Brown Motion

 Human ingenuity has always surpassed what the prior generation achieved and continued its upward march to the present. 2024. Or has it?  Do you feel like I do that the capacity for true human innovation petered out somewhere around 1970? What has followed is perhaps a slow incremental progress in certain domains with the global availability to information in the form of world wide web being the only major breakthrough of the past three decades? Think about this. Man designed, deployed and successfully landed on our only natural satellite - the moon in 1969 and since then made 12 successful attempts. Then it stopped.  This was when the rockets used to send men to the moon had computing power that looks puny by comparison to what an average schmoe carries in their smartphone. What did we do with all that leap in computing? Created disasters like Facebook and Instagram. Mental depression as a direct result of use or overuse of these software has led to massive productivity ...

Antibes, France.  Long believed to be a haven for some globally known brands like Pablo (Picasso for those who did not know his first name), Claude (Monet) to name a few, it is a spot on the Cote d'Azur or French Riviera that we happened to visit the first day of 2024. As part of our end of year pilgrimage (to seek culture, food et al not a spiritual kind although it can be uplifting just smelling new things) to places unknown (to us anyway) we decide to spend it on the south coast of France.  Along the Mediterranean sea during December is perhaps not the most ideal but it offered us a bit less crowds and not terrible weather. It rained a couple days out of 14 which is about 15% of the time so not bad at all.  Hotels were also not exorbitant except for new year's. The one day it rained we were touring a fragrance factory and came out smelling better than when we went in - so all was well. So like I was saying, the first of Jan 2024 we were in Antibes, having come in on a ...