Showing posts with label strangelings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strangelings. Show all posts
A Capella Science - Bohemian Gravity!
Professional inquiries: acapellascience [at] snamanagement [dot] com.
Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science
Original music by Queen
Dreamtime: the De-flattening (wild turkey dreaming)
In the Dreamtime before time and space the Great Serpent Koniara slithered and thrashed mightily, creating the Land of Oz, the Sky above, and the Sea that washed its shores. And when his mighty slithering was done, Koniara called a great Corroboree to honour his creation.
Supposedly the biggest monolithic rock on the planet, "Uluru, ... also known as Ayers Rock ... is a large sandstone rock formation in ... central Australia. ... Kata Tjuta, also called Mount Olga or the Olgas, lies 25 km (16 mi) west of Uluru." (Wikipedia, 2 Dec. 2016)Among those who came to the Corroboree was the scaly crocodile, Gumungung, who spake unto Koniara, saying, “O Great One, what thee or thou have wrought is awesome and immense, but there is no colour, no excitement, no magic or joy in the Land. As far as the eye can see, all is red and brown and flat as a toenail. And that’s more dull and boring than a pub with no beer. And newsflash: it’s also way too frickin’ hot!”
“My sacred doings be not to thy satisfaction,” quoth Koniara unto Gumungung, “and yet I made the whole ball of wax in just two days not six, and I didn’t need to chuck a sickie on the seventh neither.”
“More elbow grease maybe, that might have helped,” quoth Kuruku the Kookaburra, whose laughter rang out long and loud in the dry and beerless air.
How long is the shortest Planck?
Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, Planck units “…are also known as natural units because the origin of their definition comes only from properties of nature and not from any human construct.” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016) The Planck length is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 meters: supposedly the shortest length possible in the universe. How small is small? How big is big? How long is the shortest Planck?
There is a planck so short that anything shorter can't be measured, not now or ever, no matter how small your ruler or big your budget. The length of that planck is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 meters: supposedly the shortest length possible in the universe.
According to Wikipedia (5 Nov. 2016) “It is impossible to determine the difference between two locations less than one Planck length apart”. At that scale, Reality is discreet, i. e. lumpy, as opposed to continuous, i. e. without any breaks.
How quick are the breaks that Reality takes? As long as the Planck-time: a duration so short you can’t measure it, not now or ever, no matter how quick your clock.
There are many plancks in the ramshackle shack that we know as the universe. There’s a Planck mass, Planck area, Planck energy, even a Planck particle. How many plancks are there? Too many for Einstein: he wanted less wood, more marble.
Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, Planck units “…are also known as natural units because the origin of their definition comes only from properties of nature and not from any human construct.” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016)
Planck units are based on the Planck constant, “…a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and having a constant value in time” (Wikipedia 5 Nov. 2016): in other words, a number that applies everywhere, always, and never changes.
But what if they’re wrong?
Random Walk
First new painting in a while ... a long while. And thank Christ for that! It's 30.5 cm x 25.5 cm, oils on canvas. Called Random Walk, oddly enough... Finished in 2018.
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How eating dogshit can avert death
If we were sitting on a mountaintop with the wind in our hair and the stars in our eyes and a mug of yak-buttered tea in our hands, maybe just maybe we could have a productive conversation about the Book.
The male and female primordial buddhas Samantabhandra and Samantabhadri in union. Thangkas painted by Shawu Tsering and photographed by Jill Morley Smith are in the private collection of Gyurme Dorje.I'm talking about The Tibetan Book of the Dead, deluxe edition, with introduction by the Dalai Lama, Penguin Books Ltd, 2005.
Much of the material is outrageously bizarre and peculiar (in my eyes, at the time of reading). For example, here's an excerpt from the Specific Rites for Averting Death:
“When the indication of protruding ankle bones appears, one should face westward towards the sun when it is close to setting and remove one's clothes. Then, placing a dog's tail under oneself, and some dog excrement in a heap in front, one should eat a mouthful and bark like a dog. This should be repeated three times...
“Also in cases where other people are afflicted by illness: if the roots of their teeth grow grimy and black, such a person should wear a goat's skin, face the sunrise, and bleat three times like a goat. Similarly, in cases where the nostrils sag inwards, it will be beneficial if one visualises the syllable A on the tip of the subject's nose, recites the syllable A twenty-one times, and bathes in various rivers...” (Number of rivers not specified.)
Shall I Sing to Thee of Hatred?
DOJO OF ABS, oil on stretched canvas 39.75 cm x 50.25 cm. A horrible work, don't like it at all. Shall I sing to thee of hatred
whilst the rancid wine-red moon
lies plump upon a sullen sky, beloved?
Or doth thy internecine inclinations
bereft of paradigmatic meaninglessness
assert thy drolly wrothful commands?
whilst the rancid wine-red moon
lies plump upon a sullen sky, beloved?
Or doth thy internecine inclinations
bereft of paradigmatic meaninglessness
assert thy drolly wrothful commands?
As you feed the gentle drops of blood
caress your cheeks like crimson tears, my love
calling forth sweet morphogenetic memories
of all the times we’ve slain together
the line of carcasses stretching to eternity
death-lily delineating forevermore.
Shall I woo thee with insurance
until the gibbous enormity patronises
the very longitude of marsupial afterbirth, dollface?
Or would’st thou engrave betwixt delinquent carnage
thrice-flailing widdershins encircling
sublunary solemnity’s crepuscular astrolabe?
Forsooth! And whence thy infinitesimals
thy gaping quiescence incarnadine
fistula-festooned but buttery, sweet cheeks?
Or durst thee verily impignorate
thy carious kynodontic blandishments
whence fulsome gadzookery ...
The Assembly of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities
The male buddha Vairocana in union with the female buddha Akasadhatvisvari.Here's a crude summary: when you're dead, initially you may encounter things that may seem to be deities but which are really just products of the mind/imagination.
According to the Book (p 387), the deities are symbols that emerge from:
the meditator's own awareness ... and sensory and mental processes.
The 42 symbols of peacefulness:
represent the quiescent natural purity of these fundamental components of our being.
Up close and personal
This image features the head of an extra-terrestrial lifeform superimposed on 'Vitruvian Man', a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)In the apartheid years in South Africa, for example, the Dutch Reformed Church rationalised the harsh treatment of black people (“non-whites”) on the basis that they have no souls, do not qualify for salvation, and therefore should not be treated as persons. This twisted logic was frequently included by Dutch Reformed Church ministers in their Sunday sermons to the volk.
Slavery is another example. As the property of the slave-owner, slaves were (and in some places still are) used, abused, bought, sold, burnt, broken and disposed of as if they were pieces of furniture. Clearly, a slave is not a person in the eyes of the slave-owner.
Dictionary.com lists a number of different meanings of “person” including “…a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.” “Person” can also mean “a self-conscious or rational being (in the philosophical sense)”, or “a group of human beings, a corporation, a partnership, an estate, or other legal entity (artificial person or juristic person) recognized by law as having rights and duties.”
So an animal can never be a person, according to at least one dictionary. Of course, the Indian government would disagree, having declared dolphins to be non-human persons.
There are many different definitions of “person” but they all belong under either (but not both) of the following two headings:
- Every person is a human.
- Every human is a person.
The Dead Live Elsewhen
An example of a light cone, the three-dimensional surface of all possible light rays arriving at and departing from a point in spacetime. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MissMJ. So don't be like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Being unable to see does not mean being unable to be seen.
In private, people let their hair down; they take the opportunity to "be themselves". When no-one else is around, they pick their noses, masturbate, piss in the shower, eat gluttonously, murder their grandfathers, beat their children -- do all the stuff they don't want anyone to see or know about.
But everything is recorded in cosmic memory -- the Akashic Records if you prefer.
Nor are these the febrile imaginings of an aging hippie fumbling around in the peyote-flavoured smog of the Age of Aquarius. Well they are, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a grain of truth in them somewhere. In fact, no less an authority than old smarty pants himself, Einstein, believed that nothing is ever lost.
Dust to dust
their eye-leaves slowly drifting in a velvet haze
extend their praise to blackness
while the grass tips bow with the wind
a thump is pounding closer and closer
the sound of footsteps come
to cut and hurt the trees until their wizdom-sap
oozes like thick black blood
but the creatures smile with glee
their pointed features pointing, their laughter steady
they suckle and suckle and suckle
until satiated they fall to the ground
the trees are not bothered
they've been through worse, have many stories to tell
they are saddened though
by the steady vampiric suckling of life
due to which the earth is salted and white as ice
its crystals are shimmering like diamonte
and this is the place
where I SCREAMED
I was growing, ever changing
a very promising maiden
the orphanage near the woods
thought so at least
the woods so close to hand
it would be natural to become inquisitive
so i waltzed out with all my possessions:
just a matchbox
and an old economically unacceptable coin
what happened next and why i am undressed
my money gone and my body black
the charcoal crumbles
and the wind blows me away in the breeze.
Words and art by J.
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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 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.
A bad, bad feeling
Paulie was a skinny little kid with ginger hair and no friends. He lived with his mother in a ramshackle cottage on the wrong side of the tracks. His father had died in an industrial accident a few months after Paulie’s birth. The kids at school teased him a lot. They called him “mommy’s boy” because his mother waited outside school most afternoons to walk home with him, or take the bus if they didn’t feel like walking.
Paulie’s love for his mother ran deep. She was always doing things for him, looking after him, helping him do his homework, stuff like that. And every year on his birthday she would bake him a cake and give him a present (even though they didn’t have much money) and sing “Happy Birthday” so that he could forget his troubles at least for one day.
Paulie knew the date of his mother’s birthday, but for one reason or another he never remembered in time to make her a present or a card. Her birthday would come and go and a few days later he would realize he had forgotten yet again. He would feel really bad about that, but only for a short while and then the bad feeling would go away.
One day at school it suddenly came into his head that it was his mother’s birthday that day. He was ecstatic that he had remembered. In art class he made a beautiful birthday card for her. He felt proud of himself for remembering, and he could hardly wait for school to end so he could hug his mom and wish her happy birthday.
Free Willy in the United States of Personhood
I downloaded this image a number of years ago, can't remember where and can't provide attribution: apologies to the copyright-owner. Actually it's unclear as to whether dolphins were granted legal personhood status, or whether India "merely" banned the use of dolphins in aquatic theme parks. But whatever happened in reality has no bearing on whether cetaceans are or are not persons, or on how they should be treated. This issue is a great example of the relativity of values and the significance of context. The movie, Free Willy, is about the conflict of values and the impact of that conflict on the life of an orca named Willy. Many humans, including myself, believe that cetaceans are as "personable" as humans. That relativity is inescapable, at least for the likes of you and me. You might, for instance, choose diversity as one of your values, except if you were supplying tomatoes to a supermarket, in which case you would want all your tomatoes to be the same size, weight and color. A supplier of tomatoes to a supermarket would prefer conformity to diversity, at least in relation to supplying tomatoes. To echo the "location, location, location" of realtors: context, context, context!
The higher you stand, the further you see
Relativity, by M. C. Escher. Lithograph, 1953.The extent to which information is tied to a local context determines the extent to which the information is universally true. You can't and you don't see the same thing from a worm's point of view as you can and do from a person's perspective, or a bird's, a dog's or a god's point of view. Which perspective is absolutely correct? None. Which is absolutely incorrect? None.
Examples follow. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain... in Tanzania. For people without telescopes, the Earth is at the center of the cosmos. Food that humans call rotten or spoiled is a banquet for bacteria. Weeds are plants that humans don't like and/or can't use. One person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter". The lemma is continuous and discreet. As realtors put it: location, location, location! Or in other words: context, context, context!
Context-free thinking, context-free language, and language-free conversation are prerequisites to universal understanding and universal communication. The higher you stand the further you can see. The higher you think, the more contexts/perspectives you understand. The higher the level of abstraction (meta) the more can be seen of the nature of reality.
The taste of anger
Anger is an acquired taste, like the taste for blue cheese or witchetty grubs. When you first drink at the Well of Anger, you’re not sure you like it. In fact, you don't like it at all. But you soon learn. And the deeper you drink, the quicker you learn. Many times have I been drunk on Anger. Many times have I chased that oh-so-delectable feeling of being out of control, of being authorised -- even empowered -- to transgress boundaries I wouldn't even dream of transgressing under calmer, gentler circumstances.
Rage is an even headier brew -- the bitter toxicity of it burns your throat as you gulp it down. Rage makes you feel... fine and hot!
the amulet of ouroboros
Secrets imprison knowledge, constrain understanding, obscure true pathways. Some secrets throb with power, sparkle with the colours of alchemy. Such is the secret known as the Elixir of Eternal Life. Such is the secret known as the Philosopher’s Stone. Some secrets are tucked away at the back of your mind never to be known on pain of death… secrets carried to the grave and beyond… secrets that curl in on themselves like frightened creatures, furtive and small… hidden in places where the foul miasma of corruption marks the presence of horrors beyond imagining.
Dark knowledge lies pooled in stagnant ponds, where the stench of decay hangs heavy and close. Such is the nature of the Secret that lies forgotten and inert inside the bottom drawer of a dust-covered cabinet concealed behind the cobwebs at the back of a dark benighted chamber behind a heavy bronze-studded oaken doorway at the end of a twisted passage in the Mansion of Unremembered Things.
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