Monthly Archives: August 2025

We need a culture map

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Every generation has its own lifestyles, a combination of habits, behavioral perceptions and historical benchmarks. For example, how many of us use pen and paper to write long letters? How many of us realize how much of a cultural shift is represented by Rosie the Riveter, the icon representing a shift of women in the workforce from 12 million to 20 million by 1944. Walk through the years with Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Molly Bee, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Nat King Cole, Peter, Paul and Mary, ABBA and Taylor Swift; how many of us have a microwave? How many years did it take to shift from calf-length skirts to black stretch pants?

And within just one generation, who stills types their letters on a typewriter? In fact, who still writes letters (200 words) to family members? Facebook takes care of letters today. Everything, every person from childhood to today is linked to you and vice versa. Want to know what’s happening with Uncle John? Facebook has it all. Just push a button and say, “Handle it”.

There is no avoidance of the fact that in the four most recent generations, each generation is living in a different world. Not just the normal generational shift that occurs as we age but so different that if, indeed, the world were a stage, a different show would be showing for each generation.

From the Silent Generation (1928-1945) to Generation Z (1997-2010), the entire planet has moved from an atmosphere of ‘war makes power’ where the west won control as the world’s political, social and scientific leaders, to an atmosphere of a planet falling short of resources, disruptive climate and causing economic stress to the point that it is a common opinion to stop raising beef because of its cost both to producers and to the environment.

Industrially, in just 75 years technology has moved human behavior to an unknown experience – promoting television in the 1940s to smartphones today. A central force that modifies human behavior is the Internet – a science which remains unbridled today and already evidences different behavioral values in human society.;

Metaphorically, we live on a world with no compass, no directional indicators, no rationality. We are encased in a fog. We have boarded a carnival ride about which we know nothing. Times are changing like they never have in living history.

Our emergency pack should include the basics: community participation; family allegiance and support; eliminate debt by living more frugally; be aware of resource management (less CO2 and avoiding plastic are big issues now); avoid depending on disruptive leaders who promise quick solutions – there are no quick solutions. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is broke and the climate is becoming more boisterous – have an alternative planned.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Handle it, handle it

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Does the reader remember the TV show Carter Country (aired in the 1970s)? One of the characters was a chubby character named Mayor Burnside who managed all his duties by saying “Handle it, handle it” . Well, it turns out that in the very near future, we all will handle life like Mayor Burnside.

Axios published an article today that describes how, in the very near future, we will take care of life’s decisions and personal communications simply by saying to our computer, “Handle it”. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The big picture: As AI agents improve and multiply, bots representing individuals will interact with bots representing companies, and human use of the open web will continue to decline.

  • My bot will talk to your bot — but you and I will probably talk a lot less. . . .

Take one of the most basic things we do today — buying stuff online.

  • We’re used to a world in which you click around, check products and prices from different vendors — maybe with help from a comparison service or website. While prices can fluctuate and algorithms sometimes play a role, as on Amazon or Uber, the purchase decision remains firmly in human hands.
  • But AI-driven e-commerce means that vendors are going to start rapidly changing their prices based on your identity and other variables — not, just say, once a day but by the microsecond, and differently for each customer.
  • Ransomware gangs are already deploying chatbots to negotiate with their victims, as Axios has reported.
  • Next up: Victims of ransomware attacks will let AI agents handle their response to the attacks — leaving all the people involved free to relax on the beach, assuming there’s any money left in their bank accounts.
  • To see the easy-to-read article, here is the link:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-ai-plus-051cd187-147a-4a85-b588-008f8c056657.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslogin&stream=top

Markets like Walmart, Amazon and surprisingly, small markets on eBay, already are constructing buy-sell software that does not require direct authorization from you, the buyer. One service like this that the reader may be familiar with is automated purchase which is authorized by the reader once then is taken care of by computers. Another service already on its way to not bothering the reader unnecessarily is medical tests and appointments which often will appear automatically in your patient portal.

Beyond the scope of the article, alter ego Guru says this form of automation is bound to lead to corporatism, where, instead of capitalism and socialism, ‘governments’ also will be run in a similar fashion. Politicians will simply say, “Handle it, handle it” and corporate, human-independent computers will make policy decisions. Note that computers will be owned by corporations.

Great article!

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

Ode to Nature

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Mariner is pleased that in addition to his three alter egos, he has a wife who is the world’s best poet but doesn’t make any money because she refuses to publish her excellent works. Nevertheless, she is willing to share with mariner’s audience:

A Poem for Dr. Poulter

Dr. Poulter taught botany my freshman year of college

I went to class three days a week,

I paid attention, took notes

Passed tests

And now I can remember zylem and phloem

and little else.

I am not a scientist as I walk through these woods

I can not name the trees or wildflowers

But I do not think he failed in his teaching.

I remember that he talked about the trees

He noticed on his walk across campus,

I remember his delight in plants, in learning,

And in teaching.

I think he would be pleased that I remember him

When I walk in the woods

Drinking in the beauty of the morning,

Surrounded by green leaves

Yearning toward the sun

Full of zylem and phloem

Whatever that is.

 

MKM  8-19-2025

A legitimate view of the future with AI

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It is true that the planet is in a stage of re-creation. And, to use a metaphor, you can’t drive a car the way you drive a horse. How do you drive AI?

In mariner’s most urgent voice, he recommends to readers that they watch the PBS program “Firing Line” with host Margaret Hoover for August 15, 2025. It is about how to drive AI. The program “Firing Line” is on mariner’s watch list; it examines very important issues from many sectors of politics, culture, business, etc. The interviews minimize prejudice, are simple and comprehensible. Readers should consider this program as their weekly social studies class and as a way to get a driver’s license for the new world.

The recommended broadcast interviews Dr. Fei Fei Li from Stanford University where she created the ‘Stanford Institute for Human Centric AI’ – and has received a Lifetime Achievements award.

Watch it!

Again, PBS, Firing Line, August 15, 2025.

Available on many streaming channels and https://www.pbs.org/show/firing-line/

Ancient Mariner

The lost sheep of Christianity

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As many know, Christianity is having a tough time in the new century. 80% of the problem began when Alexander made Christianity a function of government during his reign as Emperor of Rome. This political relationship was common back then and can trace its political roots back to the Sumerians long before Jesus was born.

The faith that Jesus promoted had nothing to do with politics, economics or power. His faith was based on a two-way relationship between a universal power driven by love and an individual practicing the ramifications of that power. Jesus prophesied at a time when Roman domination had destroyed the local economy and stripped individuals of any inalienable rights. Jesus was offering salvation (aka survival) through sharing not only of food and physical needs but also through a belief that compassion was the secret to well being under any circumstance.

To prevent excessive sermonizing, only one guideline will be reviewed: the second great commandment: You will do to others as you would have them do to you. Pure compassion! Don’t need church buildings or billionaire preachers; don’t need budgets local or regional. Just compassion.

A few days ago, a stranger saw mariner trying to lift a heavy box. He stopped his car and came to help mariner. The box was quite heavy but the stranger took on the box by himself – despite wearing a knee brace on both knees. He carried the box all the way to the front door. It was a Christian act, that is, it was compassionate. He considered mariner’s plight more important than continuing to drive down the street.

Mariner doesn’t know if the stranger goes to church or not. It doesn’t matter. For the moment, he was a Christian. Reader’s home assignment: Luke 10:25-37.

It is too bad that churchgoers have lost the meaning of faith by making buildings more important than compassion, by making allegiance more important than giving. The compassionate gesture experienced the other day sustained physical and spiritual survival for both participants.

Faith without compassion is being a lost sheep.

Ancient Mariner

Dog et al

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Another indoor today because as much as two inches of rain is due. Out his front window, mariner saw a man walking his dog on a leash down the street. For those who own dogs, it is a large, life-affecting experience. Mariner has sympathy for dogs that live in residential areas – most never get a chance to run and smell and explore like their ancestors and most never meet another dog to talk dog talk and to run and play together.

Mariner and his family have been fortunate over the years to live in rural areas. The family’s dogs were never on a leash except to go to the vet’s office. One of our dogs was so astute that mariner and the dog could go shopping together; the dog heeled without ever being taught to heel. More astounding, the dog sat and waited patiently at the door of stores mariner went into. Mariner was more afraid of the dog being stolen than running off.

Mariner’s experience with all the dogs his family has owned is, if you can take them to a wooded area in a park or on the back side of a farm that is several acres in size, the dog will run off and explore but always keep you within a range. Mariner would play hide and seek with his dog by hiding behind a large tree or shed while the dog was roaming about. Within only a minute or two, the dog began looking for mariner by using a talented smelling nose to find him.

Speculating about the complexity and depth of the dog’s thinking, mariner came to realize that dogs have a genetically embedded awareness of how to be a member of a pack. This natural process gets trampled on by fences, cages, gates, street traffic, insecure humans and leashes. But a dog easily adapts to a human ‘pack’ and tries to behave in an accepted way except that the dog is confronted by all these human contrivances – and perhaps many non-pack behaviors by family members.

It occurred to mariner that it may be a good thing for everyone to have a pet or two around, especially have mammals. Every creature, even giraffes, have to know instinctively how to get along with Mother Nature. Homos have forgotten Mother Nature and run amok like a Mexican drug gang. Perhaps we could learn something good from our fellow non humans.

Ancient Mariner

Kiss me, Joaquin

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Axios reported today on a recreation of Joaquin Oliver (school murder victim) as a fully functioning deepfake. His father has recreated his son’s likeness, behavior and voice as a tool to advocate against gun violence. See:

/https://www.axios.com/local/miami/2025/08/06/ai-joaquin-oliver-parkland-school-shooting?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

 

Mariner doesn’t think this is what Jesus intended when he spoke of eternal life. Mariner applauds the aggressive attack on gun legislation but he is even more concerned that Matrix awaits us in the future. Today, Homos talk to an electronic fantasy called Alexa. Just think what dating sites can do with this technology in the future. Be sure your will has a notice to remove your electronic self from the dating service or, if your deepfake is interviewing other deepfakes, let Mark Zuckerberg know so they can date in his AI deepfake town.

Run, Neo, get out while you can.

Ancient Mariner

 

Have a moment?

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If you plan to have a birthday party, would you have it in a yard or a yard?

Confused? One or the other means a measurement; the other means a contained area.

What’s the same about these words? rain, rein, reign, bane, sane, lane, lain, pain, cane, Seine, train, stain, feign, drain, crane, Jane, Spain?

It occurs to mariner that the human body has a limited number of physical noises it can make. On the other hand, the human is seriously verbose. Every other blooded creature and many insects have a language – even the elephant, the whale and the mouse but they are far more efficient.

Imagine you are a sheep at a big party of all the species. Sheep would talk to ANYBODY rather than engage a human. My God! On and on. Sheep can say all it needs to say in a half dozen tones.

A Jupiter scientist, standing on Jupiter, would observe humans and conclude a very large part of their genome is dedicated to obsessive/compulsive behavior. Further, it is excessive, that is, if it can be done, do it – do it bigger!

So it is with cars, rocket ships, oil consumption, computers, houses, travel, environment, entertainment and, yes, language. Humans are obsessed with making noises – even to Alexa. Will computers, like the sheep, not allow this verbosity to continue? Ever heard of an idiolect?

Ancient Mariner

 

Deming

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Mariner has pulled another book from his library to review while multiple inches of rain continue to fall. It is the book that set mariner’s style of management during his career. Adam Smith is credited for defining free market capitalism and John Maynard Keynes rewrote competitive economics to get the US out of the Great Depression but Deming changed the workplace.

“W. Edwards Deming was assigned to rejuvenate Japan, a nation totally destroyed in the world’s first nuclear war. W. Edwards Deming played a significant role in Japan’s post-WWII economic resurgence, which led to widespread adoption of his philosophy in the U.S. during the later years of his life. His basic message was that focusing on quality would decrease cost and increase both productivity and market share. However, he argued that problems with quality were usually management’s fault rather than that of the workers on the floor. Management needed to transform itself and its practices into a quality-oriented enterprise. Quality should not be entrusted to a quality control department, but rather to a collaborative effort involving management, supervision, purchasing, and production workers. Quality inspections should be eliminated in favor of building quality into the product during the manufacturing process.” [Engineering and Science Hall of Fame]

Especially during the mid-century wars, production was very much a hierarchical process. This was because speed was of the essence; decisions were made quickly because wars and all of society affected by wars had to be supplied worldwide.  Management structures within corporations were strictly top down and subordinates had little to do with the decision-making. Deming’s reputation was highly regarded; his approach slowly crept into American production theory.

What made Deming’s life experience different from typical economic philosophers was that he not only had to build a new economy for Japan but a new nation as well. His theories of management have been flavored with Japan’s hardship after the war. As the Hall of Fame suggested, Deming’s approach was to know as much as possible about the product, assign responsibility throughout the organization, all with the purpose of superior quality in the marketplace.

At mariner’s level of employment, this meant ‘team management’. First, unusual for the time, was to provide a document which defined goals, objectives and tasks – all based on product performance and resource management. These documents could be large and often detailed. When mariner had the contract with Taiwan to build a new computer system, the first month was spent in the US with Taiwanese and US planners laying out the goals and processes of the project.

As the project progressed, decisions were made by teams assigned to a set of tasks. Each team had a dutch uncle advisor who was a specialist, hired by mariner and representatives from Taiwan. The important aspect was to make sure the team knew it had the responsibility to deliver the goals laid out in the planning documents. Each employee had an assigned task to deliver and participated in team coordination.

Even today, if he had a significant goal to achieve, he would use the ‘team method’.

Books are telomeres.

Ancient Mariner