What should we pack when we go to Heaven?

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What with it being the Christian holiday season and what with the world we live in today, mariner’s mind turned to revisiting the Gospels. For his entire life he has struggled with some of the metaphors interpreted by most readers as more literal than they imply. He doesn’t take the Scriptures literally as many readers do; rather, he is prone to searching for behavioral truths.

A significant confusion is the issue of heaven. Since he was a small boy, he wondered where heaven was, given all the family reunions people were counting on.

He focused on this issue as he revisited the Gospels. Owning three versions of the Holy Bible, he even checked out the difference in nuances from different versions. What emerged was a difference in reader perception as to when we would “go to heaven”. Noting all the references to the reward that we would sit at the right hand, or be with the Father, etc., the common Biblical inference is that sitting with the Father is an instant reward: do something nice for someone and you will feel good about yourself in a special way. One doesn’t have to die to be with God. This ‘instant’ reward fits with the core theology of the Trinity, which is a constant dynamic between God, Jesus and humans.

Feeling the Heavenly Spirit in one’s self is a direct cause and effect situation. The example in action is the Good Samaritan parable offered immediately following the Beatitudes and the two great commandments. [Matthew 5] Doing good deeds can’t be put in ‘heaven’ savings accounts. The reward is immediate.

When mariner was a preacher, he often had difficulty understanding why believers chose Christianity as a self-reward responsibility. Jesus makes it very clear that it’s the proactive event that has merit; it’s about helping the other person, not scoring heaven points. In fact, a perfect Christian would never, ever think about what they wanted for themselves.

It is true that putting off the heavenly experience until later when one’s own life is finished seems easier. But Christianity is a ‘do it now then do it again and again – no personal credit allowed’

So we don’t have to worry about the logistics of Armageddon and the Second Coming; it happens all the time. Do a good deed and Jesus chooses you immediately!

Ancient Mariner

In 2023 what was learned that is new?

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For those readers who have yet to subscribe to The Atlantic magazine, you should have by now. True, it requires reading – a forgotten skill today – but it is as honest a magazine as you can find and evaluates everything neutrally – even if the reader doesn’t like the opinion. The magazine is the most awarded of its class. What follows is a collection of observations from the journalists at the magazine. Some are funny, some odd, and some insightful but all are new. Enjoy all 81!

  1. Mars has seasons, and in the winter, it snows.
  2. Bats are arguably the healthiest mammals on Earth.
  3. Mammal milk changes depending on the time of day, a baby’s age and sex, the mom’s diet, and more.
  4. The genetic mutation behind “Asian glow” might help protect people against certain pathogens—including tuberculosis.
  5. The overwhelming majority of sweaters available on the American mass market are made at least partly of plastic.
  6. In 2003, a NASA Investigation Board blamed the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia in part on PowerPoint. [a Microsoft presentation application]
  7. As much as 36 percent of the world’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are sequestered, at least temporarily, in fungi.
  8. Mice and rats can’t vomit.
  9. In the 1930s, the U.S. Army considered distributing daily rations of yerba mate to soldiers. [nutritional gourd]
  10. You have two noses, and you can control them separately via your armpits.
  11. It’s possible to lactate without ever having been pregnant.
  12. But if you are pregnant, your feet might grow roughly half a shoe size and lengthen by about 0.4 inches.
  13. Gender-neutral baby names are more popular in conservative states than in liberal ones.
  14. By 2051, North America may run out of three-digit area codes.
  15. Today’s average NBA athlete is 4 to 7 percent better than the average player from more than 10 years ago.
  16. Hawaii’s feral chickens are out of control.
  17. When you look at a tattoo, you’re seeing ink shining in the “belly” of an immune cell that has gobbled up the ink and failed to digest it.
  18. The technology behind the first rice cookers, sold in 1955, is still widely used today—because it’s perfect.
  19. Meanwhile, the corrugated pizza box used by basically every pizzeria has not changed since its invention in 1966, and it does a bad job of maintaining a take-out pizza.
  20. A database of nearly 200,000 pirated books is powering many generative-AI models.
  21. Americans are suffering from cockroach amnesia.
  22. The hippopotamuses released from Pablo Escobar’s personal zoo in Colombia are engineering the local ecosystem.
  23. plastic bag in dirt – Compostable plastic bags buried in soil for three years can still hold a full load of groceries.
  24. Allergy season really is getting worse.
  25. Last month, for two consecutive days, the Earth reached global temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for the first time.
  26. There are Lord of the Rings–style hobbit-house Airbnbs, an Airbnb in the shape of a spaceship, and an Airbnb inside a freestanding harbor crane.
  27. Cat owners in Cyprus are giving leftover COVID drugs to their pets, but not for COVID.
  28. The same molecule that makes cat urine smell like cat urine is, in lower concentrations, commonly used in air fresheners and household cleaners.
  29. The Sphere, in Las Vegas, can transform its 366-foot-tall exterior into a gargantuan emoji that astronauts can reportedly see from space.
  30. Within eight seconds of flushing, a toilet bowl can shoot a plume of aerosols nearly five feet into the air—and straight into your face.
  31. Until the 1800s, merchants, lawyers, and aristocrats each wrote in their own distinctive script.
  32. The English words flow, mother, fire, and ash come from Ice Age peoples.
  33. car seat with heat marks – By hacking a Tesla’s rear heated seats, German researchers inadvertently accessed private user data.
  34. Many eye creams are functionally identical to facial moisturizers but are far more expensive.
  35. A Dutch man and his family have a perplexing brain condition called “color agnosia”: They can see colors, but they cannot name them.
  36. Hurricane Otis confounded extreme-weather warning systems by gaining more than 100 miles per hour of wind speed in 24 hours.
  37. Foxes have committed mass murder against flamingos at least three times during the past 30 years.
  38. Despite nearly half a century of trying, we don’t have any medication that effectively treats anorexia.
  39. There are no established clinical guidelines for diagnosing and treating adult ADHD.
  40. Elephant seals sleep only two hours a day, for many months at a time, via a series of super-short naps, taken as they dive deep beneath the ocean’s surface.
  41. UPS handles so many packages every year that its workers put their hands on roughly 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
  42. One of Saturn’s moons likely has a habitable ocean.
  43. AI avatars led a church service in Germany this summer.
  44. There’s a lifeguard shortage in America. It’s been going on for a century.
  45. A pill may be easier to swallow if you turn your head as it goes down.
  46. Kramer – During the original run of Seinfeld, the show’s costumers had a hard time sourcing the clothing for Kramer’s wardrobe because his quirky style had become so popular with the general public that they were buying up all of the vintage clothing that made up his look.
  47. AI models can analyze the brain scans of somebody listening to a story and then reproduce the gist of every sentence.
  48. A new idea to curb emissions takes inspiration from the Cold War: a fossil-fuel-nonproliferation treaty.
  49. During a 2018 war game in which the president had been cut off from his nuclear forces, many participants—including former heads of state, foreign ministers, and senior NATO officers—recommended leaving the decision of whether to enter a nuclear exchange to an AI.
  50. Decades of research suggest that hypnosis might be an effective treatment for irritable bowel syndrome, at least in the short term.
  51. Rest is not necessarily the best treatment for a concussion.
  52. People have been living on the Galápagos Islands since the early 1800s.
  53. Bird chicks aren’t innately able to recognize their mother’s calls—they learn to do so while in their eggs and can be manipulated to respond to another species’ voice.
  54. People are likely spending billions of dollars tipping creators on TikTok Live.
  55. Before Tesla and Meta, Palo Alto’s biggest tech giant was a farm that bred racehorses.
  56. Reports of pediatric melatonin overdoses have increased by 530 percent over the past decade.
  57. iPhone cameras can perform trillions of operations to optimize a single photo.
  58. Modern flip phones stink because they’re just made of recycled scraps from the smartphone-manufacturing process.
  59. If you think all phones are passé, you can buy a pair of screen eyes from Apple for $3,499 [adjusts colors for vision].
  60. Some people loop playlists in their sleep to help them game the Spotify algorithm and get more impressive Spotify Wrapped results.
  61. An index ranking the transparency of flagship AI models from 10 major companies gave every single one a resounding F.
  62. lemon lime character – Lemon-lime isn’t a flavor so much as a sensibility that defines soft drinks.
  63. The Italian government provides gluten-free-food vouchers for people with celiac disease.
  64. Some people taking Ozempic to lose weight are also effortlessly quitting smoking, drinking, and online shopping.
  65. Scantron tests, a defining feature of American education, are dying.
  66. Fifteen percent of daily Google searches have never been searched before, according to the company.
  67. American cars hit more than 1 million large animals and as many as 340 million birds every year.
  68. Animals at watering holes in South Africa’s Greater Kruger National Park were twice as likely to flee when they heard a human voice as when they heard lions.
  69. Hundreds of craters on the moon never receive direct sunlight.
  70. The total surface area of the Antarctic’s sea ice in July was more than four standard deviations smaller than the average for that time of year, shattering records.
  71. Oxygen might actually be bad for multicellular evolution.
  72. Last year, the Sunset Limited train from New Orleans to Los Angeles was on time for just 19 percent of trips, making it the tardiest train in the country.
  73. About a third of pregnancies in women 40 and older are unplanned.
  74. MSG stays on the tongue long after food is swallowed, resulting in a lingering savory sensation.
  75. Podiatrists have seen a spike in plantar-fasciitis cases since the coronavirus pandemic began, partly because so many people who work from home shuffle around barefoot on hard floors.
  76. OpenAI’s chief scientist commissioned a wooden effigy intended to represent an AI that does not meet a human’s objectives. He set it on fire at a leadership meeting this year, according to two people familiar with the event.
  77. A luxury trip to Antarctica can cost upwards of $65,000.
  78. Many football fans punch, shoot, run over, or otherwise destroy their TV when things don’t go well for their team.
  79. Checked-bag fees may feel like they’ve been a scourge since the birth of aviation, but they were only introduced in 2008.
  80. pair of talking dolphins – Dolphins have their own version of baby talk.
  81. Gravity-wise, the Earth doesn’t resemble a blue marble so much as a potato.

The race issue is fixed

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If it weren’t so serious and destructive, mariner would chuckle at the white supremacists. They are defending a race that already is destined to virtually disappear. Consider the odds: white people constitute about 20 percent of the world population. That’s one white person for every four nonwhites. Breeding is indiscriminate, especially with modern transportation, climate immigration, wars and abusive national governments.

Further, in spite of the supremacist presence, has the reader noticed that in the United States half the television commercials are biracial and the Hispanics have their own Spanish broadcast networks? One analysis from Wikipedia projects that whites in the United States will be a distinct minority by 2040.

Traditionally, the English language has been the primary language for international communication but this is changing as the advantages in communication via the Internet permit individualized conversations between nations. It is likely that along with English – Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and Hindi will have a larger role in global communications.

Mariner suggests that parents of young children in the United States encourage them to be bilingual (probably Spanish) or even trilingual as many Europeans are. It occurs to mariner that a new, hybridized language may emerge – complete with slurring for the hearing impaired.

Hasta la vista, baby!

Ancient Mariner

 

A new thought

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Mariner trusts that everyone saw Judy Woodruff’s special on PBS about the state of democracy in the United States. If not, go to the PBS website at pbs.com and check it out. Most of the program exposed the deep emotionally-based opinions of both political extremes.

One thought that captured his ears was the suggestion that one of the ways to unite the citizens and break down splintered allegiances, was to expand civil services. The term ’civil service’ suggests that the nation’s governments pay for large numbers of citizens to perform any number of public activities that unify the effort to achieve a common identity among the nation’s citizens. Examples of civil service, utilized especially during the Great Depression and both World Wars are:

֎ The military, of course, where the government required virtually all men within certain conditions to serve time in the armed services.

֎ During World War II, the government directed vehicle manufacturers to stop building civil equipment and focus their entire effort on manufacturing military equipment. With all the men in military service, women filled job vacancies while their men were unavailable.

֎ The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was an ambitious employment and infrastructure program created in 1935, during the bleakest days of the Great Depression. The WPA put 8.5 million Americans to work building schools, hospitals, roads and other public works. The WPA also sponsored projects in the arts – the agency employed tens of thousands of actors, musicians, writers and other artists.

֎ Shortly after WW II, the government launched the Interstate highway system. The legislation expanded the Interstate System to 41,000 miles and authorized $25 billion to be made available in fiscal years 1957 through 1969 for its construction to accommodate traffic demand in 1975. The Federal share of costs would be 90 percent.

Civil service provided the money for each of these projects. As a result, workers could ask for additional benefits like paying for college, guaranteed retirement, and a fair wage. Today, 70 years later, all these benefits are nonexistent except in a few commercial situations where there are labor shortages. Inflation has risen but the general salary base has not.

Interestingly, it was the war years and global economic dominance that funded what is called the Woke class, 9.7 percent of today’s population that constitute a white-collar, college class that has the most influence in government and industry.

Could the government launch another civil service program to more evenly level its social and economic classes?

Ancient Mariner

Living life on carnival rides

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Spending some time in Chicken Little’s henhouse, where news broadcasts and publications are not allowed, mariner has become aware of how myopic news programming is. Many readers will agree that if one watches the news on Monday then watches the news a week later, it’s the same news. Perhaps Fox news, MSNBC, all the social media sources and ‘streaming’ news together have set the bar very low in terms of other topics that, while not blowing things up, starving people, giving coverage to useless and mostly conspiratorial congressmen, may have more impact on the near future of mankind. Below are a couple of topics that are very important and are changing reality on a daily basis.

Extinction

Back in 2014 Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a scholarly treatise about the rapid decline of the world’s creatures. A quote from the flyleaf of The Sixth Extinction – An unnatural history:

“Over the last half billion years, there have been five major extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.”

Elizabeth cites the disappearance of over 16,000 species of every nature and every family of creatures. There are too many humans (see Overpopulation below) taking up way too much space, consuming way too much of the planet’s reserve of chemicals, and by their nature, deliberately and wantonly destroying critical balances in the Earth’s environment.

Through technology and industrialization, humans have been able to flaunt the natural restraints of Mother Nature, enabling humans to live longer, live conveniently and ignore disturbances in the planet’s biosphere – at the cost of 16,000 innocent creatures and, since the 19th century, destabilizing the careful balance of global weather; an issue that is important enough to make the news. For the last 300,000 years, the weather has been unusually stable, allowing an excellent opportunity for all creatures to flourish. That stability is rapidly disappearing. The inability of humans to evaluate human economics versus planetary economics may be the doom to life on Earth as we have known it.

Humans, being the smarty pants that they are, abide by a major perspective: “If it can be done, do it”. In this vein, humans may be adding themselves to the list of species that are becoming extinct. Less than a year ago, scientists celebrated a special accomplishment: They were able to marry a computer sequence with a chromosome such that the computer sequence can reproduce itself. Now computer programmers themselves may be out of a job. Two scientists, no less than Albert Einstein and  Stephen Hawking, held that if artificial intelligence can propagate itself, humans are too inefficient to compete and will become extinct.

Overpopulation

Regular readers know that mariner has placed great stock in the similarity between mouse and rat overpopulation studies done in the 1960s and 70s and the state of human society today. Quoting managing scientist John Calhoun’s observation about the study:

“At the peak population, 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. 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. Sometimes they’d drop and abandon a baby while they were carrying it. The few secluded spaces housed a population Calhoun called, “the beautiful ones.” 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. At least the rodents had unlimited food and water – not true with the human population.To human advantage, humans have guns and bombs, shoot children and anyone that seems different. Is this enough to reduce population?

A special carnival ride is the combination of not enough food with climate change. The combination is trashing whole nations’ economies.

And with war on every continent, rising authoritarian governments that will enforce inequality, and artificial intelligence cutting society from the past like a pair of scissors, this is a grand carnival ride!

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

Preparing for Donald

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Mariner and his wife have had more than one conversation about the possibility of moving to another nation should Donald win the 2024 election. They have done some research. The suggested website is a good source. How would the reader like to live in Finland, a perpetual first-place country?

See:

https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/the-10-happiest-countries-in-the-world

Ancient Mariner

Guru stopped by

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Guru, mariner’s alter ego for grand theories and other postulates, stopped by the henhouse to see how mariner was doing. Mariner could not resist but to ask how the planet was doing. “Not well”, Guru replied. “Your model of the mouse cage studies on over population is coming closer to reality. There are wars on every continent if one counts the U.S Congress, authoritarian disruptions in Australia and emerging dictatorships in the mid-level-wealth nations; and the super rich continue to hoard wealth.”

There was silence for a while. Mariner finally asked about his dream of a united North and South America. “Don’t ask”, Guru said.

Mariner and Guru stared out the small apartment window for a while.

Mariner said, “I’m not going to ask about the election.”

“You shouldn’t”, Guru replied.

Finally, Guru stood up to leave. “It’s going to be awhile”, he said. “Do you need anything?”

Mariner nodded his head indicating no as he quietly stared out the little apartment window.

Ancient Mariner

Past Forty-five

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Mariner reports from an electric recliner in his henhouse apartment:

This post primarily is for anyone over forty-five. Name five activities the reader hasn’t done for the last five years. For example, walk every, every day, rearrange furniture, sit on the floor cross-legged to watch television while completing a jigsaw puzzle, clean roof gutters, change a ceiling light bulb, weed all the gardens on time, paint a room, help someone else with labor, not money, etc.

When is the last time the reader took on a project that took more than a week to accomplish? How long has it been since the reader read anything longer than ten pages (newspapers and entertainment magazines not acceptable). All these activities are examples of vitality and joy of life.

To be rude, everyone lets themselves die. Mariner acknowledges that evolution has no use for humans after forty-five and has arranged for strength and chemical composition to begin decomposing more rapidly. Eventually, it is inevitable that humans will pass on; everyone does. Medical science has let humans live longer but only artificially. Keeping the old body breathing with twenty-seven prescriptions and supplements is not an example of vitality and joy of life. Yet, prescriptions aside, humans can defy evolution because evolution made the mistake of making humans too smart for their own good.

On a daily basis mariner sees old timers walking briskly, bicycling, even jogging. He sees small groups of folks walking as a group all over town. He knows many hobbyists engaged in everything from making very nice greeting cards to repairing lawnmower and tractor breakdowns as a small business – and that man is OLD. Mariner knows of a group that still goes to storefront movie houses; the ‘group’ part is as important as the storefront culture.

It is important to have at least one group activity. Options are infinite: book club, card or poker club, writing club, church activities, volunteer organizations, community maintenance, and on and on. If one is fortunate, there is a restaurant nearby where a bunch of regulars gather for morning coffee.

Here’s the test:

  • How much real, memorable fun has the reader had in the last two years?
  • What has the reader created that is a new personal accomplishment in the last two years?
  • With how many people has the reader had face-to-face conversations today (telephone, text and Wi-Fi Facetalk don’t count)?.
  • How long has it been since the reader went swimming or hiking or just going somewhere new?
  • Has the reader stepped forward to help another’s need in the last two years?
  • Over the last two years, has the reader regularly performed physical exercises?

Mariner acknowledges that evolution will have its way but go out fighting – the reader  actually will live longer and have a good time as well.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Where is the sheepdog?

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Remember that mariner writes from a one room apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house. Current news is forbidden here. So mariner writes about whatever drifts into consciousness.

It occurs to mariner that humans are every bit the herding animal that sheep are. Why, around the world, would there be cities with millions of humans in one pasture? (Fences are imaginary boundaries called ‘borders’). Capitalist human sheep would cite the draw of profit and stability. Don’t authentic sheep do the same, looking for better pasture? Just as sheep are maintained by a shepherd with dogs trained to move the sheep for various reasons, aren’t humans maintained by governments and corporations? Where are the sheepdogs? Might they be Governors and senators? Like sheep, don’t humans have to watch out for predators . . . in human’s clothing?

There are differences. A sheep requires the space of one sheep whereas a human requires 1600 square feet, a roof, a bathroom, heat and air conditioning. A sheep eats ground cover; a human eats sheep and other food sources found in oceans, mountains, fields, corn silos and restaurants.  Another significant difference is that there are 1 billion sheep in the world whereas there are 8.1 billion humans in the world.

Has the reader noticed that humans are fond of a sheep’s outerwear? Emulating a sheep by wearing sheep’s wool clothing is quite popular.

Lastly, sheep and humans speak the same language: BAA.

Ancient Mariner

Oh Dear

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A few days ago mariner was visiting the local establishment with a relative. A point was made that saying ‘dear’ to a woman is a mild form of sexual assault, an assumption that there is more to the relationship than simple conversation. Oh dear. It is true that he likely would not address a man using ‘dear’ but the use of the word in conversation, depending on the tone of course, implies appreciation and respect – at a minimum a word of acknowledgement. Mariner asked the woman behind the counter if she objected to being called ‘dear’. She said, “No honey, you can call me dear anytime”.

Oh dear. Will ‘dear’ go the way of ‘gay’?

It seems the American language is undergoing truncation. Mariner read that the Z generation has cut the word ‘charisma’ to ‘rizz’. Everyone already knows about ‘woke’, the word describing educated democrats – what happened to ‘elite’? Before we know it, we’ll all sound like we’re from Philadelphia.

On the other hand, Donald uses vitriol in his speech to extreme, punitive ends. While his use of these words may not imply sexual assault (at least mariner doesn’t think so), he abuses the courtesy expected in any conversation. It is no wonder Donald has been ordered to cease and desist by the courts. Donald should learn how to say ‘dear’.

Ancient Mariner