The Election

First and foremost to celebrate is the election of the first Zer to Congress. At the age of 25 Maxwell Frost was elected to represent the 10th Congressional District in Florida. When Max was born in 1997, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was 63 and had served in Congress since 1981.

It isn’t just republicans. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is 82 – less than a year younger than mariner. Mariner remembers when she was a teenage hottie in Baltimore. Not to mention Biden, Sumer, McConnell and the Trumper as well.

The median age of Congress is 60! Mariner thinks about this as he rakes fallen leaves out of the garden. Many of the large issues clouding over the nation and the world today cannot be managed by individuals whose intuition was formed when most telephone networks required talking to human telephone operators or when Bill Gates was 10 years old. The first credit card wasn’t around until 1958; Chuck Grassley was 18. Can Chuck comprehend the social, economic and family impact of going Crypto?

But putting mariner’s crankiness aside, it was a night to celebrate! The Red Tide did not appear. Most of the election deniers were defeated (but many remain – the republican party still has some huge issues). As this post is written, the Senate leadership is unknown but both houses of Congress are close enough to require an attempt at negotiation.

It was an election balanced enough to keep the nation’s head above water and possibly deal with two imminent wars and a never ceasing invasion by global warming.

Bring on the Zs!

Ancient Mariner

About Earthly phenomena

 

A question was raised asking what a polar reverse is. Mariner has written about the phenomenon in previous posts:

Yes, Virginia, one day Santa may have to move to Antarctica

Posted on February 24, 2021

Mariner has written recently about Earth’s polar magnetic field currently flipping erratically in the Bering Sea and the southern Atlantic. The following summary is copied from the February 2021 Science Magazine:

Kauri trees mark magnetic flip 42,000 years ago

By Paul Voosen

Using a remarkable record from a 42,000-year-old kauri tree preserved in a bog, researchers have pieced together a record of the last time Earth’s protective magnetic field weakened and its poles flipped—known as the Laschamp excursion—exposing the world to a bombardment of cosmic rays and, the team suggests, briefly shifting Earth’s climate. The record shows the field nearly failed prior to its brief swap, which only lasted 500 years. Combined with an unusually quiet Sun that is believed to have occurred during this time, cosmic rays could have caused a notable drop in stratospheric ozone, shifting wind flows and climate patterns, they suggest.

For those curious why the magnetic field flips, it is caused by the Earth’s iron core rotating at a different speed than surface layers of the planet. Eventually what can be represented as static electricity disrupts the magnetic balance – just like lightning or touching something while walking in your socks across the rug. Unlike the instantaneousness of lightning or socks, the mass of the entire Earth acts like a capacitor, slowing the change to hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

֎ It was just in the news that the Mississippi River is running shallow. Already it holds up the huge barges that carry Midwest grains to manufacturers. Add to this the failing cattle grain farms in the southwest and one can assume buying grain products and beef at the market may well run up credit card debt. Perhaps anchovies, scrapple and spam may become popular again.

Ancient Mariner