Every four or five years, mariner takes his hajj to the Mecca of modern medical diagnostics: the MAYO Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He has now returned from his visit. It occurs to mariner that this is quite an unusual experience totally unrelated to normal doctor/hospital experiences. So here is an accounting of his recent trip to MAYO:

Imagine that the reader has a large room in their house where a nationally recognized physician from every medical discipline that exists is waiting. They are waiting for the reader to come into the room. Brain problems? Covered. Bone problems? Covered. Any internal organ problems? Covered. Runny nose? Covered. Back pain? Covered. Sore toe? Covered. Dementia? Covered. Depression? Covered . . . The reader gets the idea – name an irregularity, it’s covered.

But the reader’s room may not be large enough to hold the activity of MAYO. Does the reader have a room that can hold ten buildings, five of which have 18 floors and altogether cover eight square blocks? Does the reader’s room have a walking subway system that connects not only all the MAYO buildings with four separate elevator systems but nine hotels and parking, two shopping malls, US Post Office, and four national banks? Perhaps in the backyard does the reader have room for fourteen more adjacent buildings containing innumerable independent health corporations?

Within this small city, the reader first will meet a reception doctor who has a role similar to a primary care physician. The doctor will interview the reader at length based on at least six in-depth questionnaires completed before the reader actually visits MAYO. This doctor will establish and manage the reader’s itinerary. Unlike typical hospitals and clinics where the doctors are at the top of the pecking order and each sets their own schedule, at MAYO the reception doctor calls the shots so that as many tests and consultations as possible can fit into a typical three-day visit. This is how MAYO does its magic for more than 3,000 visitors per day.

Another unusual factor is the huge staffing ratio per physician. The reception doctor provides a chart of photographs showing each person that will have a role in managing the reader’s itinerary; mariner’s doctor had two additional physicians, three registered nurses, seven practical nurses, three administrative specialists, a personal representative for the patient, and a specialist in medical administration.

The on-line physicians had large professional staffs as well. As an example, mariner’s several ultrasound examinations utilized a total of ten young nurses who covered most of his body with ultrasound grease; it took four uniquely trained nurses to perform just one examination, each gathering a different set of data. Each examination goes the extra mile with duplication for accuracy and the use of every kind of examination machine that can be imagined.

In each medical department at the end of examination was a consultation with the lead doctor for that department. Finally, there is a meeting with the original reception doctor who discusses an overall evaluation of the visits, results and prescribed solutions. All in all, mariner had twelve examinations and associated consultations not counting the reception doctor, special trips for preparation, bloodletting and urinalysis.

Three days – done and done.

But all the financial investment, all the expertise, all the attentive, efficient specialists – are not what is remembered about MAYO.

Who is it that must scurry between ten buildings, five of which have 18 similarly numbered floors and four separate elevator systems and altogether cover eight square blocks? Who must navigate a walking subway system that connects not only all the MAYO buildings but nine hotels and parking? Who is it that starts each day in a waiting room by 6:30AM? Who is it that may sit in a waiting room for extended periods of time? Who is it that must find a restaurant for dinner? Who is it that must time bathroom breaks according to available times?

The reader, that’s who!

What the reader will remember is the fatigue, the confusion of which building? Which floor? Which elevator? What time? East or West? Desk number? North or South? Mariner’s itinerary was modified three times. The reader will remember being lost at the intersection of several tunnel options. The reader will remember the long one-third mile walk to the specimen department. The reader will feel the exasperation of driving into the MAYO neighborhood which is not only busy with MAYO traffic but downtown traffic as well and the overall urgency of finding and parking the car in the right garage associated with hotel reservations. Mariner strongly recommends reserving the first day back home as a day of rest and recovery – especially if it’s at the end of a six-hour drive.

There are good memories, though. Setting aside the overhead of being at MAYO, one remembers the hard-working, intelligent, caring staff. The depth of interest in one’s health is remembered and the quality prescriptions for the future are genuine. One can surmise whether trying to get it all done with back home medical support could ever be accomplished – let alone the obviously superior quality. Mariner makes sure that local doctors receive a copy of his full examination as a way of ensuring quality judgment at home.

The pace is steady and tasks require continuous focus by the staff. When mariner was receiving one of his greasings, the nurse at one point asked him to push in his abdomen “real hard like you were pushing a bowel movement”. A few seconds later she turned to look at her computer screen and mariner innocently asked, “What do I do with my bowel movement?” She broke out in great laughter; it was a break from her intense focus. It made mariner realize how hard these staffers work.

Ancient Mariner

Nice Newsclip from Axios:

“Think about it: Most people you meet in everyday life — at work, in the neighborhood — are decent and normal. Even nice. But hit Twitter or watch the news, and you’d think we were all nuts and nasty.

Why it matters: The rising power and prominence of the nation’s loudest, meanest voices obscures what most of us personally experience: Most people are sane and generous — and too busy to tweet.

Reality check: It turns out, you’re right. We dug into the data and found that, in fact, most Americans are friendly, donate time or money, and would help you shovel your snow. They are busy, normal and mostly silent.

These aren’t the people with big Twitter followings or cable-news contracts — and they don’t try to pick fights at school board meetings.

So the people who get the clicks and the coverage distort our true reality.

Three stats we find reassuring:

75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.

On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).

Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%).

The bottom line: Every current trend suggests politics will get more toxic before it normalizes. But the silent majority gives us hope beyond the nuttiness.”

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Mariner’s wife, the pickleball player in our family, is pleased that pickleball court construction has received a major grant to be built in a nearby town.

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Perhaps not ‘nice’ but it’s nice that Bill Barr ex-Attorney General is opening up about his Trump relationship.

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There are scant indicators that the Putin war has begun to mollify a small number of populist attitudes. A philosopher once said “Nothing unifies a nation more than a unified hate for another nation.” Mariner assumes that is the case.

Ancient Mariner

In his continuous research into how the electorate thinks or even why, this post is one of mariner’s brain twister posts. This post has no more significance to today’s news than finding the next geode in Iowa. Everyone has played logic puzzles at parties or when reading a magazine. Mariner suggests his readers think about an enigma that the sciences have yet to solve:

Why did consciousness emerge from a fully functional subconscious brain?

Dan Falk, a Canadian science journalist, sets up the issue: “The puzzle of how non-conscious matter, responding only to the laws of physics, gives rise to conscious experience (in contrast to the ‘easy problems’ of figuring out which sorts of brain activity are associated with which specific mental states). The existence of minds is the most serious affront to physicalism.”

The common thought test is the zombie test. The experiment features an imagined creature exactly like you or me, but with a crucial ingredient – consciousness – missing. Though versions of the argument go back many decades, its current version was stated most explicitly by David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind (1996). He invites the reader to consider his zombie twin, a creature who is ‘molecule for molecule identical to me’ but who ‘lacks conscious experience entirely’.

Imagine the conscious mind looking at an apple. The apple has an independent reality; it is an object within an entirely reasoned environment including terrain, buildings, roads, etc. The apple is red, a value among many colors that are not part of the immediate image. Lurking close by is a conscious awareness of the industry of apple production and perhaps even an impression of the grocer.

All these externally perceived inputs are collected by our consciousness. What did our subconscious see?

It will be awake, able to report the contents of its internal states, able to focus attention in various places, and so on – all part of the senses. It is just that none of this functioning will be accompanied by any conscious experience. There is no reasoned, abstract awareness. Imagine that you are asleep while the apple is present. What will you know about the experience of the apple? At best the brain may register aroma, perhaps indiscriminate noises, subconsciously of course.

The key question is, why did a totally functional subconscious brain have any need to invent consciousness? The major senses like seeing, touching, etc., provide a completely functional reality for survival. Flight or fight is a fully subconscious behavior; pain and comfort, too, are subconscious behaviors.

Scientists to this day have not been able to pinpoint a literal link that provoked the emergence of a conscious mind. Thus it remains an open question – why does the electorate have a conscious mind?

Is the reader still awake or need mariner sign off only to the zombie partner?

Ancient Mariner

Mariner often cites his father as a treasure trove of shorthand descriptions of personality, tendencies and interpersonal behavior. Most frequently mariner borrows one his father’s favorites: the difference between why, how and what people. In short, why people must know why something exists before any further comprehension can be learned and often may not need any further detail; how people are great problem solvers but need information from why and what people in order to have a problem to solve in the first place; what people don’t care why or how and see no problems if a step-by-step procedure works.

When mariner was a preacher, he had a story about how we can be blinded by our own tendencies. He told the story of a woman preparing a ham for dinner. She cut off one end of the ham as she always did. Her daughter, watching, asked why her mother cut off the end of the ham. The mother replied that she simply cooks the ham the same way her mother did it.

Later, the daughter asked grandma why she cut the ham. “Because it wouldn’t fit in the pot”, she said.

Many confrontations occur for no other reason than the different priorities of these three thought processes.

Another set of descriptors is the difference between extroverts and introverts. Extroverts need human interaction as an element of progress; introverts make progress without any need for dialogue. Mariner once had the experience of wanting to talk with a coworker about an issue. “Leave me alone,” the coworker said; “I have work to do.”

Here is a pop psych test that’s been around for a long time: Without skipping below the figures, which of these objects seems most comfortable to you:

If you prefer the circle, you may enjoy moments of harmony and stability.

If you prefer the square, you tend to organize things and dislike loose ends.

If you prefer the triangle, you may enjoy challenges and like to achieve.

If you prefer the squiggly, you may enjoy being creative and free spirited.

Pop psychology tests are enjoyable and vague enough to toy with as long as it remembered that no one is a purebred; most of us are a mix of two with perhaps one type a tiny bit stronger than the other.

Pop psych was overrun by the Meyers-Briggs test – a compilation of 16 different personalities with variations within each one. Myers-Briggs became popular to the point that everyone walked around bragging they were an INTJ or an ESTP. Still, because no one is a purebred, these four-character IDs must be taken with a grain of salt and a conscious restraint to avoid condescension.

Another personality test used frequently is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). It is used most often to determine a person’s criminal tendencies.

If you want to have a finer understanding of yourself, type ‘pop psychology tests’ in your search engine. There’s a test for everything – even how fast and accurate your fingers are.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner and his wife maintain bird feeders during the winter months. It is often that there are 50 to 100 small sparrows, juncos, goldfinches, house wrens, woodpeckers, and cardinals, et al, sitting on the feeders, back deck and on the ground under the feeders; those in waiting cover the branches of the fruit trees. Also in attendance are several squirrels, a feral black cat, chipmunks and mice, and at twilight, a rabbit or two.

Mariner has mentioned in past posts that his yard is surrounded by back yards converted to trucking depots with 3-car garages, RVs and concrete pads large enough to land a helicopter. So mariner’s yard, while not a picturesque British garden, is a small spot of wilderness.

Having just refreshed the feeders yesterday, mariner expected the usual crowd of wildlife. But the yard was silent. The yard was still. Not a bird even in the fruit trees.

Around 10:00 AM mariner spotted the cause: a Swainson’s hawk sitting comfortably on the edge of the flower garden. It is a sheltered spot with full Sun. The hawk was cleaning itself and seemingly just passing the time. It sat there until half past Noon. It was the only creature in the yard.

As this post is written, the squirrels have returned. Still no birds.

Nature is tough.

Ancient Mariner