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skipper wrote a new post, Cleaning the archives 5 years, 1 month ago
Mariner still is culling through old documents, deleting many and moving others, long lost, to the appropriate folder. The following is an old item written by Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. Mariner wonders […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Repurposed Churches 5 years, 1 month ago
The following article was in a November 2018 copy of The Atlantic magazine. Mariner thought it may be an interesting read. In the Methodist denomination if a church closes, church buildings and property revert to […]
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Thanks or no thanks to the pandemic, this is becoming more relevant all the time. But the pandemic also complicates things because you can’t use the available space to bring people together. Our church fellowship hall has been repurposed as a classroom during the covid crisis, which might lead to creative thinking about other uses for that space when the school district doesn’t need it anymore.
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skipper wrote a new post, As the World Turns 5 years, 1 month ago
One of the characteristics of life today is that there is a sense among people around the world that something just isn’t right. The global nature of this uneasiness makes it difficult for each citizen to i […]
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The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Meanwhile the population grows and the phosphate rock dwindles. Small miracles: forget the chemical warfare and thank God for Fritz Haber and his process. Nuclear fission, glorious pinnacle of immediately-post-colonial Science that it may be, cost us a lot more and gave us a lot less.
Speaking of nuclear weapons, the major drawdown of U.S. and Soviet/Russian stockpiles (and the major financial strain facing both of us, somehow) has resulted in a serious deficiency of the versatile, critically-important isotopes tritium and helium-3 (only obtainable by the decay of tritium, or mining the surface of the damned moon, which is apparently even more expensive than waiting for reactor-bred tritium to decay.) That the global fleet of CANDU reactors is approaching end-of-life doesn’t help the situation one bit. An argument for rearmament? Of course not, but without that spur it seems the U.S. has little interest in continuing investment in the H3/He3 supply chain. Which is too bad, because we’re the only source the Western world has for that stuff.
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skipper wrote a new post, Life as a Supernumerary 5 years, 1 month ago
Is the reader familiar with the word ‘supernumerary’? Mariner first read the word in his college days reading about ancient Japanese culture instead of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In ancient Japanese cultu […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Meanwhile 5 years, 1 month ago
Because of the anthropological tumult in today’s world, mariner hasn’t visited the world of the sciences for a while. Here are a few updates:
֎ Invest in European real estate now before the rush
In the […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Do you remember that time when . . . 5 years, 2 months ago
There is an advertisement on television at the moment that shows a group of young people doing the limbo at night under the colored lights of a hamburger shack. Seeing this caught mariner’s full attention. He h […]
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skipper wrote a new post, The long and short of it 5 years, 2 months ago
This one is long: The first ‘human’ to evolve was Homo habilis who appeared 2.4 million years ago and survived for about 1 million years. A similar neighbor who came along about the same time was H. rud […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It IS our Nation 5 years, 2 months ago
It was a long, relaxing day as the nation witnessed the transition from King Donald to President Biden. One sensed that a great sigh of relief blew across the United States; even the hardened press corps seemed to […]
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skipper wrote a new post, January 6 5 years, 2 months ago
The attack on the US Capitol was violent; it consumed news organizations, social media, professional politics, corporate behavior and fringe organizations primarily associated with white supremacy. Five people […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It isn’t what goes around, it’s what has always been 5 years, 2 months ago
The disarray, some may say discontent, that the United States suffers today has been around for a while. Mariner has said that the damage to the American Dream began with the Reagan administration when regulations […]
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This is an excellent overview of what has contributed to the many problems that we have today. Not just the problem of angry mobs attacking the Capitol, but the more silent and insidious problems of jobs, housing, racial and class inequality, lack of universal health insurance, the cost of education–all the things that working people have carried on their backs for the past 40 years and more. I like this reasoned and reasonable approach. Ancient Mariner for Congress, 2022!
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skipper wrote a new post, Homo sapiens has become obsolete 5 years, 2 months ago
Regular readers are familiar with the skepticism of alter ego Amos. In this new century, one beginning with a multitude of new and unchartered worries for mankind, Amos feels increasing depression as his fellow […]
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skipper wrote a new post, New horizons in change 5 years, 2 months ago
The following two paragraphs are from World Review, an online magazine sponsored by New Statesman, a British publishing Company. It makes the case that conservative political forces around the world are drifting […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It’s a New World 5 years, 2 months ago
While the western world has survived the beginning of the twenty-first century more or less intact, getting organized for the rest of the century makes it seem as if the destruction of the Middle East is more […]
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skipper wrote a new post, What do You Believe? 5 years, 2 months ago
That is not an easy question to answer today. There are no clear hints about what is absolute or true or real. It used to be easier way back in the very old days. For example, if you lived 75,000 years ago, the […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Tiny Tidbits 5 years, 2 months ago
֎ When oldtimers use the stairs, keep a hand floating along the bannister in case that trick knee jumps out or a slipper catches the stair. It is important, though, to use the legs to carry ALL the effort of […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It’s that easy time of night 5 years, 3 months ago
The title is a quote from long, long ago when the local television station opened its late night movie show. For many viewers it was a successful ploy to sit back, relax, put the day behind them and get comfy – b […]
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skipper wrote a new post, Where is the Road? 5 years, 3 months ago
It was Robert Frost who wrote the familiar poem about two roads diverging in a yellow wood and at the end of the poem the author is pleased to have taken the road less traveled. Or perhaps Yogi Berra’s version, “ […]
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skipper wrote a new post, We are slow Learners 5 years, 3 months ago
Most everyone (including mariner) points at the pandemic as an expediter, an accelerator of cultural change. Mariner checked out other cultural shifts that have occurred in history; it turns out big-time change […]
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Can’t have a middle class without the printing press. Or, most likely, a Protestant reformation. It takes a while for a disruptive technology’s effects to be felt in a society. Perhaps less so in a late-stage capitalist society, but still, I wonder what the real shakeout of global real-time communication will look like. Computers only really became widespread in the 1970s; sixty years after Gutenberg first pressed parchment Martin Luther’s theses were still a generation away, Shakespeare three.
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Profound insight about the middle class. Skipper ponders whether today’s form of nationalism will even be around.
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skipper wrote a new post, A Tall, Tall Order for Joe 5 years, 3 months ago
Politico was nice enough to put some effort into analyzing the major issues that will confront Joe Biden whether he wants to deal with them or not. Mariner copied them into this post to give readers a quick […]
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skipper wrote a new post, It’s Time 5 years, 3 months ago
Regular readers are aware of mariner’s belief that, generally, changes in society reach a moment of significant pressure to change every sixty years. The basic pattern that encourages the sixty year cycle is the g […]
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