streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 6:27 pm on January 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  The butterfly effect celebrates the effect at the expense of the butterfly. 

  The effect is undeniable, the probability of specific occurrences to random turbulent events following some predictable patterns, no single one of which is predictable at all, predictable chaos, if you will, perhaps similar to the path of a planet around the sun, always the same, always different. If you record the picture with time-lapse photography, then the result is a predictable, but not precise, swirl of more-or-less uniform motion. Enter the butterfly, like some unknown comet coming in from out of nowhere. The theory says that this guy’s random actions can start off a chain of events that can ripple throughout the universe, affecting those previously predictable motions and possibly tipping the probabilities in another direction. But of course that butterfly has a history of its own, also, subject to the same perturbations that affect our planet. Presumably the butterfly has a free will and the earth does not, but is that truly so? The butterfly is born, metamorphoses, lives, and dies with very few parameters allocated to its existence. Conversely, a planet or even an atom is subject to internal forces, just like the butterfly, which can scarcely be predicted without putting many meteorologists out of business. Humans are another story, truly the genie now out of the bottle. Perhaps physical chaos should consider itself most affected by the ‘human’ effect, not butterflies.

   

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  hardie karges 2:27 pm on January 12, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  With respect to the shape of the universe, 

  the only question for me is whether we’re on the edge of a spheroid looking in or on the edge of a spheroid looking out. If looking in, then everywhere we look in the night sky leads to the center, if we could see far enough. If looking out, then everywhere we look would lead back to us, if we could see far enough. On first glance, the Hubble photos of multiple galaxies in a single photo would tend toward the first viewpoint, but this may not be necessarily so. Visuals can be deceptive. The second view better fits the measurements of an ever-increasing red shift, which means an ever-increasing acceleration in the spread of celestial bodies away from each other. Two points on the surface of an expanding sphere would certainly spread apart faster than any given point in relation to the center, especially if measured on the geodesic curvature, not on a straight line making a short cut across the curve. If the measurements according to red-shift agreed with measurements of the geodesic, then that would indicate that, not only is space curved, but we have no access to what lies inside the curve, presumably the past, possibly dark matter, perfectly balancing out the expansion of the universe. The outer edge of the universe, the event horizon that we see in every direction, is the cosmological constant, expanding from a point in the center at a constant rate, presumably slowing over time what with old age and all.
   
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  hardie karges 6:36 am on January 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: dimensions ( 3 ), space ( 4 ), time ( 6 )   

  Time gets a raw deal, only one dimension instead of three, 

  and it had to lobby long and hard for that. Space gets to rest its big fat butt in three dimensions, length width and depth like a big reclining chair that can also be a sofa and can also be a bed like three dimensions of fucking off all day at the furniture barn. Space just licks its greasy-fried-chicken fingers and laughs at skinny little uni-dimensional time like an arrow always at odds with space, begging for crumbs on the floor. If anybody deserves three dimensions, it’s time, pregnant with past present and future. Try to get all that on a little line with an arrowhead on one end and a feather on the other. Space is just a simple container, a milk carton, a beer bottle, an oil tanker, a city, a continent, a planet, a solar system. Fill it with your favorite ingredients and shake well before using. Wha’d’ya’ got? Volume, stuff. Sounds like one dimension to me. More than one container? It’s still just stuff loosely connected to more stuff, Beaver in the breakfast nook, battles with battles, star wars, people gazing at planets, journeys between cities, points on planes, shaken not stirred. Space is mostly empty. Time is never empty. Space is just a point in time. Whether big or small, time just bends around it. Time covers all, everything that’s ever happened and everything that ever didn’t. Time is pure mathematics, the geometry of the past and the algebra of the future. Space can’t compete; still we maintain our sentimental attachment to it. It may not be the perfect dimension, but it’s our dimension.

  its about time... is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    its about time... 10:32 am on January 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Have you read the author Peter Carols theory(s) on ‘shadow time’, in relation to the science of (chaos)magick(s)? You might get a kick out of it. We have used these principles to perform retroactive magicks successfully.
    He introduced these ideas and equations in his ‘Liber Kaos’, Weiser ’92.(and expanded in later works)If your interested.

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  hardie karges 2:20 pm on January 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  The number of species that have come and gone 

  throughout history is more or less equal to the number of stars out there is more or less equal to the number of years that the universe has been in existence. The actual numbers may vary by a factor of ten or even a hundred, even by current estimates, because no one really knows. The point is that in all that time in all that space, in all those species there’s only one that we know for sure has ever transmitted a radio signal for the purpose of communication. Show me one more and the odds will change drastically, similar to the odds of getting published the first time compared to the second time. For all practical purposes, we’re it, folks. One shot. Do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing. Now go back to work.

   
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  hardie karges 6:57 am on January 3, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  But wait. Those people (or whatever they are) 

  out there may not have had technology a mere few decades like us, but many hundreds or thousands of years, which means that we’re way behind. Strike one. They may have long made peace with themselves, but hate outsiders. Strike two. But before we strike out in our brave new world, let’s reconsider the formula. For better or worse, they beg a few questions along the way, foremost of which is the assumption that our experience is typical. Given the literally billions of species that have come and gone on our own earth within as many years, it’s nothing short of a miracle that we’re here at all. Let’s not consider that typical, given the low number of species that make a comeback after going extinct, which is exactly none. This is even more precious given the amount that our DNA differs from that of chimps, which is almost none, compared with the degree of technological advancement of their civilization, which is to say NOT. The Green Bank scientists are guilty of the worst kind of anthropocentrism, i.e. silly-eyed optimism. What they may have intended as a moral sign-post to ‘do the right thing’, since the universe might be watching and nevertheless, the equation depends on it, has been taken as an assumption that they are millions more of us out there, so fuck it, party on! Once more this begs the question of how we’d ever know even if they were out there or what we’d do if we did know.

   
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  hardie karges 5:06 am on December 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  If we’re typical, then there’s life elsewhere in the universe. 

  Or so says the Green Bank Formula. Duh. I could have told you that. I believe that’s a tautology. They go through elaborate pains to multiply R (rate of star formation) x fp (% stars likely to have planets) x ne (no. of those planets likely to have the ecology for life) x fi (% planets that might actually develop life) x fc (% of planets that reach the technological level of radio communication) x L (the average life-span of a civilization at that level) or N= R x fp x ne x fi x fc x L. With vague, but generally acceptable estimates, this yields the figures N= 10 x .5 x 2 x 1 x .01 x L, thus N= .1L or N= L/10. This means that if the average time that a technologically advanced civilization can exist without self-destruction is only ten years, then there’s only likely to be one extant at any given time. Guess who. If, however, some civilizations, say 1%, can tame their wilder impulses and achieve stasis and technology BOTH, then there are likely one million of them out there and the nearest one would be only on average a few hundred light-years away. Considering that we’re already way past the ten-year mark and a hundred or so supposedly ‘Earth-like’ planets have been found and Europeans are fucking instead of fighting, then the odds are improving, and life is not only good, but we’re not alone.

   
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  hardie karges 5:57 am on December 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply  

  I pray for the world and all of its people. 

  I pray for the past, present, and future, the three dimensions that I inhabit. Space is simple, just the straightest line between two points. I pray just to be able to make a contribution to the process of self-fulfillment. I pray for the earth to survive the transgressions and trespasses of its most illustrious son, Heaven sent but Hell bent for some reason. According to the Green Bank Formula, if a technologically advanced society can’t last more than ten years without self-destruction, then there probably aren’t any more ‘out there’. If they can survive their own destructive impulses, then given the time that it took ‘us’ to develop as an average, then there are probably about a million more. And they’re probably a lot more advanced than we are, given our position as young upstarts on the outer edge of the insignificant Melk Veg. It sounds like a weed or something. Should we dumb ourselves down just to tempt fate into sparing us from annihilation at others’ hands? Self-extinction is probably not a concern, given our obsession with sex and year-round breeding habits. Oh, yeah. We’ve gotten some street smarts, also, in the process of changing our status from hunted to hunter. Now we just need to complete the transition from prey to prayer. There’s an entire level higher than street smarts and the law of the jungle out there. We just have to listen to those who’ve been there.

   
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  hardie karges 3:40 am on December 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 ), Lao, THAI ( 5 )   

  Thailand, the land of smiles, is no different. 

  Those smiles are for foreigners, not their own estranged brothers. Comedians will come on TV in Thailand and recite a little speech in Lao, not normal speech, but something specifically designed to be intelligible to Thais but also laughable because of their inability to speak ‘correct’ Thai. And that’s the whole joke, making their fellow Laos a laughing stock, even though the two dialects are very close, Lao being relatively ‘central’ to the entire family of languages, essentially ‘more pure’ in the sense that London English is more pure than Californian, though less popular internationally. A large percentage of modern Thais from the northeast, also, speak a Lao dialect as their local language, as do northerners and southerners their own dialects. Far more ‘bumpkin’ would be the northern dialect, though it’s never laughed at, being a good obedient son, more picturesque, and closer to the hearts of the average Thai. Laos and the northeast still carry the taint of communism, very un-Thai. Lao people, in turn, revile and insult the ‘black Tais’ resident in much of the country, the original and most traditional Tais. As Jackie Chan once said, “In China, everything face.” Someone else said, “You’re in Chinatown, Jake.”

   
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  hardie karges 3:52 pm on December 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), language ( 172 ), politics ( 32 )   

  Burying the past with language 

  
  removes it from the usual patterns of evolution, as would deliberate gene splicing. The Dravidian languages of southern India deliberately remove Sanskrit influence while ignoring similar influences from English, which would certainly be easier to locate and remove because of their obvious foreignness. Local politics and petty jealousies weigh heavily. ‘Aryanization’ carries with it the connotation of ‘civilization’, at least in Thai, notwithstanding the fact that the same people now called ‘Dravidians’ have ancestors who created one of the world’s greatest early civilizations in the Indus River valley. They undoubtedly left much DNA in the current bloodlines of both northern and southern India. Unfortunately for them, this is the darker-skinned lower-caste bloodline that was ripe for Islam to enhance their status. It’s no accident that that same Indus River is now in Muslim Pakistan, though linguistic traces with their forbears are long gone. The lingua franca of Pakistan, Urdu, in fact is mutually intelligible with Hindi, the closest thing India has to a national language, and the local language of no one in Pakistan. Once again, efforts are continuous to separate the two for political reasons. The same has not yet happened, but could, with India’s other major language, Bengali, also known as Bangla, the national language of Bangladesh.

   
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  hardie karges 4:11 am on December 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ENGLISH ( 7 ), language ( 172 ), vowels ( 2 )   

  People put other people down in order to puff themselves up, 

  and so does language. The great English vowel shift in the 15^th century made sure that leaning ‘proper’ English would be a trial by fire and that only the fittest would survive. With French no longer the language of government and pretentiousness, the upper classes had no quick easy way to prove they were better than the smiths, bakers, millers, carpenters, and Joneses. So they formed their own dialect of English. Only they knew the code. Long I’s became long E’s, long E’s became long A’s, and short and long vowels separated entirely, rendering the concept largely meaningless, though still taught, at least as of my tenure. In reality, a system of dual pronunciation for each vowel was adopted, similar to the Khmer system of ‘registers’. It was complicated, but easier than learning Latin, now that French was out of favor, never to be united with England regardless of who’s the reigning monarch. Latin came in vogue at the same time, but more as a language of writing, than of speech. Spoken Latin had long since become Italian and other bastard mutations, much of the changes from classical Latin occurring even before the Empire fell.