June 2008

Interesting article on New Scientist.com….here is the first paragraph.

Is the matter in the universe arranged in a fractal pattern? A new study of nearly a million galaxies suggests it is – though there are no well-accepted theories to explain why that would be so.

Can’t really comment on it right now because I haven’t had time to digest it…and I need to get a proposal out. But the concept strikes me as obscenely profound.

I will definitely be chiming in on this in a bit.

This is the hot shit.

It’s funny.  I was reading an article about a really elegant model of spacetime in Scientific American on the crapper last night…I tend to do all of my reading in there…sort of my version of “a study”.  Anyway, the geometry described in the piece reminded me of “the reality” that users of DMT often see.

I find this very interesting because, as you probably know, I am very interested in the unexplored space between science and spirituality.  I believe that there is a set of fundamental ideas that unify these ways of exploring reality.  And to that end, I believe, as do many others, that altering your state of consciousness whether through meditation, entheogens, or otherwise can provide powerful insight into the true nature of reality.  It’s a simple matter of changing your perspective.  Is THAT perspective any more or less real than the basal state?

Maybe Joe Rogan isn’t as crazy as everyone makes him out to be.

This Umberto Eco quote was on my iGoogle today. It’s really a pretty profound insight…especially given the current state of affairs in our world.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

I was just reading an article about Michelle Obama on IHT.com.

As I began to read through, I saw something that struck me as blatant and unadulterated racism.

Fox News called her “Obama’s baby mama,” a derogatory term for an unwed mother.

Now, granted…this isn’t the primary resource…and I don’t know what the context was…BUT…how in the hell is this not considered a racist comment. I mean, frreal!? This is supposed to be a news organization calling a married Harvard-educated attorney a “baby mama”. One can only assume that this is because she’s black. I feel pretty confident that they wouldn’t make that statement if it were Michelle Bush or Michelle Clinton.

I’m sorry…but that is FUCKED UP.

Why doesn’t Fox News stop being part of the fucking problem and start becoming part of the solution.

What a bunch of pricks. Fuck them.

Follow Up: I found the actual video on YouTube.

There is an inherent duality in our universe.  Fundamentally.  Or at least current data suggests this.  I don’t completely understand the science…but it seems more logical that other models that I’ve heard ).

Either way, this fundamental characteristic of our reality, makes me kinda think that our relationship to God could work that way.

NO time to elaboate, I have a 1-year old pulling at me.  Duty calls.

I’ll definitely be thinking about this…so more at 11.

I was lying in bed last night when a thought popped into my head. It wasn’t as if the whole model was thought through…but I found it interesting enough that I jumped out of bed, opened a text editor, and wrote this.

A New Model of God
God is the super-symmetrical partner to the universe. Although we can never merge (annihilation), we move asymptotically toward God through the process of enlightenment and the understanding of the ultimate truths. We, in essence, would resonating on same frequency as God. We would be, quite literally, complete. True Harmony. Bliss. Nirvana. Heaven.

The reason why this strikes me as the making of something profound is that it brings together some ideas that have been rattling around in my head for years now — string theory, the Higgs Boson, Kant-Hegel asymptotes, Akasha, reincarnation, etc.

I’ve had a problem with God as a human construction for years now. Although the Bible says that God made us in his image…I kinda think that its the other way around. What is it about us that is so special? I think that this line of thinking is extremely short-sighted and frankly, a bit vain.

I’ll be writing more on this subject as I begin to explore it a bit more.

AP News reports that the Belgian makers of Becks and Stella Artois are offering a shitload of cash to buy Anheuser Busch.

Yesterday I wondered, since overseas investors were going to buy the Chrysler Building, if the Statue of Liberty or Yankee Stadium would be next. Not yet, apparently…but it looks like Budweiser (which to me is THE single most American brand in the world) is.

Redneck everywhere (myself included) are up in arms.

Again, I’m not xenophobe…but equity is power. And it seems that all I see lately is how much debt our country is in…and how overseas investors are buying everything out from under us.

Kinda scary actually.

Great article in the New Yorker on Buckminster Fuller…best known for his geodisic domes…the guy even got a molecule named after him.

Anyway…he was walking by Lake Michigan one day in a depressed mood contemplating suicide…or at the very least, the point of his existence. He says that all of a sudden, he was suspended above the ground…floating, if you will…when a voice spoke to him.

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself,” it said. “You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe.”

It was this experience that pushed him to begin his lifelong quest to enhance “humanity’s success in the universe”.

Pretty profound stuff.

But, the article goes on to explain

He rejected fundamental tenets of modern science, most notably evolution. “We arrived from elsewhere in Universe as complete human beings,” he maintained. He further insisted that humans had spread not from Africa but from Polynesia, and that dolphins were descended from these early, seafaring earthlings.

Clearly, this is not nearly as profound.

You shouldn’t need to look externally to find out how to get in touch with your spirituality. You should simply look inward.

Anything that becomes institutionalized tends to become bastardized over time. I think that it’s just the nature of overly scaled systems. Things are better when they are natural, organic, pure — simple.

So rather than prescribe to someone else’s definitions of things, I’ve simply decided to live by a few basic assumptions:

• People are inherently good.
• Balance is essential.
• Love is the only truth.
• We should find ways to maximize the love in our lives.
• To be able to love unconditionally is the pure form to which we all should strive.

Everything else is too much information for me. If I can simplify my life enough to use these basic assumptions as a guiding force in my thoughts and actions, then all of that other stuff will take care of itself. And you don’t need to follow anyone else’s prescription for happiness. It comes from within each of us. Not from books. Or things. Or other people.

Embrace that which makes you who you are. And embrace that in others. Period.