Category Archives: Politics

Mother Earth ups the ante

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Mariner has harangued his readers about the Armageddon consisting of excessive population, disappearing natural resources, global warming and uncontrolled AI. But Mother Earth has just started to get involved.

In a report from Nature Geoscience –

“North America’s geological core has persisted for billions of years—it’s what scientists call a craton, a massive block of continental rock that withstands the natural recycling system of plate tectonics. Typically, scientists think of cratons as unchanging, nigh on eternal. But new research published on March 28 in Nature Geoscience suggests that a long-lost geological plate may be siphoning rock from the bottom of the North American craton, eroding it from below, right under our feet.

Such a scenario would not be unprecedented—scientists have evidence that the North China craton thinned dramatically millions of years ago—but it would certainly be surprising and intriguing to study in real time. “Cratons are the oldest cores of continents, so they have been sitting near the Earth’s surface for billions of years,” says Claire Currie, a geophysicist at the University of Alberta, who was not involved in the new research. “They’ve persisted through time, so this is quite unusual.”

Mariner could find no projected dates for these events but at some point in the future, the next tectonic shift may turn the Mississippi River into the Mississippi Sea or conversely, The Mississippi Mountains.

Mother Earth’s stash seems unending. Much of Florida and much of the Gulf-facing land in the US will disappear under rising seas; Global warming will disrupt political, economic and environmental conditions that may cause even more famine and unrest among human populations.

Mother Earth wants everyone to know that AI isn’t the only player in the future of us Homos.

Ancient Mariner

Trekking amid Armageddon

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In these days, attempting to live a stable life is like being an empty trashcan in a tornado. All the headlines focus on what “Wanna be a dictator” is doing to the fabric of government; there are large situations like global warming, rational health care, personal civil rights, what schoolchildren will not be taught, the emerging isolationism of each state in the Union, and the precarious ripping apart of economic relationships between democratic nations.

That’s just one whirlwind in the storm. Another whirlwind swirls around the corporate freedom to dissemble independent human behavior and replace it with computerized corporate manipulations of behavior and intervene the interface between humans and genuine reality.

Having one’s own private perspective on how to engage in the community has been diminished and largely replaced by the new town square, Facebook – which is a behavior similar to smartphones, which requires no social intervention at all.

Corporations have automated out of existence places and activities where ‘community’ could be felt and engaged in – places like small storefront businesses, shopping malls, and computerized food services that have a negative effect on restaurants.

Slowly, humanity (in the wealthy nations only, there is no life to be had in poor ones) is being corralled into the world of one of mariner’s benchmark icons, the movie Matrix. The model is identical but Matrix says humans were put into wired coffins, their brains filled with artificial life experience and their bodies were used as batteries for the great “system”

In this reality it is the same model but for different reasons. Smartphones replace the coffins, social control replaces batteries. Remember Zuckerberg’s fantasy about everyone having their own online town? Sort of like the false life of humans in Matrix.

But the Armageddon swirl is closing in. Everyone must now store their personal computer backups on the ‘cloud’. Metaphorically, your smartphone provides verbs, your computer provides nouns. Your computer is no more than a data entry keyboard – sort of like a typewriter but wired to the corporate database.

Mother Nature will step in big time in a few years. Not that it will necessarily make things better; Mother owns the largest corporation – the planet.

Mariner is inclined to go looking for his two ponies and a cart. He has no smartphone, will not store his data in the ‘system’ database and continually searches for ways to shop face-to-face with other humans and to spend cash for purchases. He is a Homo sappien approaching extinction.

Ancient Mariner

Medical treatment

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Mariner is a decrepit old man. It seems the medical industry does not understand that a different set of ailments and treatments exist for the ancient class. He admits he has some ire about the situation so he let Amos write this post. Mariner has edited out foul language and libelous accusations:

֎ The suspicions began in 2006. Mariner’s brother went into the hospital to receive a pacemaker. While he was hospitalized, he contracted Clostridioides difficile or shortened, C-Diff. It is a bacterial infestation that attacks the large intestine, causing 10-15 bowel movements per day and loss of body water. For the worst cases, death is the only outcome. His brother went to a hospice for a few months then passed away. On his death certificate, it said cause of death was “kidney failure”. No, it wasn’t kidney failure, it was C-Diff!

Mariner suspects the medical industry uses this misstatement policy to avoid lawsuits. After all, it is general knowledge that C-Diff most often is contracted in hospitals.

֎ The job of primary care physicians (PCP) is to sell prescriptions and placate the patient’s anxiety. PCPs never fix anything. ‘Fix’ means heal it, symptoms gone, life returns to normal. Prescriptions often may influence physical disability but never fix it.

֎ Chiropractors are a lot like PCPs. They focus on joints and do a great job of making the patient feel better for awhile. But the patient will be back with the same ailment. It wasn’t fixed. In ancient patients, sometimes chiropractors branch out into special treatments almost like astrology. Still, nothing is fixed.

֎ PCPs often will send the patient to a ‘specialist’. Common examples are pulmonologist, cardiologist, ear-nose-and-throat, allergist, urologist . . . The specialist has a better set of prescriptions because they are limited to the special treatments the specialist will provide. Specialists may even offer minor surgery. Still, there may be a small improvement but it isn’t fixed. The patient is stuck with a lifelong dependency on the specialist – because the disability will never be fixed.

֎ Physical therapists are another specialty where being fixed is not an option. Mariner offers a personal experience: Told to visit a physical therapist by his PCP, he went to a hospital with all the equipment and routines necessary. First, he was guided to a swimming pool where he was to walk back and forth in waist-deep water. “Wouldn’t it be more effective if I swam?” he asked. “No, we don’t want you to hurt yourself.” was the response.

Then mariner was led to a gym with all the typical equipment. He was asked to step sideways along a bar and ‘to hold on’. After that, he was taken to a wall contraption with blue stretch straps he was to pull toward his chest. Finally, he asked when the therapy would begin, you know, sit-ups, weight lifts, deep squats. “Oh”, she said, You must be one of those ‘all in or go home’ types.” So he went home.

֎ Surgeons. Like just about every old folk, mariner has back problems. There are many ways to improve things with different types of surgery. Mariner did not hold back and went to an internationally known clinic. After dozens of tests and interviews, the final analysis was that four surgeons sat with him, each offering one of four options. One was needles, one was braces, one was intervertebral repair (disc), and one was welding vertebra together. Every one of the surgeons cited high risk of failure and restrained physical ability afterward. None would say it would be fixed. So he went home.

Being fixed by medical treatment is not an option.

Ancient Mariner

 

More info for peripheral view

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Everyone, around the world in fact, is inundated with the Trump phenomenon. Everyone around the world is troubled that their economics are so vulnerable to disruption. This vulnerability has a broader, peripheral circumstance that can explain this vulnerability: environmental resources are running out – whether they are elements, minerals, biomass, space or the effects of global warming.

As the population post cited, in all of human history, the population reached 1 billion. Then from 1800 to 1987, the population grew by 4 billion. What grew as well was the rate of consumption. Human laissez-faire about consumption is reflected in human treatment of the resources available: The world generates nearly two billion tons of municipal solid waste each year (MSW).  MSW includes trash from companies, buildings, houses, yards, and small businesses. The United States and China lead the way.

Mariner’s wife, a librarian, has a program where she reads stories to preschool children. She brought home a book which, with astounding clarity, demonstrated human disregard for environmental resources. The book is ‘One Little Bag – An Amazing Journey’ by Henry Cole.  All pages are drawings showing a small boy’s affection for his paper bag by always having it at hand for whatever purpose; it is the tale of a little boy who carried his one original lunch bag to school for over 700 lunches even using it to offer a wedding ring to his girlfriend. The pages also show all the industrial steps required to make a paper bag from chopping down the tree to paper manufacture, delivery, etc. One cannot read this simple story without realizing how trashy humans are. What is important is this trashy behavior does not show concern for the more important issue: disappearing resources.

Wastefulness is not limited to MSW. About four or five years ago, mariner watched a TV interview with a Federal Department head (mariner apologizes for forgetting the name). He was an advocate for expanding our ability to sustain natural resources in order to offset the impact of increasing consumption caused by rapid population growth. He addressed many industrial practices and the careless lack of concern by humans who consume large, irreplaceable areas of the environment just for profit or pleasure.

The Department Head went so far as to challenge lawns. “We need the space to grow food! Every bit of space around the home should be dedicated to self sufficiency, to help ease the pressure caused by disappearing food sources.”

It isn’t just food. Trickling through the news today is the concern for how much electricity and water the new computer age consumes. Computers alone have a special shortage in several minerals including Lithium, Cobalt and Zinc. Microsoft has just contracted the use of a nuclear power plant.

Mariner has a personal example: He and his wife maintain bird feeders. Many who offer this service find it invaded by squirrels. Mariner disregards this complaint knowing that he and his fellow Homos have leveled the natural environment of the squirrel to build huge, clunky houses, streets, tennis courts and businesses. The least we Homos can do is to be sympathetic to the shortage of food for the squirrel and any other wildlife that may still live here. It is interesting that only Homos need 1,200 square feet for a nest, plus lumber, steel, plastic, electricity, heating fuel, TV, a phone, a garage and two stories. Meanwhile, tigers and elephants are disappearing and wolves can’t live in the Midwest which is their natural environment because Homos will shoot them.

This peripheral information may shed light on why economies are not robust, why food and energy prices continue to rise and why every planet resource is at risk.

Ancient Mariner

 

Democracy

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Mariner called a meeting with the three alter-egos a few days ago. The topic was democracy, though not so much as it is weaponized today. The open question was what situation induces democracy, or inhibits democracy? How do the gears work in the democracy engine?

To be honest, the team had difficulty addressing the topic. In the United States (US) twelve generations have lived under and believed religiously in the political philosophy of democracy. Any substantial thinking is swamped by misperception, rumor, bias and periods when democracy was ignored.

The team used the standard definition of democracy as Wikipedia sees it (links are active should the reader want to delve into specifics):

“Democracy is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive or maximalist definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections.

In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of “the people” and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries. Features of democracy oftentimes include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.”

֎ The above description pretty much is a definition of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Amos, the team member who is critical of most human behavior, said “Democracy only works in a perfect world where Earthly bounty is free and available to everyone – otherwise, democracy switches to capitalism. Frankly,” Amos continued, “humans don’t have the self-discipline to sustain a democratic reality.”

As a counterpoint, Nosey Mole, the more conservative member of the team,   immediately proposed the example of the Anabaptist structure as a truer form of democracy saying that it is a one-for-all and all for one democracy with a simple community board of directors and everyone benefits equally in the gross profits of the community.

Guru, the philosophical member of the team corrected Nosey saying the Anabaptist government was a theocracy based on the Christian Bible and did not necessarily follow democratic principles. He added “Democracy only works in small locations where the citizens vote directly on the passage of issues, while in larger expanses many citizens elect one representative to represent them when voting on the issues; that is called a republic.”

Nosey countered, “Well, they don’t need Social Security!”.

Mariner, the romantic naturalist, suggested that democracy is a manifestation of the times, that it is a reaction to a given state of affairs involving population, weather, economics and geographical conditions. “For example”, he said, “the leaders of the newly independent United States suddenly inherited massive amounts of territory, had no established rule over three quarters of the continent, still remembered the authoritarianism of the European Monarchs and suddenly inherited much more wealth than the population of 2.7 million needed. Some form of democracy was their only choice.”

“The Bill of Rights is the weak spot.” Amos said. “It’s a fantasy list of good times that doesn’t mix with natural herd behavior – it’s what benefits the herd that counts, not what benefits the individual.”

Mariner broke in and said, “It’s obvious the team will have to set another meeting to continue this discussion of democracy.”

Ancient Mariner

Info for the reader’s peripheral vision

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The chart above illustrates how world population has changed throughout history.

At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year.

A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987).

  • During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.
  • In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.
  • Because of declining growth rates, it will now take over 200 years to double again.

A necessary part of this post is to read the post ‘Population’ added on October 9, 2023. (Use the search box at the top, hit ‘enter’ After search, if the date is wrong, scroll down) It is a scientific report on rat and mouse population studies, which may be more significant today because of the dip at the top of the chart above. Briefly, as the population became excessive, the mouse society behaved just as humans do today with intensely and brutally defined classes from the untouched ‘wealthy’ mice to the militants, and to the deprived and brutalized underclass.

Information that comes from the planet’s side of things may offer collateral proof of the invasion of Homo sapiens:

• According to a new report from the World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), there has been an average 60 percent decline in vertebrate animal species population — you know, like mammals, fish, birds, etc. — between 1970 and 2014. “Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions,” the report reads. The cause? “Exploding human consumption.” [BBC]

• Today, given the vast prairie between the Mississippi River and Eastern Colorado that existed before Europeans visited, only 1% exists today. Further, as a percentage of all living creatures, only 1% is wildlife.

There are just a few stable nation ‘herds’ left – and none have large populations.

Perhaps many of our political concerns may be influenced by this peripheral view of population. Will the new culture be socialistic? corporately controlled? controlled by survival of the fittest? Or, shudder, will humans fix the population issue by tossing about a few nuclear bombs? The mice in the study didn’t have nuclear bombs so there are no statistics about survival.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

Am I important?

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This post is about the issue of self worth. But first, mariner’s comment on trends in automation as presented by Wiley’s desk calendar:

Perhaps the Egyptians had it right all along – hieroglyphics.

 

֎ Having read the USA Today article about how mail was delivered by boat to Lake Geneva residents and how important that was to their sense of community, Mariner came to realize how the shifts in many social confrontations from mail delivery to Social Security, senior citizen support, family security and future job security can challenge a person’s sense of security within themselves. The smartphone, too, exposes the ego to damaging information, conversations and distorts behavioral relations. Even conversations between friends and family, split by defensive opinions, confronts an individual’s self-evaluation.

Humans, despite their self-declared independence from all natural processes, are an anatomical creature that first evolved 300,000 years ago – the first ‘Homo’. Homo is a herding creature – just like cows and sheep and horses and monkeys and fish, etc . Homo is embedded with conscious, subconscious and learned behavior that will, whether desired or not, identify their place in the herd. ‘Herd’ is a desire to associate with others and can be a family, neighborhood, community, region, nation or global population.

Using our peripheral vision, one has a thought that perhaps there are too many people in the United States which causes imbalances in the herd; perhaps one senses that, with all the industrial, technical and agricultural advances since the 16th century, none has provided enough loaves of bread for everyone at the same time. Imbalances in role, privilege and opportunity emerge within the herd that will affect one’s sense of value and place as a member of the herd.

Two tropes are an independent force on the members of the herd: “Survival of the fittest” and “Power corrupts”. These are eccentric behaviors that go beyond their intended role in herd wellbeing and occur when the herd is distressed.

How does one measure their acceptance and satisfaction within the herd?

⇒ Do you have a positive feeling about your role in your family? Do you feel members respect and care about you? Do you feel responsible for their well being? Do you feel that you can respond to their needs?

⇒ Do the people in your daily life, especially your neighbors, show companionship and acceptance? Does your presence (home, dress, community participation) seem to be in accord with the neighborhood?

⇒ Does your income meet your expenses? Do you feel your financial future is sustainable? Be clear about this – is insecurity the result of your behavior or is it the behavior of others? Every herd member owes allegiance to the herd but does the herd treat you accordingly?

⇒ Are you confident about who you are in this world? While the herd is supposed to be a source of survival in difficult times, do you feel you can survive by changing your association with the herd?

⇒ Do you have a satisfactory personal life that has companionship, entertainment through hobbies and group activities?

֎ All these comparisons are built from conscious and subconscious feelings as well as social and financial circumstances. Feel free to engage friends and family to clarify relationships that seem improper. It is important, as well, to take a long look at the herd. Things may be askew for peripheral reasons. Knowing about them may help shape your own survival skills.

The MAGA surge is the result of herd disrespect and abuse over the last forty years. Obviously they feel the herd has not respected their contribution.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

Peripheral vision is important

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The Atlantic magazine had a piece about what’s behind Trump irritating Greenland. The bigger perspective is what is important rather than Trump’s shenanigans about “buying” Greenland at any cost. From the magazine:

“As polar ice melts away, superpowers are vying for newly open shipping routes in the Arctic Ocean and largely unexplored mineral and fossil-fuel reserves. Arctic warming could pose a direct threat to America’s security interests too: Alaska could have new vulnerabilities to both China and Russia; changes in ocean salinity and temperature might interfere with submarine detection systems; the extremes of climate change, including permafrost thaw in Russia, could drive economic instability, social unrest, and territorial claims.

During the Biden administration, the U.S. military and NATO had both started to treat global warming in the Arctic as a matter of real military concern. Whether that will continue under Trump is an open question. Even as the president has tried to erase U.S.-government action on climate change, when he talks about Greenland, he’s tacitly acknowledging that rising temperatures are rapidly changing that part of the world—and U.S. interests there.”

This is an example of peripheral vision because it encompasses four large issues: global warming and international economics as the world economy suffers under the changes brought by AI and the changes brought by natural resource shortages. One could spend days talking about each issue independently but in this case, the four together add clarity to every issue.

Another example is the increasing frequency of earthquakes and volcanoes, two terrible human experiences that can wipe out small nations. The two peripheral issues are global warming and the Earth’s behavior as a planet in the Solar System. On the one hand, global warming is having a chemical effect on the planet. Subterranean gases like Methane have begun to escape into the atmosphere or explode underground and can be the fuse to begin an eruption; warm oceans affect temperatures of the floor under them. This is caused largely by global warming. Geologists have mentioned that the largest volcano in the world, located in Antarctica, is rumbling.

On the other hand, the Earth’s rotation is becoming an issue because the molten core is spinning faster than the surface. Mariner has written earlier about this circumstance which will increase earthquakes and volcanoes and in the future will cause a compass reversal at the poles – something that already can be evidenced in the Baltic Sea and the South Atlantic where reports of compass irregularities have been reported.

Many issues in life that are not in the news may be dealt with more efficiently if one looks peripherally at the issue. Odds are more than one condition may make an issue perplexing. Further, using peripheral vision also exercises one’s comprehension of life in general.

Ancient Mariner

New things

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This is very personal information about your body. Your body has 800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cells. If the reader doesn’t know how to say 26 zeroes, it is eight hundred million billion billion. Interestingly, the vast majority of these cells are self directed and do not need independent information from outside the cell.

This post is about changes in the world of science. It also is because mariner doesn’t watch television much except for science documentaries and has more time to spend searching the internet to find answers to useless questions like ‘how many cells are in the human body?’

All the fields of science are changing procedures to leverage AI except mathematics itself which already is procedural except for the old theoretical issues. For example, the Rieman theory about prime numbers which was first asked in the middle 1800s.

Astrophysicists have become troubled about basic theories of the universe. For example, the gravitational role of black matter doesn’t seem to be correct given new AI technology.

In economics, the moneyed class is all agog about cryptocurrency as an investment because it is identical to dollar bills which are owned by the Federal Government, thereby reducing the risk of investment. In principal, cryptocurrency is an electronic paper dollar. At this point, although they are popular, corporate organizations like Bitcoin are not proven for safety. A bit of interesting information from a February 2020 post: … “the citizens of Kenya in 2007 became the first country to launch ‘mobile money’ transfer service through a cell phone provider that plays the role of a money exchange. Swapped phone to phone, no bank is necessary.”

Mariner already has commented on the use of minions to counsel small children and the return of in-home doctor visits (not really, the doctor is a Meta deepfake connected to a Google database).

In a lengthy diatribe he has predicted the end of democracy because AI is all about singular authority over broad expanses of human life from economics to interpersonal skills.

In the field of chemistry mariner watched a PBS documentary about how scientists already have mastered methods to manufacture RNA (RiboNucleic Acid) for any specific purpose – picking a future child’s hair color, height and nose type for example. Farmers already use an especially made RNA that duplicates the sexual perfume of a female butterfly. It is sprayed over an entire field of corn so that the male butterfly cannot determine the proximity of a female butterfly. If the reader ever eats an ear of corn and feels the urge to have sex with a butterfly, this is why.

The smartphone is the RNA of AI. Its functions are creeping into everything from automobiles to watches to whom one should marry, what to wear today and which cookie to buy – all of which are based on which sponsor is supporting the website. The other side of this behavior is what the reader doesn’t hear about, like other brands of cookies and dating partners who have been screened out because they don’t match the types of partners the database thinks the reader should like.

Donald who? Mariner has other things to think about: how long will it be before humans are warmblooded minions?

Is Harris’ first name really Pamela?

Ancient Mariner

 

First sign of positive movement

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Recent news sources covered some new political action that may be the first positive sign of a transition out of the conflagration everyone experiences today. The new action is a sudden boldness by middle-liberal democrats to launch campaigns against incumbent democrats. If we were gardeners waiting for signs of Spring, this would be like noticing that first tiny leaf poking through. There still may be a frost – but the leaf is a good omen.

Our intuitions tell us that the current democratic party has been headless since Barrack Obama. Not that Joe Biden was a failure but everyone assumed he would restore leadership in his one term then let the new leadership run in the next election. Kamala Harris wasn’t a substitute.

Everyone has watched a few progressives try to fight the republican conservatism; examples are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but the current news is about a group of democrats forming a unified effort to remove older, less aggressive democrats. The common complaint is that the elected officials are not standing up to the Trump challenge. An example is the challenge to Chuck Shumer for backing the budget bill.

When one waits to change their underwear until after they are on the bus, it will be a blatant fiasco. The US government is trying to change underwear that needed changing forty years ago. As evil and self-centered as Trump is, he is a causative force that says change the underwear NOW! The trick is to not wear Trump’s choice of underwear.

Today’s news is not enough to change anything but at least there is hope that Spring may come.

Ancient Mariner