• Opinions Jim Thompson 2 April 2023

    Most of the news is noise, this is not

    AI development is at the point where researchers are not sure when its intelligence will surpass humanity’s and concede perhaps it already has. Earlier this week, an open letter containing names like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) and others gained over 1,000 (latest count 2,137) signatures calling for at least a six-month pause in training the AI systems to be more powerful than Chat GPT-4. Others are saying the pause needs to be 30 years. Good luck with that.
  • Opinions Jim Thompson 28 March 2023
    Assessing people’s acceptance
    Our lack of acceptance of many issues on the table today is simply because no one has made the effort to explain them in a way we can understand. As long as they can be lazy and just implement such issues by government fiat, they will not attempt to explain them. Such an attitude is an insult to democracy and to our citizens.
  • Jim Thompson 21 March 2023
    PSA: Get your thinking straight – now!
    Most of us would say our life is more important than material goods. However, here in our neighborhood, two people have lost their lives in the last six months because, in a rapidly developing situation, they thought saving material goods was paramount. They didn’t have time to think it through.
  • Jim Thompson 14 March 2023
    The worm turns
    Finally, there is a new political party for those fed up with establishment Washington, both the Rs and Ds. It is called the No Label Party. No Label intends to present a presidential candidate next year who is a middle-of-the-road moderate, not extreme on either the right or left.
  • Jim Thompson 6 March 2023
    Social Security’s problems are simple arithmetic
    Social Security was on fairly stable fiscal ground when founded. But look what has happened since then. Families have gotten much smaller, reducing the number of future contributors to Social Security.
  • Jim Thompson 26 February 2023
    What will Putin do?
    When Vladimir Putin looks back a year, I suspect he is quite startled at how things have turned out.
  • Jim Thompson 20 February 2023
    Up in the air
    It is not going to get any better, folks, when it comes to gathering reliable information. The new AI software – already discussed in these pages – will cast further doubt on the veracity of publicly available information.
  • Jim Thompson 14 February 2023
    Happy Valentine’s Day
    Readers of this column know me and know God is an important part of my life. I’ve been given, so far, an extra 23 years. I wake up every morning asking the Lord what he wants me to do with these days. I didn’t beat cancer. He did, and I need to follow His leading on what to do with all this extra time.
  • Jim Thompson 6 February 2023
    Were you surprised?
    Humans want to think the world is steady and predictable. It never has been and never will be. A close-to-home example is when a loved one passes away. This event is often described as a shock, even though it is very predictable – we are all going to die.
  • Jim Thompson 30 January 2023
    Are we facing the Dark Ages II?
    It is not only television that is driving us mad, but also the 1,000 other channels of tripe being delivered to us daily through all sorts of media to our pot-soaked nostrils and our fentanyl-clogged lifeless veins. Our big city teachers’ unions have lost all sense of responsibility to teach. Many of our educators have become political tools.
  • Jim Thompson 24 January 2023
    You can’t have it both ways
    This column will build on what I said last week in, “Is this a tipping point?” Since that column, we have been blessed with shrill speeches at the World Economic Forum by John Kerry and Al Gore, where they called for taxing us to death to pay for the perceived climate change needs (Kerry) followed by phrases like “boiling oceans” and “rain bombs” by Gore.
  • Jim Thompson 16 January 2023
    Is this a tipping point?
    Today, it is very hard to determine what is real and what is a joke. My personal hope is that we have gone so near to the edge that sobriety will bring us back to a place of rational thinking.
  • Jim Thompson 6 January 2023
    The curious case of Damar Hamlin
    Call this a first. I have never written a sports column before (that I recall) but the Damar Hamlin incident has so many interesting facets that I could not resist.
  • Jim Thompson 3 January 2023
    Beyond tax returns
    Honest politicians should have no fear of such an examination; dishonest politicians will do everything they can to block it. Propose this idea to politicians you know and see which ones throw up the most resistance. That will tell you a lot about the skeletons in their closet right now.
  • Jim Thompson 26 December 2022
    What does this look like to you?
    President Biden has been in office for nearly two years. Let’s assess just a small portion of what has happened on his and his predecessor’s watch.
  • Jim Thompson 19 December 2022
    Christmas hypocrisy
    Gifts are Biblical. The Wise Men brought three gifts to Jesus. I have read these passages many times. I have looked hard. There was not a PlayStation, Xbox or bicycle among those gifts.
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