The improvement in and hype surrounding AI systems has begun to lead to a panic of sorts. Though not unexpected in a era of crisis (the panic I mean), AI is seen as a potential destroyer of the human race.

It is not hard to see how this could come about. Put AI super brains to work on some of the problems that the world faces, ostensibly to find solutions, and you might get in trouble. It's that pesky little law of unintended consequences.

For example, the question, 'How can we bring climate change under control?' could go either way. On the one hand, AI might come up with some brilliant ways of mitigating climate change, or, considering the question from other angles, might conclude that since humans are responsible for what's happening, they need to be eradicated.

Building in safeguards such a prime directives and ways of 'turning off' the AI system may be possible. Then again, a super intelligence is likely to have taken those things into consideration, and headed them off in ways that we can only imagine.

It is unseasonably warm for winter in July. Even though we are past the deepest part of winter, there is no way that I should be sporting a t-shirt in the back yard, nor riding my bike with just a hoodie for an overcoat. Anecdotal evidence is usually not good evidence, but allied with the concerning weather in the northern hemisphere, it carries greater weight.

It may be too late for the human experiment to be salvaged, I don't know. As a Christian I have hopes beyond what we perceive with our senses, or comprehend with our minds. That same hope is also a spur to action - you cannot help the needy, the homeless or the oppressed if you are not interested in the stewardship of the planet. They will be the first affected by the decline of our environment.

There are many good people working towards a better outcome, but are there enough? And where is the time going?

The victory of sekiwake Hoshoryuo over rank-and-filer Hokotofuji yesterday to win his first Emperor's Cup may usher in a new era. Hoshoryu is the nephew of legendary champion Asashoryu so he has some pedigree in the sport.

His win was made a little easier (though still a great achievement) by the absence, partial or complete, of  the three rikishi in the top two tiers. Given the nature of sumo, injuries occur quite often though some wrestlers are more prone than others.

Having seen both the great Asashoryu and the soon-to-be-great Hakuho at the Osaka tourney way back in the 2006, I think it is entirely possible that Hoshoryu could be headed for the top rank, once he has proved himself as ozeki. We all expect him to be promoted to that rank shortly.

 Even with my dim and hazy memory, some things can be recalled, or apparently so. The FIFA Women's World Cup being held in Australia and New Zealand, which began last night with victories to both of the host nations, was one such spur to memory. I admit that I am helped in this matter by my old friend Wayne, who seamlessly fills in the gaps for me without ever realizing it.

Cromer Park, Manly Vale, probably 1976. Wayne and I, having been soccer tragics in every other respect, were now officiating at women's matches. The procedure at the beginning of most games for the men was to check boot studs, toss a coin and call for a fair match from both sides. This was the same for the women, except that nails and jewellery were also subject to scrutiny - long nails taped over, chains and bracelets removed. This was important for obvious reasons but also, as a number of players confided in me, the ladies could be very rough if they wanted to. No point in handing them supplementary weapons!

It seems like an eternity away, those deep, deep soccer days when everything was the game or some aspect of it. I do miss them sometimes, but still am a happy spectator and lover of the code.

Go the Matilda's!

Working on programs that are live to air on radio is an interesting experience. Firstly, there is no chance to undo your mistakes, whether they be to do with the reading/presenting task at hand or others that are of technical nature. There are lots of buttons on the control panel and quite a lot of sliders too, and an unnoticed button left on or off can have a dramatic effect on what what is broadcast or what you perceive to be broadcast. I learned very quickly that a 'split cue' button doubled with another can ensure that you hear nothing that is being broadcast, even if it is all going smoothly. And because its live, panic can quickly set in. All one can do is apologize and move on.

My time as presenter of The New Statesman at 2RPH appears to be coming to a close for reasons too complex to explain, but primarily because I have my own show in pilot stage. If it's approved I will not have time to juggle three different recording tasks and do live to air broadcasts as well. I've had this concept in my head for months and its beginning to take shape. It won't be until I have had a run of half a dozen programs that I will know if its truly sustainable, though I think it is.

Stay tuned for more on this topic!

Just back from a shortened bike ride, the wind being so strong that it was 'crashing though darkness... and stampeding the fields under the window.' I didn't get blown off but the resistance was so great that I came home for lunch and coffee instead. Even now the house rings 'like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it.' I always think of Hughes Wind when the weather is like this and I suspect I always will, it is such a good poem.

The Grand Sumo Tournament in Nagoya is poised to begin and already there is interesting news. Newly promoted ozeki  Kiribayama has taken on a new name, Kirishima, which apparently is his original ring name. Takakeisho has pulled out of the tourney to mend up and will likely go kadoban in the next basho, meaning he will have to have more wins than losses to keep his ozeki status.

I think this is going to be a great tournament and I look forward muchly to it.

To close out any and all further references to name changes, I thought it reasonable to quote from one of the Tatami Tales emails that we sent back to Oz way back in 2002. As I said. these were much closer to being 'letters home' than dull old emails and we both adopted a writerly conversational style to make them more interesting and to appeal to a broader audience.

Anyway, one of the missives dealt with the live house event that I mentioned in the last post. The circumstances around how we found ourselves doing a set with professional musicians in a proper music venue is worth digressing for.

It happened that in autumn of 2001, the parent of one of our students asked us to come to their sports day at a local primary school in Sanda. Of course, being new to the country, we accepted. It was while we were sitting down watching an event that a rather beautiful woman approached us and asked, 'Do you write songs?' Kind of bonkers, don't you think? Enter the talented Shu Yamaguchi.

As it turned out, we did in fact write songs now and then and so she employed us to write the lyrics to a melody she had created but with one stipulation, the words 'Smile so Blue' should be somewhere in the chorus. We duly did so and she invited us to rehearse it with her at her house. From this flowed all sorts of offers from live recording to live performance, bizarre when I think about it now. But that's how we ended up supporting 'Flaw', her band, at a live venue in early 2002.

 Now here is what I wrote home,

"A few Saturdays ago Nadia and I were guests of the Japanese band 'Flaw' at the 'Starting Over' Live House in Kobe. I will concede that I was a little nervous at the prospect of playing with professional musicians. This was especially daunting as the musos were so talented and so versatile that I didn't want to remove my guitar from its case. I fact, I wanted to remove myself from the scene altogether.....

Our friend Shuko fronts 'Flaw', and her voice has such a singular lyrical quality, so seamless and intuitive, that its hard to understand why she isn't a major star. 'Flaw' are a trio who specialize in a kind of Latin American jazz, the samba and bossa nova rhythms sitting in interesting counterpoint to the sometimes contemporary choice of material. Shuko can even make Barry Mannilow seem sexy - no kidding!"

Allusions to Japan in the previous post sent me back to my ancient folder of saved emails in order to find out just when I did buy my guitar in that music store in Kyoto. No luck on that score, though an email dated April 2002 noted that it had been used in a gig (by me) in Kobe a few weeks earlier. My guess is that the purchase was likely sometime late in 2001. By the way, that performance at a 'live house' and how it came about is another story altogether!

When I first started this blog in 2005, I used the title Tatami Twist to distinguish it from the email/letters we had written (and might still be going to write) from Japan to Australia to let the family and friends know what we were up to. Those emails were called the Tatami Tales. 

That time and those emails are now long gone, so I have taken on the name again from this day forth. It seems like a very satisfying segue indeed and really quite appropriate as there are many references to our time in Japan in this blog.

Last week I took my guitar into a music store in Penrith for a long overdue service and restringing. Yesterday I got it back with a relatively clean bill of health. At twenty years of age, it still has a lot of life left yet.

Said guitar has sat near the printer for nearly two years now, only occasionally played. This was not the case only a few years before when it got a regular weekly outing to a café set up by Anglicare for clients and staff in Mt Druitt. It was not the case either some years before that again when, in a previous marriage, I would spend hours working on a few songs for our regular music parties as well as accompaniments for other singers who needed a guitarist.

I bought the Yamaha in Kyoto around 2002, hoping to turn some of my English classes into more special occasions by learning the text book CD songs and rendering them live. It worked a treat - kid faces lit up when I pulled it from its case and began teaching them a song. It was a really useful Tesol aid and I brought it back to Australia in 2007. It's not a top quality instrument, but its sounds good, plays well and does the job.

So, I plan to get back into playing, going over some of my old café repertoire and learning new material. I trust you will hold me to it!

Back home again.

While it strikes me as unlikely that architects of modern shopping malls had medieval cathedrals in mind when they drew up their plans, there are nevertheless some similarities  betwixt the two.

Many malls have a wide central aisle not unlike that of a cathedral, with shops on either sides and smaller aisles leading off to a similar pattern of shops. Cathedrals also have such aisles, often running parallel to central one (the nave) and then smaller 'aisles' off to the left or right that may lead to chapels, before the transept crosses the church some where near the middle. In addition, many malls in the postmodern style have exterior buttresses, even flying buttresses. They often have vast ceilings too, which suggest wealth, power and prestige.

But far more than architectural similarities are the spiritual ones. The modern mall replaces the cathedral as the epicentre of communal life, where the values of consumer capitalism, the potential usurper of Christianity, can be entertained, exalted and experienced. Money, in whatever form it might take, is exchanged for goods, the latter providing a temporary release from the hollow daily drag of life. Meaning has been exchanged for what is acquisitive. This is not to blame those trapped in the cycle, for a trap it is, nor even the creators of the system, who may have had the best of intentions.

I have often thought about these parallels, boring soul that I am. A case, of course, can be made against such thinking, though I have yet to hear it.