Random

Chrysler Building to be sold to Abu Dhabi (NY Post)

It’s oil-rich foreign governments who are using the money that we give them to buy our country out from under us. Essentially, the balance of power is shifting because these “third world” countries now hold the most valuable resources.

What are we going to sell next to feed our insatiable appetite for convenience? The Statue of Liberty? Yankee Stadium?

We need to put our frickin’ noses to the grindstone and get the fuck off of foreign oil. Actually, any oil. If we can get to the moon using Tandy computers from the 1960s, we can figure out how to harness the power of the frickin’ sun and desalinate water.

It’s about time we started getting our asses in gear. I’m encouraged by the direction that we seem to be leaning…but for Christ’s sake, I hope that we figure it out before the whole thing goes to shit.

P.S. The Italians just bought the Flatiron Building.  The end of American dominance is ending.  We’d better learn how to play well in the sandbox with the other kids.

Found this graphic on BuzzFeed. It’s nice. Shows how only 2.5% of the world’s water is usable. But that’s untrue. We simply don’t have a cheap and easy way to desalinate and clean up large volumes of water. Kinda like solar power when you think about it.

Maybe if we spent more of an effort on these problems and less time trying to find a cure for male pattern baldness, we’d be a little better off.

Originally published February 04, 2004

From the Buddhabrot website,

The Buddhabrot Set is a re-visualization of the familiar Mandelbrot Set using a technique invented by Melinda Green. Instead of selecting points on the real-complex plane, initial points are selected at random from the image region. The point is iterated through the function, z = zˆ2 + c, where z has components in both the real and imaginary planes.If the particle escapes (exits the viewing area with high speed), it’s path is reiterated, exposing it’s position onto the image surface with each step. In this fashion, areas of high dense particle traveling appear bright white. The result is an amazing universe of structure, spirituality, and mathematical intrigue.

Wow. That is crazy. For me, this is like seeing Jesus’ face in the Shroud of Turin. Sure, this doesn’t really look like the Buddha. But it certainly looks as similar to the Buddha as the Shroud looks like Jesus. Now maybe for some people, I’m making a jump…but I believe that math has more to do with spirituality than religion does. And as are able to see and understand more of how our world works, we’re seeing the merging of the physical and metaphysical. This, to me, is extraordinarily powerful stuff.

Originally published August 18, 2003

Trust me. I don’t completely understand theoretical physics. In fact, I barely understand theoretical physics. But then again, I barely understand all of the stuff that the nuns and priests fed me for the first 18 years of my life too.

That being said…I am completely intrigued by theoretical physics. It pushes toward the metaphysical in ways that other scientific disciplines simply cannot or at least will not. Theoretical physics allows us me (the ex-scientist) to understand the universe…or at least to give me a vocabulary of the universe that I can sort of understand. Take the article that I reference above for instance.

Again, I don’t completely understand every word of it…but then again, I didn’t understand every single concept in biological chemisty but I was a year from a Ph.D. in it at one time in my life. I digress.

What strikes me as fascinating about this holographic concept isn’t the 3D to 2D paradigm shift. It’s the idea of infinite parallel universes. Infinite parallel universes says to me that there is such a thing as immortality. Not in the “if you give your $20.00 to the church every week, you’ll go to heaven” kind of immortality. I’m talking about the kind of immortality that is possible when you abandon the fact that what we are experiencing right now is the only reality…or reality at all.

If you can do that, then you can imagine that “death” is simply a shift in perspective. A new reality of sorts…which, according to theoretical physicists (or at least my read of them), are happening infinitely.

My brain is starting to hurt…and I’ve probably confused anyone and everyone who may read this. But it brings me to a fantastic quote that I read today.

“Religion and science are opposed, but only in the same sense as that in which my thumb and forefinger are opposed - and between the two, one can grasp everything” - Sir William Bragg.