Category Archives: Musings

Back by popular demand

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Indeed so! By popular demand, mariner’s wife submits one of her witty poems:

Housekeeping

Company was coming so I thought I should clean up a bit
Those dusty windowsills, for instance,
Not that they ever bothered me before.
My mother’s philosophy of housekeeping
Was ‘See it, do it’

So I tackled the windowsill with a damp rag.
Then I noticed the window needed cleaning, too
So I got the spray and cleaned the inside of the window
Which made the outside look really dingy
As it was covered with spiderwebs.

I went outside to clean the outside of the window
And noticed that the door could use a wash, too.
In cleaning the top of the outside of the door
I noticed the underside of the porch roof
Draped in spiderwebs. So I got the broom and swept them away.

As I stepped back to admire the underside of the porch roof
Which no one ever sees
I noticed the stair railing needed to be wiped down.
So since I saw it, I did it–because really
When was I ever going to do it if not now?

All this because company was coming
And I noticed the dust on the windowsill.
I am so grateful that I do not notice things
On a daily basis–dust is safe in my house
As are spiders.

If I saw things to be done all day long
When would I ever have time to write?
Better by far to think it and write it
Than see it and do it–
except, perhaps, when company is coming.  MKM 11-22-2025

Some issues are more important

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For example, in one stride, how many clop sounds does a galloping horse make? In the past this has been a troubled issue that folks went to a lot of trouble answering. How many clop sounds does the reader think a galloping horse makes?

Here are a couple of tools:

William Tell Overture –

Images of a horse at full gallop –

Film analysis has proven that at one point all four hooves are off the ground – but, a skeptic might ask, how many hooves in a stride make an audible ‘clop’ noise?

It has been proposed that if a horse is wearing shoes, it is possible to hear only the largest moment of clop volume and less strenuous  clops may not be heard. This is because the experience of clops is a combination of expectation, hearing and visual senses all responding together.

One theory is that the lead hoof starting another stride may not make a clop because it is a landing step rather than an acceleration step. What could contradict this comment is the familiar slang of ‘clipity-clop’ which suggests the opposite, that the lead hoof is actually the super-thrust of the next stride and the other the hooves land with less ‘clop’.

If you take on this quiz, you will be an expert onomatopoeist. On the other hand, if you search YouTube which has thousands of examples, you are a cheater and not willing to stand on your own beliefs.

This is important because, for the moment, nothing else is important.

Ancient Mariner

Sailing

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Sailing is an excellent metaphor for many of life’s experiences. There are the times when preparing to sail is overwhelming in its endless detail and distractions; there are times, while underway, when the weather changes a sailor’s plans; there are long periods of time when there is no one about except the sailor, the boat and the sea. If ever humans lived a sailing life, it is now.

A course on the ocean of reality has unpredictable weather, even hints of hurricanes and monsoons. Reality is driven by unknown weather confronted by a boat built in the past on dry land. Our boat’s energy and purpose comes from using the boat’s sails to interact with the waves and winds of reality – providing purpose, function and survivability.

How easy it is to use the sailing metaphor in the daily life of humans. We learn early in life that reality is not often kind and may even be determined to cause difficulty at the daily level. Yet humans must sail on, destined to fulfill purpose in life and even to physically survive.

Where is a sailor’s security while on the ocean? It is the boat, of course. It is also true that a human’s psychological self needs a ‘home base’ to feel secure. What is home base for a sailor? the boat. What is home base for a human? family and friends. It is family and friends across a lifetime that have helped build your boat. It is your family and friends that have shaped your sails and built a rudder to steer you through reality. But don’t feel life is their burden – you built the hull and mast. Yet, family and friends are a known and integrated base in the midst of the storms of reality.

If there were only one tool a sailor could take on a sail, it would be a compass. How would one know they were sailing in large circles? It is quite fortunate that sailors have a compass. It’s like using a GPS to get to the port of Maragogi, Alagoas in Africa. Fortunately for humans, the planet has an online network that can tell someone in what direction they are going just by using magnets.

If only such dependability were so with human culture. Just like a family provides direction and stability, one would think society would help, too, being a derivative of friends and family. Perhaps, every once in a while in some short sixty year period, society is stationary enough to live a pleasant life knowing where a person is and who they are supposed to be.

Such a time is not today. The disruptions, storms, abuses and ignorance that lie about today are like a miles-wide plastics and trash dump floating on the ocean of reality. No one knows where to go or when. No social identity is secure. Our rudders, whether boat or person, are clogged.

Now is one of those times when a sailor is alone with his boat for long stretches. The sailor must have a bonded relationship with his boat from which to draw confidence. Yes, the same is the situation for a human today. Only from our bonded relationship with family and friends can we draw confidence and security while sailing the oceans of today’s reality.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

 

Paint your lifetime in a picture

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Isn’t this an interesting thought? Imagine you are in a class of some kind and the assignment is to present your life experience in a painting. What would you paint? Perhaps some of your major events either of pain or joy? Perhaps a montage of the birthing day of all your children? Maybe a more bleak painting of conflicts in life. Your painting could have a theme, for example, Pablo Picasso always found a way to include breasts. Claude Monet’s expressionist paintings were never focused enough to see any detail – you wouldn’t have to name names.

Pretend we are Bob Ross. We could build a painting in layers. First, what color would you paint the blank canvas? Something bright but not too strong? Perhaps a pale, neutral color? It could be darker to reflect a canvas of disturbances, or a plain white which would permit multitudinous little images all over the canvas.

The next layer is the background. Inevitably Bob would paint mountains. Perhaps there was a suspended time when you lived in a different background like row houses or a college campus. Take note, though, that this background may limit what can be painted closer to the eye – Bob always painted trees and a road.

Now you have to pick the close up scene. Is it a bunch of small portraits? Is it a big event like joining the Army? What is the frequent style of events that shows your life? Your skills? Your family? Your job? Your romances? Your favorite pets? Don’t hold back – Pablo didn’t!

 

 

 

 

Ancient Mariner

Whither we goest?

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This post shares some of mariner’s concerns for the future of Homo sapiens. In order to take a full measure, the first item is about Homos the way they were bred to be – properly balanced with requirements provided by creature evolution and constraints provided by planetary evolution.

֎ He cites an article recently published in the science journal IFLScience:

“According to a paper titled ‘Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: at the edge of survival’, there are 196 uncontacted indigenous groups around the world, and 95 per cent of them are located in the Amazon rainforest. Meanwhile, the rest are located throughout Asia and the Pacific.”

The full article is worth reading at https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/experts-warning-survival-uncontacted-indigenous-peoples-threat-667525-20251028

These groups are now coming under attack from multiple angles, the report argues. They found that 96 percent of them today face threats from resource extraction, both legal and illegal. Around 65 percent of these isolated peoples are threatened by logging, the single most pervasive danger and often the first step toward deeper exploitation. Mining menaces over 40 percent, while nearly a third face violence or displacement from criminal gangs. 

More dangers are evolving in the 21st century. The report also highlights several “rising threats,” including social media “influencers” who seek to make contact with uncontacted peoples to create monetized content, as well as missionaries, funded by multi-million-dollar evangelical organizations, who attempt to convert these isolated communities to Christianity.

So these remaining 196 tribes are all that’s left of real, unsynthesized Homos. They are the real thing! Too bad. Today, dollars are the source of survival – the difference being that dollars are a form of borrowing from Mother Nature and not paying back.

֎  Home beds with ‘smart care’. These beds are equipped with a myriad of sensors and monitors that enable real-time monitoring of a patient’s vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature, etc. A person could be treated, maintained, fed and otherwise kept in a sustained state of health. The only piece missing is living a full life.

֎  Enter Mark Zuckerberg, inventor of Facebook and Meta. Using the internet to communicate, Facebook enables a person to remain a part of an active and ongoing replacement to society without have to do anything. Meta is Zuckerberg’s online reality that imitates and replaces any life experience a Homo might have.

Mariner doesn’t care that many readers poo-poo his belief that Homo will end up being a live example of Matrix. Hell, we’re three quarters of the way there!

Mariner has come close to marketing a recliner that can fold back to level. it is designed to have a tight fitting lid that can be connected to it so the deceased body can be taken directly to the graveyard. Now a bed has been invented that will allow TV watchers to watch for much longer. He is exploring a copyright for a lid to go with the smart-care bed.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

Remember liberal arts?

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As regular readers know, mariner spends a lot of time in Nosey Mole’s tunnels, thereby avoiding broadcast TV news. He spends his time reading and watching more cogent and thoughtful reports in professional journals, non-profit news organizations and has burned a candle short looking for interesting entertainment shows.

One of his sources is YouTube which he calls Junk University. Name a topic, a person, an ideology, a trade skill, health, comedians or any flower no matter how scarce, and Junk University has a series on it. Mariner is a lingering fan of boogie woogie. There are endless hours of boogie woogie clips.

But whence what we used to call ‘liberal arts’?

Colleges are abandoning liberal arts because it isn’t focused specifically on career preparation. It has been decades since public schools made a serious attempt to introduce academic classes on history, politics, sociology, language, philosophy, psychology or religion. Trump et al are wiping out any evidence that there was something erroneously called ‘slavery’ in the American past. If a student isn’t pursuing STEM, they are out of luck.

Guess what? There is a top class liberal arts university on television! It is a TV series on PBS called NOVA – 50 years of liberal arts episodes covering all the implied information one would want to learn in a liberal arts program. There are insightful episodes about society, ancient history, the future of education, the future of industry, all the Earth Sciences, even mariner’s oft quoted ‘Hacking your mind’ 4-part series.

So if your soul is shriveling in this tumultuous, unfocused world, refresh yourself browsing 50 years of NOVA; orderliness will return to your psyche.

And don’t forget to chip in as a member to offset one of the wonders of political history who certainly will have a place on future NOVA episodes: The Trumpeter has killed Federal support to PBS.

Ancient Mariner

Alone at last

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It’s one of those times again when mariner’s wife has gone visiting for a few days. There are several related responses to his sudden isolation. On the first day, there is a sense of free space where decorum is ignored. Eat when one wants to eat – and what one wants to eat; don’t make the bed; don’t shave; sleep often; tinker with small projects; if one is a reader, read; maybe go shopping for that odd item that normally isn’t worth the overhead. The street term for this response is called ‘Batching’, short for bacheloring – although the behavior is practiced by males and females.

After the first day, time is invested in bottom-of-the-jar tasks like fixing the storm door; making the laptop behave correctly; paint the basement; potting and propagating garden plants; clean the attic. Although unusually motivating, these tasks are huge and may end in an unfinished quagmire.

By the third day, one is aware that control of daily life has been lost. Maybe one should make a list of mandatory tasks to be done daily, like make the bed, do the dishes, feed the pets, etc. Slowly, however, loneliness begins to set in.

On the fourth day, loneliness sets in big time – especially in the evenings. One realizes how irrelevant televisions are; Alexi just doesn’t measure up as company; to many, the smartphone is a secret tunnel into Neverland (or netherworld) – just for awhile.

So the new life is quiet, unengaging and unrewarding. Slowly, the mind begins to adapt to a new life dedicated to survival. It is a quiet life with no big rewards and no acknowledgement for that life, either. This is the critical time when one must reach out to the community or severe depression creeps in. If nothing less, go to a public event of any kind or volunteer to help someone with a task or visit your nearest (within reason) relative (within reason).

Before the spouse departs, an agreed communication process should be arranged. One day can be spent traveling to a desired place like a forest, a beach, or even tour a museum – just a quiet, time consuming visit.

Hooray!! the spouse returns. Did you empty the trash in time? make the bed? sweep the floor? clean up the kitchen? shower, shave, shampoo, and trim your toenails?

Fortunately, love is blind (almost).

Ancient Mariner

Local Press

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Really LOCAL press. That is, press coverage if it were about YOUR life. Some examples to set the pace: first, mariner traveled a lot in his career; second is the never ending discounting of women’s lives.

 

 

If a few reporters were following you around every day, what would the headlines say?

֎ Bobbie’s husband leaves quickly leaving her alone to haul trash to the Dump.

֎ Bobby’s wife buys a pair of shoes costing $1,000.

֎ Sam completes furnace repair.

֎ Pam takes a day off to go shopping and has Chinese for lunch.

֎ Nickie is frustrated every morning because his underwear is too tight.

֎ Vickie is depressed because she didn’t win the scholarship.

֎ lost three years ago, Maude is ecstatic because she found her diamond necklace on the floor of the closet.

֎ Claude bought a new Buick with his bonus check.

֎ This evening all three children went to sleep early so Vickie and Nickie watched a romantic movie.

Given only as examples, is this your life in headlines? Grab a pencil for a moment and write three satisfied headlines and three unsatisfied headlines about your life. Study them for two minutes.

Are the headlines routine in nature or dramatic, life changing events? Should you get a different reporter or change your headlines?

Happy Trails.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Age Shift

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Anyone who studies ancient history of any kind runs into a phenomenon called an Age. Ages are slow – really slow. Depending on which field of history one is studying, for example Earth science, Ages can last as long as millions, even billions of years. For most human periods since the last Ice Age, an Age will require 2-5,000 years to live its time. If one clocks in at the earliest existence of economic/political times in human history, an Age averages about 1.5 to 2 thousand years and is growing shorter at the speed of a half-life algorithm [the next step is approximately half the value of the previous step].

Abstruse, he knows. Let’s do a few examples:

֎ The last ice age lasted a little over 20,000 years.
֎ Bronze Age lasted 1,300 years.
֎ Iron Age lasted 700 years.
֎ Classical Era lasted 1,000 years (historians call them Eras now).
֎ Medieval Era lasted 1,000 years.
֎ Early Modern Era lasted 300 years.
֎ Modern Era has lasted 2,000 years but has begun shifting rapidly since about 1900AD.
֎ On their own initiative, current humans created a new age for us: the Anthropocene Epoch which replaces the Holocene Epoch, beginning at the end of the last Ice Age 11,700 years ago.¹

This is a lot to explain in order to suggest that religion is subject to the Ages as well.

– – – – – –

Was ‘religion’ part of all the ages? Yes, actually. In purely Homo terms, religion is part of the human survival makeup as much as dogs and wolves have an innate understanding of their role in the pack. One of the earliest discoveries of a caveman family, back before the Ice Age, showed evidence of caring and sharing: a male had a destroyed leg in the prime of his life. He was cared for for many years, being fed, sharing family time and, eventually, buried carefully in his cave. No Popes needed, no choirs, no congregation, no architecture. In its physiological role, religion is feelings and caring and sharing with others. This behavior is key to survival.

Funny that Jesus spoke of the same primitive behavior 20,000 years later as the path to salvation. Mariner has never forgotten the documented event where a mother gave her baby to another person to avoid having the baby eaten by lions in the coliseum – the mother’s fate. Religion is innate feelings necessary for survival – even if Interstates, airplanes and smartphones have stretched the definition of ‘family’.

So, religion as we know it has been waylaid by the Greeks who needed administrative positions for their ‘gods’ and especially the Romans who worshiped grandeur. Western Europe didn’t help much either with excess social discipline. Then the Age of War (20th Century) distracted everyone from innate survival practices because Homo was and is in the midst of an ‘industrial toy’ age. New is better.

Welcome to the Industrial Age or maybe the new version, the Technological Age. So how much are church buildings selling for these days?

Ancient Mariner

¹ Wikipedia.

The deep side of knots

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As mariner is wont to do, he fills empty time exploring the world of abstruse subjects. If one wants to get lost in a giant maze with no exit, check out quantum mechanics; or perhaps the process by which ions chase each other around to manage human bodies – all the pictures look like my granddaughter’s bead bracelets. In mathematics, there is a popular puzzle that asks for the shortest path to visit all the stops in an extended trip. Don’t try it, you’ll miss your flight.

A recent article about knot mathematics stirred his interest. He didn’t know a person had to know equations to tie knots. He was a Boy Scout and remembers learning to tie a dozen or so knots that made using knots a handy tool. He ties his shoes and dress ties – except bow ties; he uses the well known square knot and its petulant brother the granny knot for just about everything else. The bowline knot is supposed to never slip. The only use he had for it was as an emergency dog leash. Mariner remembers his grandmother tying a magic knot on a piece of thread just by rubbing two fingers together – voila! a sturdy knot to sew buttons.

It turns out that ‘knot theory’ is an important part of the science of topology – how stuff aggregates and disseminates. For example, when looking at a knot, is it just another example of that same knot somewhere else or is it truly a genuine one-of-a-kind knot? Knot tying is important to the study of things like DNA, chemical reactions and astronomic physics.

Mariner is in knots trying to figure out how to end this post so the reader can finish it at:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-knot-theory-discovery-overturns-long-held-mathematical-assumption/?_kx=HnWBlzyruBWdZk8zZJGqG9mGrSNMZd2cfq-kdkdOWgOqhVgSL-mWKHsx1HZSrrCW.WEer5A

Ancient Mariner