Monthly Archives: March 2022

A warp in time

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight an hour disappears from this day as we set our clocks for DST. Well, not really; it’s more like just changing one’s socks – a different look, same old feet. For gardeners, changing the clock is celebrated similar to Groundhog Day; it is a harbinger of sorts but really doesn’t guarantee anything.

Still, mariner spent some time today planting Echinacea seed trays and puttering among the pots, planning to have a pot display this year. Already up and leafing out is the lettuce row under the grow-lights in the shed. NOAA predicts this is the first week with solid temperatures above 55. Mariner may be able to build a new raised bed.

It’s hard for an old codger to crank up stiff old muscles and weary bones. The winter’s hibernation takes more of a toll every year. But just like a bear rising from the den, it’s good to stretch and rejoin Nature’s world. He refreshed the bird feeders and was pleased to see a Red-Bellied Woodpecker hammering on the suet block.

It still is early to get into full gear. The ground is covered in old snow turned to ice and even if it all melted the water table would be two inches above the grass.

Mariner’s son sent him a fascinating talk by Peter Zeihan, an author and speaker who has broad views about how this hodgepodge world will turn out. Zeihan is a theorist and has done a lot of homework to paint a picture of the power shifts, economics and population changes that will actually drive the world to its future. Zeihan also painted a very interesting picture of Mexico, suggesting they may have the attention of the US more than we may think.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0CQsifJrMc

Mariner hopes that the reader has an alternative reality of some kind to escape from this terrible, humanized planet.

Wake up early tomorrow!

Ancient Mariner

Who tells you what is real?

Posted on by
Reply

Surely the reader knows about Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay bin Shāhrukh. Mariner must confess that he had not known about this Sultan of the Timurid Empire; so much for a college education. His short name is Ulugh Beg (oo’loo beg). Mariner discovered him serendipitously while searching for something – anything – to watch on his smart television.

Ulugh Beg singlehandedly brought modern science to a region (now in Uzbekistan) that otherwise was still a primitive culture. Not only did he bring science to his empire, he made astronomic discoveries and uses of mathematics 250 years before the West’s Scientific Revolution (1700s).

200 years before Hans Lippershey invented the first telescope in the early 1600s, Ulugh Beg constructed a large circular building in such a way that the stars and planets could be tracked with great precision. He documented the 26,000-year cycle of the Earth’s axial tilt while Galileo was being tried 200 years later by the Pope for claiming that the Sun was the center of the Solar System.

Ulugh Beg developed trigonometry and was the first to build trig tables showing relationships between sine, cosine, etc.[1]

– – – –

Mariner enjoyed his documentary respite from the present world. Too quickly afterward he became aware of the worldwide press toward totalitarianism. Remembering the Pope’s control over what is real and trashing Galileo’s knowledge is emerging as a dominant political behavior in today’s world.

The contemporary political surge to abandon or constrict empirical truth is alarming. Teachers are being fired for trying to teach authentic history; libraries are mandated to destroy commonplace literature; elections can be overturned by the government; the rights of women to manage their own bodies is subsumed under a nonchalant justice system that ignores sexual abuse and by the religious right squashing the right to abortion; Christian churches ignore doctrine to deny equality to nonwhites and homosexuals; denial of scientific fact in order to believe the falsehoods of powerful leaders – and, in its own version of totalitarianism, deliberately uncontrolled social media.

In some respects, Ulugh Beg was lucky.

Ancient Mariner

[1] A fascinating documentary! See ROKU, The Man Who Unlocked the Universe.

Seriously – prepare for inflation

Posted on by
1

Consumer prices are up 7.9% from a year ago. It will get worse after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends energy prices surging. According to AAA, Gasoline prices have jumped 59 cents a gallon in just the last week. Diesel prices have jumped even more sharply, to nearly $5.06 per gallon.

It isn’t just the energy sector showing signs of breakaway prices. Unfortunately, even sadly, small businesses that were ravaged by Covid now face rapidly increasing costs for inventory. Many local economies have no reserve and further, their customer base has never had a chance to stabilize.

Nationally, the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise interest rates more than it would like. In the moment, these interest increases seem minor but in fact are very expensive for the consumer. Consider the housing market, already screwed up by housing shortages that create their own inflation. NBC had a good example in its morning report:

“Let’s say a consumer wants to buy a $500,000 home; they get a $400,000 mortgage at a 30-year fixed rate. They would pay about $80,000 more over the loan’s term and about $200 more each month with a 4% mortgage rate versus 3%.”

In fact, any family indebtedness can suddenly loom too large to handle. If a reader has variable rate loans, make every effort to convert them to fixed rate loans. Pay attention to credit card debt; credit card finance charges are exorbitant in any case – adjust home budgets to pay down card debt more rapidly.

Savings accounts, on the other hand, stand to receive higher interest rates. Keep an eye on several types of savings products from local banks to bonds to online banks.

Setting aside normal consumer purchasing of clothes, vacations, automobiles, home improvement and other extraneous buying, it is at the dinner table, at child care, at college tuition, at insurance payments and elderly care that inflation’s tires meet the road. Salary never keeps up with inflation but costs do.

So take a good look at future expenses like taxes, insurance, travel cost and other larger cost items that may cause issues that can defeat staying within one’s income. Be prepared.

Ancient Mariner

Health Industry not immune from AI

Posted on by
Reply

The ViVE health tech conference was held in South Florida this week, with some clear themes emerging. All the worrisome things like privacy, intimacy, database diagnostics, venture capital investments and automated insurance-diagnostics-limited-options all were on the table. Oh, by the way, meet your new floor nurse (on the left conversing with a physician). Warm, caring, compassionate human nurses will be missed.

Mariner visited a sick friend today and barely could climb through cables, monitors, banks of wall plugs and the patient‘s arm loaded with tubes and monitors. The only visitors to the room were a social worker and nurses who tended sheets and cleanup generally.  Mariner felt like he was in the switch room in Matrix – with Big Brother watching through squinty backlit eyes.

The automated nurse will roll into the room. Through electronic receivers, (she?) will read all the stuff running in the room, the demeanor of the patient, turn around and roll out. While it wasn’t clear in the description, it is likely the nurse also can automatically modify doses and other treatments. One must make a choice whether to trust more a robot using database generalizations for treatment, or a human doctor influenced by unusual circumstances or moral convictions.

But on to the big picture: the confrontation between medical automation, the fractured perception of benefits for a job world that is dramatically changing, the vagaries of capitalism, and elected governments with their heads where the Sun don’t shine.

Just to assure the reader that there WILL be change, the Republicans are pushing two bills that would eliminate Social Security and Medicare. This in a world where a relative of mariner’s broke their ankle and was billed $40,000 and a world where mariner was offered a prescription for $10,000 per month. The Republicans are attempting to remove government cost from a runaway capital gains medical system but don’t care if the cost wipes out financial security for anyone unlucky enough to need medical care.

As abstruse as it may seem, our governments should look at ways to disassociate medical benefits from salary/age altogether. It’s another post to discuss that Presidential candidate Andrew Yang advocated a $1,000 dole to every citizen but there is an imminent shift coming to the US workforce because of artificial intelligence and a significant benefit at risk is healthcare.

As usual, mariner is quick to provide a metaphor.

The metaphor is about how customers tip restaurant waiters and waitresses. If a waiter works in a restaurant similar to Denny’s, breakfast may cost as little as $5.00. If the waiter receives a 20 percent tip, it amounts to $1.00. If the waiter works the lunch shift, the meal may cost $9.00 so a 20 percent tip would be $1.80 – for the same amount of work and skill. If the waiter works the dinner shift, dinner may cost $14.00 so the 20 percent tip would come to $2.80 – for the same amount of work and skill.

Consider the tip to be a healthcare benefit. If one is lucky enough to have better insurance, the fears of health liability are less worrisome. However, metaphorically speaking the vast majority of folks serve breakfast and face devastating circumstances from illness or assisted living.

As it turns out, artificial intelligence will move hundreds of thousands of folks into breakfast tip amounts and therefore healthcare is a much larger, much more moral issue than it is today.

The fat cats wanting to invest at the Florida conference would not like to have standardized healthcare costs – like Social Security and Medicare.

Incidentally, both mariner’s children worked in restaurants. They told mariner never to tip less than $5.00. It has something to do with awarding dignity.

Ancient Mariner

Happenin’s

Posted on by
1

֎ Women – Economist Magazine released statistics that rank nations by whether the circumstances are better for working women. The United States ranked 20th.

֎Russia – With the world glued to the crisis in Ukraine, are Americans troubled by the geopolitical scene? Even before Russia invaded the country, 52% of Americans said the conflict in Ukraine is a critical threat to U.S. vital interests. Negative perceptions of Russia are at a record high, with 85% of Americans viewing the nation unfavorably — up from 25% in 2003 and slightly edging out China at 79%, although China still is most likely to be viewed as the U.S.’s greatest enemy.

֎ China – The Chinese government is scrubbing the country’s internet of sympathetic or accurate coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is systematically amplifying pro-Putin talking points. Chinese media outlets were told to avoid posting “anything unfavorable to Russia or pro-Western” on their social media accounts, and to only use hashtags started by Chinese state media outlets.

֎ US Supreme Court – In a victory for Democrats, the Supreme Court has turned away efforts from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to block state court-ordered congressional districting plans. In separate orders late Monday, the justices are allowing maps selected by each state’s Supreme Court to be in effect for the 2022 elections. Those maps are more favorable to Democrats than the ones drawn by the states’ legislatures. In North Carolina, the map most likely will give Democrats an additional House seat in 2023.

֎ Atlanta Georgia – Researchers say a large spider native to East Asia that proliferated in Georgia last year could spread to much of the East Coast. The Joro spider’s golden web took over yards all over north Georgia in 2021, unnerving some residents. The spider was also spotted in South Carolina, and entomologists expected it to spread throughout the Southeast.

Researchers at the University of Georgia said in a new study it could spread even farther than that. The Joro appears better suited to colder temperatures than a related species.

֎ Airbnb said it would offer free housing to up to 100,000 people fleeing Ukraine. This is not the first time Airbnb has provided free housing. Last summer, the company also gave free, temporary housing to Afghan refugees while tens of thousands of people fled Kabul.

Airbnb is already getting a ton of support for Ukraine. As of Sunday, CEO Brian Chesky said that more than 11,000 hosts signed up to offer their homes to Ukrainians in need.

֎ Grocery stores – The humble grocery store might soon be a thing of the past. The new Whole Foods location in Washington, D.C., is showing off its techy side: It’s run by tracking and robotic tools like Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. Cameras — not employees — follow you around while you’re shopping. When you walk out of the store, Amazon emails you a receipt, which tells you how long you shopped and how much you owe. If this sounds familiar, it’s because a lot of this tech already is used in Amazon Go convenience stores, but this is one of the first times it will be used in a 21,000-square-foot store.

֎ Mariner’s County, Iowa – Mariner recently wrote a post about the idea that government should manage ‘dignity’ rather than defensive procedures that protect ‘rights’. Mariner identified the rich citizens and the old citizens as the problem but perhaps the government itself may not be aware of the dignity its citizens deserve. Recently, mariner’s wife, a post graduate degreed librarian with over thirty years experience in research, had great difficulty determining which district in the county she and mariner were part of. Here is her accounting:

I googled districts for our County and got their website.  It did not list the Districts.  I googled for our County Iowa district maps and found cities and towns but could not find districts.   I googled supervisors of our County, Iowa and got a very straightforward explanation of who the supervisors are, their terms of service and the districts they serve, but no indication of where those districts are located.  I googled my city and got a list of services for residents, and government information for new residents–but no district map.  I eventually found a site but even now, going back, I can’t retrace my steps to find it again.

Now here’s the thing–I am a reasonably literate person with access to a computer and some skill in research.  I found it very interesting and frustrating that this information is not readily available to citizens.  I am sure that I am not the only one who does not know what district I live in.  Is it some kind of secret?  And why would it be a secret in a land where the government is the people–not the parties, not the people in power, but everyday people like me.  I don’t want to think that it is because the parties in power are just as happy to keep everyone else out of the loop.  I would think they are eager to share the information if only people would ask.  But how many people are going to call their local supervisor, who they don’t even know, and admit they don’t know the most basic information about their government?

I suggest that the everyday people need more civic education if we are going to understand our government and vote responsibly.  In this world of multimedia resources at our fingertips, isn’t it interesting that I have to struggle to find out what district I live in?  —

Does the reader know the specific county voting district they live in? Their district representative’s name? Does the District care if you don’t?

Ancient Mariner

Nice News

Posted on by
1

Nice Newsclip from Axios:

“Think about it: Most people you meet in everyday life — at work, in the neighborhood — are decent and normal. Even nice. But hit Twitter or watch the news, and you’d think we were all nuts and nasty.

Why it matters: The rising power and prominence of the nation’s loudest, meanest voices obscures what most of us personally experience: Most people are sane and generous — and too busy to tweet.

Reality check: It turns out, you’re right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent.

These aren’t the people with big Twitter followings or cable-news contracts — and they don’t try to pick fights at school board meetings.

So the people who get the clicks and the coverage distort our true reality.

Three stats we find reassuring:

75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.

On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).

Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%).

The bottom line: Every current trend suggests politics will get more toxic before it normalizes. But the silent majority gives us hope beyond the nuttiness.”

– – – –

Mariner’s wife, the pickleball player in our family, is pleased that pickleball court construction has received a major grant to be built in a nearby town.

– – – –

Perhaps not ‘nice’ but it’s nice that Bill Barr ex-Attorney General is opening up about his Trump relationship.

– – – –

There are scant indicators that the Putin war has begun to mollify a small number of populist attitudes. A philosopher once said “Nothing unifies a nation more than a unified hate for another nation.” Mariner assumes that is the case.

Ancient Mariner

Is ‘Dignity’ the actual engine supporting ‘Democracy’?

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner is reading a book, Dignity in a Digital Age, published recently and written by Congressman Ro Khanna (D-17th District CA, AKA Silicon Valley). Rep. Khanna takes a two-fold position to resolve much of the unrest that disturbs politics, society and industry in the United States. First, he proposes that the formation of national policy be loosened from Washington D.C and spread among the population. Second, Khanna proposes that the intended purpose of the nation, its industries and society in general is to use the democratic process to promote dignity rather than to protect by legislated procedure.

This last point caught mariner’s interest because, along with many others, he believes Donald came to power because the labor class was not part of the success story of the United States. Despite personal business success, career prestige and a critical role in daily life, without a college degree American society felt labor careers did not represent success in life or have critical importance to society.

A major contribution to this prejudice occurred under Reagan economic policies which allowed corporations to send labor jobs to other countries with lower production costs and otherwise disassembled the financial security found in guaranteed full retirement, labor representation and other benefits. To this day, Labor makes less versus the Consumer Price Index than it did in 1980.

Back to the first point that national policy should be influenced more directly by the citizenry, it is true that policy influence has been drawn to Washington like gravity draws a rock to the ground. Now under the influence of an entrenched plutocracy, it is money that reflects dignity rather being a voting citizen. Khanna spends much of his book philosophizing about how all the components of society should help shape major policies. Mariner feels philosophy alone will not do the trick.

Under the original Constitution created in 1778-9, the Federal Government had to manage a nation with vast, unknown, empty spaces. The population of the Nation was 38.5 million. Today it is 331 million with fifty local governments. Yet the US Senate retains its original configuration of two senators per state. State governments are allowed to modify Federal elections – a necessary authority before trains and before organized Federal agencies could manage locally.

In 1780 the life expectancy was approximately 50 excluding 15 percent child mortality. Today government leaders live well into their eighties – far beyond the life expectancy of their childhood culture, which is approximately 60 years. Between the blindly rich and the culturally blind, it is no wonder no one knows how to promote dignity.

Mariner feels that before Congressman Khanna can modify policy influence to represent a cultural dignity, shudder, cringe, a Constitutional Convention will have to rewrite an outdated Constitution. If the convention does occur, thank goodness the old Constitution says we are allowed to own and bear arms!

Ancient Mariner

 

Further studies about the electorate

Posted on by
Reply

In his continuous research into how the electorate thinks or even why, this post is one of mariner’s brain twister posts. This post has no more significance to today’s news than finding the next geode in Iowa. Everyone has played logic puzzles at parties or when reading a magazine. Mariner suggests his readers think about an enigma that the sciences have yet to solve:

Why did consciousness emerge from a fully functional subconscious brain?

Dan Falk, a Canadian science journalist, sets up the issue: “The puzzle of how non-conscious matter, responding only to the laws of physics, gives rise to conscious experience (in contrast to the ‘easy problems’ of figuring out which sorts of brain activity are associated with which specific mental states). The existence of minds is the most serious affront to physicalism.”

The common thought test is the zombie test. The experiment features an imagined creature exactly like you or me, but with a crucial ingredient – consciousness – missing. Though versions of the argument go back many decades, its current version was stated most explicitly by David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind (1996). He invites the reader to consider his zombie twin, a creature who is ‘molecule for molecule identical to me’ but who ‘lacks conscious experience entirely’.

Imagine the conscious mind looking at an apple. The apple has an independent reality; it is an object within an entirely reasoned environment including terrain, buildings, roads, etc. The apple is red, a value among many colors that are not part of the immediate image. Lurking close by is a conscious awareness of the industry of apple production and perhaps even an impression of the grocer.

All these externally perceived inputs are collected by our consciousness. What did our subconscious see?

It will be awake, able to report the contents of its internal states, able to focus attention in various places, and so on – all part of the senses. It is just that none of this functioning will be accompanied by any conscious experience. There is no reasoned, abstract awareness. Imagine that you are asleep while the apple is present. What will you know about the experience of the apple? At best the brain may register aroma, perhaps indiscriminate noises, subconsciously of course.

The key question is, why did a totally functional subconscious brain have any need to invent consciousness? The major senses like seeing, touching, etc., provide a completely functional reality for survival. Flight or fight is a fully subconscious behavior; pain and comfort, too, are subconscious behaviors.

Scientists to this day have not been able to pinpoint a literal link that provoked the emergence of a conscious mind. Thus it remains an open question – why does the electorate have a conscious mind?

Is the reader still awake or need mariner sign off only to the zombie partner?

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Tip Toeing around the new world

Posted on by
Reply

֎ An entertaining perspective on climate change from 538: ‘Gumbo’ days in Louisiana are disappearing where the tradition is to make the state’s traditional meal in weather just below 50°. See https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/not-even-gumbo-is-safe-from-climate-change/

While on the topic of climate change, here’s an unexpected benefit from new non-carbon technologies:

There are already myriad examples to point to, from Puerto Ricans with rooftop solar who had power after Hurricane Maria to some Tesla owners using their cars to stay warm during last year’s Texas blackouts. (Both those disasters also show the vulnerabilities of a fossil fuel-powered grid.)

֎ Part of the new political era emerging in the northern hemisphere is brought to light by this item from HELSINKI (AP) — Through the Cold War and the decades since, nothing could persuade Finns and Swedes that they would be better off joining NATO — until now.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has profoundly changed Europe’s security outlook, including for Nordic neutrals Finland and Sweden, where support for joining NATO has surged to record levels.

֎ On the intellectual side of the new international picture is a curiosity about whether the authoritarian nations, e.g., the –Stans, Russia and its neighbors, the warring middle east and nations in North Africa will be able to sustain their economies given the burden of greedy oligarchical plutocrats, as new collaborative trade agreements (like the TPP) take over. A common opinion is that these economies will be absorbed by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and make China the dominant economic power on the planet – a club of authoritarian governments.

Mariner is more interested in how the southern hemisphere will join the rest of the world – he being an advocate of a new nation called ‘The United Continents of America’.

֎ Important progress in human rights: President Biden today will sign landmark workplace legislation that forbids companies from forcing sexual harassment and assault claims into arbitration.

֎ One reader will be pleased to know that the Doosan Bears, with a relentless offense and a tireless bullpen, have made history in the South Korean baseball postseason.

The Bears will play for the South Korean baseball championship for a record seventh consecutive year, after hammering the Samsung Lions 11-3 to sweep the best-of-three penultimate round in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) postseason.

Ancient Mariner

Pop Psych

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner often cites his father as a treasure trove of shorthand descriptions of personality, tendencies and interpersonal behavior. Most frequently mariner borrows one his father’s favorites: the difference between why, how and what people. In short, why people must know why something exists before any further comprehension can be learned and often may not need any further detail; how people are great problem solvers but need information from why and what people in order to have a problem to solve in the first place; what people don’t care why or how and see no problems if a step-by-step procedure works.

When mariner was a preacher, he had a story about how we can be blinded by our own tendencies. He told the story of a woman preparing a ham for dinner. She cut off one end of the ham as she always did. Her daughter, watching, asked why her mother cut off the end of the ham. The mother replied that she simply cooks the ham the same way her mother did it.

Later, the daughter asked grandma why she cut the ham. “Because it wouldn’t fit in the pot”, she said.

Many confrontations occur for no other reason than the different priorities of these three thought processes.

Another set of descriptors is the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts need human interaction as an element of progress; introverts make progress without any need for dialogue. Mariner once had the experience of wanting to talk with a coworker about an issue. “Leave me alone,” the coworker said; “I have work to do.”

Here is a pop psych test that’s been around for a long time: Without skipping below the figures, which of these objects seems most comfortable to you:

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you prefer the circle, you may enjoy moments of harmony and stability.

If you prefer the square, you tend to organize things and dislike loose ends.

If you prefer the triangle, you may enjoy challenges and like to achieve.

If you prefer the squiggly, you may enjoy being creative and free spirited.

Pop psychology tests are enjoyable and vague enough to toy with as long as it remembered that no one is a purebred; most of us are a mix of two with perhaps one type a tiny bit stronger than the other.

Pop psych was overrun by the Meyers-Briggs test – a compilation of 16 different personalities with variations within each one. Myers-Briggs became popular to the point that everyone walked around bragging they were an INTJ or an ESTP. Still, because no one is a purebred, these four-character IDs must be taken with a grain of salt and a conscious restraint to avoid condescension.

Another personality test used frequently is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It is used most often to determine a person’s criminal tendencies.

If you want to have a finer understanding of yourself, type ‘pop psychology tests’ in your search engine. There’s a test for everything – even how fast and accurate your fingers are.

Ancient Mariner