Dan Rattiner's Proposals for 2025

Dan Rattiner shares his proposals for 2025.

THINK AGAIN

I recently attended a lecture by an astronomer about Earth’s place in the universe.

“We are, with the other planets, in a solar system that sits on the outskirts of a galaxy,” he said. “And there are 400 billion other galaxies in the universe. Now there’s evidence the universe is just one of 400 billion other universes making up a cosmos.

“Since we now have this new information, I think religious leaders should revise their thinking moving forward,” he concluded.

But I don’t think religion needs to do that. Stay the course. We continue to be the chosen masters of all we survey. It’s just that there are so many more flowers, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles in the survey. It’s almost unimaginable what we oversee.

HONOR FEELINGS

Last week down at Coopers Beach, a friend and I watched this joyful scene where an environmental group, having tended to a sick seal that had months earlier waddled up helplessly onto the beach, was now, restored to health, being released back into the ocean.

“I’m not sure the seal wants to be put back,” my friend told me. “He really can’t express himself except for hooting. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. Either eat or be eaten. Perhaps he came ashore to get away from all that. And now they shove him back into the surf — whether he likes it or not.”

It made me think of reincarnation. Get old, die, and come back as something else.

Maybe it’s not as good as I thought.

BEAT CHINA

Unless China sells TikTok, it will be banned in the United States. It’s said that China gets too much information about Americans. Actually, it’s worse than that. On TikTok, you see a never-ending series of very addictive short videos. You can’t not watch them. What would you rather do for an hour? Quietly watch a poodle ride an alligator, a man jump safely off a 10-story building, a pretty 9-year-old girl play the harp in a shopping center, Amazon porch thieves stealing a microwave? Or do what your employer has asked you to do?

Yes, Trump’s business approach might make more jobs. And people will find them. But will they put in the hours? Or does productivity nosedive?

Thus, China, having delivered us the poison pill, will surge ahead.

BUILD BIGGER

High up along back roads here in the Hamptons, you often see rectangular wooden platforms atop telephone poles. They have been built in a cooperative effort between environmental groups and the electric company to provide safe nesting places for ospreys. It’s a wonderful thing. And these giant birds – their wingspans stretch 6 feet — clearly appreciate the effort. As soon as one goes up, an osprey family claims it. Upon it they build a nest, produce eggs, hatch them, and raise offspring.

The osprey, for many years, has been the king bird in the Hamptons. We have hawks and seagulls too. But they are much smaller.

Until about 1946, however — and this was before osprey platforms — eagles, even larger than the osprey, reined king. But then Suffolk County ordered a DDT insecticide spraying program. It was meant to kill mosquitos, and as trucks roamed the county dusting everything, it worked. But it also caused the eagle population in the county to vanish. Flew away? Died of asphyxiation? Probably some of both. As a result, the county ordered the DDT spraying stopped.

About 10 years ago, however, at an antique car show in Water Mill I was attending, everyone noticed there was a lone eagle circling around above us. People were delighted to see it. Since then, more and more eagles have been seen, but now, sadly, the eagles have been getting into battles with osprey families for those valuable pole-top platforms.

The eagles usually win these encounters.

Osprey families pack up and leave. They find new homes elsewhere.

This is not good. And I think the environmental people and the lighting company should build larger platforms near the earlier ones. How about 7 feet by 7 feet? The eagles, approaching the osprey, will see these larger unoccupied platforms nearby, decide that further bother with the osprey families is not necessary, and instead flap over and claim the bigger platforms. Much more room with those. And the osprey will heave a sigh of relief. Peace will thus be restored in the air over Birdland, or as we humans call it, the Hamptons.

And indeed, isn’t this just an extension of what goes on below? On the vast mowed lawns, the rich and powerful live in giant mansions.  Nearby, everybody else lives peacefully but smaller.

BAN FORBES

Last week, the New York Mets signed up baseball superstar Juan Soto for $765 million. The New York Yankees fought fiercely to prevent that, at the last minute virtually matching that offer, but Mets owner Steve Cohen quickly persuaded the Yankees to drop out. What did he tell them? Well, Cohen’s net worth today, reported by Forbes, is $19.8 billion. To him, $765 million, the largest contract in the history of baseball, is a drop in the bucket.

To better understand this, consider that if you had $1 million in the bank and were asked to pay $25,000 for a really excellent new roof instead of $10,000 for a cheaper one. Would you go for it? Of course!

I think Cohen just told the Yankees “Try me.” And they decided not to.

Thinking further, I propose that Forbes magazine be held responsible for the huge and reckless surge in billionaires. When Forbes first started ranking them 30 years ago, there were just 140. Today there are 2,781.

All Wall Street watches. On Dec. 18, Elon Musk ranked No. 1 with more than $400 billion. But 10 days earlier, he’d  fallen from No. 1 to No. 2. A Frenchman became No. 1. But now Musk has battled back. Third in the rankings is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Steve Cohen? Currently No. 39.

These fortunes, so vast that no person could spend them in a hundred years, are being held on to for sport. Move up in the rankings! Go! Go!

This money is so needed for other things.

Ban Forbes.

CHOOSE WELL

I think President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Linda McMahon to be Secretary of Education is brilliant. Education in America is a mess. She’s famous for creating the franchise where muscular men dress up as superheroes and pretend to beat up one another in a ring. The kids will love it.

Read more of Dan Rattiner’s stories.