skipper

  • There is a legitimate scientific theory that we live in multiple universes. Not each one separate from the other but conjoined in the same physical space. This theory exists because it is a way to solve certain […]

  • ֎ Strolling about on the search engine, as is mariner’s wont, he came across an infrequent word that took him back to college/preacher days when he was reading about religion, philosophy and logic and as a pr […]

  • Mariner submitted a post yesterday warning of a political tendency toward authoritarianism saying that it was a prominent movement in local jurisdictions across the nation. In this morning’s mail Nate Silver at 5 […]

  • ֎ Mariner has written in past posts about Earth’s polar magnetic field flipping erratically in the Bering Sea and the southern Atlantic. The following summary is copied from the current Science Ma […]

  • Do you have a degree in theology? Do you have a degree in history, sociology, and political science? If you have these degrees, you have the tools to fathom the depths of world and U.S. circumstances.

    Mariner […]

  • Mariner officially retired from his professions around the age of sixty-seven. He can’t speak for other retirees but he has drifted away from modern innovations and new technologies. Each year he finds himself r […]

  • It was Joseph Campbell, an unusually gifted anthropologist and sociologist that described our lives akin to traveling the hero’s path. Our life experience is an experience similar to that of the hero Jason, king o […]

  • This post is provided by Mariner’s wife. All her life she has been a poet extraordinaire. She has the skill to express insight and create association but at the same time her poems dig deep into the reader, l […]

    • I read To a Mouse–and did not remember the famous lines ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…’ were from that poem. I had to read it side by side with an English translation! Thank you for reminding me of that poem, and for your interest in seeing more of mine. I should use these long winter days to organize my papers!

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

    • 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.

  • 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 […]

    • 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.

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

    • 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!

  • 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 […]

  • 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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