Author Archives: skipper

Practice for Spring

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As far as weather is concerned, today has been a fine day to practice the chores of Spring. 75°, no harsh wind, a cloudless Sun-shiny day. It felt good to be outside without sharing the experience with bitter winds and frosty temperatures. He knows it is just practice, though. NOAA says snow, high wind warnings and winter bitterness are only a day away.

But personal motivation was at a high mark so mariner went charging out to pull out tools, charge batteries, check the tires, start clearing last year’s debris from garden beds . . . for two hours. Huff and puff – Spring football practice was easier than this! But he and his wife shall hold forth to barbecue steak and trimmings for supper.

It is amazing how much the body shuts down when not in use. Even with old people’s exercises, it is a shock to learn what “being in gear” feels like. The whole body takes on a higher level of tension and pace than one has been accustomed to over the winter.

He wishes that all readers get to have a Spring practice day!

Ancient Mariner

The Old Bunch

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Picked this article from AOL news:

“This Brain Disease Is Set To Double Worldwide By 2050. Are We Prepared? What Scientists Say.

While a lot of new scientific studies are focused on better understanding and treating the most common neurodegenerative disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, diagnoses in the second-most common one, Parkinson’s disease, are steadily increasing. In fact, new research suggests that Parkinson’s cases may actually double by 2050, which raises a lot of questions about why this might be happening and how you can lower your risk. ” 

An article worth reading, including links. The statistics haven’t changed; it’s really the millennial boom that’s changing the charts

Mariner’s advice is to make an appointment with Colossal Biosciences as soon as possible to get an evolutionary DNA fix. While mariner is there he’s going to get a hair job. (see post ‘Mariner warned about this, March 4).

Ancient Mariner

The other side

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Mariner has had 38 distinct jobs in his life. Everything from delivering newspapers to a contract in Taiwan building a computer system for the nation’s first fighter aircraft. He can avow that jobs shape one’s ethic and one’s place in the culture. He has had luxury dinners with CEOs and generals; he has seen a dead dog in the basement of a row house with an unused kitchen and a destitute family. He could go on about a 90-year-old woman offering sex for 75⊄, confrontations with guard dogs, a bull and an armed woman – to say nothing about belligerent executives.

But this post isn’t about bar stool stories. Of the 38 distinct jobs in his life, four have had a profound impact on his ethic, philosophy of life and his role in society. In chronological sequence they are gas & electric meter reader, Methodist preacher, parole officer and coding supervisor for an insurance company.

During 4½ years as a meter reader, he visited the homes of the very, very poor, the laborer, the white collar worker, the wealthy and many homes that were converted to small businesses and one-nite motels. These visits provided a belief that the separation of economic classes is severe, unfair and ignored by society. Each culture has its own style of community interaction, behavioral mores and even its own dress code.

As a Methodist preacher, he learned that religion is a specialized form of politics. The Christian theology is not a mainstay; the vast majority of church goers accept a parochial set of beliefs born out of tradition rather than faith. The socializing effect of belonging to a community is a positive trait but the church building is more important. Few attendees abide by the Second Great Commandment.

Mariner was a parole officer for three years. The job exposed him to the more complex side of human experience. Life is made up of many stresses that present emotional injury, loneliness, passive/aggressive behavior, debt, health and stressed relationships due to mental disorder and abuse. He learned that the personal side of life has its own mores, taboos and rituals. As with economic classes, home life is given little importance by community or by society in general.

This last job is cited because of its similarity to today’s Trumpian world of work. Mariner worked as a supervisor in the data processing department of a large insurance company. Like every other business of its time, the computer language was COBOL. Suddenly, thanks to IBM and Microsoft and Apple, COBOL was dropped in favor of new technologies and coding methods. In the blink of an eye, mariner was laid off. All the other large companies had simultaneous layoffs for the same reason. Locally, he was left without a career. It took a long time to rebuild a career in another field. His learned ethic is that corporations are politically independent and feel no need to incorporate themselves into the worlds of workers. Just profit, profit, profit.

Humans are intelligent and very much a caring species. It seems to mariner that humans, like 3-year-olds, have no sense of decorum and make life difficult just because they can. Given overpopulation, environmental abuse and provoking Mother Nature, perhaps humans should clean out the pantry and start over again.

Ancient Mariner

 

Change

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Change can be good when it is needed. Changing underwear for example or cleaning the attic or buying another car. Every once in a while governments need to change, too. The issues are who (who changes one’s underwear), how (who decides which antiquities in the attic are kept or not kept) and why (when one already has three cars).

Change seems to be an authentic phenomenon. Often, change comes later than it should. Then change becomes difficult, even disastrous. Suppose one didn’t change their underwear until they were on the bus riding to work. Mariner decided to visit Guru to talk about the validity of change. He took a trip to Guru’s remote mountain retreat.

Mariner began their conversation by citing the broad dissatisfaction that exists in the world today, the turmoil of war and authoritarianism, and the fading confidence toward economics.

“Change”, Guru replied, “is an absolute part of existence. There is not one ion in the universe that exists without being the product of change in the  state of its energy. Where there is energy, there is change. Otherwise there would be no universe.”

“But must change be so disruptive?”, mariner asked.

“At the level of living creatures here on Earth, change is always disruptive but in smaller scales of change, it sometimes can pass without being obvious. When a newborn has a different shade of hair, it is noticed but doesn’t seem disruptive. However, the level of DNA involved in that change that forced a modification in a sequence of otherwise ‘happy’ cells was significant.”

“But humans are so proud of their mastery of so many of Earth’s processes. Why can’t they manage change better?” mariner replied. He submitted a Wiley calendar subject to make his point:

“Your cartoon reflects the difficulty and disruption caused by change”, Guru replied. “Nothing, not an ion, a sea nettle, a crow or a human makes changes until they are forced upon them. Some changes are incremental and even greatly beneficial but these are not large changes. Change becomes disruptive when entire concepts and procedures must undergo total change in a short amount of time – that is, not as slow as evolution.”

Guru continued, “The cartoon also demonstrates that change must relate to genuine pressures that are hurting life’s processes. Making changes for ulterior or irrelevant reasons only adds to the cacophony.”

Mariner thanked Guru for his insights and headed home. Mariner’s assumption is that humans aren’t as smart as they should be about managing themselves. AI can’t do it, either – because AI is a human invention.

Ancient Mariner

 

Mariner warned about this

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The biotech company Colossal Biosciences has long aspired to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth, which roamed the Northern Hemisphere thousands of years ago  during the last ice age. But for now, as a step along the way, the company has come up with something decidedly less mammoth: meet the woolly mouse.

What was the purpose of this feat of genetic engineering? Colossal’s pitch is that, with biodiversity going the way of the dodo (which the company also hopes to resurrect), saving existing species will require tweaking their DNA to make them more resilient.

In other words, Colossal has decided to fire the planet’s ecosystem and take charge of the planet’s evolution process. Ain’t the mouse cute? Just think, your great grand children will be able to go to Walmart to pick from a menu what their children will look like – sort of like buying a puppy.

Well, mariner could use some hair . . .

Ancient Mariner

More about happy

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Recent posts were about finding a happy place to live. There is no question that the US is, generally, an unhappy place to live. The economic pressures putt on the citizenry are unheard of and the President already is making financial stability a disappearing phenomenon for everyone. Still, Donald doesn’t (yet) own small happy places or one’s personal memories.

Seriously, everyone must survive each day with at least a little satisfaction that life is worth living. Often, we must force ourselves to insert satisfaction into our daily life. His daughter has a supper routine where everyone around the table must identify a rose, then identify a thorn. A rose expresses the high point of the day, a fun moment, an accomplishment, or an interpersonal action. The thorn represents the opposite: a low point in the day, a frustration or failure. Even their 4-year-old must participate. Besides the benefit of sharing with one another, the exercise makes one focus on what good events feel like as well as preventing bad memories from being the only memories.

It is possible to deliberately set up a discharge of bad feelings by performing a deliberate action for that purpose. For example, play with children – the more active, the better; get outside with them and romp meaninglessly while the good vibes rise to the surface. The same can be applied with loved pets; take a walk, go to the ice cream parlor for a shared treat or toss a stuffed toy or ball. Cats like to cuddle and play hunting games with a toy or treat. Or use Zen practices designed for the same purpose – go deep and let go. Go somewhere where you have good vibes.

The challenge is to get outside the negativity that has been forced on you. The old saw about two sides make up one coin is true. If negative feelings are dominating, turn the coin over – there’s a whole new fun world there. The ability to turn the coin over at will is made difficult today by industrial distractions. One will not achieve happiness scrolling a smart phone or a television set. If one is truthful, these devices are a sedative – a lot like oxycodone and not a cure.

Discovering positivity requires physical action, change of routine and a focus free of typical responsibilities. A smart phone is not the same as walking in the woods – well maybe it can be pretended as such but that’s the difficulty in taking happiness advice from a circuit board. Go personal! Use that body of yours for fun!

Ancient Mariner

 

Turtles like to dance

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This post owes its topics to the March 2025 issue of Scientific American magazine.

First, did the reader know turtles like to dance? A scientific study of the sea turtle discovered that when it arrives at a feeding source, it does a little circle dance. [Mariner could only imagine Ethel Merman dancing the boogie.] It turns out turtles have a worldwide GPS in their brain complete with saved addresses and routes. Will Homos ever try to replace it with AI?

Another article stated that the human brain doesn’t use words to reason or gain insight. Mariner and his fellow hearing impaired are pleased about this finding. Externally, those with hearing difficulties are treated nicely but with tolerance, that their thinking is affected by their frequent misunderstandings. Scientific American says ‘no way’. When the brain is rationalizing an issue, it is off in another part of the brain and does not need the skill set that uses the five senses – including hearing. The author offers a few examples to show that words or speech-based articulating don’t have a place in reasoning:

Mariner assumes his readers are of a high quality intelligence that will solve these puzzles easily. If one escapes the reader’s insight, solutions follow tomorrow.

Just like the turtle, and most other creatures as well, the brain is a big place where the senses are just a small part more interested in immediate survival than in pondering the unknown, storing memory and managing a complex living creature.

Ancient Mariner

 

Best measure of national content

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Generally speaking, the way a nation measures its economic health is by measuring its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is an economic phrase that means ‘how much profit ls generated’. Since the Second World War, the US economic strategy has been ‘big is better’ leading to large, monopolistic corporations, international trade control and sustaining controlled inflation/deflation. Donald reminds us of how profit is manipulated through tariffs. As things stand today, the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world.

But something doesn’t seem right. Would it then be true that small is worse? Does this delineation lead to hoarding the better and ignoring the worse? Afraid so, that’s how capitalism works. Charity is okay as long as it is voluntary. Mandated charity (Is that like a penalty for being wealthy?) is verboten.

GDP is just one item in a long table of contributing issues as to what makes a nation happy – not just wealthy. In population polls of all the nations, the US is ranked 16th to 23rd in most polls and one source reports the US at 63rd) as a ‘happy’ nation. It is interesting but clearly demonstrative that certain elements of society play a larger role than ‘bigger is better’. Eleven of the top twelve happiest nations are dominated by a similar social structure. They are:   Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Costa Rica.

This conclusion is based on Gallup polling data collected over the past three years from 143 countries, with researchers evaluating six critical factors: gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption both internally and externally.

֎ GDP per capita. ‘Per capita’ means per person rather than the typical use to measure a nation’s situation. This measurement is the average income of all citizens individually. It includes not only well-to-do citizens but citizens from all income levels – including those with no income.

֎ Social Support. This category includes government programs that support the citizenry, e.g., Medicare, Social Services, child care, social security, food stamps, minimum wage, etc.

֎ Healthy Life Expectancy. This category focuses on price controls for various costs related not only to health and prescriptions but also to assisted living and living conditions generally.

֎ Freedom to make life choices. Distracting issues like racism, class discrimination, sexual constraints like birth control, abortion and homosexuality, education policy, restrictions caused by disruption from zoning, home owner associations, tax and insurance policies, and corporate intrusion all impose on an individual’s desire to make independent decisions about life choices.

֎ Generosity. There are two types: government and citizenry. It is a matter of behavioral attitude for both. Governments can be oppressive and finite about social policy or they can adopt some awareness of social need and exception. A US example is the battle over minimum wage, which is far behind the effects of inflation. Food stamps and rental policies which avoid competitive pricing are other examples.

On the citizenry side, Housing Associations are notorious for constraining individual desires. Another is the atmosphere of unanimity in communities. [In a recent post, mariner alluded to the influence of a common industry and multi-generational families contributing to a unified society.] Large corporations can choose to support employee needs outside the workplace by ‘joining the community’ or simply impose their presence in a way that can, in the extreme, wipe out a whole neighborhood.

֎ Perceptions of corruption both internally and externally. This category is likely to be the real reason the US is ranked as the 23rd happiest nation. Corruption is de rigueur in the US. Since the Reagan administration in the 1980s, unions have been busted, the tax code is dangerously imbalanced, elected officials see their own security and lifestyle as more important, rental prices are not competitive, Corporate America is completely self-managed and owes no support for American society. Lest we go on . . . .

Many times mariner has heard the comment, “If Trump buys Canada, where else can I move?” Try Finland, perpetually the happiest nation in the world.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Where is everyone?

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Mariner has written many posts about how social relationships are affected by economics, industrialism and technology. Most often, the relationship turns out to be a visible impact on specific generations. Because of the age break in generations, typically twenty years, and because the average active lifespan of humans has been around three generations, he has proposed that every sixty years a community will have significant social and economic changes.

For example, small to medium rural towns have followed the ‘sixty’ rule for three successions. The first significant change occurred around the turn of the century (1900) when automobiles and tractors changed farm practices and opened direct marketing of farm products to a much larger territory. Suddenly, in just a few years, farms had to be much larger to accommodate supply and demand. Access to a railroad line was a big advantage.

This shift in economics took an entire generation’s time to buy and sell farms, switch from horses to machinery, and to modify farm production. The population did not shift notably because these changes required lots of rural support from family farms to family banks to farm industries.

Forty years later World War II intervened. Farm families experienced the first significant migration away from rural population to factories in cities and joining the military which offered generous college benefits to GIs.

Rounding out the first 60-year loop, a large industrial influence was an active era of building US highways, interstates, train, bus and air services. This made it easier for an entire generation to leave local areas to seek better income and education. Many GIs took advantage of college benefits to leave farming for other careers.

This was during the 1960s. In 1964 Mariner moved from a big eastern city to this small town. The social structure still was dominated by large, multi-generational families. But something was missing. In the sixties, almost an entire population of high school graduates left for college and commercial opportunities elsewhere. Mariner was able to enjoy a still-functioning farm culture, a unique experience for him. But by the 1970s and especially into the 1980s, ‘family’ farms no longer existed; not only did high school students leave but many families sold smaller farms because of economic pressures.

The third 60-yearloop, until today, has seen a further drop in population which caused most small businesses to disappear, churches began to suffer from dropping attendance and the active farm culture was not the social influence it once was. The town, slowly through to today, has become a residential neighborhood where jobs are found elsewhere.

Mariner and his wife, now seasoned members of the town, have noticed the final phase of the third 60-cycle: Friends are dying; family members are dying; most of the town is populated by newcomers. No one knows everyone anymore. It is becoming a town which has no connection to its past.

When he moved back to town, mariner memorized all the street names in the town as an aid to finding his way around. Still, old folks, when he asks where someone lives, most often will say, “You know, over behind Carl’s old house.” Mariner lives in a section of town where until many decades ago a farm was across the road; older residents still cite that farm.

Mariner and his wife are losing friends and relatives rather frequently. Where is everyone?

Ancient Mariner