No you do not "opt out" of AI

using your creative endeavours to "train" their own "creative endeavours". 

Apparently our federal government is planning legislation which would require creative human beings to "opt out" of allowing a machine to learn "creativity" from actual people. This is being proposed in an effort to get those who are developing AI into bringing "data centres" into the country.

Has the world gone mad? Has the world gone completely crazy? AI is not creative. It uses data fed to it. It may appear to "think" and "create" but it is not creative in the way human beings are. AI does not have the same sort of imaginative powers. It cannot feel emotions. Yes, it might tell you it can do all these things but it cannot.

I do not longer how much longer we have before AI takes over. I still hope it will, despite the recent dire predictions, be a very long way off - or, better still, never happen. What I do know is that AI cannot "write" even the way I can write. It can be asked to try but it does not succeed. It may fool some people but someone, somewhere will pick it up. I know someone resorting to the old "card index" method to show her work is not AI driven. I know someone else who says it is much more difficult to "edit" AI created material. I know a musician who tells me that AI sounds "artificial" to him. AI can create a picture in the manner of Rubens or Rembrant but it cannot reproduce the actual brush strokes.

Creating anything worthwhile is hard work. Even this blog is "work" (although some people think it is "fun" and should be seen as such). Many hours go into researching a novel and writing it. A new song does not "just come" to someone. If a creative person wants their work to be used then they should be expected to grant permission, not withhold it.  

There should be no requirement to "opt out" here. It is most certainly not something which any government should require of creative people. It is government sanctioned "theft", nothing more and nothing less.    

Children as young as four being left

alone for not just a few hours but for days at a time?

If this was happening in an urban area and you were not "aboriginal" then your parent would be in court. You would be removed from their care.

If you are "aboriginal" and living in a remote community then apparently things are done differently. You might have older siblings or cousins who will see to it that you eventually get something to eat - if there is any food in the house - they might even do a bit of actual caring if you are lucky.

Someone mentioned the report about this to me and asked if I thought it really was true. Sadly and distressingly my answer was that it was not only true but it would not be an isolated incident.

I am commenting on this now, while I can. It is all too likely that saying something like this in the future will result in a demand to "take it down" or it will be removed and I will be unable to post anything at all on a blog. I may not even be able to have a blog.

Yes, there are two issues here. The first is the issue of the care of the aboriginal child. The second is the present government's attempts to take control of what we can see, hear and do on the internet. The claim they are only trying to remove the harm done by misinformation is nonsense. Misinformation? If the government does not like something does this mean it can be removed? Yes, of course it does.The idea of robust debate is not something any government relishes if it means they may lose votes. All those comments about non-competitive grants to golf courses would have to go. Any questions about "platinum" access to the lounge at the airport would be considered "misinformation" even though the vast majority of the mileage was paid for by taxpayers. 

Those are just two examples in the last few days. There has also been the refusal to even debate the urgent need to review the Act which has left women without rights to safe places.

Perhaps all of that pales into insignificance however when children are not being cared for because to do so might mean their removal from their families and their community. We are being told that they must remain there "because we cannot have another Stolen Generation". If you believe that then do you actually care at all? 

Recently I was directed to an article in a "reputable" newspaper on the other side of the world. If the article is correct then a mother now has a criminal conviction for the sin of allowing her four year old child to walk a half a mile alone - without adult supervision. Once the child would have walked twice that distance and done it twice a day. Yes, there were risks involved but the benefits were seen as outweighing the risks. I suspect someone allowing their child to do that here would also find their child was on an "at risk" register. A parent might well find themselves in court.   

In a remote community of aboriginal people it seems it is a different story. To do anything might mean taking the child away from their family and community. That takes precedence over the safety and well being of the child. We are told that the priority here is "family" and "culture". The reality is that, all too often, neither of these things exist in a meaningful way. Those responsible allow the lies about those things to continue but talk about them and the label "racist" is quickly applied. 

The person who directed me to the article is aboriginal. She wanted to know what I thought. Her views on the issue would get her banned from the internet - but they might protect children.  

Whyalla is dying

and whether it can be revived is the subject of the intense and anxious discussions by the spin doctors.

The answer of course is that it cannot be revived. More than a billion dollars of taxpayer funds have been poured into life support but the situation deteriorated anyway. 

Most people knew this would happen but there was an election to win so the money went in. A buyer was found. How the buyer ever believed what the government told him remains, and will remain, a mystery.

As a child at school I was taught that Whyalla was an important part of the state's economy. There were ship works there and the steel works were there. The ships went long ago. The steel works limped along like an old man who thinks he should keep walking but has difficulty in doing so. 

Now the furnace has failed. It was failing for some time but the government's "clean green energy" strategy was, apparently, going to save it. There would be a cheap and ever renewable source of power for it. This was going to save everything - except that it did  nothing of the sort. 

I think we all knew this, those in power certainly did. But, being in power is more important than making the right decisions. You make popular decisions instead. They often involved golf courses and motor-cycle races around the city. They are intended to provide opportunities to open hospitals which are too small or "expressways" to hide the lack of public transport planning.

Whyalla was one of those stages on the long journey to and from the remote location we lived in. It was where the sealed road started and ended. It rose dramatically out of the skyline as you crested the last low rise on the journey to the city. You could see the cranes rising into the deep blue of the summer sky and they grew clearer and larger as the car travelled towards them. 

We would stop in Whyalla. There was a place which sold milk shakes and we children would get out of the car and "just stand there" while Mum made sure we were clean enough and tidy enough to enter the shop. Once in she would have us sit at one of the two Formica topped tables and we would be allowed to have milkshakes before continuing on the long journey via the caravan park and "the facilities". We would go through Port Augusta and Port Pirie and onwards towards Clare but none of them seemed quite the same as Whyalla and the milk shakes. 

Whyalla was growing back then. There were schools the Senior Cat could have been sent to care for but we never lived in "the iron triangle". They were just places we travelled through. They were also places where people lived and worked. Now they live there but the work has gone.

How long will it take before we accept that the "clean green and renewable" dream is just that? 

The consumption of illegal tobacco

products is apparently on the rise again. It is said to be a major crime issue - and a health "addiction" problem.

I have never smoked. I have never tried to smoke. I have never even tried a single cigarette. I have also ingested far too much cigarette smoke from the cigarettes of other people.

Tobacco consumption is highly addictive. It also has serious consequences for the health and well being of those who consume it. Even more importantly it has serious negative consequences for the people around the smoker, especially children.

Our government has increased the tax on tobacco over and over again. It has been done in the vain effort to reduce consumption. It has not worked. Make something more expensive and then let people find another way to obtain the product at a lower cost? Of course they will go to the lower cost product even if they are purchasing something which is being provided illegally. It is a policy which makes no sense to me.

It makes no sense to the Police Commissioner either. He has apparently commented that there should be "consequences" for the purchase of an illegal product. Yes, of course there should be consequences. 

When he said this yesterday there was apparently an outcry. We were told that tobacco consumption is an "addiction" and it needs to be treated as such. 

My answer to that one if that it can be treated as an addiction but the purchase of an illegal product should still have consequences. It should have serious consequences. The purchaser is aiding and abetting a crime. There are legal, if more expensive, ways of obtaining the same product. That the government is not getting the tax on the product is not simply theft. It is encouraging a crime.

Any solution is going to present difficulties. There almost certainly needs to be a range of measures. Yes, you could reduce the cost of a packet of cigarettes but I doubt it would make much difference.  You could require the smoker to get a licence to smoke from a medical practitioner, a licence which would require them to attend classes. You could gradually increase the age at which someone could legally start to smoke. It might take ten to fifteen years to reduce the habit to almost nothing but I believe New Zealand has looked at that option.  Then there is the "confiscation" option. It would require policing but a smoker would have to be able to produce evidence the tobacco they are consuming is legally bought. Without that evidence then they would be required to hand over any tobacco not consumed. 

Yes, I realise the last option is problematic for many reasons but it might well reduce the problem to more manageable proportions. Of course the real problem is that the consumption of tobacco is still legal. It should not be.  

A friend died yesterday

and I am wondering yet again if it is possible to die from a broken heart.

The friend was my beloved Whirlwind's father. He was young, far too young at forty-six. 

I miss the Whirlwind, of course I do. She was an incredible part of my life. In many ways she was the child I never had but she was not my child in the way she was her father's child. She could never have been that.

When she died (and let us use that word "died") her father was never the same. It is something we say about people but it is also true. No parent should lose a child. Losing a child the way he did was  perhaps even harder. He had to agree for them to turn off life support, effectively kill her. His howls of grief as he clung to me at the hospital still cause me an indescribable feeling of helpless misery too. That I was the only adult he felt he could be with at that point is even worse. 

I like C... as a person. I loved him as the Whirlwind's father. We were not related in any way. He had no relations in the world apart from the cousin he lived with when he went to live in the nation's capital. I say "lived with" but in reality they saw very little of each other. Both of them were the sort of public servants who put in very, very long hours. For C... work was a way of trying to avoid the overwhelming grief of losing first his partner and then his daughter. 

Here his hobbies had been his garden, riding his bike with his daughter and putting a fishing line with no bait into the water so he could spend time reading or catching up on sleep. Ms Whirlwind would get cross with him for forgetting to put on sunscreen. 

He went to a place with no garden and rarely rode his bike. Once in a while he and his cousin would take long, silent walks in the parks. Most of his time was spent working. I sent books and he dutifully read them but they did not give him the same pleasure they might once have given him.  He returned here occasionally. After their home was sold I would meet him somewhere in the city and we would sit for several hours over coffee which grew cold and food he barely touched. 

He tried. He really did try to start living again but somehow he could not make it happen. The trips out of the country were not the same when he did not have to work out what time to call his daughter every day. 

I am not going to the funeral. There will not be one. He did not want one. His cousin will be here in another month or so. We will meet for a chat, a reminisce about what might have been perhaps. 

Yes, I am upset. I am sad but I am also relieved. He was not well. He was, despite trying, not happy. He was a hard working man, a very good father. He deserved better.  Rest in peace my friend. 

I am not going to take up another hobby

but I can still take an interest in things other people do as hobbies. There is a difference!

Recently a friend of mine spun some yarn for me. It is something she learned to do after she retired. She had planned to do this. Now, some years down the learning track, she actually spins very well indeed. She spins as well as people who have been doing it for many years. It was something she wanted to do and, being one of those highly intelligent people, she approached the task with thought and preparation. She went to classes. She belongs to a group. She enjoys the process. 

I think that's the entire point. She enjoys what she is doing. It really is a hobby. There is no pressure there.

Other people I know have other hobbies. They pursue them with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  There are people who have "taken up" an activity intended to be a hobby and let it lapse for a long period. Later they have gone back to it. 

Other people do not return to an initial enthusiasm at all. They have tools and other equipment languishing in their sheds and work rooms. The materials have been given away or thrown out.

The late Senior Cat had hobbies which he pursued with enthusiasm. His garden was important but so was his woodworking shed.  It was not just family who benefitted from the food he grew and the things he made. He loved handling timber and working with it. Designing and making conjuring apparatus was a challenge. Indoors he read widely and taught conjuring, study skills and English. He retained his intellectual capacities to the end of his long life and made the most of them.

I hope I can do the same. I do not see "writing" as a hobby. It is an essential part of my being, of my existence. That does not mean there are not days when the idea of writing a blog post does not appeal. No, sitting down to write one is a different thing altogether. It is not the same as writing about the "cathedral cats". I can think about the cats while I am pedalling out and about and I think I would miss them. Saying goodbye to other characters has been very difficult. 

I knit and I crochet. I do not claim to be an expert craftsperson but I enjoy it. I gave up using other people's patterns at around age sixteen. This was not because I am particularly good at knitting or crochet. It is because the challenge is in the design and "seeing if that works" and "what if..." and more. I want to make some buttons to go on the next projects. I have tried one or two ideas and I think I can do it. It won't be easy but that is part of the process. I am impatient to get back to them. 

The reason I have not? There was the state's "Show" and I had things planned for that. In all likelihood it is the last time I will enter anything. I also had the other project I wrote about a short time ago. It involved a hobby but it was done as a "thank you". Next week I will pass it on to someone else to finish. It is one of the rare occasions on which I wish I could sew and do the whole thing myself. Nevertheless it is done and I can think about buttons and other things.

And there is the project the knitting and crochet group at the library is planning. It will involve work but it is related to hobbies I enjoy.

In between I might manage to read a great many more books about all sorts of things...and I suppose I might find a new hobby?    

The High Court has refused leave to appeal

in the Giggle v Tickle case. It is effectively a ruling which leaves women with no legal right to female only spaces under the law.

Before you tell me this is "not true" let me try and explain. The High Court has refused leave to appeal. This means the court believes the law, as it is currently written, was correctly applied by the Federal Court. The court is not saying what the definition of a woman should be. 

The implications of this ruling are potentially catastrophic for women's rights and safety. It is difficult to see how it is now possible to prevent anyone claiming transgender status entering a space designated as being "only" for the gender with which they "identify". This could cover a wide range of services and activities. 

There are already concerns about transgender persons participating in sports teams for women. These concerns often relate to the physical safety of other participants. They are not simply about physical advantage. Who has rights here?  Recently a mother at the library told me how her daughters no longer want to play their chosen sport "because the boys are allowed to play too". Questioning revealed that a bigger and stronger "transgender" teen had been chosen and the rest of the team had been told that person had the "right" to be there. The girls no longer felt safe.

Not so long ago someone casually said to me, "Well if women didn't commit crimes they would not be in prison and they wouldn't have that problem."  What was "that problem"? It was a transgender person claiming the right to be placed in the prison of their preferred gender. The comment completely ignored issues like why the transgender person in question was incarcerated for violent offending against women. It also completely ignored the fact that the offences which land women in prison are all too often due in part to male aggression. Women were seen as the problem!

Given this ruling it will now be interesting to see which way the latest "chest feeding" case will go. A person who identifies as female claims they took measures which allowed them to lactate and chest feed an infant. Another person who took issue with this and raised concerns is now being taken to court for defamation. A judge has asked for more information about what was actually fed to the infant. There have been many questions raised about why someone would actually want to subject an infant to such a procedure. 

The High Court has, rightly, based the decision on the law as it now stands. That is the role of the court. The court is not ruling on "transgender rights". Whether parliament is prepared to review the law is something entirely different. I am not sure they will want to do it.