Mariner has been reading and watching educational shows more than usual because the rife of today’s world seems beyond the pale. One is horrified when one sees how much of humanity lives life in ten square feet of bombed ruins with no water and no dependable food sources.
One thinks of the atrocities put on Native Americans, slaves and oppressed conditions even today subject to rape, physical beating and forced labor.
How did the American buffalo deal with forced extinction by humans? How do lobsters off the coast of Connecticut deal with warming water that forces them to migrate to Canadian waters? And the Coral Reefs, a sizable community of many types of plant and animal life – how do they feel about looming extinction?
Then there are the billions of years that passed before us; what did all the reptiles think when an asteroid changed the planet forever?
It seems that the core morality of Mother Earth responds to a different code of ethics than her inhabitants would like. Are humans too brash when they discount life in the same manner as Mother Earth? Have humans adopted the planet’s ethical model that allows disregard for normalcy and slower evolutionary change? It makes one think of the Holocaust where thousands of humans were disposed of without acknowledgement of the value of human life. One learns that on Planet Earth, buffalo and humans are equal in value.
It has been pleasant, if not rewarding, avoiding television news. Watching headlines is a lot like taking slaps to the face over and over. Mariner does keep track generally through his own news email services and a number of trustworthy magazines. Television still has its saving grace through shows like NOVA (PBS) and documentaries on Netflix.
Just the other night PBS ran a show about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two early presidents who had different perceptions about the structure and role of the emerging United States. They fought tooth and nail and were brutal politically. Honestly, there were as many dirty tricks as one witnesses with politics today. An important difference was that back then, each political battle added to the Constitution with the intent of strengthening the nation whereas today it is petty payback and disassembling the Constitution without a plan to improve it.
The general observation mariner took from the show was that moving from one era to another, whether presidents, migrating fowl or coral reefs, it is grotesquely disruptive to normal expectations. There is abuse at the individual level. New rules are yet to be known.
So it was with those early days when Europe, Russia and The United States (and indigenous natives) had several wars to determine how the new world would be split among nations.
Similarly, today a new economic future that has little to do with contemporary practices has led to a global scramble to acquire a dominant position in the ‘new world’. What frightens mariner is that the planet has its own Trumpian plan to force human life to pay for the ‘borrowing’ of too much of nature’s resources – including global warming, overpopulation and gross extinction of the planet’s biomass.
Under the circumstances, the best one can do is to love family, share with the community and be careful about insecure assets and income.
Virtually every commentary about AI approaches the topic at a too low perspective: the impact on jobs, privacy, energy vulnerability, etc. In fact, AI is a global issue that will change global politics, global trade and a new era of feeding the world. Below is an expert’s insights as to how AI will change the world – worth reading. From AXIOS:
The only daily news mariner reads are the email titles from news websites. He avoids television news. However, given a decent education and actively pursuing information during two presidential elections, he has a perspective about the way things are going. More than once he read headlines about two billionaire preachers trying to turn the US government into a theocracy – an awkward interpretation of the spirit of Jesus similar to what Rome did 2,400 years ago.
Anyone who takes the New Testament even half seriously asks about billionaire preachers. Isn’t that a blatant oxymoron? How can a representative of Jesus’ instruction that one is with God only when giving, sharing or helping become a billionaire? Remember the main parable about the Good Samaritan? Samaritan Jews and traditional Jews did not get along well (sort of like Protestants and Catholics} but a Samaritan is traveling in traditional Jewish neighborhoods when he comes upon an injured Jew by the side of the road. The Samaritan gets the Jew to an inn, pays his housing costs and assures the innkeeper that he will cover medical costs. Mariner is pretty sure the Samaritan is not a billionaire in Rome-dominated Israel.
At a minimum what the preachers are doing is even worse than what Donald is doing. Metaphorically, if the nation were a shrub, Donald is using shears to cut it to the ground but is possible that the shrub will grow back; the preachers want to pull the shrub out by the root.
Of course one of the benefits is that the US congregation will have its own pope – probably a billionaire.
As many folks may experience, a sound sleep may be disturbed by a brain chasing some weird thoughts during the night. Mariner experienced this phenomenon last night when he was disturbed through the night by his brain struggling with language.
This time it was the troubles humans have because they must use the same sounds over and over again for different words because the human limits on making different sounds cannot handle the billions of words humans have invented. So humans have to use the same sound for many different words and meanings. Just a few simple one-syllable examples:
Cow, now, sow, plow, mean, bean, lean, tree, flee, see, flea, sea, etc.
If one sounds out the vowel letters in the alphabet (a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which is redundant to i), that’s about the limit of different noises a human can make. Humans try to stretch these sounds so they can invent more words. That is called slurring, or respectfully, dialect.
So humans use five sounds over and over and over again by attaching distortions of the throat, mouth, tongue, teeth, lips and jaw. These noises are called consonants.
Twenty-six letters constitute all the letters one is supposed to need to make words. But it isn’t that easy thanks to the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between 1400 and 1600. The shift made it easier to invent more words with the same vowel noises. Check these examples:
plough as well as plow, slough as well as slough – tricky, one uses the ‘ow’ sound, the other uses the ‘u’ sound; the other direction to make more words with no more vowels is to combine words, allowing vowels to be used more than once in one word. For example, tie dye as a simple one and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a complex one that means ‘fear of big words’, something about which Icelandic and Welsh languages have no concern.
What would it be like to be a crow and have to develop an entire vocabulary based on ‘caw’ noises. They have, you know.
So mariner can understand the problems ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) has trying to capture nuance and relevancy in human languages.
The dialect piece can be entertaining. Jimmie Carter and Fats Domino never end a word with the ‘ur’ sound; mariner’s friend from Boston puts ‘ur’ noises wherever he likes.
Thinking further, one wonders how the vowel noises are represented in sign language, There are only so many gyrations of the face, arms and hands.
No doubt readers have had enough fantasizing about archaeology and the role of humans. Today the post is about the behavior that keeps humans and communities bound to one another. This bonding is not limited to humans but also includes many of our mammal friends.
Mariner’s daughter, an excellent published author, came across a poem that she shared with her family:
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
An sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead – you first,” “I like your hat.”
It is remarkable how this poem calms us and makes us feel secure. Our interpersonal behavior, at its most intimate and respectful moments, is the strong glue that holds society together. These simple, often automatic comments are what strengthens complex ideas like “equality”, “all men are created equal” and “one man, one vote”. These gestures and comments should reflect out into our political behavior.
The presence of weaponized politics is the absence of small gestures that are above ideology.These gestures and comments also lie beneath bonding – a desire to unify and find security in belonging by sharing similarities rather than differences. Everyone likes to be respected, to feel valued, to feel uniquely important. How powerful is the effect of offering a seat on the bus to an unknown person. Do you know they murdered their mother? Of course not but bonding goes beyond prejudice, beyond race, beyond station. Bonding is the glue of civilization.
It is our human responsibility to sustain community by acting in the manner of Danusha Lameris’ poem.
In a recent post, mariner mentioned four forces of nature that would determine the future of Homo sapiens. They were global warming, population, disappearing resources and AI. This post offers resources that help understand why AI may not be the blessing of other advances like the automobile, airplanes, can openers, electric lights, etc.
Often mentioned is the movie Matrix which has become a movie series. It is about the battle a few independent humans have against an AI brain that totally controls the human race; humans are kept alive in caskets so central AI intelligence can use them as batteries; These humans are fed a fake reality that makes them believe they are living a normal life.
Another frequently mentioned source is a PBS documentary ‘Hacking the Brain’ about the powers of AI and how, if controlled, AI can be useful but the documentary also displays the dangers of AI in its ability to manipulate humans even as they think they are living normal lives.
One source mariner hasn’t mentioned in a while is ‘The Social Dilemma’ available on Netflix. Largely, it is an interview of AI experts and managers who have left the AI corporations because of the immoral and intensely capitalistic policies exercised by corporations collectively known as Silicon Valley and which generate all the social media content with ulterior motives.
As to mariner’s prediction of Armageddon, AI is not a tool for making life better. There is an element of improvement reflected in better health care, resource management and supply chain efficiency but the AI technology is not controlled by anyone but the corporations themselves.
As it stands, social media can start wars, erroneously destroy careers, turn gossip into national policy, etc. – and does this without government restraint, without individual control of personal information, without total control of AI intrusion into economic sectors, and without due diligence to protect against hackers and international political abuse.
It is an area of the future which has yet to show its true colors. We will just have to wait and see how things turn out.
Mariner stopped by to visit with Nosey Mole yesterday. He discovered that Nosey had blocked all his tunnel entrances. Then mariner read the headline on one of his news headline emails: The republicans in Congress have submitted a bill that would allow only republicans as eligible to vote for the Speaker of the House.
Will Donald really become our first dictator? He has said a time or two that if he won, there wouldn’t be any more elections.
The next vote for Congressman is two years away. It may be the citizen’s last chance for sustaining a democracy.
Metaphorically, in the last post about the distant future, mariner borrowed a Musk tourist rocket. In this post, he takes a ride on the fact tractor, that heavily geared pursuit vehicle most of us need to delve into truth, reality and comprehension (TRC).
Today, the tractor goes by many names but two are prevalent and represent the only publicly handy sources for TRC: Wikipedia and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). There are many, many other TRC internet sites and publications but typically, they are known to fewer searchers and often have privacy procedures.
Only the two mentioned sites honor the factual standards of that time when TRC was available only in books. How many readers had a twenty-volume ‘Book of Knowledge’ reference when they were young? Mariner still has his, published in 1938, and the distance to the moon and stars was represented in an image of railroad trains setting off on trips to the Universe.
Both Wikipedia and PBS have fact-checking and nuance-rinsing requirements before broadcasting. PBS has a large library of insightful documentaries about every thought under the Sun – including the Sun. Further, PBS news editors do their best to represent today’s cacophony in a neutral manner. Wikipedia will print at the top of an article whether there needs to be some further editing by contributors.
Except for highly specialized subjects, jumping on the search engine or television to do some dependable research finds little to be confident about TRC beyond Wikipedia and PBS.
But today they need our help in a serious, continued survival way. They need subscribers to help pay the bills. Mariner subscribes to both, otherwise he would be embarrassed given the number of times each day he accesses each. As readers may know, all US governments are as happy as a bunch of three-year-olds being let into a playroom; anything is subject to abuse. At risk is Federal funding that contributes to PBS overhead. It is a specified target for the circus performers in Washington.
Wikipedia, just like all of us, has been overrun by social media. It requires a lot more staff and automated crosschecking to keep the dinner dishes clean, metaphorically speaking.
So here is a chance to help out. Become a subscriber.
You do not need to mark this post as ‘trash’. It is the only request for you to help out two TRC information sources that we use every day.
For many folks, filling the mind, body and soul can be a real challenge. Especially if one doesn’t watch TV for news or entertainment, one hasn’t had a smartphone implant, one is getting really old, one is severely ill or one suffers disabilities.
If the reader has any interest in the state of their contemporary knowledge or has a strange confusion about how reality works, mariner suggests documentaries. Documentaries come in all forms of media. Want to travel? sign up for onsite education programs sponsored by a university. Want to avoid travel? register for a campus-based class. Like to read? visit the library or purchase an institutionally recommended book. Like to scroll a smartphone? download documentaries from endless institutional resources.
Even among the morass of television broadcasting one can find excellent documentaries from felting to building a house or, if one is intellectual, try watching 51 seasons of NOVA on PBS. YouTube has a number of top class documentaries – especially about human history and documentaries about well known personalities.
If one likes to talk back, Ted Talks is a good watch for eccentricities in human life – or watch the pseudo doctors who can heal any ailment.
Mariner presents below a teaser list that he feels provides a life lesson as well as new information:
⊕ HACKING THE MIND – PBS. This is an older documentary that still is popular. It shows a blind man whose eyes can actually see where to go and a three-year-old who forms firm prejudices without any thought process. The major point is that the subconscious brain is really in charge of everything we do.
⊕ SECRETS IN YOUR DATA – PBS. A lot of consternation is around today because new AI technologies will invade our privacy. Do not worry – it already has. One example displays to a person the names of all his friends and acquaintances from many years ago; how about everywhere you went on your vacation, including stores. The major point is that everything is known to Google. Now it’s time for Google to live it for you; Google also speaks the subconscious language.
⊕ MESOPOTAMIA – THE GARDENS OF BABEL – YOUTUBE. This is an outstanding documentary about the beginning of western society. It began 15,000 years ago along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the region between Iraq and Iran. Many of the worldly events like the Tower of Babel and Noah’s flood which were realities in Mesopotamia’s time, show up in the mythology of the Old Testament. Mesopotamia was the giant world leader for 300 years until surrounding population and new industrial progress allowed smaller states to bring Mesopotamia down. Hmm, 300 years? new industrial progress ….?
In a past post, mariner said that neither the human eye nor the snail’s eye reflect what reality really looks like. He took this insight from the following documentary.
⊕ DECODING THE UNIVERSE, 4 PART SERIES – PBS. The subject is quantum mechanics, a reality that doesn’t work the same as the universe humans live in – a quandary in itself – so pay attention (a warning to anyone who wanders into the quantum world). It seems the mysterious Black Cloud has some important functions that hold the Universe together.
So check out documentaries on the television and check out hobby interests on YouTube. They will fill one’s day many fold.
