Category Archives: Musings

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

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

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

There is Change in the Air

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Today is the first cold day. Sharp winds from the Northwest blow past at fifteen knots plus – fast enough to make whitecaps on open water. The flower and vegetable gardens wilted a week ago in a night frost. Grass has yielded to the cool temperatures. Time to store the lawn mower and bring out the lawn rake to herd fallen, tumbling leaves.

Within the space of a week or two, there is an abundance of outside chores: take cuttings or roots for plants that will not make it until spring; pull summer bulbs for dormancy until spring; plant garlic and some new bulbs for next year; clear the table under the grow lights for winter seedlings and cuttings.

In addition to winterizing outside spaces, the place where the three old trees stood is barren and covered with mounds of plant material waiting for the compost box to be completed. The four leopard frogs in the small makeshift pond will hibernate in the sunken debris, only their noses showing. Rabbits will try to winter in the gardens – a no-no; they will be rousted from their warrens. This year is the year for pruning fruit trees.

There was a time in mariner’s life when he heated with wood; six cords had to be cut to last the winter. Six cords is six stacks of quartered wood stacked four by four by eight feet. It is a time to reminisce about but never to experience again. Each to his own: Dick Proenneke spent winters in the Alaskan wilderness.

Inside, the attic will receive new insulation replacing the original material put there in 1954. The 1954 windows will receive a stuffing of cotton or silicon to eliminate drafts. The furnace will be cleaned. Blankets will appear at the foot of beds.

The clocks will be set back this weekend. It is the official act that says it is wintertime; the daylight will be gone long before supper. Winter is here.

There are many who enjoy the winter with its briskness; many even like the snow; many favor winter sports. But there is no mistaking the grey, sunless skies, the biting wind, the need for an omnipresent sweater and an extra heater here and there.

The mariner will hibernate similarly to the frogs by staying inside until spring with his nose peering out the window. He will venture outside for necessities and to travel to Phoenix when winter is at its worst. If mariner had a coat of arms, it would have a palm tree on it.

REFERENCE SECTION

Clear Food is a laboratory that examines food with genomics, that is, food is studied at the molecular level and each ingredient is identified by its genome. A headline grabbing detail is that Clear Food found human DNA in 2% of the hotdogs studied. See:

http://www.clearfood.com/

Who could think that lions could be erased from the world of living things? Lions once were the premiere predator across all the African Continent. They are about to be extinct because of human activity. See:

http://www.newsweek.com/lion-populations-likely-decline-half-next-20-years-much-africa-387471

It’s not only lions

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/forecast-for-persian-gulf-a-heat-too-hot-for-human-body-20151026-gkj3do

Ancient Mariner

Poor Amos

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First and foremost, the mariner appreciates and is grateful for each reader.

Regular readers know the mariner has two alter egos. One is Chicken Little, a character that runs about saying disaster is at hand. The other is the prophet Amos, a character ill fit socially but nevertheless decries the behavior of the masses for not following God’s commands. There is a third alter ego, the guru, but he seldom appears because no one understands what he says.

Over the years, only two complaints about mariner’s blog are repetitive. One is the posts are always doom and gloom; the other is mariner should provide solutions for his complaints. Just yesterday, I challenged readers to write some haiku. The following is a reader’s reply to that challenge:

Ancient Mariner:

Your voice and the canary

Foretell disaster.

Mariner has no defense. His Meyers-Briggs says he is an ENTJ. Even so, the mariner reads many blog sites – many receive recompense for their posts. He has not found any substantive blog that reflects Pollyanna, Helen Steiner Rice or Norman Rockwell (if he wrote instead of painted). There are endless blogs that talk about the personal life of the blogger. Many of these are similar to War and Peace; a few, like Dave Barry, are comedic; the rest are sitting in their garden reflecting on the meaning of the universe. Mariner has no doubt that virtually all these blogs belong on social media.

While we are examining the Blog of the Ancient Mariner, note that regular readers are from ten countries (47 cities) around the world. Periodic readers are from twenty countries. On a regular basis, each post is read by at least 158 readers. The highest count of readers is in the US and Brazil followed by France and the Philippines.

Solutions are both direct and indirect. Most often, the solution to an issue is to use one’s vote wisely or to correct one’s deportment. The indirect solution is that the mariner has added to one’s perspective.

The mariner appreciates and is grateful for each reader.

 

REFERENCE SECTION

A new science is emerging regarding how accurate our ability is to predict what will happen in the future.

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by Philip E. Tetlock Paperback, 2006.

“The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.”

 

In the news today, the World Health Organization stated that processed red meat may, on occasion, cause cancer. The report focused on processed meats like hotdogs, hamburger, sausage and canned meat. Diet books have emphasized for some time that meat should be reduced and vegetables increased. Visit the following:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/26/news/red-meat-processed-cancer-world-health-organization/index.html

http://www.webmd.com/diet/a-z/flexitarian_diet

http://dailyburn.com/life/health/flexitarian-diet-less-meat-better-health/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caveman-diet-secret/

Your library may have several books on this subject.

 

Ancient Mariner

Time in Maryland

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While visiting the Middle Atlantic States a few weeks ago, the mariner visited the Patuxent Research Refuge (PRR) in Laurel, Maryland. The refuge is operated in part by the U.S. Fish and Game Service and by the U.S. Geological Service. PRR, with 12,841 acres, is the largest science and environmental center run by the Department of the Interior. PRR is the only National Wildlife Refuge in the United States established to support wildlife research.

For example, in 1942, only 16 whooping cranes remained in the flock that Whooping Cranesannually migrates from Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. An additional six cranes were located in Louisiana, bringing the total global population to just 22 individuals. Unfortunately, the Louisiana flock died out a few years later, so all the whooping cranes now alive derive from the original 16 birds from the Aransas-Wood Buffalo flock. As of October 2013, an estimated 434 whooping cranes exist in the wild – a significant improvement – thanks in part to the captive breeding program at Patuxent.

Mariner was impressed by the quality of the dioramas in the visitor’s center. The many rooms have themes that cover many habitat areas, life-sized wildlife, the importance of food, fresh water, and the many facets of global warming.

Mariner travelled to Annapolis, Maryland where he has sailed many times. When sailing, he particularly enjoyed watching the Naval Academy’s ‘Navy Navy 44MKII copy44MKII’ as they left the Academy to sail to all parts of the world. These boats are schooners built with special requirements for the Naval Academy. Annapolis is a wonderful destination for a trip to Maryland and Virginia. The location fits well in a trip to Washington, D.C. The Annapolis State House is famous in Continental history as the US National Capital in 1783-84; the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War was signed in Annapolis. A visitor must practice driving roundabouts (circles); Annapolis has two connected together for your driving pleasure.

Just a block from the Naval Academy is Saint John’s College. Readers may recall the mariner’s chagrin regarding disbandment of liberal arts studies in many colleges. At St. John’s, however, one enters a bastion of liberal arts education. The following is an excerpt from their website:

Statistics show that St. John’s College students excel in their endeavors both at the college and after graduation. Almost 70 percent of St. John’s graduates pursue advanced degrees—many enter the nation’s leading humanities, science, business, law, and medical programs. St. John’s College is in the top 2 percent of all colleges in the nation for alumni earning PhDs in the humanities, and in the top 4 percent for earning them in science or engineering.

One element of St. John’s curriculum is that every student must read and report on a predetermined list of fifty classic humanities texts.

Mariner took his first sailing lessons in Annapolis. He finished his captain requirements in Florida. On his last sail to the Caribbean with his family, he visited St. Vincent and the Grenadines and an island belonging to Granada. At a small inlet on the west side of St. Vincent is the shooting location for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. These islands are far enough south to have local cultures yet to be overrun by tourism. Often, schools (or pods) of dolphins will race with the boat for a mile or so. In the mariner’s opinion, Caribbean weather is much nicer than many places located along 40°38”42.62’ N.

In addition to points of interest, Maryland seafood is outstanding – especially Crabcakesthe blue crab in every possible style. When the mariner and his wife visit family and friends, somehow several meals involve crab. The photograph has two, half-pound crab cakes flavored and cooked to perfection – one entrée from the menu.

REFERENCE SECTION

Nate Silver, the probability star, maintains all his odds and prognostications from sports to politics on a website called “538.” His political articles are easy to read and show his reasons for his predictions. Nate himself is not very political, which is good; his thought processes have little or no ideological basis – just the numbers. If you are tired of the narrow and sensational news from news channels and pundits, check out Nate Silver at:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/politics/ It is refreshingly apolitical.

Also on 538 is an article about patent rights in big pharma that reads a lot like the manipulations by NRA and the gun manufacturers. Unusual light shed in TPP negotiations bares the conflicts and suggests that the pharmaceutical arrangements in TPP are worth billions in profits and was the last point to reach agreement among the nations. See:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-problem-with-tying-health-care-to-trade/

Finally, a new book hot off the presses is a book about the Israel-Palestine conflict that has raged for many decades. The ambassador to the Middle East, Dennis Ross, is the author of Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama, published in October 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. The book isolates the history of the US/Israel relationship based on each President’s relationship with Israel. Mariner suggests reading an excerpt from the book rather than purchasing it. See:

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/excerpt-doomed-succeed-fmr-us-amb-dennis-ross

Ancient Mariner

 

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

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There is a sign of cultural collapse that is growing. Consider the following headlines – headlines that are common and forgotten in one month:

Police Officer shoots [teenager, African American, traffic violator, boy with toy, wife…]

US citizen shoots [30,000 other people]

Los Angeles teacher sues school system for 1 billion dollars for targeting older teachers for dismissal to avoid paying pensions. See:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/15/us/los-angeles-teacher-class-action-lawsuit-rafe-esquith/index.html

9 incidents where crazed gunman shoots many innocent victims.

Big banks cause US recession by trading questionable derivatives using customers’ cash.

VW deliberately fools emission tests.

2.1 trillion dollars tax free held overseas by corporations. See:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/09/us-usa-tax-offshore-idUSBREA3729V20140409

Social Security receives no COLA adjustment because of inexpensive gasoline. Retirees do not use much gasoline but other costs rise.

A former hedge fund manager purchased the rights to a drug that’s been used for 62 years to treat parasitic infections, and then hiked the price from $13.50 per tablet to $750.

The mariner quickly typed the above incidences from memories of news headlines. With little effort, he could fill pages with similar headlines which allude to the excessive abuse of authority and a corresponding lack of concern for the wellbeing of others. One wonders why a police officer can’t defend himself without suddenly emptying his pistol into a troublesome individual. A gun versus a knife isn’t quite a fair confrontation – especially six bullets later. Nor is shooting a fleeing individual in the back – six bullets later.

If one wants to live in a society where corrupted power prevails, buy a home in Syria. We in the US aren’t quite that bad; remember that Reagan budgeted research for a bomb that would kill people but not hurt buildings.

The cultural collapse is becoming a permanent patina in our lives. One could claim without exaggerating that no governments, federal, state, or local, have the best interests of the citizens within their jurisdiction. Examples abound where politicians espouse the importance of education while slashing education budgets first. There are ways to fix this issue but likely they aren’t popular with the citizenry at large (I don’t have kids; why should I pay a school tax?). Goodness! Is each of us endowed with indifference? May as well join ISIL. The NRA will be glad to arm us.

It began unnoticeably when Maytag moved to Mexico in 2003. Since then, Iconic American companies such as Coca Cola, Ford, RCA, General Motors, General Electric and Nokia have opened up assembly plants in Mexico. In fact, GE employs 30,000 Mexicans in 35 factories in the country. The difference in wages between the US and Mexico is $30,000 per year per employee. Mariner suspects the profit stays with the corporation. When mariner was young, he believed that businesses were obligated to remain in their location – even changing the product if necessary, to provide continuous support to the workers who otherwise would lose their jobs. Silly mariner.

All this information points out that business, too, abuses its authority at the cost, or corruption, of our wellbeing, AKA our culture.

Do we abuse our authority with other individuals? Words that allude to our abuse are greedy, indifferent, vain, cheat, vindictive, unfair, opportunist, prejudiced, selfish, unempathetic and unsympathetic. Someone somewhere must care for our wellbeing. All that is left is us.

Perhaps via the 2016 election, we can try to fix the governments who then can fix the businesses – but it is up to you and the mariner to fix ourselves.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

An Eclectic Post

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Inspiration comes from many sources, in this case from road kill. Carcasses lie abandoned on the side of the road which led the Mariner’s wife to write this poem:

Elegy for a Dead Raccoon

The body lies beside the road

A furred lump hit by a passing car

Left like refuse, unremarked.

We in the cocoons of our cars

Pass by without a second glance

Without a second thought.

If we gave it a second thought

We would have to recognize

That we, too, will become a lump

Beside the road.

Our mammal bodies are not different:

A baby raccoon was born, suckled,

Stretched his paws, struggled to walk,

Learned to eat, to drink, to clean himself,

Wrestled with his brothers and sisters,

Explored the same world we live in

With the same five senses.

The only difference is that when he died,

In a sudden, tragic accident

His body was left as a furred lump

Beside the road.

There were no remarks at a solemn funeral

And no elegy

Except for this one.

REFERENCE SECTION

Getting the most out history is an art form. History books that deliver dates, events and event correlations are full of facts but leave out the human condition, the three dimensional reality that makes history real and provides the reader with human substance. One trick to expand one’s understanding of history is to read biographies of those who played a role in history but may not have been on the front page. As a bonus, biographies are easy to read and almost like reading fiction. Below are four biographies spread across a wide spectrum of history.

Lucy by Ellen Feldman, W,W, Norton, 2011.

One of the most important romances in the last century. Although their relationship was heavily constrained, their love lasted. Lucy was with FDR when he died. Arthur Schlesinger gave a review:

“It is a story which reminds us of the code of another day, of the complexity of human relationships, of the human problems of statesmen bearing the heaviest responsibilities and of the capacity of mature people to accept the frustrations of life and, perhaps, to make of frustrations a sort of triumph. Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lucy Mercer all emerge from the story with honor.

And, if Lucy Mercer in any way helped Franklin Roosevelt sustain the frightful burdens of leadership in the Second World War, the nation has good reason to be grateful to her.”

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

The Sixth Extinction, an Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, Henry Holt & Co. 2014.

Mariner has referenced this book in past posts. It is an accounting of Kolbert’s travels around the world visiting scientists and living creatures. However, it is a biography of us and our association with the Earth’s life forms. Written in a story-like style, it is mesmerizing.

Paul Newman, A Life by Shawn Levy, Random House, 2009.

Historian Shawn Levy gives readers the ultimate behind-the-scenes examination of the actor’s life from his merry pranks on the set to his lasting romance with Joanne Woodward to the devastating impact of his son’s death from a drug overdose. This definitive biography is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary man who gave back as much as he got out of life and just happened to be one of the most celebrated movie stars of the twentieth century.

Frederick the Wise by Sam Wellman, Concordia Press, 2015.

Little is known about one of the most powerful individuals in the Reformation, Frederick III, Elector of Saxony. Blessed by a translation of German works by Sam Wellman, Frederick’s life and influences are readily available. Frederick was the protector of Martin Luther as Saxony battled the Holy Roman Church during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Ancient Mariner