Category Archives: Musings

Mariner concedes

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He understands that within a decade or two a new age will have emerged. The Age of Humanism will be left to history, replaced by a more computer-managed reality. Mariner has made himself eager to participate in the new era.

֎ The sex toy individuals have the right idea. Not that a sex toy would do mariner any good but he will visit the factory to make robot replacements for his friends. Then he will not have to travel all over the country.

֎ For his family he will use the metaverse so that his family can visit in virtual reality. None of the family will be inconvenienced by travel or unnecessary dialogue. Imagine the cost savings by avoiding restaurants and motels. (Will the metaverse charge for space? Likely so if Zuckerberg is still around.)

֎ Mariner is confident that in a few years he will be able to buy a robot pony and a couple of robot hounds.

Mariner now has a firsthand understanding of how Qin Shi Huang, First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, felt when he built the terracotta army.

֎ It may be possible to reenact the aristocratic age of England if the downstairs crowd are robots and won’t bitch because they are overworked and underpaid.

֎ Gardening will be easier on two fronts: a robot gardener and fake plants.

֎ No one will need a car given Zoom and the metaverse.

֎ Regarding his wife, mariner may need to have a conversation. Mariner assumes his friends and family won’t mind if their robot replacements have faces like the Muppets. Evidently the only facial requirement is soulful eyes.

Ancient Mariner

Reality

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{The Atlantic} The moment that broke Cassie Alexander came nine months into the pandemic. As an intensive-care-unit nurse of 14 years, Alexander had seen plenty of “Hellraiser stuff,” she told me. But when COVID-19 hit her Bay Area hospital, she witnessed “death on a scale I had never seen before.”
Last December, at the height of the winter surge, she cared for a patient who had caught the coronavirus after being pressured into a Thanksgiving dinner. Their lungs were so ruined that only a hand-pumped ventilation bag could supply enough oxygen. Alexander squeezed the bag every two seconds for 40 minutes straight to give the family time to say goodbye. Her hands cramped and blistered as the family screamed and prayed. When one of them said that a miracle might happen, Alexander found herself thinking, I am the miracle. I’m the only person keeping your loved one alive. (Cassie Alexander is a pseudonym that she has used when writing a book about these experiences. I agreed to use that pseudonym here.)
The senselessness of the death, and her guilt over her own resentment, messed her up. Weeks later, when the same family called to ask if the staff had really done everything they could, “it was like being punched in the gut,” she told me. She had given everything—to that patient, and to the stream of others who had died in the same room. She felt like a stranger to herself, a commodity to her hospital, and an outsider to her own relatives, who downplayed the pandemic despite everything she told them. In April, she texted her friends: “Nothing like feeling strongly suicidal at a job where you’re supposed to be keeping people alive.” Shortly after, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and she left her job.

Maybe we should buy her a robot puppy.
Ancient Mariner

A Mystery

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One day in May of 1894, a crate of peaches appeared on a sidewalk in East London, England. It looked to be a sturdy crate.

The size was 18 inches long by 18 inches wide by 18 inches high – a cube. The wood was Elm slats 2 ¾ inches wide; they were fastened vertically rather than horizontally and were held in place by 2 ¾ inch x ½ inch slats at the top and bottom, inside and out. These horizontal slats were attached to the frame. The bottom was made entirely of the ½ inch thick slats, all fastened to the frame.

The frame was made from 3-sided lengths, as an equilateral triangle. Interestingly, the nails were made of copper with a ¼ inch head by ¾ inch long shaft. Each slat had two nails at each end.

The entire crate had a thin finish of polyurethane.

The peaches were all of similar size, 3 inches in diameter. There were 6 rows of peaches and 6 columns. Each row had 6×6 peaches making a total count of 36 peaches per row and 216 peaches in all.

The unanswered mystery that remains to this day is that, at the 2nd row, 4th column was one brown, freestone peach in the midst of a crateful of a yellow variety. What is it doing there?

Mariner created this mystery. He calls it ‘Mariner’s Conundrum’.

Ancient Mariner

 

Science News

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֎ Soon everyone will be able to have their own Jackson 5.

In some farmers’ ideal world, cows would birth only females, sows would bear no boars, and chicks would all grow up to be hens. Such sex ratios would stop them from killing millions of male animals, which don’t produce eggs or milk.

Now, scientists are a step closer to this reality. Researchers have harnessed the gene editor CRISPR to produce litters of mice all of one sex. That’s a potential boon to agriculture and may offer a more immediate advantage in scientific research. “The paper shows a state-of-the-art solution to producing single-sex species” with “impressive results,” says Ehud Qimron, a CRISPR expert at Tel Aviv University who was not involved with the work.

Finally humans can match whiptail lizards (genus Aspidoscelis) who are only female.

֎ Here’s a picture of your oldest cousin, called “Lucy’s Baby”. In 1974, the world was stunned by the discovery of “Lucy,” the partial skeleton of a human ancestor that walked upright—and still spent time in the trees—3.2 million years ago. Later discoveries revealed her species, scattered throughout eastern Africa, had brains bigger than chimpanzees. But a new study of an ancient toddler finds that the brains of Lucy’s kind were organized less like those of humans and more like those of chimps. That suggests the brains of our ancestors expanded before they reorganized in the ways that let us engage in more complex mental behaviors such as making tools and developing language. The remains also suggest Lucy’s species had a relatively long childhood—similar to modern humans—and they would have needed parenting longer than their chimp relatives. Called Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy and her family grew to a height of three feet.

To get a glimpse of the future of Homo sapiens, here’s a snapshot for you:

Yes, she is a fully conversant robot.

– – – –

Cannot leave without quoting Mark Twain who had this to say about human morality:

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.

Ancient Mariner

Sailing through life

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As the fall has moved on, mariner has focused more time on the internal affairs of home and garden. It is a relief not to follow closely each day’s news and thereby carry the weight of misguided voters and politicians, regardless of polarity and party.

He has completed repotting the frost-sensitive bulbs and plants; he has made a small bench to hold flower pots in his office; he has cleared the vegetable gardens for next year; next are the trellises and rabbit-guards necessary for the survival of small vulnerable shrubs. As winter sets in he has maintenance to do on tractors, lawnmowers and in-house projects like repairing a door and some basement windows.

Then there is the family gathering at Christmas; it is a week of immeasurable cacophony and family joy. The world ends at the front door.

But his mood is a lot like someone who is aware of impending doom. It is a feeling of despair that has dried of activity and lay like an ash at the back of the mind. Daily life continues with projects and distractions but there is a faint sense in the background that the outside world isn’t going to be kind.

So mariner will continue focusing on distractions like how to make a smart television do what mariner wants it to do – it can’t; mariner needs a tower for digital broadcasting; streaming is not convenient and is intensely iterative. In January the seed catalogs will arrive virtually every day for a month. Will this be the year mariner builds a small, traditional greenhouse? The backyard needs to be graded; mariner hasn’t used a bobcat since he laid a road to the farm equipment shed – maybe 1995. The orchard will get a trimming in January, too. A year from now in 2022 mariner plans to make his first batch of apple cider.

A hospice can be fun if one knows how to work it. As a Christmas gift for him, mariner has suggested a hover board.

Ancient Mariner

 

Thoughts on Evolution

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Mariner writes this blog to avoid picking the last apples to make a year’s supply of apple butter. Why does he defeat himself with laziness? His thoughts turn to what evolution has created in the 900,000 years of creating the hominid line. It certainly hasn’t stood still. Everyone has seen the ascent of man chart. Mariner provides a variation below:

Paleontologists often identify key transitions that mark different physiological species. The most common are when –

֎ Early monkey species came down from the trees. Groups or tribes of the new ape species began to have a more stationery society and expanded their diet to more insects, small creatures and additional low vegetation like roots.

֎ In Northern Africa there were periods of drought that forced the ape-hominid to forage more widely. The demands of this long lasting period demanded the ability to range even farther, taking more energy and stamina to sustain the species. Two key evolutionary improvements were the ability to perspire and a brain that could take charge of basic visceral functions when hunting, thereby allowing man to outrun animals by wearing them down.

֎ But something new was happening. Evolution was changing the brain. By the time these early hominids left Africa, frontal lobes were growing rapidly in the brain. Early man began to have the ability to surmise beyond physical reality. There was a new smartness that required logic to perceive advantage. When the early hominids arrived in the Fertile Crescent, the area had perfect weather and a robust ecosystem. Man surmised, “If we’re going to eat so much of this grass (Kamut/Khorasan, an ancient version of wheat), why not collect the seeds and grow it more conveniently”. Because an excess of resources could be created, this was the beginning of agriculturally-based society and feudal capitalism as well.

֎ Evolution had provided man, by then called Homo erectus, the advantage to breed rapidly and consequently H. erectus had to expand territory across whole continents in order to sustain what was considered a safe survivability. Evolutionary ethics promotes successful survivability; expansion is possible because of a certain advantage to the species. This is not new; today consider the Lionfish, a flourishing invasive species in U.S. Southeast and Caribbean coastal waters. The difference is that Lionfish do not have frontal lobes. Humans, on the other hand, know full well the relationship between investment and profit: “chop those trees down, damn it, there’s money to be made!” or maybe, “Kill those savages, they aren’t Christians!” Both logical in evolutionary terms.

֎ Since Roman times in the West, Human frontal lobes have taken over ethical control of what used to mean ‘survival’ to the planet’s ecosystems – themselves a product of evolution but without frontal lobes. Humans with their ever growing frontal lobes have expanded into Einstein’s universe of time and space and they are eager to expand beyond this planet to leverage the profit motive even while significant numbers of the human species languish on Earth.

– – – –

Mariner stops here to pick apples. What about these frontal lobes? Are they a self-destructive error on evolution’s part? Thousands of species including many Homo precursors have gone extinct because of unintended shortcomings.

Have a happy holiday season!

Ancient Mariner

 

More about gumption

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Mariner is one of millions of older people all around the world – beyond career, beyond younger generations, beyond participation. Recently he assigned the word ‘gumption’ to the special motivation it takes to be a successful old person. Below is another description from folks who know a lot more about it than mariner does. Being old himself, he understands clearly how true these words are from The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2016:

“Coherence: how events fit together. This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can fit new developments into your narrative the moment they happen, but you usually are able to do so afterward, so you have faith that you eventually will.” [coherence means one is an engaged part of reality, a fellow player]

“Purpose: the existence of goals and aims. This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something. Think of purpose as your personal mission statement, such as “the purpose of my life is to share the secrets to happiness” or “I am here to spread love abundantly.”

“Significance: life’s inherent value. This is the sense that your life matters. If you have high levels of significance, you’re confident that the world would be a tiny bit—or perhaps a lot—poorer if you didn’t exist.”

It takes a lot of gumption to sustain these three values, especially if you live alone, especially if you are infirm and shut in, especially if you are financially destitute.

If you are an old folk and have difficulty with these descriptions, depression and slow demise will occur. If you are a young person, your gumption still is required to apply these principles to have a happier life.

Arouse your gumption and turn things around. Be prepared; no career has ever required more effort.

Ancient Mariner

 

A small light of wisdom

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Internet-based journalists contribute more about the science of the future workplace than television journalists. For example, several journalists have begun to analyze the impact of artificial intelligence on organizational structure, speculating about psychological, sociological and economic concepts. As a group these journalists poo-poo the Zuckerberg view of his metaverse that will replace three-dimensional space in the workplace.

Annie Pearl, Chief Product Officer at Calendly, a platform for building business applications, predicts that transitions will center on three-way efficiency through collaborative dialogue exchanged between IT, end users and product teams. Another theme among journalists is that the biggest loser in new AI-driven businesses is middle management; AI will expedite development and decision making to a near real-time event – no time or need to pass proposals and permissions up and down organizational boundaries. Many teams may not even have a “boss”.

Chris Perrotti, VP of Digital Workplace at LogMeIn, suggests that Generation Zers will have a different perspective on the workplace that diminishes literal definitions about workplace versus remote workplace; whatever works will be what happens. Speed is the new management strategy rather than literal top-down authority.

Generation Zs, born between 1997 and 2012, just now are entering the workforce. Mariner suggests the visions of the new futurists may take 10 – 15 years to emerge from the din we now experience. Nevertheless it is pleasing to see well-grounded intellectual thought beginning to map our new AI future. It is time we silenced money grubbers like Donald and Zuckerberg and looked for new, insightful leadership – including at all levels of government.

As a follow up to mariner’s post about being done with 2021, there are suggestions that don’t sound like the ‘work’ mariner suggested. How about crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, many forms of art, and an endless list of activities that include classification, categorization and even purpose-driven travel – perhaps to see in person the world’s largest ball of string in Branson, Missouri. At the most expensive end of the list is the large RVers who flock to the southern states.

Whatever the distraction, make sure it keeps the reader from suffering the deadly outpouring of 2021 daily news.

Ancient Mariner

 

John Wiley

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John Wiley, the artist in Nonsequitur, captures in a few cartoons and few words whole philosophies and behaviors it would take a dozen books to express. Some of mariner’s favorites:

Mariner grows weary of a conflicted world. He knows that more and more he is seen as a zealot. It is hard for a humanist to be considered a zealot but that says a lot about society today.

There are real and validated social reasons for the uprising of the working class; how destructive their political payback will be remains to be seen.

Big data is an immoral capitalist snowball that has grown to a dangerous size. Mariner’s defense of personally owned privacy and the double whammy of not being able to share in the sale of his information are compounded by the fact that it is sold to interests who want to manipulate him for their own purposes, seems to the electorate much ado about nothing.

While his opinions about humanity are supported by many professional thinkers, again the electorate couldn’t care less. As a parting validation to mariner’s ‘zealotry’, the supermarket where mariner’s wife shops pays a handsome discount on her gas station prices in return for tracking her purchases – a fair arrangement in mariner’s mind.

But retreat is inevitable. Mariner is a member of the useless generation, an antique, aspiring middle class person and a humanist. He yearns to be off the grid electrically, politically and spiritually. One day he will buy a donkey cart.

Ancient Mariner

Decisions

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Some will say, “I’ve made a decision – right or wrong. The important thing is that I made a decision.”

Some will say, “Someone else should make the decision. I don’t want the responsibility.”

Some will say, “There must be more to know before I have to make a decision.”

Some will say, “Occam was right – keep it simple.”

Some will say, “I make a decision based on how I feel. If it wasn’t the right decision, I’ll make it again.”

Some will say, “A decision is all about the vision – even if we have to move to Cuba.”

Some will say, “What is the decision I need to consider?”

Some will say, “What’s in it for me?”

Some will say, “I avoid making decisions.”

Some will say, “Just tell me what to do.”

– – – –

All of us are in this list somewhere. Decision making is like shifting gears; it changes our focus, our energy, even our scruples, even our sanity. Add the perspective of those who are obsessive and those who are attention deficient and the world becomes a conflicted decision-making environment. Further, add those who are bright and those who are dull and it is amazing that useful decisions are made at all.

Then add in those with ulterior motives: any middleman, any corporation, and God forbid any politician. Given their contribution to decision making, we may not know what decision was made!

There are different classes of decision making. Should I marry this person? Should I quit my job? Do we want children? Do I want to have a dog? There are procedural decisions: Should I go to the bathroom before I go? Do I need gas? Where are my keys? What color should we paint the living room?

Do I really want to argue with this ass? What is on TV? Life cannot move through one day without decision making skills. The downside is if we don’t know our own decision making style. So many arguments have been provoked by style rather than substance. To some extent we are constrained by our personality and often by dire circumstances. But resolution may require more than one style to be resolved. This is the main reason group discussions often are the only way to arrive at a rational decision. In business, team management is important. Virtually every organization has a group-based decision making group.

The advice here is to know thyself and accommodate other’s styles and conclusions – something the nation has in short supply these days.

Ancient Mariner