Opinion

It’s hard to see a yellow school bus and not think about all the hours of my childhood spent sitting on one of those hard seats with a stiff back. I hope the modern versions have a little more comfort than the utilitarian transportation I had to ride uphill both ways.From the outside, they don’t look much different now that the calendar has turned to September and the wheels on the buses are going around and around every day.As one of the last stops on the bus route, I don’t remember much about the ride to school.

Anton Krutz, owner of KC Strings, probably the premiere non-fretted musical instrument shop in the KC metro region, is fond of saying that the world of STEM is changing and that a person who really wants to be employed in that career field should take up playing a violin or some other instrument, but especially a non-fretted stringed instrument.I believe that his rationale is that AI and other developments in the field are making it difficult to justify hiring very many engineers since they can now be replaced by AI which can be much smarter and faster and is likely to be much less expensive than real humans. Since anyone can use AI or other computer programs to do their work, there is less need for a long-term education at university to learn how engineering systems work when the information is available online.I don’t believe that we can do without the human input, nor the value of the university education and AI is still subject to hallucinations, and it does take a lot of energy to run the data banks that give us AI programs.

Three weeks ago, President Trump declared that “the District of Columbia has lost control of public order and safety,” and ordered armed troops into the streets of Washington, D.C., to fight crime. His additional comments - that the nation’s capital is filled with “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people” — were all basically untrue.

What makes for a good life? That is the question a Harvard research study has been considering for more than 80 years. Robert Waldinger is currently the head of long-term study, and his work was distilled into a book called “The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.” If that seems too long for you, I encourage you to listen to the TED talk on YouTube which has over 28 million views.