Category Archives: Science

CRISPR

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Chicken Little stopped by today to bring to mariner’s attention a news item from National Public Radio (NPR). An excerpt follows:

“For the first time, scientists have used the gene-editing technique CRISPR to try to edit a gene while the DNA is still inside a person’s body.

The groundbreaking procedure involved injecting the microscopic gene-editing tool into the eye of a patient blinded by a rare genetic disorder, in hopes of enabling the volunteer to see. They hope to know within weeks whether the approach is working and, if so, to know within two or three months how much vision will be restored.”

“Don’t be fooled,” Chicken said. “There may be good intentions today but gene splicing in living humans opens the door to permanent slavery, super human football players, over-sexed men who will never need Cialis and a class of super smart people who will control everything.”

“Do you remember Matrix?” he said. “CRISPR is how they will prepare humans to live in caskets for organ donation and battery power. Or maybe CRISPR is how everyone was made identical in the book 1984.”

Mariner wishes his father knew about CRISPR; maybe it won’t take zillions of years to evolve a three-fingered hand.

Actually, the emergence of CRISPR gives one pause. It wouldn’t take much to breed humans who could live for two hundred years (Lord, who would want to?). Conversely, sperm and egg production could be stopped as a way to limit an over populated world. These are extreme ideas, though. How will CRISPR be used in the general population? Have a propensity for a disabling disease? Have it removed with CRISPR. Any deformity can be repaired or removed with a few gene modifications; bad allergies? Use CRISPR. Lose a limb? Grow a new one with CRISPR.

What concerns mariner is not the science but how it will be managed by governments. So far government isn’t controlling the use of data distribution and its effect on privacy. Government has no idea how to manage the age of artificial intelligence. Mariner is more anxious about today’s moral discipline than he is about the potential of CRISPR.

So, add CRISPR as a path to a new world – along with global warming, plutocracy, and tropical, disease carrying mosquitos moving up the coast from Florida because the weather is warmer. Mariner told Chicken Little not to worry about CRISPR, worry about normal people.

Ancient Mariner

Nationalism under 5G

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5G?

Fifth-generation wireless (5G) is the latest iteration of cellular technology, engineered to greatly increase the speed and responsiveness of wireless networks. With 5G, data transmitted over wireless broadband connections can travel at multigigabit speeds, with potential peak speeds as high as 20 gigabits per second (Gbps) by some estimates. These speeds exceed wireline network speeds and offer latency of 1 millisecond (ms) or lower for uses that require real-time feedback. 5G will also enable a sharp increase in the amount of data transmitted over wireless systems due to more available bandwidth and advanced antenna technology.

– – – –

A big conference will be held in Germany soon. Its primary speakers are the foreign ministers of China, Japan, India and South Korea. There is concern in Europe that the nations of Europe will never have 5G independence. Germany’s cybersecurity chief struck a pessimistic tone at a pre-Munich cyber conference: “If you talk about digital sovereignty, we don’t have it. And we’ll never have it.” There will be presentations by Pelosi, Pompeo and Zuckerberg as well. [Politico]

The idea of sovereignty may undergo significant political transformation if, as feared, whole nations are just uplinks to a few communication systems owned and operated by a few nations like China and the US. National privacy, very much like personal privacy, may not be available. In the old days the spy business used to be a face-to-face transaction but with China manufacturing its technical equipment and the US eavesdropping, no nation will have secrets.

The US already is pushing back on China for a number of manufactured items used in smartphones and cloud-based games. The US asked the European Union not to install Huawei hardware but, said the EU, what else is there? The US is behind China in 5G development.

Nations, just as with a person’s decision making, will be influenced by 5G operators who already know what the target nation is thinking, what its economic conditions are and where its vulnerabilities lie. What will this do to traditional diplomatic relationships? Will a robot wearing suit and tie replace Pompeo?

A current model may provide insight. At the turn of the millennium there were 12 significant stock exchanges around the world. The differences in time zone meant that transactional business for a given stock exchange was local and finished before other stock exchanges opened. Today, that is not the case. An investor can issue trades to any exchange in the world at any time of day. An investor doesn’t have to miss daily opportunities that would be gone had the investor had to wait until the exchange opened for business the next day.

Continuous access has the effect of leveling the monetary value of daily interactions between exchanges. It also reduces the range of highs and lows relative to other exchanges.

Applying these causes and effects to nations using 5G, the positive side may be the prevention of surprises that lead to political or military conflict. The downside may be a new form of authoritarianism – similar to the direction AI is taking with US citizens.

Ancient Mariner

Observations in Passing

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֎ Has anyone noticed that constraints on nuclear weapon manufacturing, in place since the cold war days, are gone? Has anyone noticed that mature nations with sound ethos like North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and the US are building these weapons again? Perhaps this is preparation for uncontrolled climate change – something like euthanasia . . . .

֎ Science Magazine had a couple of new insights: the African Grey Parrot has compassion – the only bird known to comprehend the act of sharing between adults without recompense. If a parrot can pass it forward, one would think humans may be capable as well.

The second insight is that the average body temperature of human beings has been dropping for the last 160 years. Traditional perception is a temperature of 98.6 m/l; it has dropped to an average of 97.5. That drop may be a product of lower overall levels of inflammation, thanks to antibiotics, vaccines, and improved water quality.

֎ Rather quickly, Iran announced it was culpable for downing the Ukrainian passenger aircraft. Likely, it was because evidence to the cause of the explosion was available around the world. Nevertheless, mariner thinks Donald would never admit culpability if it were his fault. His Base would have a good guess at whose fault it was – Hillary or Nancy.

It isn’t that mariner is an advocate of continued identity conflict; the US is a nation torn apart and flailing a bit. Still the electorate, mariner’s nemesis, is required to think – even a tiny bit – about the cause and effect of reality. Even if the nation’s ‘astute’ politicians suddenly were to economically repair forty years of wage suppression across the country, the Base would attribute that gift to their emotional and irrational interference with democracy without any concern for the facts and would thumb their noses at Hillary and Nancy. Democracy is a thinking person’s philosophy of government, dammit.

֎ In a similar model to Russia meddling in US elections, China is doing the same to Taiwan elections. However, the democratic forces won in Taiwan rejecting China’s “one country, two systems” model for unification that China has used in Hong Kong which promises a “high degree” of autonomy, was soundly debunked by the recent election that re-elected Tsai Ing-wen, the current president of Taiwan.

During his career Mariner spent some time in Taiwan and he was impressed with the democratic aura of the nation. It has a tough row to hoe being only 110 miles from the China coast. Three cheers for the solid rejection despite China’s political invasion.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

The New Economics

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For the last post or two, mariner has been lamenting the human creature. A creature who foremost is selfish, then vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded especially as seen by other creatures in the biosphere. There are more adjectives but the reader gets the point. If the reader is a human creature, do not discount one’s self; you are selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded. Mariner speaks his mind in the name of his alter ego and mentor, the prophet Amos.
More abstractly, the societies that human creatures build are based on their inherent characteristics but formulated into a system of measure that illustrates their success at being human creatures. The measuring system is economics in its varying forms and philosophies. Very briefly but without jaundice, consider these behavioral definitions of various economic patterns:
Capitalism is parasitic. Profit is the end product of consumed biosphere – whether human or environmental. Profit is a visible measure of selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness.
Socialism is less parasitic as long as defined territories guarantee that everyone is assured of being equally selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
Communism is less parasitic in that it constrains the opportunity for just about everyone to be selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
Corporatism is parasitic, a child of capitalism that has developed better skills at being selfish, vain, grossly insufferable and narrow minded.
There are other isms but by and large they are governmental variations applied to economics that promote selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness. One thinks of authoritarianism, dictatorships, slavery, monarchies, militarism, plutocracy and oligarchy. Oh, about democracy: it’s a method of altering overly abusive practices between human creatures; it’s just like war but it takes several generations. Parasitic economics isn’t the focus.
Mariner is sorry to be redundant but again he references the Native American societies that existed for thousands of years across the North American continent – until white man appeared. The Indians may not be any less vain, selfish, etc. than white people but they had not mastered Mother Nature. Indians had not learned how to be parasites. As human creatures they still were bound by a quid pro quo with their ecosystem. What was their economic philosophy? Sustainability.
The tribal hunters were the ‘capitalists’ except that the profits taken from the environment were not owned by the hunters; the ‘gross domestic product’, if you will, was distributed to the entire tribe (That is not true today in white man’s world).The primary requirement was sustainability – not profit or possession or any of the other human creature adjectives. Indians could not dominate their environment; rather they had to survive within the constraints of their quid pro quo agreement. The first order of economic importance was sustaining the ecosystem. The Native American economic model worked for thousands of years. Dependence on the ecosystem held a cap on abusive selfishness, vanity, oppressive behavior and narrow mindedness, AKA parasitic behavior.
– – – –
Today, just a few decades past Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the planet itself has bought a seat at the economics table. New issues that aren’t focused on the human creature adjectives have come into play. Things like global warming, overpopulation, disappearing agriculture, scarcity of minerals and critical chemicals, depth of ecological sustainability, global extinction of important plants and animals and the chemistry of survivability itself.
Whether human creatures want to or not, it is time to settle with Mother Nature. The combination of parasitic behavior, planetary cycles, and shifting biosphere dependencies all will have serious impact on human creatures in the near future and in the far future.
The new rule for human economics is not parasitic behavior. It is sustainability as a member of the biosphere. Sustainability has no room for parasites.
Ancient Mariner

Examining Existence

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The planet is embroiled in many confrontations. It has its own issues regarding its tendency to grow warmer and warmer; something Earth has been doing since the last ice age over twenty thousand years ago. Further, hominids have pitched in for the last 12,000 years, putting Earth on something akin to Cocaine. More on that later.

Earth, given its proximity to the Sun and carrying its own moon around, permits a certain pattern of life to exist. Hominids call it environment, ecosystem, life, nature, laws of physics and quantum mechanics. For the planet, though, the patterns of life are very much trial and error; Earth is indifferent to any intellectual perception that there is meaning to this randomness. Every evolutionary change is totally arbitrary.

This randomness is a characteristic of the entire universe, its stars, planets, moons and any order of nature that may exist in or among celestial reality. Consequently, all modifications to life are indifferent and may enhance an environment or may damage that environment. For example, recently an asteroid collided with the Earth in Mexico destroying ninety percent of life on the planet. On other occasions, volcanoes and earthquakes have stressed the environment to the point of having to start most of evolution over again. On the other hand, the assimilation of oceans of water placed on the planet allowed a supportive, temperate climate to emerge. Life was free to effortlessly experiment and has created a highly diversified environment.

The ethical premise of the universe and Earth is “what happens is what happens.” This applies to evolution in its entirety. In general, what keeps evolution going and surviving is, if mariner may borrow a politicized phrase, a quid pro quo arrangement between a species and its environment. A species takes from the environment to survive but also in the final analysis gives something back to the ecosystem. Overall there is a balance between species and environment.

If evolution is to be sustained, there is a need for predators. Many species in ignorance will over indulge their environment and breed to the point that nature becomes imbalanced; consider the cougar versus white tailed deer or the Peregrine falcon versus pigeons.

There is an exception: parasites. Parasites will consume an entire ecosystem even to the point it becomes fatal for the parasite. In the bacteria-virus world, parasites are common: the black plague, measles, sexually transmitted disease, ebola, etc. In the mammalian age, there are hominids.

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The ‘what happens is what happens’ phenomenon in this case is intelligence. Hominids are subject to the same quid pro quo as other mammals but after a while, intelligence learned how to break that deal between nature and the species. And by the time Homo sapiens sapiens evolved, brutalizing nature was an art form. Humans had become parasites of the planet’s environment. No aspect of nature was protected. Mining, chemical farming, destruction of large ecosystems like the Brazilian rain forest, and the extinction of 83 percent of the world’s species is de rigeuer. Atmospheric pollution took a back seat to profit – a classic parasitic move.

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of ‘The Sixth Extinction’, believes that Homo will bring about the global extinction of the mammalian age. Species are driven to extinction by simple but thorough intrusions into sensitive biospheres. A blatant example of parasitic behavior is to open the world’s largest surface mine and the largest oil drilling operation in Alaska – thereby wiping out the salmon that must use the same rivers to populate. As the reader reads this post, profiteering (AKA parasitic behavior) has moved to the bottom of the Earth’s oceans in search of new profits.

Mariner believes that the imminent recession in the world economy, the inability of governments around the world to find an ethical compass, and the disregard of individual citizens to take responsibility for the state of the planet, all may lead to a great collapse made more punitive by a planet on cocaine. How Homo and Earth’s creatures will recover is open to question.

If nothing else, vote to sustain the future, not to repair the past.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Vagaries of Dying

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Mother Earth (AKA God, Yahweh, etc.) has arranged that all life forms procreate then die. It could not be otherwise because the planet would be quite crowded, resources would be unstable and there would be no room. So, all humans will die. Dying is painful, inopportune, and generally unpleasant. But dead is different. Being dead is like a long, deep nap in the afternoon. Time passes by unnoticed; there are no challenges, fears or inadequacies; no achievement is required. Just rest – even rest passes by unnoticed.

There are many kinds of death, each unique to its existence. For example automobiles die; there are graveyards for automobiles. Buildings die by decaying. On the other hand, buildings can be razed, too. Even Pando, the oldest living tree in the world at 80,000 years plus, will die perhaps by the hand of Mother Nature herself.

Species also die but not necessarily in the same time frame. Consider the opossum: Its origins date to the end of the dinosaurs but the lifestyle of each opossum is the same today as it was 65.5 million years ago. On the other hand, humans have ended the existence of 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilization. And to the point: humans, given their frailties, are willing to end their own species as well. Did Mother Nature make a mistake in the blueprints or is it humans who are supposed to enforce change by erasing estuaries, unbalancing rain forests, wiping out critical biomes or setting up an end to the mammalian age – even at the cost of their own demise?

Unlike the opossum, humans will not let stability remain. Human society changes as often as the weather. If society doesn’t change fast enough, humans invoke wars; if status quo even pauses for a moment, human science and technology trashes it for something new. Alas, society the world around is in the midst of social wars and societal collapse brought about by technical advancement. Not just one advancement but by 400 years of advancement bumping into the next one and the next one until change has become constant for 200 years.

For humans, change and conflict are two sides of the same coin. The old social standard must die – usually along generational timelines – except for the rare exception, e.g., the conservative Amish. Nothing is allowed permanency: slavery, economics, Frank Sinatra replaced by Elvis, replaced by Beetles, replaced by Wu-tang Clan, replaced by Nosebleed. Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite replaced by FOX, MSNBC and CNN.

The New Deal followed by Reaganism followed by corporatism, and on and on. Cultural life, anguish and death are continuous.

Mariner grows tired of it all. Even the prophet Amos went home at the end. The slashing and killing of a democratic society is not pleasant to witness or to live through. It isn’t just Donald, the TV version. It is plutocracy, authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, retail communism, and international solvency all at once. No citizen knows what the world will look like in the age of generation Z. Then there’s global warming. Even Mother Nature is pitching in.

It’s time for a nap.

Ancient Mariner

 

No, it isn’t just Republican versus Democrat

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Mariner began to realize that there are many political battlefronts occurring simultaneously none of which can be melded easily into other battlefronts. In fact, righting the ship of state may be more like herding cats than the public expected. Below mariner lists some conflicts that require more than two hands to untangle.

Corporatism v democratic socialism

This conflict centers on the apparent corporate freedom to do whatever it wants to do and to turn as much profit as possible without accountability for social conditions or national unity. A complicated issue is that data tech corporations are introducing commercialized authoritarianism largely because antitrust laws have not been enforced.

Libertarian government v public accountability government

This conflict engages those who believe less government is better government – to the extent that social viability (AKA discretionary funding) is unacceptable versus those who believe in a government that is responsible for public wellbeing. One obvious confrontation is health services.

Capitalism v government oversight

A struggle over who manages the economy, taxes, monetary legislation, price regulation, inflation, antitrust and similar fiscal privileges; focused more on wealth and investment than on business practices. Two critical issues are part of this confrontation: housing and the Green New Deal.

Restrictive doctrine v humanism

This battle involves morality issues like abortion, LGBTQ and church versus state. Freedom of religion, even though clearly stated in the Constitution, remains constricted for faiths other than Christianity; within Christianity the battle is about interpretation of traditional doctrine versus current culture.

Political expediency v scientific expediency

This issue pits politicians against scientists. The most important issue is the conflict between the fossil fuel industry and global warming, which is made more disruptive because it also affects most of the economic/social issues cited above. This category seeps into areas like vaccination, abortion, environment, pollution of the land and water and ideological issues similar to how to feed 11 billion humans and preserving the planet’s supply of fresh potable water.

Public myth v existential pragmatism

Primarily this is the battle over fake news. Not just fake news on the airwaves and social media, which is significant, but common class prejudices about standards for justice, work ethic, racism, and about conspiracy theory amid several rootless assumptions. A major public myth is the common misinterpretation of the Second Amendment (gun rights) – proving not to be pragmatic in today’s society. Racist immigration policy is another issue that seems not to be pragmatic.

Isolationist v internationalist

This conflict has been severely damaged by Donald for no reason. The twenty-first century will have a widespread restructuring of international coalitions; China is emerging as the new powerhouse economy; NATO and other mid-1900 alliances are showing their age. An example of how internationalism is important is to note how critical it is for the US to represent political and economic security both for North and for South America – where China already is attempting to play that role while the Donald immigration doctrine is abusing Central and South American citizens.

Plutocracy v democracy

The battlefront in this section is how the government functions as an institution. Related issues deal with voting rights, gerrymandering, money in politics, entrenched lobbying, term limits, balanced congressional representation in the Senate, etc.

Add to all these battlefronts regional differences, population density, cost of living differences and classic prejudice between social classes.

So much to do with a citizen’s vote.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

AI

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Mariner doesn’t know how to say this but . . . Donald’s base is wiser than most of the US citizenry. The base understands the future and is trying its best to thwart it – in the nation’s behalf as well.

Every world citizen should view the latest FRONTLINE presentation on Artificial Intelligence (AI). It won’t be idle entertainment and it takes a couple of hours. But the reader’s existence in the future is revealed.

Click https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/in-the-age-of-ai/ . Pay attention, think, stay awake – it isn’t a sit-com.

Ancient Mariner

REPRINT!!

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Danger Ahead

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If there is any strength the US has to stand up against a hostile world, it is the US Intelligence Service. Coupled with the best funded military in the world, other nations think twice about taking on the US mano-a-mano.

In this most serious sector of US policy, Donald is showing his disregard for US security in favor of money schemes and showing his incompetence as a Commander-in-Chief.

This is beyond political rhetoric, beyond the politics of ‘the base’, beyond the dysfunctional condition of Congress. Donald is, in a seriously inept way, playing with the security of the US – a monkey with keys to the vault. He has no regard for anything that does not add wealth to his pocket. Under his leadership, the subtleties of international relationships are irrelevant.

Unfortunately, there is no Congress to take him to task. The electorate must suffer through an ever increasing dismantle of the US image and its authority. The electorate must endure to the election. The nation is at risk in a way that has not existed since the Second World War.

Ignore the ‘base’; ignore the do-nothing-Congress; ignore the true conflict surrounding the loss of jobs under Reaganism – the security of the US is at stake.

Ancient Mariner

Contemporary References

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Today’s post is all reference section. Mariner provides a list of intriguing and entertaining articles from various sources that help us interpret daily life in a modern and unconstrained world.

REFERENCE SECTION

This first article from the Atlantic Magazine is about how the business world manipulates how users relate to their smartphones:

Copy website to reader’s browser

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/how-dark-patterns-online-manipulate-shoppers/595360/

The linguist Gretchen McCulloch aims to clear some things up with her new book, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. The “new” rules, she says in an interview, are emergent. Basically, communicating requires more than just a factual statement pursuing clarity; it also must simultaneously convey a state of emotion associated with those facts. Provided by NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/31/747020219/our-language-is-evolving-because-internet?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20190801&utm_campaign=books&utm_term=artsbooksculture&utm_id=39748169

 

Just so the reader knows, CRISPR is not something to keep lettuce fresh. “CRISPR = Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats are segments of prokaryotic DNA containing short repetitions of base sequences.” Basically, it is a sequence of DNA that has space at the end where specially contrived DNA can be affixed – thereby changing the genome of the creature at hand. Science Magazine shows us how Chinese Agronomists are changing food crop characteristics:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6452/422?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2019-08-01&et_rid=590596864&et_cid=2929035

Puerto Rico isn’t the only troubled subculture within the United States. At the other end to the North is Alaska, with deep concerns about sexual abuse in communities that have no law enforcement. ProPublica offers this sobering account of life in the back country:

https://features.propublica.org/local-reporting-network-alaska/alaska-sexual-violence-village-police/

Ancient Mariner