Category Archives: Politics

How to know how much is Actual News

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Mariner finds it difficult to ascertain actual news from ramblings, speculations and gossip on all the 24 hour news channels. He has borrowed a formula from geometry to help identify the true news content from the smoke and mirrors of news broadcasting. Where are Huntley, Brinkley and Walter Cronkite when we need them?

Normally, the formula is used to determine the radius of a true circle when only the chord length and distance from the chord to the arc are known. What is intriguing about this formula is that it is totally relative in its solution; it makes no difference what the values of the chord and arc are, a correct radius always will be defined. The formula:

Radius = 4h2 +l2
                8h

Redefining variables for our purposes,

Radius = Total News broadcast which is a constant of 100
Height = Actual News
Length = Number of Pundits

Solving for unknown height instead of unknown radius, the formula becomes:

h = r – √r2 – l2

Assume 4 pundits

h = 100 – √ (10,000 – 16)
h = 100 – √ 9984
h = 100 – 99.92
h = .08   In other words, Actual News is 8/100ths of Total News when there are 4 pundits – less than five minutes of an hour-long broadcast.

What’s important is that actual news takes so little time.

Ancient Mariner

 

Compassion, Damn It!

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Well, well. Wasn’t the fur flying because young mariner had no traffic ticket for his accident. An entire article about compassion as the root of democracy was trashed because mariner did not get a ticket. So much for compassion over judgment.

Mariner understands that in these uncertain times citizens are chary and become judgmental about due process. Nevertheless, he stands by the principle that compassion without judgment is both restorative to personal happiness and productive as well. One thinks of the abused folks who constitute Donald’s base: The US economy has squeezed them for decades; there is little that comes easily to them. These folks are left only with defensive mechanisms similar to pride, judgmental attitudes, intense populist ethics that are destructive – in their minds as it should be – and intensely protective of what little they have.

Mariner assumes that most readers have read the parable about the Good Samaritan so he won’t repeat it here. Perhaps, though, you just might check out Luke 10:25. The context surrounding the Samaritan’s compassion is identical to the social conflicts present today. The US population has become increasingly conscious of class, even fragmented versions of class (identity politics). In the Samaritan’s situation, he was considered less than a proper Jew because Samaritans did not adhere to the racial requirements of proper Judaism; Samaritans allowed mixed marriages even though otherwise they practiced the Jewish faith.

Mariner’s wife read a book written by a homeless person, Lars Eighner, who walked across the country with his dog Lizbeth.[1] From the book she remembers a time when Lars, who had no source of income, would save the bit of change he came by to purchase dogfood for Lizbeth. Many times others in the stores would buy his dogfood for him. No one said “He ought to get a job” or “He should be picked up by the police.”

Often mariner has touted the practice of “Pass it forward.” It is a practice based on having a compassionate insight into another person’s need without judgment or prejudice. Use this simple gesture to practice compassion. What’s more important than ever is to look for ways to be compassionate toward someone from a different class – even a different political class.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

[1] Travels with Lizbeth, Lars Eighner, Ballantine Books, 1993

One for Many but Many for One, too

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Mariner was a young lad, well, not really young, he had progressed a bit in his career and was working as a staff consultant assisting all state law enforcement agencies in complying with new Federal regulations about reporting law enforcement activities to a State database. Let’s just say he had a full head of hair with a flat top.

The work was both tedious and fraught with conflicts about changing behaviors that had long existed in local police agencies. After a hard Friday, we all stopped after work to enjoy a happy hour at a local pub. It was a good release from a difficult day and, after a couple of hours, mariner had had an uncounted number of half-priced gin and tonics. Needless to say, as he left for home, he had an accident on the interstate. One is supposed to slow a bit when taking a tight exit ramp, which mariner failed to do.

But the accident is only a set-up for a genuine insight that has stayed with mariner throughout his life and sets his belief in what democracy is all about.

Mariner rolled his jeep-like vehicle and totaled it. He crawled out the back window virtually unhurt. The first person to be there as he crawled out of the vehicle was a nurse who checked him for critical injuries, determined he would survive and left. The second person to greet mariner simultaneous to the nurse fed him two breath mints to help ward off law enforcement analysis of his inebriation and left. The third person redirected traffic. There was no judgment of mariner’s behavior; there was no judgment of inconvenience; there was no judgment of moral principles. Mariner was a fellow interstate traveler. Further, because he was in law enforcement and reported to the Secretary of Public Safety, police officers saw to it that there were no ticketing or other law enforcement transactions as a result of the accident.

This tale has nothing to do with regulatory justice, alcohol, or nuisance among interstate travelers. What mariner learned is that he belonged. He was a fellow interstate traveler; he was a fellow law enforcement employee; he was a fellow human being. He belonged. Not only that, he was accountable to other travelers for the same concern about wellbeing. He learned that judgment and prejudice are not the rules for living together. Just the opposite, it is compassion and understanding that hold us together.

At this time we are confronted in our nation with a despot president, an unjust economic system and many citizens suffering from innumerable injustices in daily life. Democracy is at risk. Our nation is not so far from the cliff not to be concerned about abject collapse into a so-so nation that will be left behind in the artificial intelligence age. Already our allies are drifting away.

The solution is to feel that we belong. We are one of many. Also, we are among the many that care for the one. Democracy requires unity and mutual participation without judgment.

Ignore the fake news concerned about prejudice and malfeasance. Go outside and look for someone who needs to belong. While you’re at it, let yourself belong to the nation as well – without judgment.

Ancient Mariner

On Lack of Literary Greatness

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Mariner has one comment on the results of the 2018 midterm elections:

Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate to 51+ seats — even though 10 million more people voted for Senate Democrats than for Republicans. The Senate was never intended to be a democratic institution. Today it is a hurtful political influence when our nation, indeed the world, needs desperately to deal with human issues, scruples and a new democratic vision.

– – – –

Of more immediate interest, Mariner will never be an author of insightful literary works. The post, “A Future of Oneness,” was written as an allegorical work depicting life without human friendship, love, bonding, compassion and even argument and disagreement – between authentic human beings. Alas mariner’s crude prose left readers only with a literal interpretation of the future, either a gushy basketball or extinction.

In truth, the distant future doesn’t matter much if at all. Our only relationship to the distant future is our disregard for our own wellbeing today. What is missing from this allegory is physical, three dimensional, person-to-person respect and affection, and a desire to participate in these intimate experiences above the need to engage in electronic distraction and convenience.

Many times mariner has witnessed couples sitting beside one another foregoing mutual conversation and the exercise of hippocampus engagement in favor of some nondescript, certainly inhuman distraction on an electronic device. Allegorically, we are adapting to a future as gushy basketballs needing only a port connection to the gushy network.

Similarly, foregoing real experiences intertwined with real human beings, even loved ones dear to one’s heart, so that one can talk to an electronic box full of faux confederacies interested only in manipulation, seems headed for gushiness as well.

Mariner read a psychologist’s article that said android devices are an escape from the energy and commitment required to relate to fellow humans. Yet, that is what living as a human is all about. The commitment we choose to escape is the authentic experience of being human.

As to the second allegorical reference of extinction, two elements are of supreme importance: breeding and environment. One won’t have many children copulating with various sex toys and realistic androids. It is easy even to include smart phones as a distraction from human interaction and the commitment required for foreplay or just having an interesting conversation. Surely, after ninety million years of evolution, the intimate practices between humans has become the most important experience we can have and to which we owe priority over electronic circuitry no matter how disguised.

On the matter of environment – just as with the ease of preferring the convenience and laziness provided by electronics – wealth, physical comfort, and the avoidance of what a real human life is all about, distract humans from their obligation to maintain their environment. A major premise in the study of creatures of all kinds, including humans, is that there must be a net zero relationship with the source of life – environment. Only humans can deliberately alter the net zero relationship: we burn oil for money, convenience, distractions like war, the convenience not to physically weed millions of acres of crops, and so forth – even though our environment is no longer under our control. The planet itself has taken charge. Will the planet allow us to survive or will it choose extinction?

Ancient Mariner

 

Travel isn’t Broadening – It’s Frightening

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Mariner grows disinterested after hearing hour after hour day and night the same statistics, speculations and campaign ads intent on assassinating the character of the other candidate. Today he focused on the rest of the world. He should have stayed home.

We live in an age of rapidly growing nationalism. Most countries have had a form of nationalism but today it is the democratic nations that are switching rapidly. To name just ‘a few’: every member of the European Union (EU), most dramatic are England (Brexit), Poland, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey, Greece and Germany – just a quick list. South America is awash in nationalism with Brazil and Venezuela in great disarray. Central America has long had several abusive, crooked governments but even there dictatorship is on the rise.

Drivers of nationalism include a slow economic recovery, an increase in people displaced across borders, and anxiety about terrorism, according to Harun Onder, an economist at the World Bank. Another factor, which perhaps is not as appreciated, is age. Many rich nations are in the grips of a big demographic shift toward older populations, and aging populations experience economic pressures that can lead to more nationalistic tendencies. Most frightening is that the newly elected nationalists in these democracies act and sound exactly like Donald! Racism and religious oppression are rampant around the world and are used to incite even more fear in stressed populations.

Median Age [qz.com]

On a more theoretical level, our global economy is 170 years old and shows signs of wear as oligarchical practices gather more and more wealth to fewer and fewer people. In the US, despite apparently good unemployment statistics, general wage levels are half of what they would be if wages kept up with inflation. Corporate power expands ever more rapidly as new digital technologies emerge.

Regarding migrations, mariner has noted that major migrations occur periodically throughout history. Humans moved out of Africa because food was becoming scarce; two very long droughts drove large numbers of humans further into Europe and Asia. Today, the reasons are war, violence and abject poverty. Ironically, the human population is growing to such an extent that soon there will be no room to migrate.

Global culture is in a state of severe turbulence. Change is everywhere and in everything. Is nationalism a solution? Is nationalism similar to a storm cellar during a tornado? Can democracy survive during hard times; during times of uprooted society and morality? Coming back to the US this evening, mariner is concerned about the state of western society. China may not know what it is getting into.

Ancient Mariner

On Being Manic/Depressive

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According to mariner’s favorite bookie Nate Silver, “Republican chances of holding the House are only about 1 in 1,000.” He is not as kind to Democrats taking the Senate: only 1 in 6 (16%)

The imminent election induces one to be manic/depressive. If you’re a Donald advocate, you revel in Donald’s pompous attacks on the establishment and in the process seemingly untouchable by anyone. Conversely, it’s the invasion of the nonwhites who will rob, rape and take jobs – oh, and eliminate white people.

If you’re a Donald critic, the anticipated change in Congress, especially the House, provides a sense of relief and joy that US governments will become functional. Conversely, the lame duck Congress, especially McConnell, will ingrain Republicanism in the courts and agencies regardless of the election. Then there’s Donald playing dirty tricks with the Department of Justice to trash the Mueller investigation.

Voting on Tuesday will be like taking an analgesic for pain but the headache, AKA Donald et al, will return. As long as the Senate exists, especially if it is controlled by the GOP, the big issues of our time will continue to go unresolved. Speaking in manic voice, we may expand and secure ‘Obamacare’ and even expand Medicaid with the help of a democratic House but still, speaking in depressive voice, guns, taxes, modern constraints for runaway corporatism, and a new vision for international economics and cooperation will not be resolved.

Mariner doubts Donald will be impeached because of the Senate. Mariner doubts Donald will face criminal charges while in office.

There’s another election in 2020 . . . .

REFERENCE SECTION

Although many kids’ apps may seem innocuous, filled with bright colors and loud noises, they actually contain loads of advertising targeted at children ages 5 and under, writes the Atlantic staff writer Joe Pinsker. Researchers characterized the methods that advertisers and app makers use to influence young children as “manipulative and disruptive,” with one scholar even calling the practices “abominable.” For full article see:

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/kids-apps-ads-smartphones/574588/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=family-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20181103&silverid-ref=NDkwMjIzMjA1Mjg2S0

National Public Radio is touting the country western song “Will the Circle be Unbroken” as the new national anthem. The lyrics allude to the importance of continuity and generational bonding. For a Grand Old Opry rendition, see:

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/30/662203468/will-the-circle-be-unbroken-connects-musicians-generation-american-anthem?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20181103&utm_campaign=music&utm_term=#

Ancient Mariner

News of the Day

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National Public Radio (NPR) is launching a new newsletter all about China. When reading the first reports, it became blatantly obvious to mariner that China, while a communist state, also is an aggressive capitalistic state. Not having to mess with sloppy democracy, China’s leadership (Xi Jinping, elected for life) can dictate the priorities of its economy, its culture, its international behavior and its ethics. One example of China’s aggressiveness is its invasion of other nation’s economies; the old idea of international trade is not the major strategy. China simply joins the target nation’s production economy – starting businesses without mentioning the link to China and hiring away the best and brightest from that nation’s existing workforce. Mariner highly recommends the NPR series especially because US TV news media is useless.[1]

– – – –

Yesterday, mariner returned to watching TV news broadcasts after a four-month self-imposed hiatus. If reality is anything like the content of news programs, our nation is doomed to the trash heap. Mariner felt he needed to track more closely the coming election next week so he watched a full day accessing every broadcasting source. As they say today, OMG.

Watching the various broadcasts, mariner felt he was watching an Asian table tennis tournament. No, perhaps it was more like whack-a-mole. In any case, in four months, broadcast news has begun to ignore ideological differences and simply engage in discounting competitors’ news stories. It is a blood battle for market share. Mariner blames broadcasting corporations for making news a profit center.

Add to this a President intent on destroying the unity of the United States, its culture, its democratic ethos and its sense of fair play and equality of life. Mariner now knows firsthand the feelings of an individual trapped in a horror film.

His advice to his readers is to join the growing number of newsletters that pride themselves on quality research, unbiased reporting and covering news worldwide in every subject. Augment digital sources with a few quality magazines that provide in-depth articles about reality.

If there is even a remote chance of returning to civility and international leadership, and mariner must be honest and repeat ‘remote’, that chance hangs on whether the reader will vote on November 6.

VOTE

Ancient Mariner

[1] To receive NPR newsletter, see:

https://www.npr.org/newsletter/best-of-npr

FYI

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Tidbits from mariner’s email:

֎60 percent of vertebrate species

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]

֎2,681 planets

The Kepler Space Telescope is dead. Long live the Kepler Space Telescope. The NASA craft discovered 2,681 planets since its launch in 2009, along with many more promising outer space “blips.” Kepler ran out of fuel. It will be missed. [The Verge]

֎1 million lost users

Facebook saw zero growth in the U.S. and Canada and lost 1 million users in Europe last quarter. God bless you brave million. Go outside. Dance. Sing. Frolic. Be free. [TechCrunch]

֎The Democratic Divide:

New York progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did better in gentrifying precincts than she did in working-class neighborhoods. Do blue-collar Democrats really want what the far left is offering? [David Freedlander, Politico Magazine]

֎How much will summer temperatures in US cities change by 2050?

Des Moines, Iowa:             2018 – 85.4° ….. 2050 – 91.1°

Los Angeles, California:    2018 – 83.5 ….. 2050 – 87.1°

Baltimore, Maryland:         2018 – 82.6° ….. 2050 – 92.3°

Denver, Colorado:             2018 – 86.4° ….. 2050 – 91.7°

New York City, New York: 2018 – 83.1° ….. 2050 – 87.9°

Billings, Montana:              2018 – 85.4° ….. 2050 – 90.7°

Miami, Florida:                   2018 – 89.9° ….. 2050 – 93.4°

Phoenix, Arizona:              2018 – 104.7° ….. 2050 – 109.2°

[VOX]

֎Worried about voting? Here’s what to know before you go:

Double Check Your Registration

Know Your State’s ID Requirements

Know Where You’re Going

Beware of Misinformation

Find Out What’s on Your Ballot Right Now

Access to the Ballot if You’re Disabled

Vote Provisionally if You Must

If All Else Fails, Call For Help [ProPublica]

Ancient Mariner

 

Notes from the Alter Egos

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Guru speculated about China’s Belt and Road Initiative (in China more often referred to as One Belt One Road or OBOR). Very generally, Belt and Road is China’s plan to be the most powerful economic engine in history. This is not simply bravura but a scale of economic activity necessary to accommodate China’s very large population and its stressed economy. It is a huge goal costing more dollars than anyone can begin to estimate but at the same time creating economic opportunities for about 60 percent of the developed nations in the world today.

Guru noted two things:

  • OBOR sounds aggressive and immediately brings to mind an automated form of colonialism. In truth, to use a mariner metaphor, China needs more stoves to burn its wood. Think of a family with twenty children trying to establish a rotation of food, clothing and household goods without being overcome by storage and process – it is easier to send out for pizza than having to make it at home. Investment opportunities seem to abound both for China and nations on the OBOR. However, economists are less than enthusiastic about using geopolitical solutions to solve internal economic issues.
  • Today, at least until Donald was elected, there was no question that the western nations, especially the US, were at the center of global economics and political influence. Guru proffers that if OBOR is successful, the center of global economy will drift back to the centuries where Sino-Eurasian economy prevailed (The original Silk Road). Still, guru ponders whether nations on the sea route in particular will be susceptible to economic bondage.

Amos has had it with the US citizen. The harsh combination of identity politics, populism, incompetent, party-zealotist and opportunistic Congressmen, news programming required to make a profit, predator corporations, a horrific, selfish, hoodlum-like Whitehouse, and more, all virtually have eliminated the American ethos. Acknowledging activist interest, albeit it often a part of the list above, common citizens don’t care about ethos as long as they have their Facebook, smartphone, Echo, and Netflix. Putin is right – Americans have irretrievably trashed their respected role among nations. And the beat goes on . . .

Meanwhile, Chicken Little is fearful that he may be deported because his grandmother at age nine arrived in the US as an immigrant.

Mariner agrees with dissenters of Elizabeth Warren’s claim to be a Native American. Mariner’s Aunt Mary married a full-blooded Cherokee and had a son that looked more native than the man on the nickel. But that heritage was never used to differentiate their family. Elizabeth should be ashamed for practicing identity politics.

ELECTION DAY: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6. BE THERE AND DO IT – VOTE!

Ancient Mariner

Merger of CVS and Aetna

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In what was a disturbing interview on PBS NewsHour between Judy Woodruff and Larry Merlo (CVS CEO), Judy pressed Merlo several times about how the merger will benefit individuals. Continually, Merlo ducked that specific question by advocating better procedures, better integration of services and a number of platitudes all of which reflect a larger corporate-driven control of market, profits by collusion and most disturbingly, the point Merlo ducked, was quality control of corporate costs by managing patients directly.

This is an article/video that is very important for the reader to read/watch. It speaks clearly to the control factor that large data clouds and massive records of daily life are being integrated for corporate benefit, not for personal benefit. Go to:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/what-the-cvs-aetna-merger-could-mean-for-you

The reader may recall a recent post in which mariner mentioned John Hancock converting it policies to a program called “interactive policies” where insured will be screened and if selected, must participate in the interactive program.

John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday.

 The move by the 156-year-old insurer, owned by Canada’s Manulife Financial, marks a major shift for the company, which unveiled its first interactive life insurance policy in 2015. It is now applying the model across all of it’s life coverage.

It works like this:

Policyholders score premium discounts for hitting exercise targets tracked on wearable devices such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch and get gift cards for retail stores and other perks by logging their workouts and healthy food purchases in an app. In theory, everybody wins, as policyholders are incentivized to adopt healthy habits and insurance companies collect more premiums and pay less in claims if customers live longer.

Privacy and consumer advocates have raised questions about whether insurers may eventually use data to select the most profitable customers, while hiking rates or not accepting those who do not participate.

Hancock says customers do not have to log their activities to get coverage even though their policies are packaged with the Vitality program. The insurer will begin converting existing life insurance policies to Vitality in 2019, it said.

As mariner understands it, your insurance company knows if you eat three strips of bacon instead of one or skip a morning run when Grandma visits and will have the right to raise your premium or even drop you for someone else who helps the company’s profit margin. As regular readers know, mariner is extremely sensitive to corporations telling him what to eat, know, or do with his life – especially if it is for the benefit of the corporation.

– – – –

To wax philosophically for a moment and promising not to be verbose, we are watching capitalism leverage a changing technological society for profit. The way to tell the difference between capitalism and other isms is that the wellbeing and advantage in other isms is driven by the individual or by government in the individual’s behalf – not using the individual foremost as a controlled instrument for profit. If there is no profit in an individual, buzz off. Who cares?

The beginning of this post mentioned the merger of CVS and Aetna. Leverage gained will be through combined databases about customers. Then, just like the book 1984, the customer will have to do what the corporation says to do – which cuts overhead and locks in pharmacy prices based on each individual’s profit value instead of what the market in general will bear.

And to top it off, one’s life is not managed by one’s own decisions.

More disturbingly, these corporate controls smell of Harari Yuval’s belief that in the future unwanted humans will not be cared for by society. Is the future now?

Ancient Mariner