Current Reality

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Today’s post has a number of reflections. There is somewhat of a theme in that they all relate to current reality but are derived from separate disciplines.

The first reflection is derived from the mathematical theory of chaos. Chaos Theory is a real system in mathematics. The most popular example is: If a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and other physical influences are present, the fluttering will be the beginning of a Hurricane in the United States – or not.

Not to indulge in mathematics too much, chaos is a measure of change. Certain events and conditions occur which change the value of currently accepted values. These new values are in turn influenced by changes in other values. Eventually, everything that was accepted has changed and new, unanticipated values emerge. The US is in a whorl of change; it is chaotic because so many events seem not to be what was expected; around every corner are new extremes, unexpected crises and turbulence. The changes come faster and faster and there are few dependable expectations; chaos will take its course with little regard for history.

For example, US citizens did not expect the rise and influence of the tea party movement. It changed the Republican Party in ways that were not expected. This led to a breakdown in the ability of Congress to achieve legislation as expected. One bill was passed by the House more than forty times in an attempt to overturn The Affordable Care Act. Something is changing. What are the new rules? Who would predict the US would be at war with the Middle East for twenty-five years? Who knew that perniciously the industrial age would bring the Earth to a state of unacceptable pollution? So many situations have new, unexpected consequences.

Has a presidential campaign ever had more than twenty candidates? Values have changed. What are the nation’s new values that Donald Trump can be so popular? An amazing phenomenon is that a Nazi-style authoritarian is running against a democratic socialist in the same presidential year! There obviously is change occurring in America’s gestalt.

In recent weeks, killing innocents has become de rigueur. In the West, French and American atrocities have held the headlines – should it be said the news organizations have held the headlines. Beyond the Western nations, terrorist attacks have killed 147 at a University in Kenya, 43 people were killed and 239 wounded in Beirut, Lebanon; in recent weeks, Al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, attacked a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 67 dead; 49 people died when rebels shot down an Ukrainian plane; 224 died in the Russian plane bombed in Egypt; suicide bombers killed 81 at a church in Pakistan; and the Taliban took credit for killing two police officers with a car bomb in Afghanistan. Terrorism is a recent phenomenon, widespread, and not necessarily acting in behalf of a religion. Something has changed. Will the world ever be able to restore civility? What values must change to reconcile random murder performed by third-nation rebels? No one knows yet. The entire world seems to be caught in a tornado of chaos.

REFERENCE SECTION

Recently, mariner offered a book by Gene Baur, Living the Farm Sanctuary Life: the Ultimate Guide to Eating Mindfully, Living Longer, and Feeling Better Every Day. The mariner suggested it was an upbeat book about animal rights and proper dieting – an unusual approach, that is, being upbeat. The mariner tinkers in the kitchen. He found the recipes – the largest part of the book – were unusual and intriguing. Many of us have read vegan books and find the recipes mundane and make an attempt at competing with omnivore diets. Baur’s recipes often are unique and out of the norm for a vegan recipe book. Vegan and vegetarian readers will be well served to give this book a read.

The Atlantic Magazine has an article describing reactions to Donald from around the world. It may be a comforting read. See:

“What the World Is Saying About Donald Trump’s Comments About Muslims”

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/trump-muslims-global-reaction/419343/

Expanding the Liberal Arts Mind:

In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes was a proponent of determinism. Generally, this philosophy means that every act is the result of previous acts. The battle was about free will and whether it could exist if everything was deterministic. This dialogue went on for centuries. In 1960, Edward Lorentz wrote a computer program that mimicked weather. He discovered that each time he loaded the first values, he received a different prediction. In a word, there was an element of “chaos” that prohibited predictability. This is why we cannot predict infallible weather more than a day or two ahead. For a great presentation that is as entertaining as it is enlightening, see:

http://www.abarim-publications.com/ChaosTheoryIntroduction.html#.VmdWKxZdG01

Ancient Mariner

Will the Next Generation have Their Lives Lived for Them?

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The mariner admits he is a privacy advocate. It stems from his first job in computer systems: he was responsible for a corporation’s system and data backups. Security was an aspect of the job. Throughout his career in systems, he was aware of the power of information in the automated world. The mariner has written many times about the disappearance of privacy.

Generally, the younger generations have less or no concern about individual privacy in exchange for the toys, correspondence, convenience, and social media. In this post, the mariner asks a few questions to demonstrate the kind of control and abuse a computer can impose on your personal life.

Assuming that most folks eventually will order groceries online, the grocery store wants to know your shopping preferences. At least grocery stores are willing to pay for this information with discounts on gasoline or sale prices. With your history of purchases, two things occur: first, the grocery store can trim its inventory overhead by providing only those items you are likely to buy. This seems reasonable but you will be offered fewer options to buy other items unless the grocery store wants to show them to you. It will be to the store’s advantage to offer only those items or brands they want you to see.

Second, you cannot price shop; the options are offered via the Internet showing the grocery store’s pricing to you, the individual buyer. Are your prices the same as everyone else’s? Are your prices competitive with other grocery stores? Will your income, bank balance or credit score determine how much you can buy? You have traded independence for convenience; you have surrendered private shopping preferences to anyone who wants to see them for their own purposes. Mariner wonders whether a shopper has lost control of grocery shopping decisions.

Anyone who owns a computer today, whether it’s a PC or the multitude of handheld devices, has experienced unwanted popups and other advertisements that almost trap the reader into making a purchase – wanted or not. How many inexperienced folks have bought computer cleaning software because they couldn’t get rid of the popup? Further, have you noticed that advertisements and email for automobiles are limited? They are limited because the seller knows your credit score, your entire history of auto purchases, and your income.

A store clerk will not see ads from Cadillac and Tesla; more likely, it will be Kia and Mitsubishi Mirage. On the surface, this limit of choices seems innocuous; on the other hand, someone else is deciding what car you will buy. In a subtle way, someone else is telling you what you can’t buy. Can’t is the operative word: today, interest rates are based on risk – not only your credit score but if the store clerk is buying a Cadillac, the interest will be higher because a Cadillac doesn’t fit the clerk’s profile.

Banks know your credit situation before they send you an offer for another credit card. Is your credit score high? You have the opportunity for a higher line of credit and many credit options; if your credit score is low, your line of credit will be low and your interest rate higher. You actually have little choice in the matter; the full array of credit card choices is not shown – someone else has selected your card for you.

The mariner receives thousands of junk email from boat suppliers, hardware companies, woodworking companies and especially plant nurseries. How do all these retailers know about the mariner’s propensity for boat, shop and gardening? The businesses have two external sources: they buy customer lists from other businesses and they buy from the worst lot of them all, the companies that control your access to the Internet.

That brings us to Google – the worst thief of the bunch that, usually without your knowledge or any recompense, takes your personal life and makes large profits selling that information to anyone who wants it. Why do others want your information? They want to live your life for you – using their products, of course.

I mentioned in a post a few years ago that I had written an email using an AOL account; Google was my link to the Internet. In that email, I used the word “depression.” The next day, when I launched Google, three separate ads for psychiatrists appeared. Google reads our mail even if we don’t use gmail. Google knows everything. It knows the brand, model and configuration of your device; it knows every website you ever visited; Google knows all the information available through government agencies like your birth certificate, driver license, social security number, and all your insurance policies. Google denies its obsession to know everything about everyone. Google says they don’t read people’s mail – but their computers do and the computers sort, select and bundle your information to obtain the highest price from information buyers.

Another growing use of your personal data is psychological evaluation. By cross-matching your computer activity over time, Google (and anyone wanting to pay for it) can determine the status of your life. The mariner knows for a fact that Google can deduce you had an increase in pay from your purchasing patterns; Google can deduce that a divorce is imminent; Google knows your political disposition and can determine who you will vote for by cross-matching the shows and channels you prefer on television, the neighborhood you live in, the car you own, your arrest record…need the mariner go on?

What provoked this post on privacy is the fact that Google again is caught red handed modifying settings in school PCs so that Google can monitor the use of the PCs unbeknownst to anyone. Further, a student cannot modify the setting to turn off Google’s snooping. The news article is a MUST READ. See:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-invading-student-privacy-with-chromebooks-eff/

Mariner says it again: Don’t worry about what NSA knows about you; it’s Google who knows a lot more than NSA ever will and can use it without accountability. Besides, at least the NSA doesn’t want to live your life for you.

A recent advancement in computer technology is the use of “clouds.” A cloud is a data storage service where you can leverage many processing devices to process your data. The cloud also stores your data. This is a boon for large companies and science research that need faster processing than possible in their own locations. These large scale users have IT specialists to assure security and accuracy – specialists that you may not have to protect your data for you. The issue of privacy is bound up in the cloud service because the smart phone companies store your smart phone activity on clouds whether you need high powered processing or not. However, the smart phone companies use the high powered processing to sort through your data just like Google always has.

The next chapter in limiting your choices in life will come soon when you can no longer buy your own processing system and programs. You will rent them from owners of the clouds. Like the child who picks up a dirty object and you say, “Don’t put that in your mouth – you don’t know where it’s been!” you may also be able to say that about your data.

Ancient Mariner

About Dots and Cats and Christians

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The mariner asks forgiveness for allowing his Guru persona to reach the keyboard. The last three posts were written with traces of obfuscation. Mariner knows that Guru has the habit of taking giant leaps to keep up with where his thoughts are. The trouble is Guru doesn’t use turn signals; those attempting to follow from one sentence to the next are left at an intersection of thought with no directions.

Upon reevaluation and pointed criticism from the home team (actually a good editor), a grammatical pattern is determined wherein Guru will start a sentence with a given premise, then insert two parenthetical expressions comprised of twelve or thirteen points, ending with a conclusion that has little to do with the initial noun phrase. The reader is left to connect ethereal waypoints without a map.

Mariner’s wife is a librarian working in a public school. The library has a colored dot system called Accelerated Reading (AR) which is a counter intuitive name. Every library book has a dot on the spine, each with a given color that indicates that book’s rank of difficulty. A student who is learning to read must start at the lowest color, take a proficiency test and pass it before the student can move to the next higher color – a gradation measured in picograms (one trillionth of a gram). Had the reader and the mariner been forced to learn in this brain-numbing manner, I could not write a post and it wouldn’t matter because the reader couldn’t read it. Please understand the mariner speaks for himself; his wife notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, Adolf Hitler, had JEB Bush not killed him, could not devise a more abusive environment for young minds wanting to leap forward at a challenging pace. It is heartbreaking to see a student walk into the library and ask for a book about rocket ships. After looking along the shelves, the librarian advises the student that the nearest book about rockets is two colors above his current dot. By the time the student reaches middle school, reading is no longer a joy or a habit in the student’s life.

What is worse, the students learn the game. A number of books must be read in the current dot level before they can take the proficiency test. It is quite likely that the student need read only one or two books to advance to the next picogram but typically several books are required. The only game in town is to accumulate enough book points to be eligible to take the proficiency test. Consequently, students come to the library wanting only those books with the right dot color. Reading is not subject driven, not interest driven, not maturity driven, and not intellectually driven. “Give me a yellow – I don’t care what it’s about; I need my book points.”

During the mariner’s formative years in education, he remembers, in the second grade, that he had read the whole set of learning to read instruction books and was bored with the pace of the class. When mariner was little, teachers were about making sure everyone learned everything – a practice that slowed the curriculum to a standstill. Had he been forced to read only one dot color that had nothing to do with his curiosity, personal reality, or challenge him – all children want to be challenged in the second grade – he would have lost interest in reading and thinking in short order.

During mariner’s college days while working at the same time, mariner decided to take the Evelyn Wood speed reading course. The instructor chose a book that lent itself to the task of reading fast (The Sun Also Rises: Hemingway). It was clear, however, that we were to be taught how to read not by constraining subject matter like dots do, rather we will be taught to read anything we pick up. And read it quickly!

To share the phenomenon of Wood’s speed reading technique, mariner was pressed by the instructor to read a page in 60 seconds; then the instructor asked questions to test how much mariner had absorbed and remembered; then the next page was selected but time to read was reduced to 50 seconds. Further reduction in time occurred when the instructor was satisfied that mariner had captured all the information on the page in the allotted time. The transformation to Super Reader occurs when one is reading so fast that there is no time to say individual words in your head – AKA subvocalizing. At a minimum, one is reading whole phrases as if the phrase was only one word but it was read without saying it.

Mariner had nothing short of an epiphany. At the point a reader leaves subvocalizing behind, the increase in speed comes rapidly; it is comparable to an airplane leaving the runway, leaving the resistance of the wheels and crosswind behind. One must speed read regularly or reading falls back into subvocalization. The experience of speed reading enables the reader to read two or more lines in the same glance – literally a 20th second glance because we no longer interrupt reading cognition to speak the words. The better readers in the course graduated reading ten thousand words per minute. Sounds impossible but mariner is a witness. With Wood instruction, we all learned to read but after the first novel, we each chose our own. I picked a story about rocket ships.

Of course, AR has little to do with mariner’s childhood and his noted ability to screw up sentences. He’s just deflecting criticism….

REFERENCE SECTION

Was the reader successful in reconciling the paradox proffered by Schrodinger’s cat? In quantum physics, this is an important concept to master. When Einstein and other theoretical physicists proposed that subatomic particles could exist in a number of different states simultaneously, none of which was primary until some external event forced one and only one state to survive, Schrodinger scoffed and created the cat paradox. After an hour, as the classic experiment proposed, the cat would have a fifty-fifty chance of being dead or alive. No one would know which until the box was opened. Schrodinger proposed the cat paradox to show how silly it was to apply quantum values to complex systems much larger than atoms. Two excellent presentations that will clear the mind are at the following:

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/schr%C3%B6dinger%E2%80%99s-cat-explained

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger’s_cat

A liberal arts article was submitted by the mariner’s wife. It is about the disarray of Christianity and that one can claim that the US is not a Christian nation. It is likely that the reader’s subsequent conversations will be entertaining – in a serious way. Unlike Guru, Parker Palmer writes clearly and with a tight grasp of his ideas. The mariner believes it is mandatory reading; color of dot is moot:

http://www.onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-america-is-not-and-cannot-be-a-christian-nation/8162

Nate Silver is a famous statistician who is magically right whenever he predicts anything. A few years ago, Nate began tracking every topic influenced by prediction – especially politics. Nate is financially successful given his clients are some of the largest corporations in the world (and largest gamblers) – to speak nothing about US ragtag politicians. NATE SAYS IGNORE THE POLLS! Visit his website at: http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/2016-presidential-election/

Ancient Mariner

A Well Rounded Education?

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Mariner has been reading about the new movement in colleges that expresses empathy for individuals suffering any indication of racism, cultural suppression, campus abuse, and even offensiveness in comedy. On the good side, this is college students running things. On the bad side is a student mentality that appears to be over protective of even one student’s sensitivities. Several top ranked comedians like Jerry Seinfeld won’t do shows at colleges because of restrictions about their subject matter. Other campus speakers are screened before they are invited to speak at assemblies. (An earlier post recommended the September 2015 issue of The Atlantic Magazine http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ covering this topic)

What is disturbing about the student attitude is its tendency to foster cultism and isolationism in students who will leave the campus to step into the real world – a bit coarser than a campus. There are enough tea party folks to go around already. Will there be a generation of young people who reject the human condition and close their ears to reason, compromise and human frailty? The student attitude of purity or nothing is dangerous in a world full of turmoil, overcrowding, terrorism, and global warming. The students are opposed to negotiation right from the start. Nothing is more important in this century than teaching students the skills of negotiation, political reason and the pursuit of a better world for everyone.

The mariner understands their intent. The students are tired of racism and the enmity of cultural and religious bigots. They wish for a fair world where differences are accepted without turmoil. It may be a good thing that turmoil is not accepted but the real world, particularly at this moment, is not ready for piety. This is a hardnosed time when humanity must sort out conflicts affecting the entire world. It is a time when leaders must decide who will not die, who will not starve, who will not suffer genocide, who will not be sacrificed for a greater cause. The mariner suspects the students may not be fully prepared for reality. Still, things can change – the hippies of the 1960s became the capitalists of the 1980s.

On a second front, the gun-racist-terrorist sensitivity, the Mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, confessed he is more afraid of white men with guns planning another mass shooting than he is afraid of a hidden terrorist among the Syrian refugees. See:

http://www.thespreadit.com/mike-rawlings-dallas-mayor-66591/

Third, for the last several days CSPAN broadcast from the Miami Book Fair. A Sunday broadcast presented the following:

Tracey Stuart, author of Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better, and Gene Bauer, author of Living the Farm Sanctuary Life: The Ultimate Guide to Eating Mindfully, Living Longer, and Feeling Better Every Day, present their thoughts on animal rights.

This is an upbeat, refreshing conversation about animal rights and our overdependence on meat in the human diet. Worth watching. While the reader is at the CSPAN video website, browse a bit; it is guaranteed the reader will find an interesting subject. See:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?400037-7/book-discussion-unto-animals-living-farm-sanctuary-life

Finally, if you haven’t been following John Oliver’s television show, you’ve missed his scrutiny of your favorite complaint in life. This episode questions the legitimacy of televangelists asking for money to buy 65 million dollar jet airplanes. Accommodate some coarse language – it’s HBO. Check him out at:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+oliver+last+week+tonight&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=DF07448C20530777F6EEDF07448C20530777F6EE

REFERENCE SECTION

It’s time to drag out the old thought experiment called Schrodinger’s Cat:

You have at hand a sealed cardboard box. Inside is a cat, an ion detector (like a Geiger counter), and a flask of poison. If the ion detector detects a radioactive particle, the flask breaks and the poison kills the cat. Seeing only the box and no outside clues, is the cat dead or alive?

Give this some thought. Could the cat be both dead and alive at the same time? How would that be possible? If you can resolve this paradox, you are prepared to study quantum mechanics! Not fair to use the Internet although you’re allowed to find it in a book you already have in your own library.

Ancient Mariner

 

The West and the Middle East – in Conflict since 192 BC

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The Roman-Seleucid War began the ongoing conflagration between the West and the Middle East during 192-188 BC. Since, there almost always has been conflict between nations that are the root of western civilization and nations, or caliphates of the Middle East. Since earliest times, when the Middle East was the crossroad of commerce and travel, the region became a melting pot of civilizations as impressive as American dependence on immigrants. It seems as if every nation-state in the Middle East took turns dominating an area reaching from the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas to the border of India, and from the Steppes of Eastern Asia to the southern border of Egypt and the Kush Desert on the African continent. Consequently, the heritage of the region’s population contains bloodlines of Indo Europeans, Armenians, Persians, Arabs (as mixed as any American bloodline), Greeks, Turks, Jews, Egyptians, and to keep the matter short, all previous nationalities in the Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Roman, and Seleucid Empires. Without exception, Islam was the dominate religion.

Often included are North African Mediterranean countries that comprised the ancient Egyptian Empire: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Sudan.

There was a time when the Western world was in an introspective stage, fighting among itself as European nations redefined themselves creating new borders, more organized governments, and more sophisticated cultural capabilities – especially in terms of Christian influence¹. Eventually, Europe turned its focus back to the Middle East as the Christian West came to believe that Jerusalem should be in Christian hands.

The first Crusade started in 1096 ending with the capture of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. In the third Crusade (1187-1192), Richard the Lionhearted led the Knights Templar into the Holy Land to recover Jerusalem from a conquest by Saladin, a powerful and popular Sultan ruling both Syrian and Mesopotamian regions. Saladin was a “gentleman” warrior to the point that he was respected in the West. The Crusade ended with a truce that recovered much of the Holy Land but left Jerusalem under the control of Saladin.

It should be noted that Saladin was a devout Sunni and was known for eliminating Shiite caliphates – a conflict that still complicates Middle Eastern religious and political relationships.

From 1830 until the end of the Second World War, the Middle East was overrun by colonialism from Japan, United States, Great Britain and France. Colonialism was so blatant that at the Berlin Conference of 1884, fifteen nations from the West and Russia met to negotiate which nations would own a piece of Africa. Africa was divided into fifty territories – no Africans were present at the meeting. While colonialism appears to be an orderly way of developing economic success, its price is the destruction of tradition, self government, and independence for the subject territories. Observe the political state of the Middle East and Africa today.

It is a fact that the Christian-Islamic differences fostered conflict in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; it is a fact that colonialism prevented the national maturation of an entire region of the planet for 150 years. To throw salt into the wounds in the Middle East, after the First World War in 1918, France and Britain divided the Middle East into a large region for each to dominate. The line was called the Sykes-Picot line. Subsequently, the Ottoman Empire, the international presence of Islam, collapsed, leaving unnatural boundaries for surviving Middle Eastern nations. Turks ended up living in Iraq and Syria, Sunni and Shiite regions were placed under one regime and finally, to end the history lesson, the Balfour Declaration in 1948 encouraged the international Zionist movement to push for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. How foolish was the West even to suggest such a thing. All of us, Israel and the West, are now paying for this conclusion.

Does everyone know why Middle Eastern Islamic nations hate the West and the United States in particular? The damaged international relations now suffered in 2015, caused by splintered Islamic sects, unnatural combinations of Shiite-Sunni governance, suppressed governmental self-reliance, and current abuse of oil profits primarily by western countries, leave a bitter taste. Further, it is a shame that the West’s Christian rejection of Islam over many centuries is that Islam – a palatable faith and religion – has become the rallying force for violence and terrorism.

Wise politicians, especially those aware of the years of history since 192 BC, know that war will not resolve the West’s relationship with the Middle East. The US, albeit heartlessly, created American Indian territories; the US paid retribution to the Japanese interred during the Second World War; what olive branch will heal the blatant anger of the Middle East?

[1] Also known as the Dark Ages; for sake of focus we ignore the Visigoths, Justinian, Moroccans, Bubonic Plague, and the Vikings.

Ancient Mariner

Pondering the Role of Corporations

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As the world becomes smaller because of communication technology, transportation technology, international awareness of other nations, cultures, and geography, this smallness has changed corporate behavior. Because a corporation’s sole goal is profit, every act – however slight or invasive or rewarding – is an effort not intended to benefit any element of fairness, kindness, cultural improvement, employee rights, or to balance the economy. Every act is dedicated to that corporation’s wellbeing and ever to increase its own corporate profit. Today, as national boundaries soften in this smaller world, corporations have escaped national and local governance.

The conflict between government authorities and businesses is not new. The struggle for business independence likely goes back to the earliest civilized cultures. It is a natural conflict; a government ostensibly exists for the wellbeing of its citizens while a corporation exists only for its own wellbeing and profit.

To provide a quick history lesson, the following paragraphs are quoted from

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/ not for its advocacy but for its concise exegesis:

 

“When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end….

…. For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight control of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.

States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company’s accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.” (end quote)

One quickly notices the difference in the relationship between governments and corporations today. In the early days referenced by the quote, the US was still a pure democracy. Society was an all inclusive concept that included freedom of religion, the power of the vote, and any organized activity that may affect the citizens. Today, with the Supreme Court’s blessing of Citizens United, the untold wealth used to buy every aspect of government authority, and the resultant unbridled power of corporations, the only restraint on corporations is money. Control by government has been weakened to the point of uselessness. Capitalism trumps democracy. Capitalism is a religion, not an economic theory. It is more important and culturally acceptable for a corporation to ignore the wellbeing of human beings as it pursues more profit.

The mariner is reminded of when the Holy Roman Church was more powerful than the governments of its time. Unbridled power enabled the HRC to engage in brutal inquisitions, suppress scientific advances, and approve heads of state. First Baron Acton was right about power.

Today, the fossil fuel corporations suppress the growth of renewable fuel industries, attack the Clean Air Act, and, until the public had enough abuse from pipelines destroying property and claiming right of way, ran pipelines across the continent with no constraint or liability.

Today, corporations – not governments – negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) encompassing nine nations; TPP permits corporations to ignore constitutional law, civil rights and avoid taxation.

Today, communications corporations grow wealthy by usurping personal information, personal associations, family links, friend circles, medical history, credit history, and retail history. Did corporations ask permission? Did they even tell you they were collecting information without your knowledge? Did corporations tell the reader they were selling your history and preferences about everything to other corporations who want to know things and do things the reader may not want disclosed? On the other side of the issue, an old battle about the rights and accountability of content providers versus service providers continues. The difference has been smudged by mergers between the two and the evolving Internet broadcasting market. It is impossible to manage what is broadcast on social media and across the Internet. The National Security Agency is not the one to fear; Google knows a lot more about you. Even China cannot block Google. All these abuses are without accountability.

Sounds like the old days when HRC was omnipotent instead of corporatism.

Stick a pin in a communication CEO and they leap into arguments about freedom of speech. Similar to the gun issue, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are showing their age. Some might say the same about the Supreme Court (That’s another post). The founding fathers sought to constrain oppression of speech, not to encourage access to one’s privacy. However, there was a lot of space between one town and the next and reproducing pictures and words was somewhat difficult. In the eighteenth century, privacy was an environmentally protected phenomenon. Consequently, privacy as a concept drew short shrift in legislation as communication advanced through the centuries to the omnipresent state it is today.

Three examples have been examined to demonstrate the issue of corporatism. There are many more examples: banks that can destroy the US economy; lack of citizen-wide participation in the military; conflict of interest between elected officials and private enterprise – whether bought by lobbyists or sitting on legislative committees that govern personal interests.

The mariner chose the enclosed quote because it demonstrates clearly the transition from democracy to corporatism.

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In case the reader does not follow replies to the mariner’s posts, a reader (Robert) provided us with an inexpensive source for less recent publications: A great source of cheap books is Edward R. Hamilton that sells remaindered books in Connecticut. Check out their huge catalog at:

http://www.hamiltonbook.com/

Ancient Mariner

It’s All Reference Section

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The Mariner began adding references until it became out of hand. This post is all reference section!

REFERENCE SECTION

If you haven’t become a David Baldacci reader, you may be missing an excellent writer of mysteries. Most renown currently is his Wil Robie series, now in its fourth edition. Start with the first in the series, The Innocent, followed by The Hit, The Target and The Guilty. A prolific writer, Baldacci has several published series. Visit his website at:

http://davidbaldacci.com/books/robie/

Barnes and Noble also carries the series at inexpensive prices – or visit your library.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/this-weeks-biggest-books/

Traditional approaches to dieting, e.g., tracking carbohydrates, glycemic index and calories do not, by a significant difference, accurately reflect how each individual’s blood sugar rises after eating. Further, some folks can imbibe chocolate and alcohol with little change in sugar levels. Doctors Eran Elinav and Eran Segal from the Weizmann Institute of Science created a formula based on “postprandial glycemic responses” or PPGR (during or relating to the eating of food). The PPGR algorithm was more accurate in calculating individual responses to spikes in blood sugar. See:

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/algorithm-creates-diets-that-work-for-you/416583/

A must see news program is Fareed Zakarias’ weekly show on CNN from Sunday, November 22. It is an analysis of the terrorist issue in the news with no political spin and no pundits full of trite phrases. Worth watching for this if nothing else. After Sunday, November 29, see:

http://www.yidio.com/show/fareed-zakaria-gps-special?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=Search&t_source=64&utm_campaign=466

Study: Fracking industry wells are associated with premature birth and having high-risk pregnancies. New research From Johns Hopkins School of Public Health suggests an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes closer to active unconventional natural gas wells. See:

http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/study-fracking-industry-wells-associated-with-premature-birth.html

Liberal Arts activity – Have you written your haiku poem yet? Don’t know what haiku is? From October 12:

Exercise your mind:

A different form of poetry is Haiku, a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world. Some think writing Haiku is similar to solving a three-dimensional crossword puzzle but with nuance. Try writing your own. Sample:

New moon on the lake.

Your voice and the nightingale

serenade springtime.

 

Full moon on the lake.

Your voice and the waterbirds

celebrate summer.

To which the mariner’s wife responded:

Ancient Mariner:

Your voice and the canary

Foretell disaster.

Anyone who is a gardener or just appreciates the plant kingdom, know that cybernetics has arrived in the kingdom. Visit “Cyborg Roses Wired with Self-Growing Circuits” at:

http://www.livescience.com/52872-electronic-plants-created.html

Ancient Mariner

About the Terrorist Situation

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The terrorist attacks in France have dominated news media for eight days. When innocent people are killed for no direct reason, this truly is murderous and beyond the reasoning of normal human beings. The terrorist battle is shaped by the power of the Internet, communication satellites, and sophisticated weaponry, which includes bombs placed in soft drink cans.

It also is shaped by a world economy based solely on profiteering. The world economy today, including current trade agreements and international treaty organizations, is designed to protect participants against nonmember incursions – military, economic and cultural. Nations with low gross national product, especially nations with authoritarian governments coupled with countering terrorist groups, are not allowed. The problem is that these nations are full of millions of people who can’t be called the poorest of poor – they truly are destitute and battle death every day from starvation, disease, civil war, terrorist murder – and an indifferent world economy. Is there reason for their animosity?

For the last half century in particular, the United States has led the way in the design and application of the world economy with its singular focus on profit. In fact, the US has set an exemplary example of a government and culture run for the purpose of profit and the power that accumulated profit brings to key players in the economy. Today, the US has become an oligarchy run by plutocrats. The idea that profit (money) is the same as speech in the First Amendment is a telling belief that the US is a profit-based culture.

That the US population (not just the billionaires) has hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on show business, sports, vacations, opulent homes, and other ancillary but expensive pastimes, suggests an abundance of cash well beyond a culture that would use excess income for education, health and social services, technical advancement, 21st century infrastructure, and government-driven charitable support for those less fortunate in the US and around the world. It is noteworthy that none of the above excesses is considered unethical or even out of the ordinary; they are expected benefits of living in a profit-driven culture.

These broad-based observations about the focused pursuit of wealth in modern times – over the centuries since the beginning of colonialism coupled with the industrial revolution and subsequent profit-based ages – are the background that has fostered inequality and poverty as quickly as it has drawn income to the winners of economic profits. It fosters a class system among nations: 1st tier industrialized nations, 2nd tier developing nations, usually commodity economies, 3rd tier undeveloped nations, in truth meaning these nations are not participating in the profit-based world economy because for one reason or another they cannot accumulate an ante to play the profit game. Like the poor in the US, they aren’t allowed to reap benefits from the profit culture.

Another benefit provided by a profit-based economy is the opportunity to feel secure, to feel good about one’s self, and to invest time in socializing and other rewarding pastimes. Conversely, those not wrapped in that security and opportunity for personal growth do not feel secure nor can they mature in a well-rounded way because they are too busy trying to survive not only in body but in spirit as well. Add to this disadvantage – especially among the ancient cultures of the Middle East – a religion that has not had the benefit of cultural upgrades and has not engaged in the evolvement of modern dependable governments – and further has no benefits from modern technology, infrastructure and lacks an income-based workforce, there exists an opportunity for terrorism. This is a common description for Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria, just to name countries regularly in the news because of terrorism.

Understandably, these populations are starting from scratch; no dependable government exists to influence their thinking, no money to expand personal wellbeing, no nurturing history to assuage them intellectually. They are required to experience to a significant degree the nation making battles of early Europe to sort out their own winners, their own acculturation, their own form of government not based on Christianity. Like primitive man before them, metaphorically they have only spears, their fervor and their lives. While unacceptable to nations who have evolved on schedule, their only choice at the start is terrorism.

By no means do these background thoughts justify their violent behavior. But there is context. In a similar context, because of the permission ostensibly giving every American the right to bear arms, 30,000 US citizens are killed with guns every year. Because our culture condones this horrific violence and it is in the context of our laws and culture, we discount its immorality.

If we understand the context of Middle East terrorism, we may more easily have success eliminating it. The rest of the world must set an example of civil behavior else, we regress to primitive man.

Ancient Mariner

 

Snow Approaches

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Outdoors, life is disappearing. Trees are dormant; flower gardens vanish, showing no color but drab; walking and biking in this town ceases except for the very few zealots; children are not seen romping; chatting neighbors are absent. A few days from now, the first snow is predicted. It is time for long johns, wool sweaters and hot toddies.

But gardening continues. The mariner has a winter garden in his shed replete with large grow lights, heat and passive watering system. Cuttings have been potted for winter growth; soon, a few vegetable and herb seeds will be planted for winter consumption. Outdoors, fruit trees will be trimmed; the rabbit fence will be completed. The compost box awaits completion and the unexpected company of frogs requires that the ditch be maintained. Circular hardware-wire cages will be built and filled with leaves or straw to protect shrubs from rabbits and from killing temperatures.

Inside, the job jar has many tasks waiting for attention: broken light fixture in the basement; repairing attic insulation; catching up with office work like filing papers that have collected all summer, and upgrading the computer; adjusting heat vents to accommodate the colder temperatures; finish rewiring the garage, and preparing for the holidays.

This is the time of the year that one grows older fastest. One doesn’t feel older just because a birthday comes around; one keeps a spring in the step through the outdoor months; flowers are abundant then, and friends and pets and the neighborhood all are alive and sharing the warmness of nature. But, as warmness wanes, life seems to shrink, to dwindle, to retreat. In the stillness of the cold, lifelessness abounds. We are another year older.

REFERENCE SECTION

If the reader hasn’t discovered “Breakthrough” on the National Geographic channel, mariner suggests watching the series. Each show investigates breakthroughs in the relationship between humans and machines. It is not about futuristic science fiction; rather it investigates cybernetics and tools already produced in current laboratories – some are actually in production. One example: paraplegics are taught to move prosthetic limbs as if the limbs were the original ones. The brain moves the limbs with normal brain instructions and adopts the prosthetic as the original limb! Every show demonstrates amazing breakthroughs in science that benefit and expand the human experience. One scientist said, “We are confident that the entire Internet can be placed in the brain!”

Mariner challenges the reader to reread an old classic – something that was enjoyed for its liberating romanticism, or its invigorating challenge, or its quiet but powerful insight. Rereading an old treasure will remind one of their forgotten sensitive side. Thoughts about one’s self will be reset.

Ancient Mariner

Word-up

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Over the last six months or so, the mariner increasingly hears the word “existential –ism, -ist, -ly” etc. The word has been adopted by the media to mean a number of things. Most often, the journalist really means empirical or experiential – both words related to observation of the physical world or physical events via the five senses. A day or two ago, mariner heard a commentator say, “If we don’t stop them in Syria, we face an existential invasion in the United States.” Could he mean, “…we face the experience of an invasion…” Actually, more correct in existential terms, the word “face” alone is sufficient and more akin to the meaning of existential.

Jean-Paul Sartre, the first philosopher to define the word existential, posits the idea that “what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence.” In simpler words, one’s experience of living is more important than any event in life. Hence, the description of an individual who may do careless things to enhance their sensation of existence is a common, if simplistic, example.

The reader may opine that the mariner is nit-picking. This can’t be denied. In this world of texting abuse, emoticons, and eagerness to affix any human condition to –gate, and further, to obscure pronunciation in speaking “purposefully” as “purpsly” or “purposely” – one of many thousands of abused pronunciations, and by deserting words altogether by touching fingers to pictures, we approach the subtlety of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The mariner’s passive-aggressive attitude about words stems from that time when a simple word that conjured a moment in life full of happiness and self contentment was stripped away forever with no word to replace it. That word was “gay.”

Mariner has a friend who is an outstanding linguist and philologist. He suggests that language is a living thing changing as usage by humans change. That may be well and good but not all change is beneficial to general communication. The mariner will not bother the reader with his opinions about the ISIS of American English: the word “got” kills a dozen words a day.

That’s enough for today; skoeet.

Ancient Mariner