footlong and fancy-free: why size doesn't matter

Joule's apparatus for measuring the mechanical equivalent of heat energy. A descending weight attached to a string causes a paddle immersed in water to rotate. Caption by Wikipedia, 6 May 2014.

No energy? No matter!

Zero, zip, nada, none: that's how much is left after you turn matter into energy, via a bomb or a power station. But what kind of power station is best? It's actually impossible to say.

I’ve heard that coal-fired power stations are dirty, wind-farms are ugly, and nuclear power stations are dangerous (but much more efficient at producing energy).

Do you agree? I don’t, and I’ll provide the supporting logic in a minute. But first let’s unpack the conventional wisdom and hold it up to the light until it withers and dies!

Power stations are designed to transform matter into energy, or one form of energy into another. If you’ve got nothing better to do, you can use Einstein’s equation, E=MC2, to work out the energy equivalent of the mass1 of any given chunk of matter. The equation says that energy (E) equals mass (M) multiplied by the speed of light (C) squared.

I’ve heard that the reason why you get so much energy via nuclear processes2 is that the speed of light (squared) is such a big number. Really?

The Gospel of Scissors Paper Rock

In Japan, Mushi-ken is one of the earliest rock-paper-scissor or sansukumi-ken games. Published in the Kensarae sumai zue by Yoshinami and Gojaku. From left to right: Slug (蚰蜒 namekuji), frog (蛙 kawazu), and snake (蛇 hebi). The frog defeats the slug, the slug defeats the snake, and the snake defeats the frog. (Wikipedia 26 Nov. 2016)

Rock blunts scissors
The massive dead stone of ignorance and superstition blunts and smashes the keen sharp mind seeking truth.

Scissors cuts paper
The mind that is too keen and too sharp cuts the paper on which truth is written into disconnected shreds of reductionism and limited perspective.

Paper wraps rock
With lightness and breadth, truth enfolds and conceals the massive dead stone of ignorance and superstition.

Published in MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS, a disturbing repository of quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments. for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.

In my father's house are infinite mansions

The material world, ultimately, is a network of inseparable patterns of relationships. Fritjof Capra, author "The Tao of Physics"

A pattern is a frozen process. A process is a freely flowing pattern.

A pattern is a static process. A process is a dynamic pattern.

A pattern is one form of structured chaos. A process is another.

In the material world/s, a pattern is structured chaos. The growth rings of trees, at a moment in time, are a pattern.

In the immaterial world/s, a process is structured chaos.The development of growth rings in trees is a process. Immaterial things like "Life", "Consciousness", "Self/Soul", "Thought" are processes.

Unstructured chaos is the primeval state. Structure is an emergent quality, i.e. structure isn't present or seems not to be present in the primeval state, but rather emerges or seems to emerge at a threshold level of complexity. Structure and complexity are correlated or seem to be correlated. The more complexity, the greater the potential for structure, the greater the potential diversity of structural forms.

where consciousness lives

A process is a frozen pattern. Consciousness is a process and cannot be found at any material address in this or any other universe or reality. Patterns, on the other hand, can be found at many material addresses, including wool, cotton, polyester and many others in the fabric of reality.

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many mansions

What do we mean by "real"? Is matter more real than energy? Is a tree more real than the idea of a tree? Is the idea of a tree real? Are ideas real? Is a sound more real than a thought? Is actuality more real than possibility?

What is an action? Is an action real? An action is not a physical thing. It is not a thought. Or is it?

Is the idea that there is (are) a god (gods) less real than the fact (assuming it is a fact) of there being a god or gods?

In my father's house (the multiverse/reality) are many mansions: the Mansion of Matter, the Mansion of Mind, the Mansion of Memory, the Mansion of Mystery, to name but a few.

You can find roast chicken in the Mansion of Matter. You can find a recipe for roasting chicken in the Mansion of Mind. You can find molecules in the Mansion of Matter. You can find ways to understand what a molecule is in the Mansion of Mind.

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no vacancies: the universe is fully stuffed

The shortest way between two points may not always be a straight line. Sci-Fi spaceship engines warp, fold or curve space so folk can get from A to B without going through all the space between.

And likewise, in the real world (whatever that is) a host of physicists, mathematicians, cosmologists, geometers and other horse-thieves are firmly of the belief that space has shape. They say it can be flat, curved, even foamy!

They may be right, but I just can't get my head around curved space: I can't visualise it. What happens to the matter, the material, the stuff that's occupying that curved space? Does the stuff get curved too? They say that gravity warps space: I can't visualise that either.