Italia

Arona, Italia.  A meravigliosa place for buon cibo, musica, amicizia and vistas!
Sights, Sounds and Amici

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Prague, Italy, & California - Past, Present and Our AI Future

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A whirlwind trip across countries and continents.  New adventures, friends, and technologies, juxtaposed with glimpses of the 1930s, offer a cautionary tale about Europe’s future.   And through it all, I am pondering the questions: Who am I? What is my deepest desire?  Heading to Europe to attend the SFTE symposium in Prague, I visited Italy first.  My plan was to stay again in Venegono at La ManSardina with the hope of recreating my November experiences.  But as it was a long weekend to celebrate Italy’s Independence, I learned too late that my friends had made other plans.  I was disappointed. But recognized this as an opportunity to exercise Anthony Dello’s non-attachment and Eckhart Tolle’s “living in the now” philosophies.   So the first night in Italy, I went out with Leonardo flight test colleagues for a fun dinner event.   One of them (Simone) invited me to go sailplaning , which turned out to be an  incredible exp...
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Oregon-Beautiful Dissonance

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Obscurity Lake, Washington - Alluringly Peaceful Trap of the Biting Fly Apocalypse.  Went to Oregon to escape the heat and flatness of Texas and test my mettle backpacking.  3 of my closest old friends live in the area around Portland with their spouses.  All migrated years ago from California.  This trip was an insightful opportunity to see how others from my youth have chosen to live their lives and retirement years.  And also to better understand what it would be like to live in this area.  My best friend from high school lives in a wooded suburb south of Portland close to mountains and the Columbia River. Riding horses and hunting remain his passions.  Another lives in a beautifully restored 1925 house in Portland  surrounded by mountain hiking/biking trails,  eclectic food carts, with close proximity to river kayaking.  He and I drove 2 and 1/2 hours to backpac...
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The Tao Road to Risk Mitigation - In Wichita Kansas?

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A 5-hour road trip brought me to a midwestern aviation capital in Wichita, Kansas.  The annual U.S. Flight Test Safety Workshop was again an enlightening and sobering remembrance.  MIT's STPA was again presented as a tutorial,  but his many test programs will incorporate it.  Too few I'm afraid.  Distinguished retired USAF test pilot Rod Huete took us through the painful lessons of the 1990s X-31 mishap.  Painful because the Air Force Test Center had embraced all the CRM practices that should have prevented this accident.  And the X-31 program had assembled a stellar test team.  But again the ego and human frailty yeared up to bite.    Mike Contratto, Dept. of the Air Force augmented this theme with his thought-provoking presentation, "The Tao, Self Deceptive Rationalization and the Vulcan Mind Meld."  In his talk, Contratto incorporated wisdom from George Chandler's masterpiece, "The Tao of Safety" quoting the comp...
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