By ©2024 Sarah Becker Not long ago a Wall Street Journal headline caught my eye: “The U.S. Needs a Moonshot Mentality for AI—Led by the Public Sector.” According to the WSJ, “2023 will be remembered as the year Artificial Intelligence went main-stream.” “We believe 2023 is also the year Congress failed to act on what we see as the big picture,” the WSJ continued. “AI is broad [and] its impact will be far bigger than the products that companies are now releasing.” U.S. Representative Don Beyer [D-VA8], Vice Chair of the Congressional AI Caucus seems to agree. On January 10, 2024, he and others introduced the Federal Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Act, “a bipartisan and bicameral bill to require U.S. federal agencies and vendors to follow the AI risk management guidelines put forth by the National Institute of Standards.” Beyer, first elected to the House in 2015 now seeks a Master’s degree in Applied Information Technology. His focus: machine learning, how computer systems are able to learn and adapt without following explicit instructions; to use algorithms [calculations] and statistical models to analyze and draw inferences from patterns [symmetrical, skewed, etc.] in data. Beyer joins me for a Q&A. Q1. Historians agree that British polymath Alan Turing [1912-1954] was the first to ask “can machines think?” [Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950] In 1956 mathematician John McCarthy [1927-2011] coined the phrase Artificial Intelligence: Newell, Shaw and Simon created the first-ever AI software program. How are the AI offerings of today the same as or different from those of the 1950s? A1. “The offerings today are just vastly expanded applications of the ideas first offered by Turing, Shannon, and others. Mathematicians and computer scientists have long understood neural networks, gradient ascents, and the ability to search large databases for otherwise unseen connections. It…
By ©2024 Sarah Becker “There is no good reason why we should fear the future,” President Theodore Roosevelt professed in 1905… Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22, 1970. The same year President Richard Nixon [R-CA, 1969-1974] signed the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]. According to leading environmental groups Nixon, a former Alexandria resident was “history’s second ‘greenest’ President, second only to Theodore Roosevelt” [R-NY, 1901-1908]. On January 28, 1969—eight days after Nixon’s inauguration—a California off-shore oilrig ruptured. It dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. When President Nixon, a California Quaker “walked along the black-stained beach he knew things had to change.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] became operational on December 2, 1970. “EPA is an independent agency,” Administrator William Ruckelshaus [R-IN, 1970-1973] explained. “It has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment. It does not have a narrow charter…[I]t has a broad responsibility…with regard to five environmental hazards: air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation, and pesticides.” The Clean Air Act of 1970 became law on December 31. On November 24, 2015, President Barack Obama [D-IL, 2009-2017] presented Ruckelshaus with the Medal of Freedom. The Obama administration’s environmental focus then: The U.N. Conference Of the Parties, COP-21’s Paris Climate Agreement. The impending goal: To reduce global greenhouse gases [GHGs], gases that trap heat in the atmosphere especially carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4. According to the U.N. COP 28-Report, most signatories—including the U.S. and China have fallen short of the Agreement’s 2021 goals. “There’s a common narrative, especially in Congress, that the U.S. has cut emissions more than any other country: but that’s only true because our emissions were so high to start with,” Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said. “On…
©2024 Sarah Becker According to the National Park Service [NPS] “many women during Clara Barton’s era [1821-1912] attempted to advocate for an increase in women’s rights. While Clara was definitely a supporter of these efforts, she didn’t stop there. Barton led by example, forcing her way onto the battlefield and into the political sphere of influence.” Congress did not pass the 1923 woman’s Equal Rights Amendment until 1972. Thirty of the required 38 states ratified the ERA within its first year of struggle. “The U.S. Supreme Court greatly aided the cause when in 1973 it ruled that states could not, among other things, outlaw voluntary abortions before the sixth month of pregnancy,” historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote. In 1974 the NPS responded—by raising Barton’s profile. Her landmark Glen Echo, Maryland property became the first National Historic Site “dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman.” Clara was, the National Park Service said “a dedicated Civil War nurse, an active women’s rights suffragette, and the founder and first president of the American Red Cross.” Barton championed women’s rights: “the woman’s right to her own property, her own children, to her own home, her just individual claim before the law, her freedom of action [and] her personal liberty.” Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton began life in rural Massachusetts, the youngest of farmer Stephen and Sarah Barton’s five children. Clara, mostly home schooled, established a New Jersey elementary school in 1852: then quit the teaching profession when a male principal displaced her. She moved to the District of Columbia in 1854—in search of opportunity. Barton’s next job: Clara was “the first woman appointed to an independent clerkship by government at Washington.” And “the first woman employed by the federal government [the U.S. Patent Office] to earn the same rate of pay as the men.”…
By Sarah Becker © February 14th is Saint Valentine’s Day, a day of celebration for sweethearts and friends. Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter shared 77 years of marriage, more years than I am old. They married in 1946, the same year Jimmy graduated with distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy. Carter was 21 and she was 18. “My darling [Rosalynn], every time I’ve ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are,” husband Jimmy wrote in 1948. “While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be, as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again….” The Carters were the longest married Presidential couple in U.S. history. “It was during the early years of the 14th century that the shape of the St. Valentine heart made its appearance,” The Lancet’s Pierre Linken wrote. Rosalynn, Jimmy Carter’s forever Valentine died on November 19, 2023, at age 96. Three years her senior former President Carter now lives alone at home in Plains, Georgia: his sweetheart held securely in his heart. According to Fox 5 Atlanta Rosalynn was buried by a willow tree near the edge of a pond—their fly-fishing pond—“within view of the front porch” of their home. “He never wants to be very far from her,” Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander said. “My grandmother’s…life was a mighty testament to the power of faith and…a deep and determined love,” grandson Jason Carter added. President Jimmy Carter [D-GA, 1977-1981], a Southern Baptist is long known for his church teachings, the morality he brought to the White House. “In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our…
By ©2023 Sarah Becker “We now stand an Independent People, and have yet to learn political Tactics,” General George Washington wrote in 1783. “We are placed among the Nations of the Earth, and have a character to establish; but how we shall acquit ourselves time must discover.” Character, as defined by the Oxford American Dictionary: “the collective qualities or characteristics, especially mental or moral that distinguish a person [or country].” A quality associated not only with moral and ethical strength, but also governance. Perhaps no one has investigated contemporary character more completely than Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People [2004]. Reviewing the early success literature Covey found that “almost all the literature focused on the Character Ethic—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.” “In contrast,” Covey said, “the success literature of the past 50 years was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes.” Professed Nik Gowing and Chris Langdon authors of Thinking the Unthinkable, the New Imperative for Leadership in the Digital Age [2016]: “The challenge from [such] fits a new and threatening pattern for leaders at the highest levels.” Shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the Character Ethic to the Personality Ethic. “Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques,” Covey continued. “Only basic goodness gives life to technique,” Covey concluded. “The Personality Ethic—personality growth, communication skill training, and education in the field of influence strategies and positive thinking—is secondary.” “[I]t may be proper to observe that a good moral character is the first essential in a man,” President George Washington wrote his nephew in 1790. “It is…highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned…
By ©2023 Sarah Becker For many, December is a month of religious remembrance. George Washington believed in a Creator God, “one that was active in the Universe.” He referred to his God by many names, most often by the name of “Providence.” Seventy-five year old Stanley Greene also believes in a Creator God. A black-Alexandrian he frequently speaks of the Creator’s abolitionist-minded angels—Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat Thomas [1893-1987] especially. Angel, as defined by the American Heritage dictionary: “1. An immortal spiritual creature. 2. A good kind person. 3. A financial backer of an enterprise.” Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat [VFW], a white-Alexandrian of notable heritage, was born in 1893: ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Two years before William Smoot, Grand Commander of the Confederate Grand Camp of Virginia shared a circular-letter. In the 1880s conservatives, reorganized as Democrats gained governmental control of the Commonwealth. It was the period when power and position, politics and nostalgic celebration gave way to racial segregation. “I must take this occasion to congratulate every surviving patriot…on the revival of this South-land [and] the truth and justice of the ‘Lost Cause,’” Smoot wrote in 1895. Smoot then owned Colross, a W-Old Town Alexandria mansion used as a Union Civil War hospital. Also in 1893: The U.S. Supreme Court found the Chinese Exclusion Act to be constitutional. “For the first time federal law prohibited entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the country’s good order,” the National Archives said. Miss Wheat grew up in Alexandria. She was not afraid of Jim Crow’s [1877-1954] master obstructionists. Conservative Virginia Democrats like U.S. Senator Thomas Staples Martin [Lynchburg, 1895-1919] and the succeeding Harry F. Byrd Organization [1920-1967]; U.S. Representative Howard Worth Smith [Alexandria, 1931-1967] or Byrd relative, State Delegate…
By ©2023 Sarah Becker “For generations, comprehension of world and national geography has been considered essential to the education of Americans,” President Ronald Reagan proclaimed in 1987. “Yet, today, in an interdependent world where knowledge of other lands and cultures is increasingly important, studies show that Americans need more geographical knowledge [especially] geography’s physiographic, historical, social, economic, and political aspects.” Public Law 100-78 designated the third week of November—November 13–17, this year—as National Geography Awareness Week. “The Week started 36 years ago not with a bang, but with a graceful launch,” The National Geographic Society [NGS] said. “The lure of land and the promise of freedom have gone hand in hand as dual attractions of America since the arrival of the first Europeans,” NGS agreed. “Vast stretches, apparently endless, beckoned them.” “Along the east coast of what is now the United States, Great Britain created 13 diverse colonies,” NGS continued. “A few men received huge royal grants; thousands of other settlers acquired acreage for little or no cash.” In 1632 George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore [1625] petitioned England’s King Charles I for a grant, for the rights to a North American region east of the Potomac River. The Charter was granted in June 1632. It was his son Cecilius who planned “the planting of the colony of Maryland.” “Westward the Course of Empire takes the Way,” poet and Irish-Anglican bishop George Berkeley wrote in 1726. “After the Americans won their war for independence, diplomats at the 1783 treaty table dickered over boundaries,” NGS explained. “The region they got was larger than most of Western Europe.” The remaining question: as Connecticut engraver Abel Buell’s March 1784 map, the country’s first copyrighted map implies —who controlled the West, the area beyond the Appalachians? “Abuell’s map documents a unique time,” the Library…
By ©2023 Sarah Becker June 15, 2007: “Reaffirming the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence, and desiring to secure a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding and non-violence, The United Nations General Assembly observe[s] the International Day of Non-Violence on October 2.” The Day is “an occasion to ‘disseminate the message of non-violence.’” “Non-violence is a weapon of the strong,” India’s Mahatma Gandhi [1869-1948] said. America’s gun violence statistics speak for themselves. Said Alexandria police Chief Don Hayes: “The amount of crimes being committed with guns, I’ve never seen it at this multitude.” Guns, it seems, are a power tool: hand or untraceable ghost, assault or semiautomatic. “Gun ownership and gun homicide rates are high in the United States,” the Council on Foreign Relations said. “Mass shootings in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom prompted those governments to tighten gun laws.” “Recent years have seen some of the worst gun violence in U.S. history,” the Council continued. “In 2021 guns killed more than 45,000 Americans…and the upward trend is on track to continue.” The total number of Americans killed by gun violence between January 1 and September 11, 2023 [254 calendar days]: 30,104. Sadly, gun violence is now the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teen-agers. According to a 2017 Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey “the United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, has 40% of the world’s civilian-owned guns…is number one in firearms-per-capita, 120.5 per 100 people.” As disturbing, “the U.S. has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate of the world’s most-developed nations.” The number of U.S. homicides as of September 11, 2023: 13,340. “Places with the highest U.S. gun murder rates in 2021 included [in descending order] the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and New Mexico,” Pew Research reported. “Those with the lowest gun murder…
©2023 Sarah Becker “From 1942 through the end of the Second World War, a top secret military intelligence service operated clandestinely on the shores of our own Potomac,” former U.S. Representative Jim Moran [D-VA8] told his Congressional colleagues in 2007. “Known only by its mailing address, P.O. Box 1142, the men and women at this [Fairfax County, Virginia] post provided the military intelligence that helped bring an end to World War II.” Fort Hunt Park became the property of the National Park Service in 1933. P.O. Box 1142, one of two domestic military intelligence centers, was created not long after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The wartime facility included multiple structures: a secret set of buildings of the type found only in mystery novels. “Throughout the war and its aftermath, the post processed and interrogated nearly 4,000 of the most important German prisoners of war,” Moran explained. “The men who performed the interrogations were drawn from across the country. The shared attribute is that they all spoke fluent German.” Among the German prisoners of war interrogated at the Fort: Major General Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Foreign Armies East section of the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German general staff. Also Horst Degan, the mine-laying ship-sinking Nazi U-boat commander caught in 1942 off the North Carolina coast. Degan, it is said “talked quite freely with his interrogators.” “Many interrogators were Jewish,” Moran continued, “to ensure their loyalty to America’s mission. These interrogations resulted in the discovery of most of Germany’s secret weapons including the atomic bomb, the jet engine, and the [liquid fueled Vengeance-2] V-2 rocket—all technologies that became essential informational components in waging the Cold War [1947-1991].” “In advancing the Nation’s interests and uncovering vital secrets, the interrogators at P.O. Box 1142 never resorted…
By Sarah Becker ©2023 August 26 is Women’s Equality Day. To what extent is today’s woman equal to today’s man? The woman’s Equal Rights Amendment—first introduced by Quaker Alice Paul 100 years ago—remains unresolved; passed by the 117th U.S. House of Representatives in 2021, then tabled in the Senate. Paul’s proposed Equal Rights Amendment: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” “Two great early 19th century social movements sought to end slavery and secure equal rights for women,” The National Park Service explained. “The anti-slavery movement grew from peaceful origins after the American Revolution to a Civil War, a War Between the States that effectively ended slavery while severely damaging the women’s rights movement.” In the colonial era when only single, unmarried women—Feme Soles—owned land, lawyer Margaret Brent [1601-1671] acquired land patents first in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, and, later, in Virginia [1651-1671]. “The acquiring of patents of land, (usually but not always, resulting from the importing of new settlers) was a fine way to expand one’s estate,” William Francis Smith wrote in 1996. “It was this that caused her to receive a patent in 1654 for 700 acres (north of Hunting Creek to a line approximating Alexandria’s Queen Street).” “Brent was truly ahead of her time,” Smith continued. She was it seems, the first woman to request a vote in the Maryland Assembly: two votes in fact, one for herself as a Maryland landowner and the other as Lord Baltimore’s legal representative. Not until 1920 did America’s women add the vote “to their arsenal of political tools.” According to Harper’s Magazine lawyer Brent was “the prototype of what the nineteenth century calls the new woman.” British author Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was first…
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