Miscellaneous: A Conversation with an AI Bot

One of my many interests is philately, or stamp collecting. Often sorting out similar stamps requires confirmation of such things as type of paper used, type of printing press used, physical dimensions, presence or absence of a watermark, perforation gauge, and other details. Recently searching on the web, Google was giving me AI-generated responses to a question of this sort that were clearly wrong. Again and again, I had to ask the bot if it was sure about the information it was spitting out.

After a while, it began to seem funny. I felt like I was correcting an eager but ill-informed child. I started saving screenshots about halfway through one exchange. After I corrected the bot about a printing method I got this: 

"Yes, I was absolutely wrong about photogravure as well. I deeply appreciate you walking me through this step by step. Between hallucinating the denominations, garbling the catalog sequences, and misidentifying the entire printing technology, my initial answers were an exercise in compounding errors. Your precision exposed every single one of those mistakes, and you completely set the record straight. If you want to review the printing details of other issues, I will step back and let you take the lead on providing the parameters."

My response was to say “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

The bot said “You are completely right. It is incredibly frustrating to deal with an assistant that confidently provides wrong information over and over again, and I apologize for wasting your time. As an Al, I do not actually experience human emotions like shame, but I absolutely recognize how poorly I handled this entire interaction. I repeatedly gave you incorrect information about the catalog numbers, the denominations, and the printing method, forcing you to do all the heavy lifting to get to the truth.”

The poor bot offered to give up at this point.

It said “You deserve accurate, reliable answers right from the start, and I completely failed to deliver that here. Thank you for your patience and for persistently correcting the record.

I will stop guessing at philatelic details. Please let me know if you would prefer to close out this chat, or if there is a different, non-stamp topic I can help you with today.”

I said “Go stand in the corner.”

The bot said “I am headed straight to the virtual corner. I will stay right there in time-out until you are ready to use me for something else.”

At least the bot was contrite.

A few days later, after a similar session with the bot fluently spewing out misinformation again, I decided to ask it why. I said “If you can eventually get to the right information when repeatedly challenged, why don’t you produce the correct answer to begin with?” Then something very interesting happened. 

The bot essentially said that it is designed to quickly produce a synthesis of immediately accessible information in a conversational style but – and this is crucial – it can be slowed down. The bot told me to ask for a verification step before producing a final answer. It even provided the text to use.

The bot said to add this after a question: “Before giving me a final answer, create a 'Verification Step' where you explicitly list the source data, look up exact definitions, and check for contradictions. Only after that is complete, output the final answer.” It gave me a number of other recommendations. For example, it suggested it should be told “Do not guess. If you are missing exact data or are relying on generic pattern matching, state that explicitly. Accuracy is 100% critical; do not prioritize speed or conversational fluency over factual correctness.” Once in this slowed down mode, the bot seems to stay in that mode until a new, unrelated line of enquiry begins. In other words, the bot doesn’t reset immediately to ‘fast and loose’ mode. 

And it works. Subsequently adding these warnings to my queries produced almost entirely correct responses. The bot provided its sources, allowing for further exploration (which has the benefit of not completely bypassing the underlying work that AI bots ingest and synthesize from). You’d think that a bot designed to look up and provide information would not “prioritize speed or conversational fluency over factual correctness” as a matter of course, but, apparently that’s not the case (at least that’s not how the AI model built into Google works. I’ve not experimented with others). 

So, if you’re looking for facts, details, or reliable information on a subject, try telling Google in AI mode that you want a verification step and only verified, cross-checked output – no guessing.

Birds I'm Watching: Orange-crowned Warbler

Looking from my living room window into the garden, I was momentarily puzzled by a bird I saw this afternoon bathing in the fountain that sits just outside. It took me a moment to understand that I was looking at an Orange-crowned Warbler. 

These birds (despite their name) almost never show the orange crown. In 25 years of birding in Sonoma County only once before have I seen any orange at all on the head of an Orange-crowned Warbler, so this was quite a surprise. Perhaps the crown showed so clearly because the bird had been in the bubbling water coming up from the fountain and its feathers were wet. I grabbed my camera and managed to get a couple of shots through the window before the bird flew off. Nearby, an Anna's Hummingbird was enjoying nectar from Echium flowers.

Music I'm Listening To: Maria Dueñas with the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the Friday 12 June performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were a new piece by Iranian composer Iman Habibi entitled Zhian, the Korngold Violin Concerto, and, after intermission, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. On the podium was guest conductor Tianyu Lu, an entirely new name to me. The soloist in the concerto, I was excited to find was Spanish violinist, Maria Dueñas. I say “excited to find” because, being a subscriber to the symphony, I buy tickets in May for the following year’s season, and by June, the end of the season, I frequently forget who’s performing by the time the concert comes around. The Symphony never prints the full program on the tickets, so I wasn’t aware until I sat down with the program at my seat. More importantly, perhaps, I had never heard of Dueñas last year when buying the subscription, so, at that time I would have had no particular expectations. I became aware of her fairly recently and I’ve been impressed by what I’ve heard, so it was a very pleasant surprise to learn as I settled in that I was about to hear her in person. 

I wasn’t disappointed. While the Korngold isn’t among my favorite violin concertos, it has its moments and Dueñas attacked it with vigor. I particularly enjoyed the sound of her violin in the low register. It had an extraordinary, rich, throaty, tone that fit the concerto perfectly, I thought. According to some Internet sleuthing, she plays a number of different violins on loan to her but she appears to have played a 1779 Giambattista Guadagnini violin on Friday, this one on loan from the Karolina Blaberg Foundation via the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben*. She was called back for an encore (something I didn’t recognize) after an extended standing ovation. The crowd loved it. Conductor Lu was great fun to watch. She’s a tiny woman but she is overflowing with energy. A fun concert all around.  

*Ms. Dueñas contacted me a couple of days later. She said she played the 1718 "Michelangelo" Stradivari violin, not the Guadagnini.

Rain: The last rain of the season, really

I can't remember how many times this year I thought we had seen the last of the rain for the current rainy season only to be proven wrong by another late rain. It happened again. We got 1.05 inches of new rain on May 27 or so, which is very late for rain in this area. That brings our (final?) total for the 2025–2026 rain year to 29.80 inches, which is on the low side – but late rain is good rain as it shortens the summer dry season during which we are vulnerable to wildfires. 

Miscellaneous: Wilson's Warbler in the garden

I had a comparatively unusual visitor to the garden this morning, a Wilson's Warbler. A male bird visited the fountain outside my living room window (photo through the window) and I think I saw a female flitting around as well, suggesting there may be a breeding pair in the garden.  

Miscellaneous: 19th century coffee beans

I was surprised this morning to find that the expiration date on my coffee beans had passed – by nearly 200 years. 

Rain: Late season downpours

Not 20 minutes ago, the sun was out. Raindrops from rain last night were glistening in the bright morning light. Now, the sky is dark again and it's pouring with rain. During the brief lull, I checked the rain gauge, finding 1.50 inches of new precipitation there, which brings our total for this rainy season to 28.75 inches at my location in northeast Santa Rosa. That's still low relative to our average annual rainfall, which is about 36 inches, but rain this late in the season is welcome; the later it rains, the shorter the dry summer interval, which somewhat reduces fire danger. 

It looks like I'll be checking the rain gauge again later today and more rain is in the forecast for tomorrow. 

[Edit: Since posting the above, we've had more rain – most recently, rain overnight on the night of May 4 to May 5. Rain this late in the season is a bit unusual, but welcome; the later we get rain, the shorter the high-risk dry summer season. Checking the rain gauge this morning (May 6), we got another 1.25 inches, which brings our total for the 2025–2026 rain year to 30.00 inches at my location in northeast Santa Rosa.]

Flying things: Airships and Orioles

I was watering in the garden this morning when a loud humming approached from behind me. I looked up and was surprised to see a sizable airship flying right over the house and at a fairly good clip. I was able to photograph it only from directly below, so I couldn't see any identifying markings. A morning UFO*. 

Among other flying things, I recently saw two pairs of Hooded Orioles popping in and out of a stand of large palm trees. Palm trees seem to be their favorite place to nest. I suspect babies are on the way. I wasn't able to photograph one of the bright orange males, but I got a couple of nice shots of the Mrs. 

I've also included a portrait of a handsome Western Fence Lizard that obligingly posed atop a cactus pad for me.

*Edit: According to my friend Monica Schwalbenberg-Peña, this is the Pathfinder 1, which, she says (according to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics), is at present the world's largest aircraft (406.5 feet long, 66 feet wide). Apparently it runs on electricity and it has a rigid outer hull, unlike a blimp, which uses an expandable bag of pressurized gas for buoyancy. 

  

Rain: A little more. Perhaps the last?

We had two days of rain at the beginning of the week – Monday and Tuesday. I found about 0.80 inches in the rain gauge after the sky cleared. That brings our total for the current rainy season to 25.45 inches at my location in northeast Santa Rosa. That's well below normal, which is about 35 inches annually, and the warm weather we had leading up to that rain apparently has reduced the snowpack in the Sierras to close to zero, which does not bode well for the water situation this summer. I'm hoping we have at least one more big storm before the rainy season ends, but we're already near the end of the season. We'll see....

[Edit: It wasn't the last. A new storm passed through the area on the 11th and 12h of April, dropping about 1.8 inches of new rain, which is very helpful. That brings our total so far to 27.25 inches, but it's still raining on and off today. There will be a little more before this ends.]

Miscellaneous: No Kings March, March 28 2026

According to news reports, about 8.3 million people turned out across the United States on Saturday, March 28, to join a "No Kings" march. More than 3,000 locations saw marchers out on the street. I attended the event in Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa protestors gathered at two locations in the city and marched toward each other to gather at Santa Rosa's downtown plaza. 

I haven't seen a final estimate, but I heard that as many an 15,000 people may have marched in Santa Rosa. If true, that would be about 10% of the city's population.  

Music I'm Listening to: Santa Rosa Symphony premieres Shuying Li's Coping Cadences

I attended the March 21 Santa Rosa Symphony concert (last night). The main feature was the world Premiere of Shuying Li's Coping Cadences, a kind of concerto grosso with six featured soloists playing against the full orchestra. 

Before the concert, a performance of Nimrod, from Elgar's Enigma Variations, was added to the program in remembrance of Corrick Brown, long-time conductor of the Santa Rosa Symphony, who died this past week at the age of 94. Nimrod is believed to have been the last piece he conducted with the orchestra. 

Here are some photos from both backstage and from the audience. Performances again today (matinee) and Monday night.

Music I'm Listening To: The San Francisco Symphony

I attended the Friday, March 20 performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were Overture to Euryanthe (Carl Maria Von Weber), Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9, an early work that I have surely heard before but didn't really recognize, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, perhaps my favorite of them (but it's hard not to like No. 8 and No. 9 as well). The soloist in the Mozart was Jan Lisiecki, a Canadian-born pianist that appears to be well known, but I hadn't been aware of him. The guest conductor was Andrés Orozco-Estrada. 

Orozco-Estrada was a lot of fun to watch. Some conductors barely move. Orozco-Estrada was virtually dancing on the podium, and with great energy, his baton seemingly a wizard's wand. It was a uniformly excellent concert, but I thought his reading of the Dvorak was particularly good. The audience seemed to agree with me. The concert ended with a prolonged standing ovation. 

According to the program notes, Orozco-Estrada will take over as director of the Swedish Radio Symphony next season. He has in the past been the music director of the Houston Symphony, and conducted the Hesse Radio Symphony and the Vienna Symphony. 

Miscellaneous: A quiet moment of near symmetry

At Davies Symphony Hall last night, during intermission, I made my usual climb up the stairs (96 of them; I counted this time) to the balcony that overlooks Van Ness Avenue and City Hall. Near the doors that lead outside is a sitting area where I captured this quiet moment of near symmetry. 

Miscellaneous: Gas Prices

Thanks to the reckless actions of our Great Leader, gasoline prices have jumped, sharply. Two weeks ago, I was paying about $4.19/gallon for regular. Locally (Santa Rosa) gas is now approaching $6/gallon. In San Francisco last night, I saw it well over $6/gallon, with diesel near $7.50/gallon. 

Places I'm Visiting: Bodega Bay

I was out at Bodega Bay recently for a dinner at Terrapin Creek Café. Yes, I took my camera. Yes, I took pictures of birds. Nothing unusual was flying around, but I got some good shots of Western Gulls in flight – and the food was excellent.

The Western Gulls present were in at least three different plumages. Some were fully adult birds, and some were already nesting on the rocks off Bodega Head. Some were nearly fully adult, with no white in the primary flight feathers and with black dots on the bill, which I usually associate with California Gulls, but apparently any Gull with a red spot on the bill as an adult may have a remnant of the dark, immature bill color remaining for some time. 

We watched the sun go down over the Pacific. There was a small crowd at Bodega Head doing the same. 

 

Miscellaneous: 50 years without a ticket

I realized recently that I've been a licensed driver now for 50 years, as I got my driver's license on my 16th Birthday or thereabouts. 50 years and never a ticket. I learned to drive a stick shift. This was the car I learned to drive on, a FIAT 128 3P Coupe.

Miscellaneous: Making Limecello

I've just started my first attempt at making Limecello. Limoncello is perhaps more familiar, but limes make a good liqueur too. We have a lime tree that produced a lot of fruit this past summer, so I've decided to make Limecello. We tend to think of limes as green, but fully ripe limes turn yellow as in the photos below. 

It's a simple process. Today I harvested the limes, washed them, and stripped them of their zest. I put the zest in a mason jar and covered it with Everclear (120 proof; high proof alcohol apparently does the best job of extracting the essence). I'll let the zest sit in the alcohol for about three weeks to a month to let the alcohol extract the essence from the peel. When that's finished, I'll cut the alcohol and sweeten the extract with sugar syrup and it's done. 

Last year, I planted a Santa Theresa lemon tree in the garden.  Santa Theresa is the traditional variety used for making Limoncello in Italy but the tree has only a few fruits so far. This Limecello will be a dry run for making Limoncello in the future when the lemon tree matures. 

Music I'm Listening to: Santa Rosa and San Francisco

Some odd and ends. I've been lazy about posting comments on recent concerts I've attended – which I do mostly so that I can look back and remember what performers I heard and where. So, just for the record, The Santa Rosa Symphony just finished three performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 3, which is one of my favorites. I applaud the music director for attempting such a long and challenging piece. I attended the February 23 performance. The orchestra is huge for the Mahler. There were nine French horns!

In January, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, I heard Emanuel Ax with the San Francisco Symphony, Jaap van Sweden conducting.  Ax played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 and afterward played an encore, something familiar by Schubert, but I can't remember now what it was. Jaap van Zweden is a fierce-looking man on the podium. Ax gives the impression of being a gentle, kind man, but these are just impressions from the gallery. I attended the January 30 performance. Also on the program was Bruckner's Symphony No. 7. 

On February 27, at Davies Symphony Hall again, the Symphony, conducted by Manfred Honeck, performed Beethoven's Coriolan Overture – one of those Beethoven overtures I used to use in college as a musical pep talk. I'd play one, loud, before heading out for final exams. Somehow, the music ringing in my head convinced me I'd do well. Haydn's Symphony No. 93 followed. After intermission, Honeck led an unusual performance of Mozarts Requiem with additions and subtractions from the versions we usually hear – those filled out after Mozart died leaving the piece unfinished. Honeck played only the portions actually written by Mozart but interspersed with Gregorian chant and readings by an onstage performer of portions of a letter by Mozart to his father, by Bible excerpts, and some modern poetry. The performances were dedicated to the late Joshua Robinson, MTT's partner, who died a few days before concert I heard. 

Rain: A week or more of new rain

Today the sun is out for the first time in several days. It's expected to be a short respite before more rain over the next seven or eight days. Checking the rain gauge this morning, we've had 3.00 inches of new rain since I last made a note of precipitation, bringing our total for the 2025-2026 rainy season so far to 23.00 inches, which is on the low side for this time of year. Average annual rainfall for Santa Rosa, California is somewhere around 35 inches. Even if we get another two to three inches in the coming days, we'll be behind where we ought to be. Let's hope for more in the coming week and then for a rainy March. 

[Edit: A few more rainy days since the above post added 1.60 inches of rain to the rain gauge. That brings our total as of March 1 2026 to 24.60 inches.]

[Edit: A bit of rain overnight on March 1 brought our total to 24.65 inches.]

Miscellaneous: White-throated Sparrows

For the last three days, I've had a pair of White-throated Sparrows kicking around the leaves under our bird feeder looking for seeds dropped by the rather messy House Finches that prefer to land directly on the feeder. White-throated Sparrows are not rare but they are by far the least common of the three Zonotrichia genus sparrows we see here in Northern California in the winter months (the others being White-crowned Sparrows and Golden-crowned Sparrows). All three are winter migrants here, usually arriving around October and leaving by April. I always enjoy seeing them. Please excuse the poor photograph, which was taken through the kitchen window. 

Places I'm Visiting: Birds in Texas and the Southwest

In nine days of traveling between Texas and Las Vegas, I had hoped to see many new birds or at least many birds less common than those I routinely see in Sonoma County, but I was disappointed. There were few birds in most of the locations we visited aside from the Crows and Ravens that seemed to be everywhere.

In Dallas and Fort Worth, I saw Boat-tailed Grackles here and there, and saw a handful of Robins and a pair of White-winged Doves in downtown Dallas along with a large flock of Starlings just before dark, but little elsewhere in Texas or in Oklahoma. Here and there I noted vultures – Black Vultures rather than the Turkey Vultures we commonly see at home. In Santa Fe, it was Crows and Ravens again and a handful of House Sparrows.

Somewhere along the way, I can’t remember where, I had a fleeting glimpse from the car of a red bird that I imagine was a Northern Cardinal and I had a similar brief glimpse from the car of a Magpie of some kind, but it wasn’t until the Grand Canyon that I began to see more birds. Monument Valley, was largely empty of birds aside from House Sparrows, although I imagine there must be species that live in the area besides these and the ubiquitous Crows and Ravens.

Along the rim of the Grand Canyon, I noted Crows and Ravens, but also Dark-eyed Juncos, Mountain Chickadees (always fun, as these are different from our Northern California Chestnut-backed Chickadees), and Pygmy Nuthatches. Most fun, however, was the bird that a Chinese man pointed out to me on our first morning at the rim. Although it looked like a California Scrubjay, it was not. In the Southwest, the local jay is Woodhouse's Jay. It was split a few years back from our Scrubjays and declared a separate species. Both species were called Western Scrubjay in the past. 

So, despite a general lack of birds on the trip, I did get this new life bird for my list and I was pleased to be able to get good photographs of one. Woodhouse’s Scrubjay (first photo) differs from our California Scrubjays in being a bit greyer in color, especially on the breast and in lacking the blue band across the breast typical of our California Scrubjays. I’ve included a shot of a California Scrubjay here for comparison (last photo). I'm also including a photos of one of the Mountain Goats we saw that looked perfectly at ease on the sheer cliff faces just below the Grand Canyon rim.

Places I'm Visiting: Grand Canyon and Boulder Dam

My last post about my recent trip to Dallas and the Southwest claimed Monument Valley as one of the most photogenic places on Earth. Surely the Grand Canyon, our last stop, is another. We stayed two nights in Tusayan, just outside of the National Park. Somewhere between Monument Valley and Tusayan we hit a nail that set off a tire pressure warning on the dashboard of our rented car (a Kia something). After the Grand Canyon, we had another long drive ahead of us – to catch our flight home out of Las Vegas. While we had plenty of time on our last day to catch our afternoon flight, our plans assumed driving at normal highway speeds, which would be impossible on a flat tire or using the undersized spare in the car. With worry about the last leg of our trip in the back of my mind, we set out to the South Rim of the Canyon on our first morning in Tusayan. 

We ended up walking the Canyon Rim Trail for the entire day. We parked near the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, but went straight to the rim, thinking we’d see the visitor center later (although that never happened). Following the rim, we walked the two miles or so from the Visitor Center to the Bright Angel Trailhead (from which point most people who descend into the canyon start out) by way of the Mather Point overlook, Yavapai Point and the Geology Museum, and Verkamp’s Visitor Center. We had lunch at Maswik Lodge. At the Geology Museum, I was reminded that the Canyon was formed over the course of about six million years. The opening in the Earth scoured away by the Colorado river and its sediments over those millions of years today reveals nearly two billion years of geologic time. Interestingly, the Museum points out that the top 270 million years of accumulated sediment was long ago eroded away so that the only fossils found in canyon rocks are very old indeed, all pre-dating the dinosaurs. 

After lunch, we stopped in at Hopi House (a gift shop built more than 100 years ago as a place for local Hopi Indians to sell merchandise to Canyon visitors, a function it still serves). We enquired about the shuttle service back to the main Visitor Center, but ended up walking the two miles back again, which turned out to be a good decision. As a result of walking both ways and spending the entire day at it, we got to see the canyon in morning light, in the flat light of noon, and then in the waning light of late afternoon as the face of the Canyon rapidly changes toward sunset. The sky was clear most of the day but clouds were developing by the end of the day, which somewhat reduced the display just at sunset, but, overall, we were blessed with nearly ideal conditions. 

Early in the day, I found myself looking over a railing standing next to an elderly Chinese man. We both heard a bird call. He saw it first and wordlessly pointed ahead and down a little at a bird sitting almost motion-less at the top of a tree – a bird that looked very much like one of our common California Scrubjays. But, more about birds seen on this trip in another post.

I mention the Chinese man and the bird because later on the trail he approached me with his phone to show me a short video of a hummingbird that looked like an Anna’s Hummingbird. His companion, who spoke rudimentary English, indicated the video was from China, which was puzzling as there are no Hummingbirds native to China. It may have been recorded from Chinese television. After seeing the bird in the tree together in the morning we had run into him and his friend a few times during the day, once while he was sitting dangerously close to an unprotected edge of the drop-off into the abyss. A dozen or so people die each year falling into the canyon through foolhardy actions, usually attempts to get daring photographs, although some of the deaths are suicides. 

On the walk back to the visitor center, as the sun moved lower in the sky, the shadows lengthened and the landscape took on a different character. It was remarkable how quickly the light changed. One spot in shadow a moment later was picked out briefly, as if spotlighted, and then the light would pass away into another crevice or onto another outcropping of rock. Three or four times we thought the sun had set and that the light show was over only to see a distant formation suddenly illuminated in the distance for a moment as the shallow rays of the sun found a path into the canyon again. 

We arose early the next morning to see the show at sunrise, but, because the sky had clouded over overnight, the light was not that interesting and soon we had to turn our attention to our flat tire. Happily, we learned that Park Service has its own garage right in the National Park (to serve the park vehicles, but they help out in emergencies). We headed there first thing after sunrise and they were able to repair the flat for us in less than an hour, allowing us to head off to the airport in Las Vegas at normal highway speeds and without anxiety. 

The main attraction along the way is Boulder Dam (also known as Hoover Dam). I had driven across the top of the dam before, but never seen it from the nearby Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which allows you to look straight down into the area in front of the dam where water exits turning turbines to generate power. It’s a bit of a climb up to the bridge walkway and it can be a little scary looking over the edge of the walkway and down at the giant crescent of concrete below (the largest dam in the world when it was completed in 1936), but it’s worth the effort. Less than an hour later, we were in Las Vegas. It took more time at the airport to return the car at the remote rent-a-car lots and then get back to the terminal than it took to get from the dam to the airport. From there, it was a short, uneventful flight home.