I understand the United States Postal Service has some major challenges. They run 31,330 post office locations in the US, some of them with automatic postage dispensers in actual working order. In 2022, they delivered 127.3 billion pieces of mail. They suspiciously do not report how many pieces are submitted to them, but they do manage to deliver 127.3 billion to their appropriate destination. Well, a destination, anyway. And they…
Far be it for me to offer two blog posts in a row that reference the entertainment franchise, Star Trek. I am not a “Trekkie nerd” by any stretch of the imagination, although I do enjoy many of the 973 or so series the concept has spawned. Through many episodes there are numerous references and suggestions of the various technologies that make warp travel possible in the 22nd century and…
To be honest, this post doesn’t have much to do with Star Trek. Ok, it has nothing to do with Star Trek, except for a clever play on words designed to suck you in and take you along for a joy ride of erudition. Or not. Whatever, you’ve come this far. Might as well slug your way through the rest of this morass. The movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath…
Last week’s WCRI Annual Conference theme was “Disruption, Resilience, and Evolution,” and it did not disappoint. Held in Phoenix, Arizona, it offered comprehensive information about the current state of the workers’ compensation industry, along with insight into what we might expect in the future. The selection of Phoenix for this year’s event proved to be fortuitous regarding futuristic trends; more on that in a moment. The keynote speaker for the…
Timely information makes for great education, and along that line of thought, the upcoming WCRI Annual Conference appears set to truly deliver. Scheduled for March 21 & 22, 2023 in Phoenix, the annual “research summit” (my words, not theirs) has crafted a truly relevant agenda for the times. The theme of the conference this year is “Disruption, Resilience, and Evolution.” In this post-pandemic era, it is a most suitable theme…
Once again we delve into the rarified world of artificial intelligence, with another extended discussion with my friend Skippy, the OpenAI ChatGPT thingy that is challenging our conventional wisdom and scaring the crap out if us at the same time. In an earlier post, I mentioned that Skippy’s dataset is all based on information from 2021 and before, when he was initially trained to do his job. In this discussion,…
Comedian Robin Williams once delivered what he called, “A Poem Written While on LSD.” It went roughly something like this: A Broo Arr Arr,A Broo Arr,Eve Arden,A Broo Broo Arr. Recently I have been playing with (chatting with, actually) OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine that will likely, at best, eventually upend traditional search engine functions. At worst, it may enslave humanity and destroy life as we know it. But…
I have not written much in the last couple of weeks. It’s not that I don’t have much to say. In fact, I rarely “don’t have much to say.” It is just that the last few weeks have been extraordinarily busy, and I just haven’t found the time to pound out any of those words on the keyboard. At least in some semblance of order anyone could understand. I have…
There were several possible titles for this post. One was, “Bidding Abbie a Fond Farewell.” Another option was “Abbie Hudgens and Her Enormous Feet” (I’ll explain that one in a minute). But in the end, simply “Abbie” ruled the day. Because most people active nationally in workers’ comp will immediately know who I am talking about. Abbie Hudgens, the Administrator of the Tennessee Bureau of Workers’ Compensation for the past…
It seems that as the years come and go, each one, for the workers’ compensation industry, ends up being defined by one or two dominant topics. 2015, for example, might have been the year of medical marijuana. 2019 was the year of presumptions. It is no surprise that 2020 was the year of Covid. That topic carried over for 2021, in the form of presumptions for “front line workers” and…
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