Monthly Archives: June 2016

Humans are not Creators, they are Stuff

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It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.

Alas, Heraclitus was not a theist for he also said:

This Universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by Heraclitus smallregular measures.

Heraclitus, who lived from 535-475 BC in Ephesus Iona (Turkey), predates Socrates and Plato by a century and was not part of the mainline Greek philosophical revolution although he was commonly quoted by many later Greek thinkers and shows up as a quote in books about other philosophers.

Heraclitus appeals to the mariner because he established the principle that the law of the Universe is the only law and all things that exist in the Universe must obey the same law. Too often the creative genius of H. sapiens is attributed to itself when in the broader view it is, as Heraclitus suggested, a child playing with blocks.

It is difficult for humans to associate with the Universe. The Universe has no recognizable goals. The Universe does not show responsiveness, preference, appreciation, personality, possessiveness, vengeance, favoritism, or kindness. There is only astronomical stuff, chemical stuff, unending space and two unending energy resources: time and gravity – immeasurable time, pervasive gravity and all the space the Universe needs. These eternally present things are called Universe stuff. It isn’t easy to talk with the Universe over a breakfast muffin and coffee; trying to get the Universe’s attention by discovering how to fly to the stars with the Universe’s own stuff doesn’t score, either – less than a spit in the Milky Way.

Before we begin dissecting how humans fit into Earth’s stuff, it will be easier to have a consolidating word for all Earth’s detailed activity, cause and effect, and interactions between elements of Earth’s environment: let’s call it all “stuff.” Specialized stuff. For example, anything created, altered or thought about by humans is “human stuff;” things like orbit changes, volcanoes, earthquakes, geologic ages, atmospheres and magnetic fields are “Earth stuff.” There’s also environmental stuff that includes weather, living things, gold, diamonds, sulfur, critical stuff like water, oxygen and other stuff as may be required.

From a few miles in space, human stuff right now looks very much like a colony of disturbed ants long resident under a large rock. Like the ants, humans are racing about blindly, trying to conjure what is going on; what shall we do? Experiencing reality like an ant but on a human scale, consider the following:

Environment stuff is increasingly unstable – some unstable because of human stuff but most because of Earth stuff. Observant, thinking humans acknowledge that Earth’s surface stuff is growing warmer. Even indifferent humans acknowledge that humans have accelerated warming with excessive release of Carbon into Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. As Heraclitus suggested above, if you do not expect the unexpected, you will not recognize it when it arrives. Such is the case with carbon pollution, which arrived unnoticed and unexpected shortly after the Civil War.

The use of the word “stuff” is an important tool; viewing the Universe on the scale of normal human cognition quickly exaggerates the importance of human stuff. It isn’t really important at all – except to humans. Similar to ants, reality is greatly distorted by personal experience. Brazilian farmers continue to deforest the Amazon rain forest despite the suggestion that removing the forest will change environment stuff. The farmers’ reality is distorted by personal gain; they are incapable of expecting severe changes in their weather so the true scale of their reality is much like an ant’s. On the scale of Universe stuff, ants and humans are closely related.

Humans keep track of mathematical versions of stuff. An arctic fox may have a sense that it is unusually cold but it seems not to care that not only is it unusually cold, it is minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit cold – now that’s cold! Humans mathematically track a lot of phenomena about other stuff; that’s how humans know the environment is growing warmer on Earth’s surface.

A reputable scientist wrote an article in Atlantic Magazine about a year ago. He was ridiculing humans’ plan to reverse climate change: “They think they will fix the problem in a lifetime or two. What they can’t see is the scale of global warming. It may take the Earth 30 thousand years to reset its global environment!” Many scientists agree and also believe that the Earth will enter a long ice age at that time. Each set of stuff has its own scale of size and time. We forget how small human stuff is when compared to environment stuff and Earth stuff. A simple example is we count our lifespan in years; environment stuff easily can count lifespan in centuries, i.e., how many years does it take for the Fertile Crescent to come and go through a desert cycle? Earth counts lifespan in eras; an era has two or three cycles called periods – the length of time during which rock formations appear, e.g., the Rocky Mountains.

If human stuff is messing around with Earth stuff, the results may take so much time they never will be known. On the other hand, looking down the scale of different stuff, say solar system stuff messes with environment stuff, things can change rapidly. Remember the meteor that helped wipe out the dinosaurs? That meteor may have been floating around the solar system’s inventory of asteroids for billions of years then POP! If we had been alive at the time, we could have watched the entire global environment change within a week.

Mariner can hear the reader complain, “What’s all this stuff about? What’s the point?” This always happens when Guru is allowed in the room. What it’s all about is that the twenty-first century confronts humans in a new and unpredictable way. Like the ants, Earth stuff is changing our reality: our comfortable rock has been lifted to expose new, larger issues that force H. sapiens to realize it is not as much in charge as it thought. Further, time is short enough to be relevant to our psyche. Stephen Hawking is confident H. sapiens will be extinct within ten thousand years. Our line of ascendency began nearly 90 million years ago as a simple primate. We’ve only 10,000 years left to come to terms with the relative value of our messy human stuff as a part of Universe stuff. One example: Are we a benevolent species or a predatory one?

“This Universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.”

POST SCRIPT

Mariner’s in-laws, nine cousin families strong, are celebrating their eighth quinquennial this week. Posts may be scant during that time.

Ancient Mariner

Signs of the Future

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Remember those spooky science fiction shows when you watched the actor (and yourself) walk into a dense, mysterious cloud where something unimaginable will occur? Well, dear reader, we are at that moment in real life. You, the mariner, and every other speaking soul, approach a dense cloud where everything will be different.

What does this cloud look like? Not just a water vapor cloud or a disrupting chemical cloud – this cloud is a montage of things, behaviors, environment, and different lifestyles. Okay, it doesn’t look like a “cloud.” It looks more like a roaming, tumbling garbage dump with zombies roaming around; nevertheless, the mysterious unknown will envelope you. What will you become?

From a distance, we see in the cloud a disappearance of written and spoken language capable of specific expression and defined meaning. With the use of text abbreviations, compressed spellings, and rolling enunciation, much of our speech will be comprehensible to seals, whales, beagles and subordinate primates – but it will not be useful for finite, articulated ideas or correlations of fact. What seems probable is an erasure of the history of speech – leaving us expressing little more than our ancient predecessors to express emotions, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and pain.

Back in 1980, as the mariner’s son was being born in York Pennsylvania, mariner was working as a project consultant in Roswell New Mexico for a small group of men who wanted to build a new jail. Typically, a consultant would have to prepare about five wordy documents to describe in detail the goal, scope, cost, staffing, project plan and delivery dates. In Roswell’s case, even a blueprint would be appropriate.

These men wanted none of that. The general attitude was “I wouldn’t read it if you wrote it” and “How is doing that building a jail?” These men were brick and mortar types with trowel in hand! After a lengthy meeting discussing how in a productive manner we should move ahead, we arrived at the use of one document to handle the ideological and regulatory aspects of building a jail: the blueprint itself. Instead of articulating the purpose and description of a space, we had a discussion which reached consensus and agreed to move a room’s wall two feet farther to the west. Room by room, door by door, plumbing fixture by plumbing fixture, regulation by regulation, we finished the design to the point it could be turned over to the builders. Notes about the blueprint process were on the margins of hundreds of previous versions of blueprints; every meeting started with a newly updated blueprint. Call the process “document writing via storyboard” or “social dissolution of a conundrum;” however unusual, the jail was built on time, under budget and ready to function;” a project consultant and five men in Roswell couldn’t be more proud. It is in use today.

What mariner did not realize was that he had participated in creating and using a hieroglyphic with three-dimensional scripting. The Egyptians, Syrians and Hittites had nothing on the Roswell project! The Roswell team had abandoned letters and words for glyphs! We had gone back in time 4,000 years – and Hawking said it couldn’t be done.

It was then mariner realized he had an experience near ‘the cloud.’ People would speak and write something like ‘LOL,’ even speaking it. Not a true Egyptian hieroglyphic – it required some knowledge of word usage and spelling. Soon afterward, words, letters, even paragraphs were unnecessary when emojis were created. Mankind was moving deeper into the cloud.

Will we become an illiterate creature – depending on monks to document our lives and articulations? Will we have to draw a picture to ask for Pseudoephedrine? (What will the emoji be?) It is true that the mariner had a mother-in-law many years ago who drew a stick figure of a man, a plus sign and 2 eggs on a piece of paper so her husband would not forget to buy mayonnaise. This was necessary because, despite the wise woman she was, she was illiterate. Hmm – aren’t we all….

Ancient Mariner

The Republic versus the Parties

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The mariner is not sure about the reader but the mariner has been tossed about on the deck of the 2016 election for President. Since the very beginning of the process, the voter hasn’t had much of a say. The Republic (Federal, State and Local) has not modernized itself since Lyndon Johnson freed the slaves again in 1964. Richard Nixon, socially clumsy as he was, had an intuition for international policy; with the aid of Henry Kissinger, a bright Secretary of State, he established a relationship between China and the US. The two nations were absolutely unknown to each other and were blocking a move toward globalization.

Jimmy Carter introduced kindness to the language of politics but it washed off as soon as he left office.

Reagan became President in 1981. Everyone remembers “Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” but that event was already ordained by European and Russian economics – Reagan was just the toastmaster. What Reagan really did was stop cold the center-left culture that took root under FDR and flourished until Reagan (Eisenhower never was an ideologue but was favorable to business interests).

That center-left culture included voters as an influence in politics. Reagan and his kitchen cabinet put together a list of policies which put the Republic back in the hands of Plutocrats. Wealth and upper class became the drivers of the Republic. This group is known today as the “Establishment.” It still is controlling things. With the mental acuity of a worm, the Supreme Court finally and legally turned the Republic over to the Plutocrats with Citizens United. Voters no longer drove the Republic – unless one voted with money. The Supreme Court is not allowed to consider cultural values. Consequently there is no issue with calling money speech. If dogs were a political force, they would qualify as having free speech. In fact any creature would qualify. If you doubt that, watch ‘The Birds” with Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren (1963).

Since then, the Republic’s gestalt has been left adrift. 41, Clinton and 43 were no more than keepers of Reagan’s list. All three left the heart of the Republic on its own while improving the world of corporations and unsavory tax and banking interests, releasing them to become the modern version of buccaneers in the fifteenth century who robbed cargo ships from Jamaica to Yemen and India. The new world economic model was the same – except lust need not be satisfied by raiding a ship at sea, it was satisfied by wage suppression and manipulation, by moving labor to the cheapest country allowing the tax-free hoarding of cash and, as Bernie may say, sending 90% of the Republic’s GDP to 1% of the population.

Finally, there was enough dissatisfaction about how the plutocracy was treating its citizens that the Reagan gestalt began to splinter both in the conservative citizenry and in the liberal citizenry. On the one hand, blue collar conservatives had had enough of salary suppression and the newly legal opportunity for manufacturing to move out of the US destined for cheaper labor markets. Once manufactured, the products were sold in the American markets at higher prices. Enough is enough, said the blue collar conservatives. Joining the blue collar dissatisfaction, the fundamentalist conservatives had had enough of a “no comment” Congress who had ducked religious issues since the last generation. LGBT had blossomed overnight, abortion would not die and State’s Rights were constantly overridden by the courts.

On the liberal side, it was the same story. The same types of folks suffering from unfair labor practices on the right were suffering the same dilemma on the left. The college educated were faring no better. Graduated and truly deep in debt, jobs for the graduates were disappearing rapidly. The biggest culprit was computerization. Unless a grad could get a job in technology or invent some odd thing that turned into a billion-dollar buyout, times were just as rough as on the labor class. By April of 2015, still not recovered from the recession of 2008, grumbling was afoot everywhere. Conservatives wanted to throw the bums out and return the Republic to 1970. Liberals wanted to restructure the overly capitalistic oligarchy and turn the Republic back to the voters.

The time was right to join a political party!

Join to what end? Voters quickly realized both parties were controlled lock stock and barrel by the “establishment” – Reagan’s plutocracy. By April 2015, The Dems knew it would be Hillary; the Reps knew it was Jeb→. Who needs primaries and caucuses? In the early going, the two presumptive candidates were raking in money from contributors and PACs.

But strange statistics were emerging: 47% of previous full time workers still were working part time. Government reports said there were no more jobs. Wages were dropping every month. These statistics revealed a churning, irritated electorate the plutocrats had underestimated.
In the last Presidential election, times were peaceful. Party Rules Committees agreeably changed Convention Rules to accommodate favored candidates. In April 2008, the Establishment thought the election would be status quo. Was the plutocracy surprised when Jeb → and Hillary were joined by 16 serious candidates for the reps, a talented and experienced Governor from Maryland and an independent Senator from Vermont? Oh, by the way, enter the Donald. The voters (and the Establishment) knew by now that things were going screwy in a hurry. To complicate matters, broadcasting companies thought they could improve market share if they marketed debates. Now five distinct groups were in the game: nineteen candidates, two parties, four broadcast companies, the Reagan Establishment (R+D), and the discontented voters (R+D).

To shorten this account of the Republic versus the Parties, a few quotes will suffice to describe how both parties slowly had squeezed out public participation:

Donald says, “The primaries are crooked. Every time I read ‘Bernie wins!’ then I read ‘Bernie loses.’ I win the majority of voters then I’m told, Lyin’ Cruz wins.”

Bernie says, why are we having a debate on a Saturday night during an important basketball game?”

Bernie says “The delegate system is designed to control the vote. It is not democratic.”

It was too obvious that primaries were tightly controlled by the two parties. The plutocrats were caught in the open playing puppeteers. The resultant split between the Republican Establishment and its party members threw the whole Republican process into disarray. Donald saw a hole in the line and charged through it for a touchdown. Mariner and the reader will have to wait for the Republican Convention to see how things turn out but however they turn out, the Republican Establishment has been stopped dead in the water. The role of the party primary must change what it represents ideologically and procedurally in 2020. Let’s hope the voter is included.

As to the Democratic Party, it is in shambles, too. Democrats will win the Presidency if only because the Tea Party and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shut down the Congress for the last 7½ years.

The delegate process will be under close scrutiny.

There are still seriously damaging behaviors by each party. The most serious is gerrymandering. Redistricting must be removed from any hint of political influence. Primaries will never represent the true intent of every voter until the districts are a matter of census rather than a description of political and class preferences that intentionally falsify representation.

Also serious is money in politics. There should be none except what the Republic provides and what can be raised within the scope of one’s jurisdiction. After all, the Party is not the Republic, the reader is the Republic. Broadcast corporations don’t collect profits for campaigns, the Republic requires educational programming for campaigns.

Ancient Mariner

This and That

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The Midwest, between parallels N35° and N43°, has suffered temperatures in the high nineties with humidity above 70% for a good while. It isn’t pleasant. If you work outside, dehydration, sunburn and heat stroke lurk nearby. Still, plants and seeds cannot delay their required attention. The garden experience has transitioned from digging, hoeing, planting seeds, little pots and large pots, to an activity more akin to reconstructing frames for cucumbers and string beans, laying brick walks, processing compost, layering mulch in the gardens and weeding, weeding, weeding. As the mariner tells his town friends, “Anymore it takes me eight hours to work a four-hour day.”

In August, there are wedding bells in the mariner’s family. The wedding is in Los Angeles with many show business neophytes in attendance.

Every August mariner also hosts a neighborhood fete called “The Turkey Fry.” Mariner provides two large turkeys – one for roasting and serving sliced in gravy, the other dipped in dangerously hot and open cooking oil which could easily spill onto the propane burner under the pot. This year mariner planted sweet corn timed to be ready for picking for the Turkey Fry. About thirty neighbors attend. He assumes a fortress of electrified wire around the12x12 foot corn crop using a 13-acre AC charger will deter raccoons.

The mariner has a tip for tomato growers who invest time, money and frustration with tomato cages: don’t use them! The mariner’s model is to grow each plant about eight inches apart in a square configuration. The tomato plants prop each other just fine. It is still possible to tread carefully among the plants when harvesting. Another benefit is the plants help suppress weeds among the plants.

In a manner of days, hordes of in-laws arrive at a park down the road for their quinquennial, weeklong gathering. It has occurred every five years since 1981. They look old now but one can easily tell the new ones are continuing the tradition.

Readers are advised of these events to warn them of other gaps in post writing. The mariner will do his best to be regular.

A piece about Muhammad Ali is in the Reference Section. What set Muhammad apart was his statesmanship. He wasn’t just another boxer among boxers; he had class, empathy and intelligence. True, he played a buffoon as part of the show but he had a quick and caring mind. His feelings about the wellbeing of others were the basis for his conversion to Islam – an act that was spiritual and was distant from more rebellious sects.

REFERENCE SECTION

Muhammad Ali was a gentleman in the boxing community. He had an extra sense of grace that translated from his pugilist profession to one of awareness, care for the common man and a sharper mind than most in his profession. Oh, that more statesmen could be in politics! Muhammad had the courage to defy the draft and serve his punishment; the courts plucked him from that fate but still he would lose three years of income, age and prestige before the military was behind him.

His extra sense of grace allowed him to quote poetry about himself more succinctly with entertaining braggadocio. Note this one before the “Rumble in the Jungle” against Joe Frazier:

Last night I had a dream

Last night I had a dream. When I got to Africa,

I had one hell of a rumble.

I had to beat Tarzan’s behind first,

For claiming to be King of the Jungle.

For this fight, I’ve wrestled with alligators,

I’ve tussled with a whale.

I done handcuffed lightning

And throw thunder in jail.

You know I’m bad.

Just last week, I murdered a rock,

Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.

I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.

I’m so fast, man,

I can run through a hurricane and don’t get wet.

When George Foreman meets me,

He’ll pay his debt.

I can drown a drink of water, and kill a dead tree.

Wait till you see Muhammad Ali.

–      –   –   –

Add another one to the list of extinctions occurring during the Holocene, the period in which humans trashed the biosphere: Melomys rubicola — Bramble Cay Melomys, a species of mouse that remained in existence only on an island in the Torres Straight near Queensland Australia. The rodent, also called the mosaic-tailed rat, was only known to live on Bramble Cay, a small coral cay, just 340m long and 150m wide off the north coast of Queensland, Australia, which sits at most 3m above sea level.

mousex

–  –   –   –

Mariner stopped by the Forbes Magazine to review an article. The first screen had a display that said:

Quote of the Day

“You will never own the future if you care what other people think.“

Cindy Gallop

Each of us could write three of four counterpoints to Cindy’s comment – which is  required to be a capitalist. Assets do not normally flow up hill; they deliberately must be acquired. Capitalism unbridled by compassion will make few rich, most poor, and the capitalist, protected by layers of wealth, will be indifferent to environment, fairness, contribution to the point of meaningful sharing and a twisted sense of self-worth.

“Only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”

                        – A  Cree Indian Saying

Ancient Mariner

Is Homo sapiens too Expensive for its Habitat?

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Through his retirement years, mariner has had more time to sit aside and watch the world go by. What has emerged is awareness that Homo sapiens will have a relatively short, finite time as a member of living things on Mother Earth. For the last five hundred thousand years or so, H. sapiens has used superior skills to garner excessive resources beyond the amount required given the type of animal spawned within its natural environment.

It began when H. sapiens invented the spear. The invention of weapons to hunt game has been used by a few other primates but not with the intellectual capability to leverage weaponry as its own, organized thing.

Humans (AKA H. sapiens et al) elevated hunting with team management and scientific advancements like the atlatl; it was the advantage needed for earliest humans to overhunt environmental resources. Humans still overhunt species today (American Bison, Carrier Pigeon) – or intentionally eliminate them only because they interfere with other prerogatives (estuary and otherwise rare habitat, coral, useless specimen hunting) – from overhunting African wildlife to being, as of today, the cause for the extinction of 50% of all living species – plant and animal. Humans have so decimated the Earth’s biosphere they have added to cataclysmic events by causing the Sixth Great Extinction. The other five were caused by the greater laws of astrophysics.

Humans have extended hunting to the mineral and chemical world, also known today as science and technology, until we accomplished the following effects:

Better weapons for hunting using iron, steel, copper, and unnatural chemicals like Roundup and agent orange to make it easier than weed pulling by hand or landscaping large areas with axes and brushhogs. The primary reasons to impose these aberrations then, would be ‘it’s easier than by hand’ and ‘why not; we can do it.’ Humans pay little note to the infringement on nature’s way of running the biosphere.

Better weapons for destruction using chemicals and metals that have total disregard for ramifications to the biosphere, which, on the good side eliminates some of the dangerously overpopulated species (H sapiens) but on the other hand demonstrates the continuous devastation humans have on the biosphere. Mariner will mention only Hiroshima as an example and let intentional military destruction go at that. Did you know that nuclear warhead testing and use is responsible for Strontium 90 being present in our tobacco and similar broadleaf plants?

The mariner thinks all human abuse on the biosphere can be traced to the thought that it takes idle minds to invent trouble – why aren’t we busy cultivating common weeds into a food source and otherwise weeding them from our gardens by hand? As the ‘intelligent’ creature, why aren’t humans doing their share to help the biosphere for the betterment of all creatures? After all, the biosphere is the perpetual uterus for everything – including humans.

Humans ignore the sophisticated balance of the biosphere – how every living thing has a niche that provides enough to survive but limits its imposition on the balance of nature. 90% of Monarch butterflies are gone. The human impact continues as if humans want them all gone – or at least are indifferent to our unwelcome behavior that sends so many creatures from tree frogs to elephants into extinction in this century. Is this a sign of the apocalypse? If it is, it includes humans.

A conundrum arises if humans reset their attitude: There aren’t enough resources to support seven billion soon to be twelve billion humans who want to drink percolated coffee every morning before each human drives off in its own expensive seashell. [the hermit crab shares our plight] Point made. Not to mention the six hundred-thread bed sheets and Donald’s Mar a Lago. The biosphere will deal with that last one shortly.

Humans are pretending they aren’t aware that anything is wrong. HAH. Why are the following terms worthy of mention in most nations?

Grass fed – No Hormones – Not genetically modified food – Nature’s choice – Naturally caught seafood – No additives – Not commercially owned water source – Not made from ivory – Not manufactured from coal – and on and on. Think of a few on your own.

Accountable to readers for some kind of advice, mariner has the following:

No amount of effort will turn things around. Planet Earth has decided to end this age. Being the boss, Earth neither requires permission nor will accept suggestions.

Within the reader’s own biosphere, assume a lifestyle that respects simplistic, natural habits. Methuselah lived over nine hundred years without airplanes, trains, or automobiles. It took Noah’s flood to kill him off. Many of mariner’s closest friends travel frequently; the mariner admits to a few passage sailing trips. Bon voyage, he says. A simplistic solution may be to set aside a trip every now and then to use the unexpended resources to help our uterus (yes, graphic but the entire subject is contained within).

Remain aware of cultural impact. Many times biosphere issues can help lawmakers and voters decide the better direction for legislation, e.g., too much carbon for the biosphere.

Remain educated on the relationship between humans and the biosphere generally. It helps with awareness. Visit the following website to keep in touch.

http://www.overshootday.org/

Check out Earth Overshoot Day which this year is August 8.

A general news source for interesting and important topics: One article describes a day in the life of an orphaned hippopotamus; the main article headline reads, “Humans Stripping Earth of Its Resources – Global biodiversity has fallen 30 percent in 40 years, the new report says.” See:

http://www.seeker.com/humans-stripping-earth-of-its-resources-1765773906.html#news.discovery.  Otherwise, be aware that with a little more human-biocentric awareness, how can you simplify your life without the over-abundant dependence on the “plastic/electronic” aspects of your culture?

Further, definitely assign yourself the responsibility to grow some milkweed for the Monarchs, have a place on your property – if only your fourth story windowsill – to provide water to birds and food in the winter. Like the good Samaritan, don’t pass up opportunities to rescue the plight of any creature including Homo Sapiens.

Today’s comfort and sense of accomplishment is most important now rather than waiting 10,000 years to the end of our age when there will be no Homo sapiens.

Ancient Mariner

Clipart

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A guest column has been trimmed a bit to highlight important clipart and merged with mariner’s comments.

Posted by Alex Greer

According to a July Gallup poll, public approval of Congress has fallen to near-record lows. On average, 34% of the population approves of a given Congress. The current 114th Congress has a 17% approval rating.

Americans have reason to be concerned. … The last two Congresses have enacted fewer laws than any other Congress since 1947. And the 114th Congress may just surpass them all in terms of doing nothing. … Some members have been exceptionally unexceptional. Using data from GovTrack  I [Alex Greer] created an Effectiveness Score to determine the least-effective members of Congress.

The effectiveness score is the percentage of bills sponsored by each congressperson over their time in office that went on to pass committee. The score does not factor in the percentage of bills that turned into law because such a small number of proposed bills and resolutions actually become laws.

These are the 35 least-effective members of Congress. See if your representatives make the list:

http://members-of-congress.insidegov.com/stories/5278/least-effective-members-congress?utm_medium=cm&utm_source=outbrain&utm_campaign=ao.cm.ob.dt.5278&utm_term=dt#Intro

Yes, Steve King R-Iowa, 4th District is on the list. Steve holds the dubious honor as the least effective person in Congress. The Iowa Representative has served in congress for 12 years and has yet to sponsor a single bill that has passed committee – let alone become actual law. Further, a committee effectiveness survey scored him at zero.

Don’t feel left out, Maryland. Representative Donna F. Edwards (D) is virtually tied at the bottom with Steve. Elected in 2008, Donna has sponsored 10 bills. Of these bills, 10 have died in committee.

clipart: Americans are getting poorer. According to a study by the Russell Sage Foundation , net worth for the typical American household has been decreasing steadily since 2008. The median household net worth in America is now $56,000, down from $87,000 in 2003. From 2012 to 2013 alone, the median household net worth in America dropped by about 20%.

Not for congresspeople. From 2012 to 2013, average net worth more than doubled—and in one case, grew by more than ten times.

The mariner suggests repeatedly that every voter should consider carefully who to vote for on the undercard – even good ol’ buddy Steve King and antiquity in residence Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The mariner also suggests that the US is dealing with a 1968 Congress. Old wood needs to be cut out and replaced with congressmen/especially women who understand and still participate in American culture in 2016; a term limit requiring congressmen to step down if their next term includes their sixtieth birthday is about right.

Let’s hope the next President really does something to help Senator Elizabeth Warren break down the bank monopoly in the US economy. Did you know that the Federal agency fought for and created solely by Senator Warren (Consumer Protection Agency) has sued banks to return illegal fees and charges to customers totaling more than four billion dollars in only four years of existence?

This is an unusually important election. Consider where you want your nation to go from here. Someplace where democracy can restore citizen equality.

Ancient Mariner

The World around Us

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Anticipating that few readers follow the mariner’s comments further by pursuing the related links, the mariner has copied in full an article from Fareed Zacharia’s online GPS:

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/

04:30 PM ET Share this on: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, MySpace, StumbleUpon

Editor’s Note: The following piece comes from Global Post, which provides excellent coverage of world news – important, moving and odd.

By Tom Mucha, Global Post

Truth is elusive.  But it’s a good thing we have math.

Our friends at Business Insider know this, and put those two principles to work today in this excellent and highly informative little slideshow, made even more timely by the ongoing talks in Washington, D.C. aimed at staving off a U.S. debt default.

Here’s the big idea:

Many people — politicians and pundits alike — prattle on that China and, to a lesser extent Japan, own most of America’s $14.3 trillion in government debt.

But there’s one little problem with that conventional wisdom: it’s just not true. While the Chinese, Japanese and plenty of other foreigners own substantial amounts, it’s really Americans who hold most of America’s debt.

Here’s a quick and fascinating breakdown by total amount held and percentage of total U.S. debt, according to Business Insider

  • Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
  • Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
  • Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
  • Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
  • Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
  • Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
  • Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
  • State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
  • Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
  • United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
  • Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
  • State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
  • Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
  • U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
  • China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
  • The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
  • Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

So America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.

And to bone up on China’s debt – another potentially big global economic headache — check out this interview with brainy-yet-coherent Northwestern University economist Victor Shih, who spoke with GlobalPost’s David Case.

End Excerpt

This list of US indebtedness by nation is hard to find. Further, to have easy access to two of the highest regarded specialists on debt and international economics is comparable to achieving a minor in international studies.

We may as well stay with Fareed; he had an excellent show today (6/5/16).

Two books are recommended as well which are contemporary to the extent that the content is almost newsworthy on the daily news channels. The first book is Zachary Karabell’s The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World.

The second book was mentioned on GPS. (the mariner watched an interview on CSPAN with author Anja Manuel, This Brave New World: India, China and the United States by Anja Manuel, Hardcover. $20.25.) One cannot be prepared for our near future without reading Manuel’s book (received 27 outstanding reviews). For instance, India is about to have more citizens than China; the battle for economic supremacy between China and India depends on who has more toilets – a point raised by Fareed when he quoted her book on GPS. Anja Manuel writes that toilets have become an economic indicator that influences the degree of worker health, improves travel from other countries, and improves quality of life generally – not to mention improvement in water quality and infrastructure.

Between the Tom Mucha post, the interviews with Diamond and Shih, and the CSPAN interview with Manuel, one will likely know enough to be their own expert. At least, maybe, know as much as Donald!

Speaking of candidates for the Presidency, a new player has been picked up by our ever alert news media: Gary Johnson – the Libertarian candidate for President. Johnson is polling at 10% and could be a real spoiler for Donald – and Hillary as well although her odds for surviving Donald and Gary are less troubling.

What makes Gary potent is he sounds intelligent, stable, and defends a very liberal social policy. Perhaps a sign of concern is his classic Libertarian position on the economy, taxes and government. His sense of government obligation is military. That’s it – military. Forget anything that hints of discretionary programs, special assistance (Social Security? No). Global Warming is Earth’s problem. Yet he comes across in TV interviews as a sensible person who does not advocate military action around the world; something that is soothing in contrast to the Obama/Clinton doctrine and whatever Armageddon Donald has planned.

Gary once was the Governor of New Mexico. He didn’t fit well. US voters must remember that the conservative branch of the Republican Party will not vote Libertarian because economically the conservative republicans are too liberal. Let’s hope there are a number of three-way debates. It should be interesting.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Economic Outlook

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The mariner is no expert on the economy. Instead, he gets most of his data and insights from recommended books, business sections of newspapers, erudite talk shows, and news channels like Bloomberg. It wasn’t long ago that only money grubbing naysayers wanting ones’ money were predicting a financial Armageddon.

Yet common news sources in centrist magazines and television shows now talk about troublesome circumstances such as “the US has run out of jobs,” or, “the stock markets have never recovered from the 2008 recession: an expected jump in the world’s economies has not occurred.” Bloomberg statistics show that two-thirds of part-time workers are former full-time workers; only the health sector added jobs in the last four months; only 51% of veterans are employed. Erik Shatzker, a Bloomberg reporter, said job creation has fallen off a cliff and threatens US recovery.

In Europe, “Brexit,” the vote to withdraw Britain from the European Union, looms ahead with a close vote indicated. If Brexit succeeds, Britain will have a recession. In the OPEC nations, there are signs the organization will not hold together, disrupting the global oil trade as a means of international political stability. The US remains the healthiest economy in the world at the moment. However, too many national economies (including the US) are coming into the same station carrying inadequate assets.

The mariner senses there is a shakeup of some kind due in a year or two – perhaps as soon as the November election. Having watched Surviving Progress, half of the world not owned is already in debt to the other half. Perhaps the pump is running dry.

REFERENCE SECTION

A bit of postscript to the post on Heavy Seas. LiveScience has an article that explains the ice age side of things. It turns out that the Earth’s axis tilt wobbles a maximum of 40°. At the maximum tilt, more sunlight reaches the ice-laden poles causing the ice to melt. Further, a longer cycle of about 10,000 years shifts the axis from Polaris, the North Star, where it points today, to the star Vega and back again. Whenever the vacillations complement one another, an ice age occurs – lasting as long as 120,000 years!

See: http://www.livescience.com/6937-ice-ages-blamed-tilted-earth.html

Ancient Mariner

Heavy Seas

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The Weather channel provides special reports from government agencies (FEMA, NOAA) and environmental/ecological studies (seminars and University studies) that teach us how to respond to heavy storms, sustained heavy rain patterns, and hurricanes. It seems that the first thing flood victims want to do is wait until it is too late to evacuate. This is understandable given all the possessions and entrenched lifestyles. Still, arranging for offsite storage, moving or securing extra vehicles like RVs, boats, lawn tractors, arranging for creatures from pets to livestock, and avoiding the final highway gridlock, require more than one hasty trip when water is around one’s ankles. Wait, didn’t we have a teenager?

Sooner than later the failure of local electrical substations and erratic current across surrounding grids occurs. Virtually everyone except the non participating elderly and the poorest underclass depend heavily on electrical appliances, cell phones, GPS and Internet games to live from one hour to the next. Oh my! Now we can’t track where our teenager is. What do you mean the TV doesn’t work?

The human experience of global warming is a conflict between incremental change that seems normal and longer effects requiring two or three lifetimes before the weather definitely is different – apparently permanently – and coastlines have suffered irreparable damage to industry and housing. Some change will continue for as long as 100,000 years. Again, flooding victims think there is plenty of time because rising ocean levels are measured in an inch or two per year. Take note, however, that ecological scientists have discovered that the oceans are rising faster each year: somewhat like creeping inflation where each year includes the rise of all previous years plus the current “2.5 inches”.

In a lifetime, the long term rise in the oceans is expected to be a minimum of nine feet and as much as thirty feet – the guesstimate rises with each later evaluation. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans likely will continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet, enough to submerge London.

By 2100, the plains states are not immune. The Mississippi River will rise as much as the oceans do. It is true that the land is not equal in altitude. The mariner’s home town has an elevation around 700+ feet. Yet the Mississippi is only 10 miles away. The southern states (Louisiana, Arkansas) will have permanent flooding similar to the Texas floods in today’s news. The southeastern states (Florida to the Mississippi and on to the Texas/Mexico border) will have a dramatic change in coastline. New Orleans’ new lock and berm system already is proving to be inadequate in today’s weather patterns.

Global warming is not an issue subject to personal, political or corporate opinion. Many politicians and the corporate money that supports the politicians are opposed to additional regulatory policies that will impose on profits and investment. It is the same pattern of priority as the flood victims who wait until water is around their ankles. Add to this group those who insist any further government involvement in anything is taboo. These motives are understood – but irrelevant to a planet moving into a warmer phase of its slowly evolving history.

What can we do about global warming? Nothing. It will continue no matter what we do. What can we do to prepare for the effects of global warming? Plenty. The ecology of the Earth is changing fast enough for humans to notice. It is time to listen to climate experts; to elevate their influence in the news and in government committees; to work harder to implement international policies – other nations will suffer more than the US. What areas of the US will suffer rises in the sea? Climatologists have a handle on a lot of this information already. If you want to spend a night in Mar a Lago you should call Donald soon.

Ancient Mariner