Author Archives: skipper

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

 

 

Monomyth

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Readers want a clearer definition of where the monomyth was in the Native American experience cited by Chief Seattle. The monomyth was the completely accepted reality that all existence was anthropomorphically aware of the rest of existence. The river was aware that the Indians were there; the rocks and beaches were cognizant of reality the same way a person would be. This myth provided religious morality, social structure and an understanding of how the Universe works. The monomyth needed no words or drawn lines because it was a totally encompassing reality.

Part of the reason that the Native Indian monomyth existed was its origin very early in history at a time when the sciences did not exist nor were required on the American Plains. By the time the sciences and the industrial revolution came along, the Western cultures were based on a monomyth that Homos were of a different ilk that was superior to the rest of the planet and the only creature capable of reason and imagination.

Be careful, the rivers, mountains, animals and trees may convince the Solar System to send the ICE unit . . .

Ancient Mariner

Rummaging for good thoughts

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Living with Nosey Mole for such a long time and sacrificing television news, and having a disinterest in social events, even the tunnels have their own negative shadows. To pass his time, he has revisited his library (remember books are telomeres; February 16 2025 post). His interests have turned to the influential subjects of his earlier years – most often philosophy, sociology and ancient political history.

He pulled off the shelf a DVD of Joseph Campbell’s famous interviews with Bill Moyers in 1988 (PBS). Joe Campbell was the foremost mythologist of his time. Don’t discredit the term because of street usage. Joe was a renown college professor of religion and mythology at Sarah Lawrence College and credited with identifying the ‘monomyth’. He is the writer who made the story of Jason’s pursuit of the Golden Fleece quite popular as “The Arc of the Hero” – a generalized description that suggests everyone marches in tune with a monomyth.

An outstanding letter by Native American Chief Seattle clearly represents the fact that we live within the limits of a myth, that is, a myth which by definition cannot have words; that is the theological part. See if you can identify the monomyth that allowed Native American civilization to survive for ten thousand years – until Europeans arrived living under a different monomyth.

Chief Seattle’s Letter
“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

• • • •

Mariner, for one, is speechless.

Ancient Mariner

It’s always somethin’

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Nature enthusiasts believed that by living off the grid and using homemade wells rather than using commercially dammed water and river-sourced urban irrigation systems, they were helping Mother Earth. No luck – Mother is an ODSC [see July 14 post]. It turns out Mother wants to keep in place all her water anywhere it is placed, thank you.

Here is a clip from Popular Mechanics:

“Pumping groundwater appears to have a greater consequence than ever previously thought. But now—thanks to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters—we can see that, in less than two decades, Earth has tilted 31.5 inches as a result of pumping groundwater. This equates to .24 inches of sea level rise.”

The article went on to say that loss of groundwater also affects orbit. When the dinosaurs became too much to handle, she called the Solar System’s ICE unit which dropped a meteorite on them. This time, it seems, Mother is using her own biosphere to compensate for a 123% growth in human population between 1800 and 1938.

Today mariner had a personal experience with Mother Nature and her water. His basement was filled with six inches of water because his town’s sewer system couldn’t handle 4+ inches of rain in one night. He always has wanted a pond but not all the way around the house! Now the ol’ one-two punch: the next several days are sunny and in the nineties!

No matter how we Homos squirm around the issue, it won’t go away. There are far too many Homos for Mother Nature’s liking.

Ancient Mariner

 

The new party

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It’s called the ‘Democratic Party’. This is the second week in a row that news sources have focused on low rumblings about the 2028 presidential election. Early possibles include Rahm Emanuel (Mayor-Chi), Pete Buttigieg (Biden Trans Sec), Andy Beshear, (Gov-Ky), Ro Khanna (Rep-Ca) and Gavin Newsom (Gov-Ca). No doubt that many more will join the fray.

An emerging insight is that it is no longer possible to win a presidential election by appearing on MSNBC and CBS. Buttigieg, for example, appeared on ‘The Breakfast Club’ and a sports podcast. It is suggested that candidates also appear on the likes of FOX and The Joe Rogan Experience as well as participating in a broader spectrum of events like YouTube and even Facebook – the object being that the democratic candidates will have to cull a victory from disgruntled republicans, typically not-interested no-voters and skeptical democrats.

On the Trumper’s side, two articles appeared in science journals suggesting he is in a growing stage of dementia tied to his own perceptions of reality. This may be the reason so many of his statements reflect the circumstances of his first campaign. Don isn’t eligible to run again according to the Constitution but then, who follows the Constitution? Watch Texas – they’re trying to ignore it.

So the game is on. Will the democratic party be able to introduce themselves to a new electorate and carry the 2028 election? Watch the 2026 returns to see if anything is working.

Of course, another option is an AI robot candidate.

Ancient Mariner