Found this at the Daily Dish:
Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category
Why Data Matters
Monday, April 5th, 2010Unifying “Physics”
Thursday, March 11th, 2010theOwl
Just in case I haven’t published this little tidbit yet…(UPDATE 3.11.10 – I guess I have).
In an email to a real certified Physicist today, I included the glyph:
…can we profitably think of prime numbers as a metaphor for coexisting yet not interpenetrating physical theories, unified by their common divisor “1″?
The import being that if Quantum Mechanics was like 2 and General Relativity was like 3 then both theories are divisible by 1 (God, Consciousness, Perception, Observation) yet do not interpenetrate. Therefore a new theory of Quantum Gravity would be unnecessary to unify Physics. Physics would be unified in the Unitary dimension of God, Consciousness, Perception, Observation.
Enough said.
Dream Cultivation
Monday, March 8th, 2010theOwl
So what do you do when change is upon you – not quite in your face yet, but definitely coming up? How to marshal all of one’s capacity for clear thinking that takes everything into account while contemplating a big decision, a big life change, change of employment, change of primary identity – something BIG that requires all of your attention to get it right?
I am cultivating a Big Dream. I expect to dream and remember a dream that will frame my current state of flux in imagery and narrative that are so evidently TRUE that I will be able to proceed with a confidence that my life change is animated in a State of Grace. The very nature of the dream state seems to me to be a grand integration of all the information – facts, feelings, sensory memories, EVERYTHING – available to me as an organism. It all comes together in a dream, and the very fact of my cultivating such a dream by publicly honoring this process makes my clarifying dream that much more likely to come sooner rather than later.
Of course I must pay attention to my dreams.
Heavy but true. This really works for me. I just need to pay attention. And it helps to state my intention publicly. Hence this pod…
Smart Dolphins
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010Climate Doubts?
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010theOwl
I’m happy to say that at least one really smart, well-meaning person that I know does not accept the consensus among climate scientists that CO2 is contributing to global warming. I hope he’s right.
I suspect and fear he’s wrong. We cannot take this ridiculous, irresponsible gamble.
Enough is Enough
Monday, December 7th, 2009theOwl
(I wrote the following screed a month ago and didn’t publish it. Perhaps I thought it over-the-top, angry, bitter – somehow unworthy of theWheel. And yet, what more appropriate tone can one adopt? This one may come back to bite me, but it’s real today.)
OK. I’m calling bullshit. Physics. “String Theory” Enough is enough.
Calling all string theorists. Do you have any evidence for your theory? Any repeatable testable observations? Anything at all? Looks like religion to me. Fancy math. I can’t do your fancy string theory math – or more to the point, until there is any repeatable testable experimental evidence, I see no point in learning esoteric notations that so far as I can tell refer to nothing. Except maybe tenure.
I am not an illiterate. I can read an orchestral score, but I assure you I would never have bothered to learn without first hearing repeatable testable renditions of scores. Fancy graphics can embody great art and beauty. They can also serve as smoke screens.
Enough is enough.
(Links to the Economist. and a blog called Not Even Wrong.) Decide for yourself.
Why Physics Will Not Be Unified
Sunday, September 20th, 2009theOwl
Driving around Ann Arbor doing my day-job, moments of clarity visit me. I write them down on index cards – the little spiral bound 4×6 ones. Most of the cards are about music and songs. Some politics.
The other day I was thinking about Nature (not Physics) and wrote down, not for the first time, my take on the now nearly century long effort to unify Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.
The title of my card was “Why Physics Will Not Be Unified”. It read:
- Physics is not fundamental. The “physical” is an emergent phenomena.
- “Number” is fundamental. “Consciousness” is fundamental.
- All possible mathematical constructs coexist physically as best they can. THEY NEED NOT INTERPENETRATE!!!
(On the flip side of the card I wrote:)
Like Prime Numbers on a number line, all are divisible by one, but not each other.
(Unifying General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics as “Physics”) is like wanting to find a commonality between 19 and 31, but not being willing to concede that “1″ is real.
I could expand upon this, but the essence of the argument might get lost in all the words. I think I’m right.
(number/consciousness – chicken/egg)…?
Why Theater?
Monday, September 7th, 2009theOwl
Today, just an observation. Natural Science – what I hesitate to call Physics because in my opinion that which is most essential about the subject matter of what is usually referred to as Physics is not physical – has led me to Theater.
How very interesting that Physics and Theater resonate with each other.
Why Theater? The live audience is the key. From my post Night Flight:
It recently occurred to me that what was truly special to me about live theater was the way in which a group of people, including – especially including – a live reactive audience as an indispensable component of the magical dynamic – a group of people “self consciously” agree to surrender to a theatrical dream within the dominant shared “reality” dream. Within the magic circle of a suspension of disbelief (or is it rather an affirmation of belief?) all are creating together, all are aware of and swept up into the common alternate reality that all are purposely – I won’t say mindfully – dreaming up together.
From Listen to the Moon:
In fairness, Science has indeed generated a concept, the Anthropic Principle, which explains the conveniently life-friendly physical constants and attributes of our universe by noting that only universes that have laws that facilitate the generation of observers will ever be observed. But I don’t think even the Anthropic Principle can have anything to say about why the discs of the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size as seen from Earth.
I say this because this synchronicity of observed disc size plays out in a realm of aesthetic rather than physical necessity. There is no physical necessity for the discs to be the same size. For instance, the moon could be farther away and a bit denser and achieve the same gravitational and tidal effects on Earth with a smaller apparent disc size.
There are, however, aesthetic reasons for the discs to be the same size. As currently constituted, solar eclipses look strikingly cool. Furthermore, the current arrangement of Earth, Sun, and Moon is also balanced and symmetrical. We have two lights of the same apparent size, one for the day and one for the night…
It seems that the audience in a theatrical system plays a role analogous to the role of observers in a physical system. Hmmm….
Night-flight
Monday, August 24th, 2009theOwl
Dreamt It Through the Grapevine – Night-flight.
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with dreams. I can remember some very vivid BIG dreams from very early in my childhood – two in particular from a time when my family lived in a house in Ohio from which we moved when I was 4 years old. My early intrepid experiments in expanding consciousness, my interest in and identification with Native American cultures, my love at first sight when I was finally exposed to Carl Jung (Man and His Symbols was my first contact), my full speed ahead obsession with lucid dreaming at a time when science, before Stephen LaBerge at Stanford, still insisted we lucid dreamers were self-delusional or just plain nuts, my later embrace of Joseph Campbell’s work identifying Myth as Public Dream (and Dream as Private Myth) – all this has been an ongoing central theme throughout my life.
Maple Whirlygig Vortex
Friday, June 12th, 2009theOwl
I saw an interesting article about maple whirlygigs at Discover…
Smoke particles illuminated with laser light around a freely flying maple seed reveal a prominent leading edge vortex. The visualization of the leading edge vortex on this and 31 other specimens of…
And here’s a “monocopter”
This is a shakedown flight for the world’s first hybrid powered monocopter. A monocopter is a flying machine with a single wing on one end and a motor on the other end. It is kind of a maple seed…