When the North Carolina legislature voted to prohibit our schools from teaching Evolution, Senator Sam Ervin concluded

“The monkeys in the jungle would undoubtedly be delighted to know that the North Carolina legislature has absolved them from all responsibility for the conduct of the human race in general and that of the North Carolina legislature in particular.”

Today’s NEW YORK TIMES contains an article by Carolyn Y. Johnson entitled WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NEANDERTHALS?

And one on a new way to educate :

An Alpha private school in Austin, Texas. The Alpha network is small but growing rapidly. Its leaders have ambitions for the model to reach one billion students around the world.

By Dana Goldstein

And an earlier related one:

Oct. 23, 2026

Thomas L. Friedman: We Just Set Off the Second Big Bang

All are pertinent comments on what is coming down the pipe via Artificial Intelligence.

In Yuval Harari’s prescient HOMO DEUS he speculates that HOMO SAPIENS will be more like Neanderthals than the next evolving species, HOMO DEUS.

JOURNEY OF THE MIND by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam is another book “above my paygrade”. Though published in 2022 it is prescient and related to the big questions of the moment.

Here is a clip from the book’s cover: “Journey of The Mind” is a mind-bending work of popular science, the first general book to share the cutting-edge mathematical basis for consciousnesss, language, and the self. It shows how a “unified theory of the mind” can explain the mind’s greatest mysteries—and offer clues about the ultimage fate of all minds in the universe.

Tough reading follows.

Homo Sapiens as just another link in evolution?

“Chain, chain, chain—chain of fools”

 The GreatestSentence Ever Written

Walter Isaacson

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written

Walter Isaacson

Premise

“The author argues that these early edits reveal the Founders balancing the roles of reason and faith in defining American rights. The final sentence declares that all men are created equal and possess unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Isaacson presents this sentence as one of the defining statements of the American founding.”

At one point, a fighter took the mic and made a nasty joke about Michelle Obama while standing in front of the house she once lived in with her husband, daughters and mother.

Even for a president with a lifelong penchant for P.T. Barnum-esque gambits, this one was in a league of its own. (NEW YORK TIMES )

*************************

Raylan Givens: Sometimes, we have to make deals with lowlifes because we have our sights set on life forms even somehow lower on the ladder of lowlife than they.
(JUSTIFIED )

“Where have you gone, Joe Dimaggio ? Our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.”

LUDDITE LITERATURE

I resisted the email, technology world that cropped up at the end of my coaching, teaching career.

We moved to the beach just before winter.  I had never cut on my college issued computer.  High school typing class was in 1956.  Health issues, injuries, age, weather chipped away at my physicality. 

I began to “hobby write “.   Self-Publishing was possible and I waded in.  

Any old person will tell you of the “nightmare of the new age”.    Even now.

My seven “books” and 700 blog articles attest to one virtue–VOLUME.  And while the process has been a retirement hobby, I haven’t changed my name to Shakes Parham.

Vanity has caused  me to wonder “ is it any good ?”

In toto it is a jumbled mess.  At 85 years and “ circling the drain “, finding out its worth is beyond me.

Here is a thought.  With the galloping advances, will there be a way to edit out the good parts?

There are bigger questions:

Are there large numbers of people like me, who given self publishing, produced some unique period and worthwhile contributions?

• Will an advanced editing tool be developed to glean items of value from this plethora of effort from us Luddites ?

Are we really going to let some one person who doesn’t believe in the law, singularly write the rules ( i.e. laws )

for college athletics in America ?