There are a few things about which to take note.
֎ First, read the following quote from Scientific American:
” Now researchers led by Daniela Angulo of the University of Toronto have revealed another oddball quantum outcome: photons, wave-particles of light, can spend a negative amount of time zipping through a cloud of chilled atoms. In other words, photons can seem to exit a material before entering it.”
Briefly, it’s about light energy entering a transparent thing like glass but seems to take longer to pass through except the light energy already has exited.
Back in the old days Albert Einstein said unequivocally that it may be possible to travel into the future but it is not possible to go back in time. Is time a situational fantasy? Mariner always has thought that we live in multiple dimensions. For example, mariner fills his prescription box every week but it takes just a few days before it is empty again – or so it seems. Is AI being honest with our scientists?
֎ A new alter ego metaphor has been chosen to replace Chicken Little: Nosey Mole.
Nosey Mole lives in a large maze of tunnels. The food is good and there is little concern for catastrophe. Still, being nosy, he pops to the surface periodically to see what’s happenin’. Every time he pops up to look around, he gets whacked by the swirl of reality and returns to his tunnels. There is no great historical theme in Nosey’s life that must be feared or hoped. Life is pleasant in the tunnels.
֎ This topic is too broad to address in essay form. Mariner strongly recommends his readers make the subject of public education something of a conscious interest that induces them to learn more and do more about the state of education. There are several large issues: Public schools no longer mandate that children learn how their society works – whether its government or group behavior or issues of physiological morality.
The field of education has been set adrift for half a century. It has gone the way of unions, free speech and equal rights. In today’s world, education is confronted by extremism, technology and shifting family economics. Education is infected with obsolete teaching techniques, life threatening lack of funding and a loss of raison d’etre.
The loss of a reason to be has allowed other disciplines to invade education. Public issues like health, sexuality, classism, public funding of private schools and replacing expansive learning with extreme restrictionist objectives.
Be kind to Nosey Mole as he adapts to a role in mariner’s life. If a reader can explain negative time, let mariner know. Do become focused on education; if our children don’t have the intellectual tools to survive during Armageddon, things will get worse than we can imagine. Think ‘Israeli-Hamas war’ in the United States. . .
Ancient Mariner
May I suggest that the picture of Nosy Mole accompany each post? He has an intrepid and whimsical look about him that is very appealing.
Alas, just as Chicken Little was a minor presence in mariner’s posts, so, too, Nosey will not be a major influence. Surely you appreciate that it will take a lot for Nosey to stick his head out to be whacked. You may sense his influence by a lack of chicken Little characteristics, given Armageddon et al.
Regarding public school education: one of our grandsons who is twelve and in the 6th grade needed help with a homework assignment while staying with us over the weekend. He was given examples of human interaction and was asked to identify which showed sympathy, which showed empathy and which showed compassion. While I realize I am not well read after spending my life as a steamfitter I thought this was a particularly difficult assignment. We helped him use a dictionary to define each word but the examples of human behavior were not clear cut enough for the definitions to help much. Fortunately he achieved a 70 on the assignment and was happy he passed.
Thanks for a good example, Marc. At least there is an effort to talk about human communication and sensitivity. If only our Evangelical movement would make the same effort.