we win! again!

OK spoiler alert LOL- actually no spoiler - the title gave it all away - we tried a new (to us) place and it was great! a real winner and we will be back soon!

LOL - make note of this- a plate of oysters caught on camera BEFORE the first one disappeared :-)

crudo listing - changes daily-

because it was my birthday we had my favorite white burg- OK so maybe now my favorite it s Beaune Close Des Mouches Blanc but this one is easier to find LOL

the crudo sampler (the three above without the cooconut)

I may never have a grouper sandwich any place else - this was beyond good- when to the level of sublime combo of flavors were terrifically creative in a dish that is always good when fresh but never inspiring like this one was!

the potato gratin- was exactly correct- you could swear you grandma was in the kitchen turning out these perfect and perfectly memorable dishes!

this time I missed the dessert photo - chocolate pot de creme- very nice!

so this one goes on the list for definitely returning to!  Fabulous service from Patrick and the ENTIRE staff was welcoming and they ALL ensured we had a lovley evening! What a wonderful surprise... tomorrow we are off to visit Angela and Lee in NC... so more to follow - stay tuned!

more fun with friends

More fun with friends- Barry and Ellen came to visit last night and we saw Snooty - had a dinner at our go to Blue Marlin- stayed up late talking and hung out in the morning before they headed back south for lunch with Barry's mom.

So we went to the South Florida Museum for some Snooty time, a planetarium lecture by a new guy Howard (where's Jeff?!?) ... and ended up here for dinner - a favorite Blue Marlin in Bradenton Beach on AMI-  but more on the food later LOL-

so back at the museum -  we started with a walk through the pre-columbian exhibit (the museum is small but has a nice collection in several areas)

then we dashed off to the planetarium where the new show was kind of hokey cartoon-y which was a bit of a disappointment - and the other disappointment is that Jeff wasn't there - but the new guy was pretty knowledgeable and held his own -

then we rushed off again for the final feeding of the day at Snooty's pool- our guy is 68 now and as of last week was down to one roommate (Sarasola was released to the wild just last week after his stint in rehab with Snooty)

this is Snooty's current roomie Ice Cube LOL-  he's gained 400 pounds hanging around Snooty- LOL
And he is getting close to a weight where he too can be released back to the wild...

Snooty calling for the food lady to come feed him his California Romaine lettuce - LOL - he's dreadfully spoiled but why not no other 68 year old guy can fund raise the way this guy can- his birthday gala every year is the big$$$ maker for the museum-

Cube comes up for a breath-

some living shells in the display area outside the manatee pool-

a view from the windows below the big pool- that's the big guy - you can tell from his scars - caused by infections decades ago when they let people pet him...

this is the view the food lady got when Snooty asked for lettuce- how could you not love that face...

off to Blue Marlin - after some champagne at home and a bit of white wine - we had wahoo sushi and scallops and lobster corn dogs (a lobster tail on a stick) YUM all around as well as some Apalachicola oysters which were fab but that I -LOL big surprise - missed the photo of them - they were baked with shrimp butter and Parmesan--- another big YUM...

we doubled the mains - Elle and Phil had the wahoo entree and Barry and I had the grouper Provencal- both excellent...

grouper above and wahoo below-

Ellen and I chose the chocolate porter mousse cake and the boys had bread pudding (Barry) and Pecan pie (Phil)

we had no problems but just in case there was a sign LOL

a cozy little cottage that has terrific food- really our number one go to place in Bradenton...

so we talked late in the night- catching up and just hanging out and turned in around 1:30 or a bit later (much later for Phil) - then I had breakfast of a sort with Barry & Ellen before they left for Siesta Key...and  lunch with Barry's mom.  Then our friends came over to sing Happy Birthday to me and drop off a couple of lovely gifts- my favorite was this photo- of me and Phil and our dear friend Barbara Ramsey (of her hundredth year post fame!)

later we went out to dinner at a new (to us) place which I will review in the next post...it was a real winner! so come on back and find out all about it!

minds blown

the last time I entitled a post "minds blown" it was about food... this time it is much more intellectual and less a sensory experience.  This afternoon we attended a lecture and discussion on artificial intelligence  - and WOW! is all we can say about the livey discussion and the two terrific lecturers -

so I am not sure the description of the afternoon does it justice because the discussion was all over the map/planet/universe

the first words spoken to us - after good afternoon- were that "nearly all the time our thinking about the future is shaped by our current reality and that in order to really expand into the possibilities one would need to let go of this restricted thinking" - just as hunter gatherers couldn't imagine an agraian society, and the agraian society couldn't imagine the industrial revolution, we have difficulty imagining the life of the future.

then they did a little bit of background on the development of machine thinking - it was built by humans and is like clothes (artificial skin) or glasses (artificial sight) or HVAC (artificial heat)... you get the drift - because it is "man-made" human made

but here are some slides and my comments along the way-

loved this quote- and the two speakers seemed to think this was very close to how things will go-

they see the future as one where machines do the work and humans do creative things - the thinking and the things that create what we know as culture-

but of course they acknowledge that there will be some who will be left behind because they refuse to come along - and there is another quote in the later slides from Toffler that addresses that point-

Watson- wins at Jeopardy - LOL - "he/she" looks quite bright LOL

here is the Toffler quote - those who will be left behind will those who refuse to adapt- and it wasn't lost on this audience that we are already in the midst of this issue-

I took some notes along the way and although they were cryptic things I put in my phone I will add them to this post because mostly they were interesting tidbits that I was astounded by -

• More people have cell phones than indoor plumbing (YES and by quite a majority!)
• Data creation doubles every three days right now and will get exponentially larger faster from now on...
• We have moved from a time of innovation to disruption. 
• ever wondered what “creative destruction” feels or looks like, we are now living in one of those times.
• Physiological need to have machines to crunch all the data- humans can no longer do the job of analysis of all this data that is being created each and every day- 
• Creativity and design is the area where the growth will be largest. 
• Ringling grads at CIA to interpret the data via GUI (ha here's the future- these graphic design grads are now being used to create graphical images of the data that the computers now crunch for us so it can be understood- the ultimate GUI  (graphical user interface)
• Data scientist. Not linear thinking. 
• Kids now being ranked on how quickly they can access info/knowledge rather than holding it in their brains
• Nanopharmacist? Lunar tour guide? Virtual lawyer? Robotic ethics consultant? 
• 85% of the jobs that today's learners will do have not been invented yet. And they will have 8-10 jobs by the time they are 38 - according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Science fiction has addressed these issues for years 
• Dependency? it all stops when the computer fails (a woman's story from the late 70s before the Internet and its diffuse hosting mechanism and the cloud and available redundancy) 
• Hamlet's Blackberry - how to live an analog life in a digital world (a recommended book)
• We are IN media - it is no longer the message- we are now fully immerse and there is no turning back
• Consciousness conscience cognition- we have no way of predicting when or whether the machine learning will get to the point that it may develop consciousness or conscience but it is already well into the cognition stage of how we define "human intelligence"
• Safest time in human history ratio of war dead to population but is also the most dangerous
• AI parsed across a broad range of activities and application is the future 
• "The future is already here it's just unevenly distributed" (a quote from someone- I didn't write down)
• Who controls the data?
• Bit coin = future global currency (won't have issues of Brexit and currency fluctuations by country)
• Rethinking food chain completely. already in development - individual growing pods/boxes/containers where your food is produced and you harvest what you need for any given meal... 

The thing they fear the most - that keeps them up at night- that could create no future at all- CLIMATE CHANGE...

Chris Bishop (below)-  Right after graduating from Bennington College with a degree in German literature, I toured and recorded with a country-rock band called McKendree Spring. Then, moving to New York, I became a sought-after session musician, working with many famous artists including Robert Palmer, Darius Brubeck, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Realizing that by working in advertising, musicians could sleep in their own beds at night and get off the road, I broke into the jingle business, first as a bass player and then as a composer and producer. 

In 1995, after becoming captivated by the Internet, I taught myself enough about this new technology to get hired as a Web producer at several seminal interactive agencies in New York-including CKS Partners and Eagle River Interactive. Then, in 1998, after being invited to what I fully expected would be an awkward if not embarrassing interview, IBM asked me to join their Corporate Internet Programs team. I left IBM in June of 2013 after 15 years. While there, I worked in a variety of roles including new media production, as a business strategy consultant, and in various communications and social media-related jobs.

Specialties: multi-modal work transitions, improvising careers, metacognitive learning strategies, global socio-cultural transformations driven by technology (from linked in)

David Houle photo below-

David Houle (born 1948) is a futurist, keynote speaker, and author of The Shift Age. He coined the phrase "The Shift Age" and identified this new age as the successor to the Information Age in 2007.  David Houle is a renowned futurist, thinker, and speaker. David has won numerous awards including Speaker of the Year award from Vistage International, the leading organization of CEOs in the world. He is often called the “CEOs’ futurist” having spoken to or advised 2,500+ CEOs and business owners in the past seven years.

he has a blog and a recent post addressed his thoughts on the current view of what the future holds - given the new president- if you have interest- you can find it here:

http://davidhoule.com/forecasts-for-2017/2017/01/03/first-look-2017-high-level-thoughts

This was an amazingly far ranging discussion - and it was a discussion because they presented for about 30 minutes and the interactive session was more than an hour long- and probably could have gone on for twice as long given how much people had to ask and share about!  Terrific use of two hours of our time! worth the drive to Temple Beth Sholom for the presentation.

and as aside because Watson was a part of this discussion I thought about how terrific The Watson Intelligence was at Theater Wit... and it was reviewed here in case you might want to revisit that one-

http://blog.semifreelife.com/2015/10/why-we-go-to-plays.html

so on we go- friends are coming tonight and we are off this weekend to visit Angela & Lee... so stay tuned