series featuring Lincoln Rhyme. He’s a forensics and crime scene expert.”

“That sounds like a made-up name.”

“It is a made up name. One of the novels is titled The Coffin Dancer.”

“So…?”

I grow tense and frustrated when I’m not heard.

“Don’t you agree using a title about DNA harvesting and violent murder is a bit odd?”

“Dancing on someone’s grave is a common expression. People can use any handle they want.”

I realized I was making no headway at all. It turned out another major inquiry was under way, the season premier of CBS News 48 Hours Investigates. It’s still featured on the CBS web site.

They focused on DNA. CD provided police with a number of panties containing secretions from both parties. However, local news reported at least some (plural) had not been available for retail sale until after the date in question. An unsatisfactory suggestion of a mixup surfaced. At least one reporter indicated CD had taken condoms from Malavé’s garbage bins, but if true, that report passed into obscurity.

CD was described as having a brilliant mind, but suffered from borderline personality dissociative identity disorder (DID), once referred to as multiple personalities and Sybil’s Syndrome. CBS experts dismissed multiple personalities out of hand, but Malavé’s attorneys believed at least three of CD’s internal characters conspired to accuse Malavé of having sex with CD.

Following professional medical training, she worked for a urologist, harvesting and working with semen. She had the knowledge, she had the experience of working with and manipulating seminal and vaginal DNA.

☛ Curiously suggestive, a central plot point in the novel The Coffin Dancer is collecting DNA from semen by going through trash bins.

Nonetheless, 48 Hours hired their own expert who concluded the ratio of male secretions indicated intercourse, not transfer. 48 Hours Investigates season premiere ended with a gleeful assertion the show had vindicated Coffin Dancer.

The Florida Board of Medicine leaped upon the 48 Hours conclusion rather than police reports and a jury’s conclusion, and denied reinstatement of his licence to practice.

Maybe CBS got it right, but I wonder if Board members read Deavers novels. They might have reached a different conclusion. I wonder if Coffin Dancer, the accuser, outsmarted them all.

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References

• Open Letter by a Fellow Physician

Links in the CBS News articles are broken. Use the following to navigate the three segments.

1. A Crime of the Mind, Part I
2. A Crime of the Mind, Part II
3. A Crime of the Mind, Part III

Half Time at Hard Time

You remember that larcenous prisoner pal Shifty. Turns out his brother-in-law, Shaky, the crime ring’s explosives expert, was in the penitentiary and looking for a way out. He discovered the prison updated their security system at midnight.

At zero-hundred hours, the computer initiated the cycling process. Exactly 45 seconds later, it shut off the electrified fence and alarms for mere moments, whereupon it was fully reactivated with fresh recording media. If Shaky could breach the fence at the 45-second mark, he could escape. Three seconds early or late, and his goose was cooked. And by goose, we mean an electric Shaky.

There was just one problem. A bell always clanged at midnight, but how could Shaky time 45 seconds without a watch or cell phone, both banned by incarceration rules.

Having studied under explosives master Dixon Hill, Shaky felt confident he could figure out a way. He discreetly assembled fuses in the prison workshop. Although each length burned exactly one minute, they burned unevenly. The first half of this homemade det cord might burn in forty seconds while the second half would race to the finish in twenty. He couldn’t depend that three quarters of a fuse would give him 45 seconds and not risk his life.

But then Shaky saw the answer. Armed with two one-minute lengths of det cord and a lighter, he affected his escape. How did he do it?

Rules

1. The prison’s system reset begins at midnight when a tone sounds. Exactly 45 seconds later, the fence deactivates and mere moments later it re-electrifies.
2. Shaky carries only a lighter and two lengths of fuse cord.
3. Each cord will burn exactly one minute. However, burn rate is not proportional or even.

How did Shaky escape?

Here is an entertaining three minute Ted Talk presentation and answer to the puzzle.

 

 

 

 

© SleuthSayers

 

Solution

The Spurious Scurrilous Scurril.

domesticated flying squirrel

Monday, our Chris Knopf persuasively wrote The Irresistible Sciurus carolinensis, i.e, the grey squirrel. I'm here today with a rebuttal. Much like Miss Bubbles LaFerne, squirrels are cute cuddly…

Homewreckers!

Yep. Wild squirrels let me pet them and I’ve had flying squirrels as pets– they’re small, like gerbils. I’ve met black squirrels, white squirrels, and red squirrels.

But at the moment, I’m leaning toward the rats-with-furry-tails philosophy. The Florida floods following Hurricane Ian persuaded rodents of all sorts to seek higher ground. In my area, the August Council of Rodent Emigration (ACRE) decided that meant Leigh’s attic.

Soffits, we laugh at you! Sciurus carolinensis moved in and never left. Invasive greys are known for driving red squirrels out of their traditional habitats. I know that feeling. They are…

black squirrel

Hometakers!

They refused rat bait (not intended for squirrels) and they discovered Valentine’s cockatoo food suited them quite nicely: sunflowers and salads and fancy nuts, thank you very much. During the recent cold snap– okay, what passes for a cold snap in Florida– the squirrel delegation decided they need not go out when fresh food is delivered downstairs.

Quite the overstayed guests, they are rude little…

Homemakers! (aka Make Themselves at Home)

New drywall– the gypsum board to replace that damaged in Hurricane Ian’s wake– represents a small barrier. The furballs gnaw windows above the fireplace to see what’s going on. The scene resembles one of those old gothic movies where spirits lean out of picture frames. That’s our squirrels, resting their elbows on their most recent window-to-the-world, wondering why Miss M is hurling pots and pans and curses at them. But once upon a time…

white squirrel

Home Fries!

Before Florida, I lived in a state forest in Minnesota. Lots of wildlife, lots of squirrels. Not by coincidence, the electrical power would sometimes go boom with an explosion like a shotgun blast.

The house had its own transformer high on a utility pole. You may have noticed squirrels like to climb, and the pole was no exception. From time to time, Squeaky or Squiffy or Squirmy's curiosity would come to the fore. One or another would climb on the transformer, shorting it out and blowing the fuse with a bang heard ’round the forest. Lois at the electric company would exclaim, “Glory be. Sounds like Leigh’s transformer blew again. Earl, you up for the trip?”

As a result of tripping the fuse link, Squiffy or Squirmy or Squeaky would be blown away, figuratively and literally. Funeral arrangements occurred the next day. Furry families requested sunflower seeds in lieu of sunflowers.

red squirrel

Home Savers!

After transformer blasts occurred a few times, I told the company’s lineman these untenable squirrel blasts were expensive for the electric company, the squirrel population, and me in the middle of critical lines of code on my computer.

“Oh,” Earl said. “Why don’t you request a squirrel sleeve?”

“Why has no one mentioned this?” I said. “What’s a squirrel sleeve?”

The device, as you might surmise, was a 20-inch / 50cm length of galvanized sheet metal wrapped high around the utility pole. Squirrels might ascend to the sleeve, but not climb past its slippery surface. No more Spiffys or Squiffys or Rocky Js would die on my watch.

My thoughtfulness won numerous Squirrelman of the Year awards, whereupon rodents everywhere figured I’d welcome them to my house and hearth.

grey squirrel

Homebody!

I concede a major point to Chris: If I could reincarnate as any karmic wheel-of-life creature, a squirrel would make a good candidate. Sure, they work hard, but the little acrobats play hard too, scampering and teasing, friends-with-benefits flirting and playing you-can’t catch-me tag.

They are smart and wily. Defeated homeowners have posted videos of incredible obstacle courses originally intended to keep the little buggers out of bird feeders.

Score:    Squirrels 137,528    Humans 0

Moreover, naturalists tell us squirrels are the only mammal that can survive a drop from any height. When they spread their limbs, loose skin of the abdomen flattens just enough to resemble a wing suit, letting them parachute safely to a landing. Better than a flat cat! How cool is that!

Rocky J Squirrel
© Geico, Jay Ward Prod. et al

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But chewing the wiring in someone’s old house?

Nuts to that.

So…

Any chance your karmic lineage includes a squirrel?

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wingsuit human flying squirrel © Squirrel.ws