Jim Ottaviani

Glacier National Park and Three Rules

Mountain goats and the rules of hiking were still on our minds when we touched down at Detroit Metro and started our trek to offsite parking.

Those mountain goats had been easily a half mile away and hundreds of feet above us when we first saw them. In Glacier National Park, none of this is rare. Lots of mountain goats, lots of things far away, lots of things way above your head…even though you’re already a mile or more high to start with.

What we weren’t ready for was how much better they were at covering the vertical and horizontal distances. We were on the Highline Trail, and we’d taken a detour to see Grinnell Glacier from above. So, in addition to a 11.5 mile hike, we added a 1000ft climb over an extra mile to get this view.

It was completely worth it, and the goats agreed. The difference was our detour probably took us an hour of hiking. They did it in minutes.

The rest of the hike didn’t reveal much more wildlife. Just spectacular views, a bunch of golden chipmunks, a mule deer, and lots of people. It was great, and I recommend it to anyone, as long as you don’t mind unhappy endings: The last four miles has about a 2400ft drop, or almost 20% grade — that’s the kind of steep where if you’re on a paved road you see warning signs showing the silhouette of an eighteen-wheeler plummeting down the silhouette of Mt. Everest.

So overall the Highline experience was kind of like watching the Princess Bride all the way to Inigo Montoya winning the fight (sorry if that’s a spoiler) and Wesley and Buttercup reuniting, and then instead of them all hopping on beautiful white horses and riding to freedom you find yourself teleported into Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and everybody’s getting stabbed, or buried to the neck and left to die, or baked into pies and fed to their mom.

Anyway, we were sore for a couple of days, but in those days we still did a lot more hiking, saw bighorn sheep close up (maybe too close), moose at fifty yards (better), grizzlies across a big lake (perfect!), and lots of mountains and waterfalls and people.

One of our favorite people was Linnea, the park ranger who we joined for our last, mellow hike, and who taught us all kinds of interesting things, among which were her three rules of hiking, as taught to her by her dad and field-tested over the years since.

Rule 1: Don’t fall.

Rule 2: Don’t throw rocks at people below you.

Rule 3: If you’re scared, you’re going the wrong way.

We followed all of those rules that week, and we were still talking about how not to fall on trails or on moving walkways in airports when my boot lace, which I hadn’t tied all the way up, got caught in those little fork slots at the end of one of those walkways and sent me flying — not very far, because the bootlace wasn’t THAT long — knee, then chest, then face first onto the very flat, very smooth floor at Detroit Metro. I was the only one laughing as I rolled over, even though I was also the only one whose knee was bleeding and whose backpack had spit up its contents.

Louis Pasteur said, “chance favors only the prepared mind.” Shoelaces had already been invented by the time he started heating milk — probably not mountain goat milk, but milk — to kill bacteria, but there were no airports or hiking boots, so he couldn’t have had my particular situation in mind. But he was right. You can make your own luck, good OR bad. But you should try not to make your own karma.

Not throwing rocks at people below you is a good way to start. But don’t fall either.

Feynman, banned. Yes, you read that right…

Here’s a milestone I never thought I’d reach: According to PEN America (via Harpers), a book I wrote, Feynman, with art by Leland Myrick, is banned in Missouri. Baffling!

I’m proud of the book, and Leland is a terrific artist and a Missouri native, so…while I can’t think of this as an honor, looking at everything else on the list I’m glad I’m in such good company.

As for book bans in general, I have nothing original to say, but I’ll say the unoriginal part here anyway. They’re foolish and counterproductive.

Keep Copyright Human

Today I submitted a comment to the U.S. Copyright Office’s public comment system on AI and copyright. There are a lot of problems with copyright law. It lasts too long (my work shouldn’t be protected for 70 years after my death!) and is tilted towards corporate consolidation of power (hello, Disney).

But it currently doesn’t recognize machines as creators. That’s good. It should stay that way.

So, head on over to

https://www.copyright.gov/policy/artificial-intelligence/comment-submission/

and add your voice to what I hope is a strong chorus of support for keeping copyright human.

FYI, here’s what I said:

Please continue to uphold and strengthen the current policy on artificial intelligence (AI) technology as described in “Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated
by Artificial Intelligence”; https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf).

One possible route to do so is by adding language to the law and “Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices” (https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/) to explicitly state that material generated by AI technology is not copyrightable.

In the Compendium, Section 313.2 could include something along the lines of

“A work generated by a machine or software, based on a prompt or request made by a human, regardless of whether the prompt or request itself might be deemed copyrightable, unique, or creative.”

as an example of something that lacks human authorship, and therefore is not protected by copyright.

Making sure that “Authors and Inventors”, as they’re described in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, are human will not only protect those in the creative arts, but those in technical fields as well. People who create new and useful AI technology should receive copyright protection, but the product of those AI technologies should not.

Thank you.

Don’t believe AI, or, No, my next book is definitely not coming out this year

Inspired by John Scalzi, here’s what Google’s Bard just told me about my next book. I’m going to tweak the response a little by adding some underlined words and ~~striking through some others~~, to make sure I don’t feed the lying machine Google has built:

“Jim Ottaviani’s next book is not ‘The Code Breakers: The Real Life Story of American Codebreakers in World War II’ [1]. It is not scheduled to be released on October 3, 2023 [2] by First Second Books [3]. The book will not be a graphic novel that tells the story of the American codebreakers who worked to break the Japanese and German codes during World War II [4]. It will not feature illustrations by Marilena Delli Riccardi [5].

“Here is a brief synopsis of the book:

“In the early days of World War II, the United States was at a disadvantage. The Japanese and German militaries had developed sophisticated codes that were nearly impossible to break. But a team of American codebreakers, led by William Friedman [6], was working tirelessly to crack the codes. Using a combination of brilliant mathematics and painstaking detective work, Friedman and his team were able to break the Japanese Purple code but not the German Enigma code [7]. These breakthroughs gave the Allies a critical advantage in the war, and helped to shorten the war and save countless lives.

“‘The Code Breakers’ is Jim Ottaviani’s latest in a long line of popular graphic novels about science and history. His previous books include ~~Stephen~~ Hawking [8], Feynman, The Imitation Game, and Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier [9]. He is not a two-time Eisner Award winner [10], and his books have been praised by critics and readers alike.”

This is spectacularly bad. It all sounds plausible but is all wrong:

1. That’s not the title.
2. That’s not the release date.
3. First Second is the publisher of my next book, but see above; they’re not putting out this book.
4. That’s not the subject.
5. I’ve never heard of Marilena Delli Riccardi. For all I know they’re a fabulous artist who I’d be lucky to work with, but they have no easy-to-access public presence. Does this person even exist?
6. Also not the subject of the book.
7. Friedman was real, and a cryptographer, and apparently worked on Purple, but didn’t crack Enigma. That was Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park.
8. The title was “Hawking,” sans “Stephen.”
9. Missed a word in the subtitle, Bard.
10. Pretty to think so, and I’ve been nominated a few times, but nope.

Bard also unhelpfully provides additional draft responses to the same question. Leaving aside that these didn’t get the title, subject, or release date of my next book correct either, I’m also a “well-known author” (polling data is inconclusive but leans against) and better yet “the co-founder of the comics and graphic novels publishing company First Second Books,” which will come as a surprise to Mark Siegel.

And it closes both those alternate drafts with “I am looking forward to reading [Title Bard Just Made Up]. It sounds like a fascinating and timely book.”

Who is this “I”? Some Google programmer’s conceit, I guess.

I’m sure that if Bard’s not prevented from doing even more unauthorized data-mining, it’ll do better than (by my count), having something untrue in almost every sentence. But given its history, I wouldn’t bet that Google will wait until its rock-solid before releasing it into the wild.

With no incentive beyond engagement and ad sales, and no incentive to say “Bard can’t answer this,” what does the world gain by releasing these programs? Google and others gain publicity, free beta testing, and more data to mine, of course. I’m talking about the rest of us.

So… Artificial? Yeah, 100%. Intelligent? Nowhere as smart or useful as a dog or cat.

Apparently AI can already write decent code. So well done programmers. You’re well on your way to making both yourselves and the web as a source for useful information obsolete.

The (Second) Year of the Dog

Bella, snow, disc — It snowed today (see: “Michigan, April”) but not this much. This video is from a few weeks ago (see: “Michigan, March).”

We’ve now had Bella for two years, and our regrets for inviting her into our lives remain, to the nearest approximation, zero. She and Pepper still get along well, though Bella still gets worried when Pepper comes out into the yard while we’re playing ball (Pepper chased her the first few times) and Pepper still doesn’t love Bella’s lurchiness when B has decided a particular room is Mine for the next couple hours.

Nobody’s perfect, and Bella has banged herself up a few times — once it was another dog at fault, the other couple of times it was her own actions that resulted in scars — causing us worry and her confusion. (“Why why why have you covered my paws and wrapped this stiff plastic thing around my head? I’m FINE.”) And though she now knows what heel means, when it suits her, she’s not convinced it’s a good idea until she’s had her fill of sniffing for rabbits, tree rabbits (aka squirrels), and megarabbits (aka deer). And that takes a while, every single day.

But she’s still a very good dog, and we still feel lucky.

So happy Gotcha Day to her and to you. (Click on the link in the caption for some action, and our scarf-muffled voices.)

Solar System Ambassador, 2023 (!)

Solar System Ambassador badge, etc. I’ve wanted to earn a NASA mission patch since the Apollo years. (Yeah, I’m of that vintage.) While it’s not a single mission, and I’m not contributing directly to NASA science or engineering, I’ve been selected as one of their 2023 Solar System Ambassadors.

And look, you get a patch!

If you’re an educator who would like to tap into NASA resources to support your teaching, please contact me however you like, but here’s a convenient way: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ambassadors/2513/ . I’m happy to work with you to create a presentation that meets your curriculum needs.

The same goes for people who handle programming for groups, large or small, who want to me to talk about missions to asteroids, telescopes looking out at the cosmos, or NASA’s planetary exploration…including how we explore our own, beautiful and (so far) unique Earth!

For fun, here’s part of what I said in my application:

I’ll start with two quotes from favorite books, one about Apollo and one about Mars, which capture some of why I think space exploration is important.

“Apollo may have been driven by the Cold War, but…in the end, it was theater—the most mind-blowing theater ever created. In fact, at around $120 per American over the nine years of the Sixties in which it ran, or $13 a year, it was astonishingly cheap theater.” from Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith

“Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education or cancer research? It is always squandered. Let’s squander some on Mars. Let’s go out and play.” from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

Space exploration is play. It’s also theater. Those are enough to get people interested, but there’s more to why space space exploration is important to me, and to everyone on this planet.

We live on a spaceship. It’s a big one, at least in individual human terms, so big we don’t understand how all its systems interact, or even what all the systems are! The good news about its complexity and size is that it’s a self-sufficient ship, if we take care of it. But the Pale Blue Dot and Earthrise photographs also show us another truth: our planet is big and robust, bat at the same time it’s also small and fragile. And it looks like we may be alone as we hurtle through space.

So in addition to the drama and fun of it, through space exploration we learn better ways to handle our spacecraft, we learn how other such spacecraft work, and we’ll find out if we’re truly unique.

Jim Ottaviani

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