Preposterous probability . . .

It's Odin's day … and TulseyTown awaits Thor's thunderstorms . . .

Today is the 138th anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death in 1886, Amherst, Massachusetts

Alice Munro, the revered Canadian author, died yesterday at 92.

Katherine Anne Porter was born 130 years ago today. The novelist was born on this date in 1890 Indian Creek, Texas.

It's the birthday of Frank Baum. The author of The Wizard of Oz was born today in 1856 Chittenango, New York

The map has never been the territory . . .

The multipath, machine learning genius, Dr. Joy Buolamwini revealed AI's bias in a talk at SXSW Austin this past March.

Recent scholarship has mainstreamed notions that years ago may have seemed preposterous: that plants communicate, signal, sense, and cooperate in ways previously unimaginable. But are they sentient?

Science may open the door to wonder, but cannot walk through it into mindfulness. The reason for such a limit is, perhaps, not obvious. Science is wholly focused on the dualities of language and phenonema predefined as matter. Mind and wonder, while nameable, are in their experience non-dual, unified, substantive and ephemeral at the same time. While scientists do wonder, they are prone to strangle it with two-sided measuring tape. The plant-sentience article and AI discussion above provide prime examples. Clearly, sentience has something to do with what is termed “consciousness” which in quantum terms is arguably another name for the Universe. Sailors figured out shortly after there were sails that “the map is not the territory.” Science does have one saving grace: probability. Always expressed as “ p> .01 ” — the “1” after the point “0” signifies the error potential in every mathematical measurement utilized to support an ontological statement. Probability allows for the “Black Swan,” and that the wind never blows in only one direction in any given moment. Of course, I could be wrong.