Morning Thanks--Copilot

Grandpa Schaap, the preacher and the little guy right there at the horse's snoot, didn't take Abraham Kuyper, the preacher/politician with him when he immigrated. In fact, he didn't even immigrate--his parents did, in 1868, left the Frisian island of Terschelling and made their way to America soon after the America's Civil War. 

Grandpa, the little guy, was born here. Abraham Kuyper was growing in prominence about then, but he hadn't achieved the stardom that he did when he became the Dutch Prime Minister in 1901.

When I found Kuyper's book of meditations, To Be Near Unto God, in English, in his library, I was greatly taken by my find because that's the book I'd  heard was so frequently lugged along with Dutch immigrants from the turn of the century--1900-1917, much beloved by those who suddenly found themselves here, aliens in a land as strange as it was huge.

One of the meditations began with the wonder of this new technology then sweeping Holland (and elsewhere too, I'm sure). Pastor Kuyper thought to reassure the flock that the telephone would not alter how the people lived, and that, in fact, the phone offered remarkable attributes ordinary people like those who read his meditations in the  newspaper should not be afraid because the Lord God of Hosts gave us blessings like the telephone for our good usage.

It would take me awhile to find that meditation, but you get my drift. Kuyper was being Kuyper, telling believers they should not be afraid of the world.

Yesterday, I asked MS Copilot to draw me a map to explain where, in 1823, the Arikara fought Ashley's band of mountain men--ninety-strong--out west on the Missouri River. I didn't realize until yesterday that that bloody fight took place close to Mobridge, SD, a place I've been often enough to know its look. MSCopilot is MS's AI. I was asking AI to do something elementary, but something I'd never asked before, to create a map.

Now let me be clear here. President Trump, who so regularly shows himself to be a fool, knows how to ask AI to do things--like that wicked cartoon of him in a red shawl looking for all the world like deity, and helping someone bedridden. You remember. I'm saying  that, regrettably, Donald Trump, who is older than I am, knows more about AI than yours truly. But yesterday I accomplished the creation of a map--supposedly accurate--of exactly where on the Missouri River that famous attack took place, and, as predicted, it did. Here 'tis.

For the record, you will not find that map anywhere else. I created it--with the strong armed help of AI. 

Kuyper was talking about the telephone, but he wasn't wrong. Innovations in technology have to be studied to be sure that the benefits they give us exceed the problems that accompany them. 

This morning this old Kuyperian is thankful for AI--wary but thankful.