Category Archives: Science

Dismantling the Petro World

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The last post implied, if the reader did not take the content as factual, that the future for the western coalition of nations faced a collapse of its economies and would be fortunate to be called second tier nations. The reason that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations will overwhelm the western economy is because they have the oil, gas, and the population growth to take over the world economy – somewhat like Walmart, Target and CVC moving into a neighborhood. Any local retail outlets that survive will be less than robust for sure.

Aside from nations, the petrochemical industry is the largest set of global organizations in the world. Asking them to go out of business or scale down to ten percent of what they were is not a winning strategy for global warming. Yet this is the fear that those who deny scientific information hear – that the petro economy is a common source of wealth and making the changes in corporate behavior, the way neighborhoods are built, the way every person consumes food, energy, space and nonrenewable minerals must undergo a transformation that challenges capitalism and suggests something more akin to socialism. So, global warming doesn’t exist.

While searching the Internet, the mariner came across an article in the Nation Magazine for November 2011. The article was written by Naomi Klein, a Canadian author who writes books on the climate and its confrontations with capitalism, human nature, and disappearing resources, including the disappearance of national economic policies. Klein’s current book, “This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate,” is on the best seller list at the moment.

The entire article is available at

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=0,2

 

In the Nation article, Klein makes a six point case that makes a reader think it is easier to climb a cliff covered in ice than to change the petro paradigm:

  1. Reviving and Reinventing the Public Sphere

…Traditionally, battles to protect the public sphere are cast as conflicts between irresponsible leftists who want to spend without limit and practical realists who understand that we are living beyond our economic means. But the gravity of the climate crisis cries out for a radically new conception of realism, as well as a very different understanding of limits. Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems. Changing our culture to respect those limits will require all of our collective muscle—to get ourselves off fossil fuels and to shore up communal infrastructure for the coming storms.

  1. Remembering How to Plan

…Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels, what the Transition Town movement calls an “energy descent action plan.” In the cities and towns that have taken this responsibility seriously, the process has opened rare spaces for participatory democracy, with neighbors packing consultation meetings at city halls to share ideas about how to reorganize their communities to lower emissions and build in resilience for tough times ahead.

  1. Reining in Corporations

…But we are also going to have to get back into the habit of barring outright dangerous and destructive behavior. That means getting in the way of corporations on multiple fronts, from imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, to banning new coal-fired power plants, to cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans).

  1. Relocalizing Production

…Climate change does not demand an end to trade. But it does demand an end to the reckless form of “free trade” that governs every bilateral trade agreement as well as the World Trade Organization. This is more good news —for unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen their manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced with big boxes. But the challenge this poses to the capitalist project should not be underestimated: it represents the reversal of the thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power.

  1. Ending the Cult of Shopping

…This growth imperative is why conventional economists reliably approach the climate crisis by asking the question, How can we reduce emissions while maintaining robust GDP growth? The usual answer is “decoupling”—the idea that renewable energy and greater efficiencies will allow us to sever economic growth from its environmental impact. And “green growth” advocates like Thomas Friedman tell us that the process of developing new green technologies and installing green infrastructure can provide a huge economic boost, sending GDP soaring and generating the wealth needed to “make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure…”

The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume.

  1. Taxing the Rich and Filthy

…That means taxing carbon, as well as financial speculation. It means increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cutting bloated military budgets and eliminating absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. And governments will have to coordinate their responses so that corporations will have nowhere to hide (this kind of robust international regulatory architecture is what Heartlanders mean when they warn that climate change will usher in a sinister “world government”).

Most of all, however, we need to go after the profits of the corporations most responsible for getting us into this mess. The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade; ExxonMobil alone can clear $10 billion in profits in a single quarter…

Naomi Klein pulls no punches in this article in the Nation. The quotes provided here by the mariner provide an insight into her perspective but a great deal of reasoning remains in the article. He recommends that his readers go to the link provided above and discover the whole painting and all the colors in it.

Ancient Mariner

Oneness I

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ONENESS

Why write this?

The author is in his middle seventies. The culture of his lifespan is collapsing all about him. The decades have marched by. After the war, the forties and fifties saw the end of the quiet, home town culture – the last days of Norman Rockwell and radio. By the time the author was ten, he no longer had to carry ashes from the basement furnace or empty the pan under the icebox. The telephone had five call letters and seldom rang.

Television had little to brag about early on; he did not realize how fine it became before expansion and capitalism began to whittle television down to the nothingness it is today. Today, the “best” shows are the ones that capture audience share – if only for a season or even one event. The unfathomable power of television to heal, educate, provide factual history and improve the human mind has disappeared. Only PBS holds down the fort – and just barely. Under the hands of entrepreneurs, quality is gone but the profits have soared. The TV cow is milked dry, replaced by a mechanical cow with artificial milk. Today, in 2014, broadcast television itself is under attack as entrepreneurs compete for profitable schemes similar to Netflix, ESPN, HULU, HBO and internet channels.

The sixties and seventies foretold the increasing conflict between government, business and citizenry. The Viet Nam War became an icon for an American society that was beginning to shred American gestalt into pieces divided along generational lines. Still, we were a conglomeration of equal, if conflicted, citizens until the Reagan years. Reagan opened the government to big money, corporatism and unbridled capitalism. It was no longer a government that belonged to the citizenry. The author still weeps at the resultant devastation that has made our government a mockery of democracy and a blatant, troublesome oligarchy. The movie that brought it all together was The Matrix. Individuals were nothing more than batteries in coffins – surviving only to make the powerful even more powerful.

What stopped working? How did greed and prejudice in all it manifestations take control? It was because no one is interested in reconciling the best solution with a larger ideal as a guide. The American society has lost its ethic. We are rootless with no means to set a standard for goodness, ethics, and morality – whatever word touches you as something that isn’t around anymore. Would Andy and his son Opie survive today? Or Pogo or Opus? Or Omnibus? What happened to news programs that were not required to be profit centers? No wonder the only news is sensationalist police chases, wars and murders with a bit of schmaltz thrown in for variety. What a different world it would be if government had not caved to the likes of Rupert Murdock.

One expects cultural change but not the slashing, manipulative and greedy bashing the American citizen has experienced in the last fifty years.

We must learn how to pursue oneness. We must learn how to build a positive gestalt just as a bricklayer lays brick – one at a time; one opportunity at a time; one commitment at a time – to oneness.

The question is this: Technology has obliterated the cultural foundation that began in 1890. What does the new foundation, including its ethical standards, look like? What will be right or wrong? What will be the standard for fairness?

Ancient Mariner

Oneness

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Throughout the winter months, there will be a series of posts on oneness. The focus of the series is an investigation into how we can improve our decisions with the use of oneness as a problem solving tool. Other topics may be posted as well but the series can be identified by the title: Oneness I, Oneness II, Oneness III, etc.

The format presents the outline first, and then follows with an expansion of the outline in paragraph form. At the end of each post, a general question will be offered for your perusal. The mariner will not answer this question.

The first series is the Preface. It begins below. No question follows.

  • –

 

PREFACE

Oneness has a bad reputation. It suffers from association with many religions, is perceived to be weakness in business, a phenomenon in mystic pseudo-sciences, misinterpreted as togetherness, and is associated with cuddliness and romance. Truth be told, you and I would not exist except for our dependence on oneness. Mammals would not exist except for oneness. Oneness is not a social term subject to romance or derision. It is a genetically embedded requirement for survival of Homo sapiens.

Language and writing would not have emerged were it not for oneness. Human skills like invention and discovery would not have emerged without oneness. Families, tribes and nations would not exist without oneness. Fairness, truth, justice, and morality would not exist without oneness. If humans existed otherwise, life would be barbaric at best and murderous violence would have no restraint. Under these conditions, it would not be long before humans were extinct.

Even cattle have a sense of oneness. It is an instinctual oneness but the herd instinct has enabled cattle to survive millions of years. Except that an unnatural predator wiped out the American Bison to make hats and coats, the bison would have survived into the ages. The presence of seven billion humans, soon to grow to twelve billion, is in itself destructive and stupid. The author will leave the issues of excessive humans to another author, Elizabeth Kolbert, in her book The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History. The book is a necessary volume in every individual’s library.

In his book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Dacher Keltner makes the case that empathy is a firmly placed factor in mammalian genes (see post ‘Evolution of Faith’, May 2013). It takes empathy to nurture offspring until the young one can deal with the world on its own. Empathy is a critical element of oneness. The flip side, the action verb, is compassion. While empathy helps the species survive, it is acts of compassion that enable the world to survive as a healthy, nurturing environment. Kindness creates a powerful enhancement to manifest the destiny of a moral, thinking species like Homo sapiens. Yet, the power to be compassionate, to generate oneness, is a perpetual battle against those who choose not to be compassionate. Given knowledge of passing time and self awareness, the power to choose separates humans from other mammals. The power to choose oneness or pejorative abuse is the soap opera of human history. This discussion is presented in the hope that soap opera will diminish and oneness will increase.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Judge

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Having just seen the movie “The Judge” with Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr., the mariner felt more like Robert Duvall than Robert Downey, Jr. In other words, he felt old. Like Robert Duvall, the frontal lobes were intact and contained a lifelong establishment of reason, morality and a command of human behavior. Still, the body was finished; the brain confused by drugs and memory lapses. The shower scene “done me in,” as a Broadway play once complained; it was the last straw – the mariner, too, had outlasted his biological lifespan.

To make matters worse, the mariner came home to read a frightful edition of Smithsonian, describing the bright ideas that will shape the future. The mariner has always considered he was an agent of change. Indeed, his career was just that, bringing large corporations into new worlds of automated business management.

But technology has caught up and passed him by. Not so much the technical engineering but the changes in what human beings will be subject to in a world where reality and automated fantasy are combined in a smudged and inseparable pseudo-reality. One article in the magazine claimed to implant false history in a mouse brain. The mouse believed it had been severely shocked while standing on a steel plate. Placed in a box with an easy way to escape, the mouse stood frozen in fear that it would be shocked and would not move toward the exit. Yet the mouse actually had never received such a shock.

Translate this ability to alter reality to humans. The claim is a cure for Alzheimer’s, dementia, psychological disorders and other ailments of modern life. If one is paranoid of government and corporate prerogatives, one can see manipulation driven by foolish laws and corporate procedures – a capability that can be used for cure or curse.

In any case, one’s knowledge of one’s self may not be real. One’s history that has built an identity of self may be artificial – the self being lost among artificial memories and erased traumas and confrontations that make us who we are.

The mariner longs for that sailboat that will take him away from the modern world and travel among the shores of places that still are behind the technological curve – where real is real.

There are two concepts that dominate international culture today: We do it because we can – and the individual is not the solution. This mixture reminds the mariner of the early industrial age, where human rights were trampled in the name of progress.

Inept governments around the world are not interested in protecting human rights. Profits account for much more than personal freedoms.

Change is always traumatic as new processes displace old ones. The world will change under our feet even as we try to stand upon solid ground.

In the movie, Robert Duvall passed away due to advanced cancer. One could not help but share his release.

Ancient Mariner

Homo sapiens: Reagent of Planet Earth

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Frequent readers are aware that one of mariner’s favorite subjects is “reality.” Reality, seemingly simple on the surface is a collection of facts representing a moment in time yet simultaneously a complex amalgam with nuances from the sciences to the arts to the senses of each individual. Reality is a conundrum to say the least.

Let us travel out into space, perhaps halfway to the moon and look back at Planet Earth. We see weather patterns floating about over land and water. We see Earth turning in its rotation every 23 hours and 56 minutes. It appears to be a blissful scene. It could last forever.

But it won’t. Did you know that 250 million years ago it took only 22.8 hours for Earth to complete one rotation? Each century, the rotation slows by 1.7 milliseconds. Avoiding a scientific treatise on the subject, the important element is that Planet Earth will not last forever. Further, a few million years down the road, the Sun will have an increasing role in the weather, radioactivity and axial tilt of the Earth. As spoken wisely by every generation, things never stay the same.

The numbers cited above are meaningless given the relatively short time it took for the first vertebrates to evolve into Homo sapiens. Still, it is obvious that nothing organic or living is forever and, in fact, is a bit unstable. To narrow the scope, consider the existence of vertebrates. Homo sapiens is wiping out dozens of species every day. This does not include disappearing insects and creatures that have no spine, for example, coral, bivalves and plant life.

Seven billion people cover Earth like a giant scrubbing pad, scraping the surface as if it were a dirty dish. The “soap” is carbon-based abuses of every kind mixed with chemical and radioactive byproducts of Homo sapiens, and the excessive space and food required to sustain each human. Note that every nonhuman vertebrate lives a balanced natural footprint, taking and returning to nature in a way that does not significantly disturb the status quo.

Why are humans selected to be a rapid reagent to life on Earth? Is this a good thing? Can human intelligence that will force change be attributed to evolution and processes of natural selection? Are humans the latest example in a series of evolutionary shifts? Must the world go through drastic transitions every million years or so? Is this a way of recycling Earth’s resources?

The questions beg a larger understanding of why we are a naturally occurring reagent that will change life on Earth.

Individuals often conjure a logical relationship between dinosaurs and people – both dominant in their time. The dinosaurs lost out to a meteorite that ended normal weather for a long time. Therefore, humans will be stopped only by extraterrestrial events. Nothing on Earth has enough effect to end the species. However, some claim radioactive poisoning from Sunbursts, excessive volcano and earthquake activity or a modern, unstoppable plague.

It is popular to say we are our own worst enemy and at some point Planet Earth will rebel and significantly reduce our number. Nevertheless, across Planet Earth’s lifespan, is destruction by humans a natural cycle? Is Homo sapiens the next “meteorite?” If Planet Earth were aware of human behavior, that behavior may be considered insignificant; we quite often assign ourselves too much importance with regard to geophysical reality.

Reality may be that Homo sapiens is indeed the peak of a long run of vertebrate existence. Scientists project that our population will top out at 12 billion – almost half again more than exist today. Numbers this large definitely will change the global ecosystem, including weather, species and topography.

Reality is that we are evolving faster and faster toward automatonic behavior. Key parts of our normal bodies will be electronic. Our manner of communication will be through electronic networks much more easily than if we had to speak or write. A tiny forerunner of this future world is the grocery card one uses at the grocery store. The store knows what you buy so it will be available to you; the store knows when you shop and how much you pay; the store knows you changed brand due to pricing changes; the store knows you have a new baby or a teenager. The store pharmacy has your health profile. With this information, the store sends you personal coupons, suggests magazine subscriptions, advises available neighborhood clinics and doctors, and may even make it not necessary to come to the store at all – your food is delivered to your door if not to your pantry and freezer. Neither you nor a grocery employee ever said a word to make all this happen.

Reality is that we are master of our own genome. We can alter Homo sapiens dramatically in one generation. It will be possible to change every feature of a fetus to have the perfect child. Medicine will modify genes to prevent genetic diseases and mental disorders. Homo sapiens will be freed from the slow, evolutionary process of achieving character traits through accidental changes generation to generation. Examples of all these evolutionary powers already exist. Only the process of making the changes available to the public need be added.

Reality is that the definition of “nation” will become less of an independent state and more like a consortium of producers.  Nations will retain traditional cultural values but will no longer require a complete Gross Domestic Product. The GDP will be comprised of economic output shared with other countries in an international marketplace (corporatism).

Given that Homo sapiens will not perish on a planet that is changing, our reality will never stand still and will be indefinable as we move into a new evolutionary phase – automatons. Our differences in appearance, freedom, and choice will be virtually controlled by electronic collaboration of banks, government, retail and presumed class. The mariner learned long ago that the opossum had a very stable genome because it was an ancient species that long ago stabilized any irregularities or inefficiencies. But, the mariner asks, “Can you tell one opossum from another?” As we evolve, we will be more like the opossum.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

The Future According to Michio Kaku

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The mariner drove to Colorado to visit family and attend to an apartment complex he owns. The trip is lengthy at 12 hours. It can be accomplished in one day but now the mariner takes two days to cover the distance – two six-hour drives is plenty.

While driving he listened to Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Michio KakuHuman Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku. A photograph of Michio Kaku is included in case you have not placed name with face.

The first part of the book describes how fast technology advances. In the last one hundred years, educated scientists predicted technological achievement at a much slower pace than how technology actually advanced. The automobile and aircraft existed around one hundred years ago and both were considered novelties that generally were not useful. One insightful scientist suggested that air balloons will be the main form of personal transportation – as common as the automobile today. No one believed high-speed trains were possible within the next one hundred years.

By 2100, Kaku predicts a full integration of every aspect of our lives. The Internet will enable the following:

Each piece of clothing you wear will have a chip that tracks wear and tear and will order a replacement automatically with a design approved by you. You may choose to select another design by scrolling through a specialized catalog based on your past selections. There is no mention of credit cards. The same is true for every object in your life. In a conversation with someone about the book, they asked, “Does that include spouses?”

The desktop, laptop, and handheld devices will disappear within a decade and slowly be replaced by contact lenses with a microchip embedded that performs all the automated functions you perform today on current devices.

There is a rule called Moore’s Law that says computer speed doubles every 18 months. It has held true since the invention of the first computer. Kaku says there is a limit where changes in technology will end Moore’s law. At that point, all information everywhere in the world will be simultaneous and available to anyone. Interestingly, Kaku says that as we implement the new technology, it will reduce the effectiveness of capitalism, which depends on exclusive information and time advantage. But everyone will already know everything and everyone world-wide will be introducing new information at the same time, sort of like Facebook except the input will be useful.

The walls of rooms in your house will be covered with wallpaper that is also a computer screen. Change the color and pattern with your contact lens computer. The walls are interactive with your movement. Further, you can place yourself anywhere in the world in a true three dimensional interactive way. For example, in your room, you can walk the streets of Rome in real time interacting with real people in Rome who will need contact lenses. Do not worry about language differences. As you speak with an Italian, the Internet will automatically make it sound as if you are speaking Italian and vice versa. Remember you are in Italy real time via the Internet. You will be able even to feel the loose stones on the street. The mariner can imagine that this capability will eliminate public transportation. Just blink your eye and click your heels!

You will have access to all knowledge instantly. Kaku predicts that soon, perhaps much less than 100 years, as you walk the streets and focus on a person coming toward you, that person’s name and biographical information pops up on your contact lens. Not just certain familiar persons, every person will be identified by face recognition. Every person! The mariner likes this part because remembering names, among many other things, is increasingly difficult.

A new form of x-ray will give you Superman’s power to see through walls and other objects. The mariner began to wonder about all these powers. He has been around the world a bit. He knows that some men wear women’s panties because they are more comfortable and, perhaps, there are Freudian perceptions at play. If a man walks into a room where others wait for his presentation, what effect will there be if everyone knows the man is wearing panties?

Using the seemingly transportable power of being anywhere in the world, places like Manhattan will be overrun with people from everywhere – or maybe if someone transported themselves to Times Square, it would appear empty because everyone in Manhattan transported themselves somewhere else – or everyone in Times Square is from everywhere but Manhattan. The imagination runs wild.

Kaku says that the combination of speed of light communications with universal awareness will enable a global culture. Nationalism, radical and reactionary movements, insider power and financial moves will diminish if not disappear altogether. Everyone will know everyone in context and everyone will have absolute knowledge.

Finally, Michio Kaku says we will have the power of the gods to create life in any form – even new types of life like a short-necked Giraffe who will viciously bite your toes off. We will heal with hand-held devices seen on Startrek, track viruses at the viral level and destroy them before you even know you may be getting a cold. Any cellular irregularity will be destroyed by a special injection using your own DNA. Your doctor, insurance company, boss and mother-in-law will know these things as they happen. Thank goodness for the Internet.

The mariner is overwhelmed, entertained and feels exposed. It may be the beginning of a technical version of transcendentalism. Emerson wrote in his 1837 speech “The American Scholar“:

“So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. …Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

Indeed. The Internet will allow us to conform our life to the pure idea in our individual minds while in our living room. Shades of The Matrix – at least we don’t have to conform our life in a casket! Will we all transcend the evils of human institutions and social class disparity? Will we have enlightenment? Will everyone know that we don’t have enlightenment?

Ancient Mariner

 

Sixth Extinction

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When the mariner was about twelve, he was reading one of his father’s textbooks that had a chapter on Thomas Malthus, a British economist who, in 1798, said that population growth would be destructive and would be the end of the human species. Being impressionable at that age, the mariner never forgot that warning. He has not thought about Malthus for a while but has always been aware of the impact of overcrowding on the earth in general and on the human race in particular.

Malthus based his prediction on the fact that population was a geometric growth pattern (1,2,4,8,16..…) and food sources grew arithmetically (1,2,3,4,5…..). Eventually, he reasoned, people would die of starvation. Among several opinions about how to control human population, the most memorable was to increase the death rate. Little did he know that science would not shorten lives but would extend them; now, on the horizon, people will live greatly prolonged lives. Further, science would boost food production to keep up with population growth.

All this came back to mind when Elizabeth Kolbert was interviewed on television. She is the author of a new book titled The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History. (Henry Holt & Company). Readers may be able to watch the interview on Jon Stuart’s webpage, http://www.thedailyshow.com/videos

The title derives from the fact that five great extinctions have occurred in the history of living things on Planet Earth. Most know about a meteorite that hit Earth in Mexico and ended the era of dinosaurs. Check Wikipedia or search “five great extinctions” for more information. Kolbert portends that humans are the cause of the sixth great extinction.

The book is drawn from scientific research and trips around the world with experts on climate, oceanography, ecology, animal and plant specialists and others who study living things and their habitats.

To make a detailed analysis brief, Kolbert’s point is that our species once existed only on the plains of Africa and now has spread to every spot on Earth, that is, every habitat of every plant, animal, fish, invertebrate, bacteria, and has altered every single ecosystem. The result of this overpopulation, especially by a species that is extremely high maintenance in its use of food, space, materials and energy, is that tens of thousands of species are falling into extinction on a continuous basis.

Not only are there so many humans that other species are crowded out (cities and sensitive estuaries filled in for the benefit of real estate development to name two), humans are a dirty and careless bunch. Humans are the cause of innumerable destructions of habitat by deliberately invading them (farming and river dams to name just two). Humans carry diseases that kill not only humans but other plant and animal life as well, spew chemical damage into every habitat on Earth, and alter climates to such a massive degree that animals from whales and polar bears to tiny fish, bees, coral species and plant life over the entire Earth are dying or being deliberately killed.

We are an uncaring lot. However, what goes around comes around. No longer can our profit be measured solely by spreadsheets and bottom line profit and loss. We are undermining ourselves day by day, even as the riverbank slowly gives way to its river. Is life in the matrix* our future, where robotic life forms are the only survivors?

Malthus would be horrified.

Ancient Mariner

*reference to movie The Matrix, where humans live unknowingly in a matrix of coffin-like life support units and are used as batteries to generate electric power for a lifeless robot reality.

Beyond the Creationists

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It is time we took the creationists to task. Why are so many afraid of evolution? In context, the creation story was written over six thousand years ago when virtually nothing was known about the Planet Earth, how the Sun and stars moved or even that the Earth was round. That being said, the creation story is a beautiful metaphor for why God’s world was created but not how.

Signs of evolution are all around us. Even the most uneducated understands that the many species of dogs are bred to be different from one another – a form of forced evolution derived from the original wolf. Even the most uneducated understands that Tommy has red hair because Grandpa had red hair.

However, evolution is more than the old arguments about Jewish history or other animals. The human being is evolving, too. A genetic history of humankind taken from blood samples proves that all humans go back to African ancestors. Three great migrations out of Africa created the Asian race, the European race and the Paleo-Indian race.

Awareness of our changes in early years of humankind, however, does not prepare us for how we will evolve. There are signs emerging that give us clues. The following examples foretell the direction of our evolution – a direction that leads to a human/electronic being. Not part human and part electronic but a genetically united new version of our species. That may sound like science fiction but the process is well under way.

To start simply, is a person with an artificial leg controlled by the brain still wholly “human?” Is a person with a pacemaker still wholly human? These are simple examples of the integration of humans and electronics.

Experiments with telepathy have developed to the point that in a laboratory, two individuals can compete playing a computer game directing the action only with their thoughts – no wires, no remote, just their brainwaves. Several television shows have televised the ability of disabled veterans to move limbs by directing the motion of prostheses with their brains. A double amputee won Olympic class races on springs instead of feet. These are primitive examples but one can understand that merging humans with electronics and changing powers of the brain to accommodate that integration is plausible.

A rat has been enabled by a chip in its brain to see and interact with wavelengths beyond normal visible wavelengths. Can humans be bred from birth with these capabilities? Perhaps with a fetal modification, an unusual skill will be normal for a lifetime or a deficient condition can be repaired. As human and electronic interdependencies become more common, perhaps parents will not want their child to fall behind in school because the child did not have a memory chip embedded.

The examples above are mechanical. Evolution also is occurring socially. One need only compare how an individual worked, shopped, traveled, communicated and maintained the home before 1996 versus how those under thirty do all these things with a small remote. Is this remote a harbinger of future human-electronic integration such that the remote device will become integrated within the human body?

Yes.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Pollution

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Let’s look at the global warming issue. The mariner has pulled together some information from newscasts and scientific sources.

From Science Daily (www.sciencedaily.com) :  “Sea-level rise in this century is likely to be 70-120 centimeters [27 inches to 47 inches] by 2100 if greenhouse-gas emissions are not mitigated, a broad assessment of the most active scientific publishers on that topic has revealed. (Credit: © Thierry Hoarau / Fotolia)”

If this is true, all the coastlines of the United States will have normal tide levels three to four feet higher. Having lived on coastal waters for many years, the mariner knows that virtually every beach will be under water. Louisiana and Florida will suffer drastic economic situations. In Maryland, the mariner’s home State, the Annapolis Harbor, among many, will be flooded and in places wash onto the streets at high tide – not to mention the effects of stormy weather.

Many readers will not be around at the end of the century. However, the sea levels already have risen three inches; the shoreline will disappear even as we live day-to-day.

 

Counterpoint:

“Sixteen prominent scientists recently signed an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal expressing their belief that the theory of global warming is not supported by science. This has not been getting the attention it deserves because politicians (looking at you Al Gore) are frankly embarrassed to admit that they are wrong about the phenomenon known as global warming. Not only has our planet stopped warming, but we may be headed toward a vast cooling period.

New data shows that in fact the Earth has not warmed at all over the last 15 years. In fact, theDaily Mail reports that the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, after taking data from nearly 30,000 stations around the world, have found that the earth stopped warming in 1997. The report suggests we are headed toward a new solar cycle, Cycle 25, which NASA scientists have predicted will be significantly cooler than Cycle 24 which we are in now. This data largely contradicts the accepted theory among the public that carbon dioxide pollution is causing global warming and even proposes that we are actually heading toward global cooling.”

To the mariner, sixteen scientists doesn’t seem like an overwhelming crowd. Most scientists back the fact that the Earth is warming. A big political issue is whether the human race has disrupted normal earth climate.

On the other hand, several scientific sources that draw their data from different databases do predict a weak Solar cycle within the century. If it were strong enough, it may cool the oceans a degree or more; certainly, weather will be much colder in arctic and temperate zones. The mariner sees three issues:

(a)        The climate is warming or otherwise is too warm as it is – the melted Arctic Sea accounts for that. Further, ask any polar bear; the species is endangered. A small indicator is that plants are blooming two weeks earlier in Vermont, creating difficulties for migrating birds and insects that arrive too late for blooming season.

(b)        The Sun by far has the most influence on the weather on Earth – many times more than any global pollution argument. While the Solar cycle may save the planet from desert temperatures, it does not disprove human pollution.

(c)         Human pollution is affecting the climate. This is a political issue for sure. Read republican documents (highly influenced by the oil industry) and climate change is a myth. Read democratic literature (greatly influenced by new technology) and climate change will be the ruin of the human race.

The mariner accepts arguments based on carbon particles and gases. Machines and balloons that sit in odd or remote places, not affected by politics, collect atmospheric data without prejudice. It is true, as Al Gore will say, that carbon pollution has risen almost vertically since the year 2000. Recent news coverage of Chinese cities show visibility is limited to a block or so demonstrates the solid carbon particles discharged by human activity ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzz6TWNRUAc.  Two other arguments come to mind: Midwest electric and steel plant smoke that killed trees all the way to the Atlantic Ocean with acid rain; the Love Canal scandal where the town had unbelievably high rates of cancer that traced back to 21,000 tons of radioactive waste buried under the town.

What concerns the mariner more is the human race has little concern for the path of waste and abuse in its wake. Politics aside, Americans waste one-third of their food; waste dumps are almost as overloaded as our prisons, and the number of fellow species are disappearing at an alarming rate because human population has and is ruining natural habitats.

The conflict between government and corporate growth versus the natural environment is a tough one. It may run many decades. Maybe growing a few vegetables in the window, eating leftovers and recycling our glass and plastic may make a small difference in our own air quality. Buy products that are safe for the environment. Support climate magazines. Individuals must do something because there is no government in the world that can take definitive action on human abuse of the global environment.

And no one has mentioned methane. Damned cows!

Ancient Mariner

Our Brain and Probability

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The quickest trick to play on the brain to demonstrate that a human brain does not process probability is to say, “You Gotta Play to Win.” This sets up in the brain a simple equation: If you don’t play, you won’t win and if you do play, you will win. Well, maybe not every time….

The phenomenon called probability has intrigued mariner for some time. The brain operates strictly on a cause and effect mode – information in, information out. Probability, however, does not operate that way. Probability is free to behave randomly in terms of cause and effect expectations.

As a warm up for this post, visit my favorite university at

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/applied-math/cryptography/random-algorithms-probability/v/bayes-theorem-visualized

The weatherman says there is a ten percent chance of rain. To take the statement literally as a cause and effect event, everyone will receive ten percent of all the rain today. Alternatively, one could deduce that the weatherman has said this many times before and it did not rain so the probability in the listener’s mind is quite different from ten percent. Bayes’ Theorem, which will be discussed later, is able to discern the difference between what is expected and what may happen.

A recent book and a Nobel Prizewinner for economics, “Thinking Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, has an excellent chapter that discusses why the brain is so easily fooled by probability. A key concept in the book is the “anchor” effect. The first piece of information the brain receives becomes an anchor that unduly affects proper judgment as later information is added. Kahneman’s example:

“The initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the negotiations, so that prices lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is really worth.”

The anchor effect is isolated quite nicely by Nate Silver in his book, “The Signal and the Noise,” which is about identifying the correct anchor in sports betting. Silver takes the reader through many examples of mistaken anchors that did not consider the appropriate first piece of information and therefore led to gambling losses. It is in Silver’s book that he simplifies Bayes’ Theorem, which is a massive and complex set of calculations.

Silver sets up a simple set of questions:

X = prior assumption (first piece of information):

Do you think your husband cheats on you? The woman thinks

it is unlikely and says maybe 5%. X=.05

Y = a new event occurs: a strange pair of panties is discovered in the

husband’s car. Is this true evidence or an unexplained

circumstance? What are the chances it is circumstantial?

The wife thinks maybe 20%. Y=.20
Z= What are the chances it is true evidence that the husband has been cheating? The wife thinks maybe 80% Z=.80

Nate Silver sets up the following equation:

___XY____                    .01___                = .013                                                                 XY+Z (1-X)                .81 (.95)

Roughly one chance in a hundred that the husband is cheating. The equation demonstrates the power of the anchor effect. The wife had a very low value (.05) as the first piece of information. This made the later values less effective even though the panties were a strong piece of evidence.

In reality, the husband will have a lot of explaining to do because the brain does not think in terms of probabilities.

Ancient Mariner