Of Tomatoes and Immigration

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֎It was, if you can believe it, only 11 million years ago that tomatoes split away from peppers, evolutionarily speaking. But now, thanks to gene editing technology, scientists may be able to activate genes already lying dormant in tomatoes to, yes, make tomatoes spicy again. [Gizmodo]

The seed catalogues must be drooling over the opportunity for yet another new tomato variety.

֎Last night between tennis matches, mariner tuned to The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC). Lawrence had Ezra Klein as a guest. Ezra provided an excellent interpretation of Donald which mariner thought was dead on. It is worth a check with the video collection at https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word

֎In these times of overwhelming change, reason and necessity can be worlds apart. Both are real motivations and both are rational responses but in times of significant upheaval their solutions for managing change sprint away from each other. The immigration issue is a good example.

The majority of US citizens are pragmatic, dollar-conscious, and feel shortchanged by their changing culture. Their opinions reflect their concern for their immediate wellbeing and are, of necessity, urgent in nature. Hence, racism increases, identity politics emerges and everything NIMBY is the rule of the day. This is a valid response.

Some citizens are preoccupied with the long view, using reason rather than necessity to establish values. They ask questions like, “What effect does immigration have on the economy and GDP?” or, “Will additional people create overcrowding issues?” or, “What does the Constitution say about immigration?” One question that may be asked is based on the age of the US population. The US, along with Germany, France, China and Japan among others, has a rapidly aging population. Economists suggest that a few decades out there won’t be a large enough labor force to care for all the old people and further, GDP will drop precariously. This line of reasoning suggests that immigration is a good thing and will slow the aging curve.

If this is not enough to chew on, some may involve the effect of artificial intelligence (AI) on the work force and question whether there will be enough jobs to accommodate a new influx of immigrants, thereby shifting the core issue to “What do we do with all the old people?”

In any case, one can see that reason and necessity truly are worlds apart in their responses to extensive change.

Ancient Mariner

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About Pass it Forward

֎In Delano, Minnesota, a black family’s home was broken into in March 2017 and a warning was spray-painted on the walls: “Get out.” The vandals left a note, too: “Next time it’s going to be fire.”

֎In Athens, Tennessee, the white mother of young biracial children alleged that she’d been harassed verbally by a neighbor for a year.

֎In Columbus, Ohio, a man went to police because someone had been ringing his doorbell or banging on his garage 25 to 30 times a night, almost every night. When the man went outside, the suspect would call him racial slurs from the darkness. The man and his family are the only black residents of their cul-de-sac.

֎In Kansas City, Missouri, an African-American man went to police because his neighbor had harassed him for three years. The suspect allegedly stood in his driveway taking pictures of his home and waved a Confederate flag. The man who filed the complaint wound up moving, but he told police he was worried because he’d seen the man outside his new home.

֎In Oxford Township, Michigan, a couple — a white woman and a black man — went to police because they said they couldn’t leave the house without getting harassed by their neighbor, who called them racial slurs. When police gave the neighbor a citation for disorderly conduct, she ripped it up in front of the officer. She was subsequently arrested for disorderly conduct

֎And in Spokane, Washington, there are records on two cases of possible neo-Nazis harassing their black neighbors. In one case, the neighbors reported that a man with a swastika on his hand called them racial slurs. He allegedly threw a brick at a woman, calling her a slur.

֎In another case, a black man said his white supremacist neighbor and another man assaulted him in his garage while using racial slurs and threatened him with a gun.

֎In Grapevine, Texas, Dante Petty was harassed by his white neighbor, Glenn Halfin, for over a year after he moved in. The harassment became so persistent that he installed surveillance cameras outside his home and a police officer was stationed outside for over a month. The breaking point occurred when his neighbor left black baby dolls with nooses around their necks hung outside his apartment. [CityLab search engine]

– – – –

The Blog of the Ancient Mariner does not solicit donations. It solicits action. Make a point of passing a good gesture to another – without judgment, without prejudice, without reward. The United States is in serious disarray. If Rodney King can see the solution, why can’t we all?

Ancient Mariner

 

About the Shutdown

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Mariner had a group meeting with his three alter egos. It seems the group has serious concerns about the shutdown. The US is very much in the roiling currents of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations – indeed a plateful. The shutdown is larger than life, larger than myopic news that broadcasters describe, and very much a pivot point in US history.

Not wanting to eat the whole pie at once, mariner has a few observations that may be more important than the daily hodgepodge may imply.

Mariner recommends that readers take some time to study the situation in Egypt. The conflict is between a Trumpian dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the majority Islamic citizenry in Egypt. There are fewer players than in the US but the manner of governance under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is very much dictatorial and he has imprisoned, under the term ‘terrorists,’ all citizens who oppose his reign. Only 47 percent of Egyptians voted in 2018 (same as US in 2016); Abdel Fattah el-Sisi garnered over 90 percent of the vote (US did not mess with ballot boxes; it used the Electoral College). It should be noted that Abdel has imprisoned over 60,000 citizen ‘terrorists.’ Type Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in your search engine for further awareness.

There are many parallels between Egypt and the US (typically, abolishing free press, the right to due process, justice by law, and democratic governance). Granted, the US is more mannerly only because for 241 years it has been a Federal Republic with three established branches of government and relatively independent state governments. Egyptian governance has suffered the disruption of Middle Eastern politics, religious rebellion and recent civil war. Nevertheless, in terms of citizen abuse, manipulation of ‘justice’ in governance, and attempts to impose the authority of a tenth century king, Egypt is on the same path as the US. Given the civil constraints of US history, one can respell Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as Donald Trump.

True, mariner may have overstated some similarities but the mechanics of change – particularly under the influence of a leader who would be king – are quite similar. Comparable is the citizen rebellion in Egypt versus the rebellion against Donald, a castrated Senate, and a 35 percent minority of citizens (AKA the ‘base’). As for Senate neutering, Senator McConnell holds the knife. While Abdel imprisoned 60,000 citizens, Donald has put 800,000 government employees under house arrest and garnered their income; while Abdel attacks mosques, Donald attacks nonwhites, immigrants, green card children, and ignores critical support needed for US citizens in Puerto Rico after a destructive hurricane. There are several more comparisons on the personal level, all dealing with corrupt financial dealings, international cronyism and deliberate showboating. We can only hope that the new Congress, the State Attorneys General and Robert Mueller will slow the rotting of our democratic process.

The shutdown is an act of war. Like Abdel, independent power is used to disrupt normal governance. It is an act that Donald must not win. This is a terrible position for mariner to take, given the imprisonment of 800,000 fellow citizens, but the nation’s democratic process and its citizen rights to representation are at stake. Lest prejudice sway one’s commitment to Congressional resistance, Congress, sans McConnell, is willing to pass six budget bills that will fund all government functions except the TSA and related security/immigration functions. Donald knows that if the government reopens generally, his strong-arm position will be diminished. Think of a New York mob enforcing protection from threatened abuse on local businesses.

A few posts ago, mariner suggested that if Donald were not impeached or otherwise removed from office, the new Congress would get little done because Donald and McConnell can control unwanted legislation. Mariner and his fellow citizens don’t need Donald’s disruption during times of change on many fronts including economy, governance, industry, civil rights, Constitutional rights, technology, society norms, religious rights, and international relations.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Power Corrupts

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The last post, “The mice warned us,” dealt with the self-destructive nature of overcrowding. Calhoun’s mice experiments showed that unity broke down into have and have not classes, that violence erupted in self-destructive ways, and social mores disappeared. Eventually the physiology of procreation completely failed. Violence was common; illness and flagrant disregard for the wellbeing of other mice became universal. Across several experiments, the population fell to an average of 116 mice before beginning to grow again.

– – – –

Just to get the reference out of the way, it was John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton who, in 1887, said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

This post deals with an imbalance in power. “The Stanford Prison Experiment” (SPE) was a 1971 social psychology experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. It was conducted at Stanford University between August 14–20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo using college students. In the study, volunteers were randomly assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a mock prison, with Zimbardo himself serving as the superintendent. Several “prisoners” left mid-experiment, and the whole experiment was abandoned after six days. Early reports on experimental results claimed that students quickly embraced their assigned roles, with some guards enforcing authoritarian measures and ultimately subjecting some prisoners to psychological torture, while many prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, by the officers’ request, actively harassed other prisoners who tried to stop it.” [Wikipedia][1]

This experiment has been challenged because of questionable methodologies and unwarranted suggestions to participants by Zimbardo. In fact, other similar experiments with more disciplined methodologies suggest that the breakdown of social roleplay was caused by the manner in which Zimbardo exercised dictatorial control over participants, whether guards or prisoners. It was Zimbardo himself who proved Lord Acton’s quote.

In a similar experiment in England, it was found that tyranny (cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control) can only arise when groups become dissatisfied with their circumstances. Organized social structure that is fair and reinforcing will not let tyranny take form. In other words, fragmentation of society (we call it identity politics) will permit extreme reactions to occur in an effort to rebalance group ethos. Mariner found the English study highly relevant to the history of democracy in the US and those troublesome times when privileged groups took advantage (as in Calhoun’s mice studies) or when there was dissatisfaction on a broad scale (one example is the Vietnam War along with inflation). The conservative voters Reagan met that year became the core of his support in the decades ahead. They embraced Reagan not just for his moving pro-America rhetoric, but also for his anti-tax, small government policies and his strong stance against communism and the Soviet Union. Today, the issue again is economic imbalance as old style capitalism begins to fail in an international economy.

Forty years later, the US President seeks to restore Reagan’s policies by tyrannical behavior and disregard for a fair and reinforcing society.

Ancient Mariner

[1] For the 2015 film, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanford_Prison_Experiment_(film)

The mice warned us

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The early pioneers in psychology, the standard list around the western world is Pavlov, Skinner, Jung, Maslow, Erickson, Rogers, Freud, and Piaget, focused on an individual’s response to reality. These folks helped us understand the physiology of the human brain and mind; they provided insight into the human response to love, fear, success, failure and a myriad other emotional behaviors. It wasn’t until the Second World War and after that psychology partnered with sociology and history to investigate group behavior. Similarly, management theory and economics incorporated psychology and sociology to uncover new approaches to management; one thinks of Deming, Drucker, Chandler and Aldrich among others.

An interesting observation is that the study of group behavior began about a decade before differences in individual behavior versus group behavior began to be documented in contemporary terms. Two world famous experiments were conducted that have become common knowledge. The first was one of a series of studies of mice by John B. Calhoun in 1972; the second was a college experiment performed at Stanford University in 1971 covered in the next post.

CALHOUN’S MICE

The mouse study was performed to answer the question, ‘what happens when overcrowding occurs?’ (The human brain is optimized for a social group of about 150-200 people). Calhoun was careful to eliminate the lack of resources as an influence and fed his mice with an endless supply of food, water and nutrition. Calhoun provided a mouse utopia with apartments and different levels called Universe 25; the initial number of mice was 8. The landings of the pilgrims and the first migration to the Middle East from the Rift Valley in Africa come to mind.

Brackets [] in the quoted material below are added by mariner.

“At the peak population [2,200 by day 560], most mice spent every living second in the company of hundreds of other mice. They gathered in the main squares, waiting to be fed and occasionally attacking each other. [Nations live this way now on every continent except Australia and Antarctica] Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies. They’d move half their litter away from danger and forget the rest. [Forced migration] Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it. [Closely approximates behavior in estranged communities and certain starving populations in Africa; mice had no chemical alternatives or voluntary abortions]

The few secluded spaces [owned territories] housed a population Calhoun called, “the beautiful ones.” [wealthy class] Generally guarded by one male, the females—and few males—inside the space didn’t breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. When the population started declining the beautiful ones were spared from violence and death, but had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.” [Comparatively, humans in their teens and twenties today have significantly less sex than their elders at the same age] [Add to that the lessening need to socialize with other humans directly because of the smartphone, TV and other electronics]”

A notable side effect as the population approached its maximum was that mice that still had a bit of territory chased other male mice into specific corners at the opposite end of the cage. Mariner wonders whether suppressed groups in Africa and other nonproductive locations are simply ignored because there is no forced limit of territory at this time. Oh to live in Silicon Valley….

Now, in 2015, interpretations of Calhoun’s work have changed. Esther Inglis-Arkell (UCSF) explains that the habitats he created weren’t really overcrowded, but that aggressive mice enforced territorial prerogative to keep the beautiful ones isolated. She writes, “Instead of a population problem, one could argue that Universe 25 had a fair distribution problem.

“In 1972, with the baby boomers coming of age in an ever-more-crowded world and reports of riots in the cities, Universe 25 looked like a Malthusian nightmare. It [collapse of society] even acquired its own catchy name, “The Behavioral Sink.” If starvation didn’t kill everyone, people would destroy themselves. The best option was to flee to the country or the suburbs, where people had space and life was peaceful and natural.

“The fact remains that it [Universe 25] had a problem, and one that eventually led to its destruction. If this behavior is shared by both mice and humans, can we escape Universe 25’s fate?” [Inglis-Arkell]

Mariner leaves the door open for readers to have further speculation about group behavior in unbalanced societies.

Next post, the effect of power.

Ancient Mariner

Newsy

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Mariner often is chastised for persistent negativism. It’s not his fault; it’s Amos’s fault. Today, however, mariner makes an effort to report good news. It is about Newsy broadcasts on 283 DISH.

Regular readers may recall that mariner stopped watching CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, MSNBC and CNN last fall. He collected his news from online sites, reputable magazines, newspapers and subject-specific websites for health, science, etc. He watched only two TV broadcasts: PBS News Hour and MSNBC Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams.

All the big, showy news broadcasts are flawed. Every one of them, whether soft-toned or sharp advocacy, reports very little news; they are totally preoccupied with gossip, speculation, accusation and market share. Donald is not the be all and end all of the world’s newsworthiness – but he plays to the press, feeding them easy candy and the broadcasters are addicted. Mariner read an item that said the ‘cable news’ stations contributed to increased tribalism and baiting the opposite political parties.

Mariner must prepare the reader for watching Newsy. We are accustomed to news broadcasts being ritzy with expensive studios, all broadcasters and pundits are Type A personalities with expensive wardrobes, coifed hair and even a picture that fills the entire TV screen. Newsy doesn’t fill the screen. Newsy doesn’t have high voltage lights and bright colors. Broadcasters are dressed in normal casual clothes. Broadcasters are young and tell the news with no fanfare or hype.

But wow! Mariner’s favorite part is how news headlines are presented. Because the news and only the news is given, each news item lasts an average of about 30 seconds. A friendly tone says it’s time to move to the next news item. This rapid fire presentation permits Newsy to cover the world’s headline news, domestic news, sports and throw in an occasional 15 minute examination of an interesting subject.

Most important, Newsy is apolitical; Newsy presents news that has no spin but still the viewer understands what truly is important about the news item. There is an air of PBS, Frontline and Nova but these people are young; they are serious; they are professional; they are not in show business.

Get your news from Newsy.

Ancient Mariner

 

Happy New Year

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A new year is upon us. Mariner wishes the best for mankind and especially for his readers. Today, his town has a bright winter Sun; it is cold and quiet outside. For a moment one can sense fulfillment and satisfaction for another year passed. For a moment. Unfortunately, this is not Norman Rockwell’s world; it is not Mickey Rooney’s world or Judy Garland’s or even George Herbert Walker Bush’s world. It is our world. It’s a failing world everywhere. Something is wrong with how the planet’s humans are doing things. Consider a few realities:

Out of 195 nations that exist today, only ten are not engaged in war. Only Botswana, Chile, Costa Rica, Japan, Mauritius, Panama, Qatar, Switzerland, Uruguay and Vietnam are free from conflict.

24 nations are facing a full-blown debt crisis and there are 14 more that are rapidly heading toward one. Right now, the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio for the entire planet is an all-time record high of 286 percent, and globally there are approximately 200 TRILLION dollars of debt on the books.

By 2050 climate change will reduce the world’s GDP by $21 trillion.

The world population was estimated to have reached 7.5 billion on April 24, 2017. Unfortunately, of the 7.5 billion, 600 million will die from starvation.

Mariner could go on noting the bad state of political, social and quality of life failures but already he is too depressed.

Happy New Year

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Think Abouts

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Mariner watched an episode of Christine Amanpour when she interviewed Jon Stewart and Dave Chapelle. Both men are astute observers of human life and social discourse. One comment that stayed with mariner was a comment by Jon Stewart; he was alluding to the brashness and unthinking environment that marks our society today. He said our opinions don’t have time to mature because we live at a circadian pace driven by tweets. Think about the rapidness of our society. Does rapidity override social grace?

Words that stir thought from Amanda Kolson Hurley:
“Ah, suburbia, land of the bland. White-picket-fenced realm of white-bread people and cookie-cutter housing. That’s still the stereotype that persists in how many of us think about and portray these much-maligned spaces surrounding cities. But if there was once some truth to it, there certainly isn’t today.

“In the past several years, a much more complex picture has emerged—one of Asian and Latino ‘ethnoburbs,’ rising suburban poverty, and Baby Boomers stuck in their split-levels. And 2018 really drove home the lesson that, when Americans say they live in the suburbs, the suburbias they describe are vastly different kinds of places.

“A century and a half after Frederick Law Olmsted laid out one of the first planned American suburbs in Riverside, Illinois, and seven decades after the builders Levitt & Sons broke ground on the ur-tract ’burb of Levittown, New York, we haven’t fully mapped the contours of modern suburbia—not just who lives there and why, but the role that suburbs play in politics and society.”

Mariner once read in a forgotten sociology book that towns, suburbs and other neighborhoods have a cultural lifespan of sixty years. Since reading that passage, mariner is convinced by continuous examples that it is true give or take a few years. Mariner is old enough to remember the new instant neighborhoods, some large enough to be small cities. Economics required that only one or two models would be available else costs would be too high for profit. Given today’s situation, income and profit slowly have dwindled in these suburbs; new better housing is found elsewhere and newer prices and salary requirements have trapped residents in their homes, unable to move out of the old neighborhood. Think about your childhood neighborhood; is it culturally the same as you remember?
– – – –
In mariner’s home town things have changed dramatically over sixty years. Mariner lived in his town in the sixties, left and returned ten years ago. In the sixties, the town was booming and healthy with robust churches, agricultural employment, investment potential for banks and entrepreneurs, active social life with dozens of clubs and social activities. It was a good time to live in his town. But it was the last decade of growth. Since then, the town slowly dwindled; churches are on the verge of closing; the older folk are trapped because their economic model has yielded to relentless inflation; and significantly, the age of electronics, computers, and soon artificial intelligence will totally reconstruct the daily culture and economic model of town citizens. From 1960 to 2020 will be sixty years. . . Think about how a town in the middle of corn fields can energize itself. It is a necessary goal for 800 people – many of them are young with families.
– – – –
Now think about this. An increasing number of nations are considering paying a basic income stipend to every citizen. Mariner is neutral on this issue. However, to solve the rapidly growing injustice of income and economic injustice as money gravitates to the upper classes; as a growing poor increases day by day; as an aging population cannot keep up with inflation and earnings; as the ability to produce dwindles in most neighborhoods, towns and even cities (consider the rustbelt on one end and impoverished Native Americans on the other), there are no other recommendations with the dynamic effect capable of reducing class-based economic disparity. Let’s use the Swiss as an example:

“Switzerland has a very direct style of democracy. For example, changes to the constitution, or “popular initiatives,” can be proposed by members of the public and are voted on if more than 100,000 people sign them. If a majority of voters and cantons (Swiss states) agree, the change can become law. This system not only allows individual citizens a high degree of control of their laws, but also means that more unorthodox ideas become referendum issues.

“Recently, there has been a spate of popular initiatives designed to curb inequality in the country. Earlier this year Swiss voters agreed to an idea proposed by entrepreneur Thomas Minder that limited executive (in his words, “fat cat”) salaries of companies listed on the Swiss stock market. Next month, voters will decide on the 1:12 Initiative, which aims to limit the salaries of CEOs to 12 times the salary of their company’s lowest paid employee.

“Earlier this month, an initiative aimed at giving every Swiss adult a “basic income” that would “ensure a dignified existence and participation in the public life of the whole population” gained enough support to qualify for a referendum. The amount suggested is 2,500 francs ($2,800) a month.

“While most observers think that the vote is a longshot, it has certainly sparked debate — and not just in Switzerland. Writing for USA Today, Duncan Black said that a “minimum income” should be considered for the U.S.” [Business Insider]

If ever there were a curse word in capitalism, it is “guaranteed basic income.” Very much a socialist concept, today’s conservatives perhaps even more than the rich, will have apoplexy if such a bill were submitted to Congress. Still, is there another alternative which forces income into communities and individuals who are production negative?” Think about it.

Tangentially, ProPublica published a report saying:

“A new data analysis by ProPublica and the Urban Institute shows more than half of older U.S. workers are pushed out of longtime jobs before they choose to retire, suffering financial damage that is often irreversible.”

Ancient Mariner

Current Events

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In the nation of Norway is an archipelago called Svalbard, the home of the village of Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world. Longyearbyen is notable for two things. First, temperatures are below 32° year round; second, the Global Seed Vault is buried in Svalbard on a nearby island called Spitsbergen. It is the security vault holding important seeds from all over the planet just in case there is a terrible disruption to the climate that kills all plant life. Name any crop you can think of; its seeds are in the vault. The Global Seed Vault was buried deep in the permafrost to assure seeds will remain frozen virtually forever.

Recently the permafrost began to melt. Permafrost is mostly water and some dirt mixed with mulch. When it melts, long held methane is released which exacerbates Global Warming – which caused the permafrost to melt in the first place. The melting has reached the seed vault; further, the deceased buried around Longyearbyen have started to pop up here and there. Actually, the corpses look pretty good because the cold has kept them frozen.

So we don’t need to measure the weather. We don’t need to measure carbon dioxide. We don’t need to measure ocean temperature. We know climate change exists because the Svalbard archipelago is melting and the dead have risen.

– – – –

Here are a couple of questions to test one’s news knowledge: What is the name of the farthest planet from our Sun? And second, how many planets are in the solar system?

The farthest planet’s name is ‘Farout’. It was discovered recently and has been confirmed as an ice-covered planet about 310 miles in diameter orbiting the Sun. The distance between The Sun and Earth is one Astronomical Unit (93 million miles); Farout’s orbit is 120 AU from the Sun, hence its name.

There are thirteen planets or dwarf planets orbiting our Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, The Goblin, Sedna, Eris, and the aforementioned Farout. True, some are quite dwarf but they are part of the family of orbs that have stable orbits around the Sun. These new planets are part of a search for gravitational influence by a theorized super-Earth-size Planet Nine, also called Planet X, which researchers have proposed orbits in the extreme reaches of the solar system. The movements of several distant bodies have suggested the existence of this planet, which would be extremely faint and hard to locate.

– – – –

An article on www.livescience.com is interesting. Meteorologist Jana Houser argued that of four tornadoes observed in enough detail with a rapid radar technique, not a single one started its rotation in the sky. Instead, Houser and her team found, the tornado rotation began rapidly near the ground. “Tornadoes do not appear to form from the traditional, top-down mechanism,” Houser told reporters at a news briefing. Traditional meteorological technology checks for tornado development every 5 minutes; Houser’s equipment checked every thirty seconds.

All four tornadoes formed from supercell storms. Otherwise, they were very different in strength and impact, Houser said. None, however, formed from the top down. In the case of the El Reno tornado [wide damage, killed 8], a storm chaser actually snapped a picture of the funnel cloud on the ground minutes before the mobile radar detected the tornado about 50 to 100 feet above the ground.

– – – –

About a quarter of American households own a “smart speaker” like the Amazon Echo or Google Home, and in the not-too-distant future, a whole host of devices and appliances—from coffee makers to doorbells to toasters—could be connected to the internet. The Atlantic staff writer Joe Pinsker questions what could happen to all the data that companies will accumulate about domestic life, and how these devices ultimately shape people’s behavior.[1] A small teaser:

“I’ve just asked Lowenthal what he, as an advertiser, would be able to do with data transmitted from an internet-connected appliance, and I happened to mention a toaster. He thought through the possibility of an appliance that can detect what it’s being asked to brown: “If I’m toasting rye bread, a bagel company might be interested in knowing that, because they can re-target that household with bagel advertising because they already know it’s a household that eats bread, toasts bread, is open to carbs. Maybe they would also be open to bagels. And then they can probably cross that with credit-card data and know that this is a household that hasn’t bought bagels in the last year. I mean, it’s going to be amazing, from a targeting perspective.”

This is a classic example of corporations shaping a human’s life decisions and curtailing independent thought. While this may not matter in toaster negotiations, its impact on political control, economic knowledge and other thought-based activities also will be shaped and curtailed such that a human being will not be in control of his or her own destiny – just ask the Russians.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] full article at https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/smart-home-devices-data-privacy/578425/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20181222&silverid-ref=NDkwMjIzMjA1Mjg2S0

The Right Spirit

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A bit of thrust and parry about abolishing the Senate. The idea is emerging in magazines, books and even television commentary. Mariner again will proffer why the Senate distorts public discourse – an example taken from John Dingell’s book:

California has a population of sixty million people. The bottom twenty states in population together have less people than California. Yet, those twenty states have forty senators while California has two.

This imbalance in Senate representation echoes throughout many national policies, civil rights, and contemporary issues requiring, to be fair, a national perspective larger than the constraint caused by a minority of US citizens. Most political thinkers attribute the rise of identity politics to the ability of a few Senators representing a significantly small population to block healthy, rational compromise.

The Senate’s cousin, the Electoral College, twice in recent times has elected a president who lost the popular vote.

What forces this issue to the front is the massive changes in government, economy, civil rights, technology and class discrimination that are upon us. Compared to our cultural and economic stress, the Luddites had it easy.

Turmoil among rank and file citizenry has been growing since the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 – just to name a contemporary starting point.

– – – –

Ahem. Allow mariner to straighten his tie, comb his hairs, and change the subject to one of cultural cure: It is the holiday season. For all cultural segments and religions participating in this most uplifting time of year, mariner steals lyrics yet again.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles will be out of sight.

 

Ancient Mariner