Science

I used to think that this song was “cute” and “fun”.  Now all of a sudden, Peter Pumpkinhead isn’t so funny.

Here are the words.  Wow.  Prophetic.

____

Peter pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the vatican what golds for
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkinhead?
Oh my!
Peter pumpkinhead pulled them all
Emptied churches and shopping malls
Where he spoke, it would raise the roof
Peter pumpkinhead told the truth
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies…
Peter pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live tv
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
But he made too many enemies…
Hooray for peter pumpkin
Wholl pray for peter pumpkin
Hooray for peter pumpkinhead
Oh my oh my oh!
Doesnt it make you want to cry oh?

____

This would be a GREAT cover…if you really do it right…especially now.  Note to self: Do not do it like the fucking Crash Test Dummies.  Sorry Shifty.  This shit needs to be called out.  It’s a very karaoke performance. (TM Simon Cowell 2001-2008)

And the fucking “base lick”?  Frreal.  Dood.

Anyway.  XTC might be my new old favorite band.

I’m listening to Dear God again right now.

Found this little quote on religion in a 1964 interview with Playboy Magazine. She was asked if religion had ever offered anything of constructive value to human life.

..in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very — how should I say it? — dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.

This is kinda how I see religion. It holds true to antiquated models of reality.  Since it is supposed to provide insight into the metaphysical, then shouldn’t it be updated as our knowledge base turns more of that metaphysical stuff into actual physical stuff…so to speak?  What I mean is that if religion tells me that the world is 4,000 years old…but I have reams upon reams of verifiable data which not only supports a different model but actually refutes the religious claim, then shouldn’t the religious model be updated to reflect this?

It seems sort of irresponsible to me, as a thinking, rational human being, not to explore all models of reality in search of the ultimate truth.  This is why I tend to gravitate toward models of reality which seem to align most gracefully with current scientific models of reality.

I’d prefer to take my leap of faith after I’ve exhausted what science can tell me.  There is still faith.  But its the leap that has been reduced.

Does that make any sense at all?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I often become frustrated with radicals…not the kind that produce molecular damage…the kind that push their ideas on you.

Essentially, I’m frustrated with anyone who is arrogant enough to think that they are capable of truly “knowing” anything. Religious zealots, community college english professors, bad bosses, guys on infomericals…you name it. Let me tell you why I feel this way.

I believe that everything that we, as individuals, process is an approximation of what it really is. The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle is a well-known articulation of this thought. Since different people have different frames of reference, no two perceptions can be identical.

It’s as if each of us looks through a pinhole to understand reality. None of us are right. But if we took those pinholes and combined them over the range of all consciousness, then we’d actually have a tapestry of experience that would, in essence, be that reality.

As such, someone else’s perception of the world is no more or less valid than mine. The abstraction may be universal. But the context cannot be. It’s simply impossible…at least at my level of thinking.

Ergo, how can anyone be “sure” of anything?

From my experience, the zealot is one who is so incredible ignorant to the world around them that they not only fail to understand the nature of the context in which they live…but they actual believe that somehow they are operating at some absolute level.

Reality check.

There are viruses, which by some definitions aren’t even living things, that are capable of selectively changing the behavior of higher order species as to create a more suitable environment for reproduction. Essentially, these viruses specifically change brain chemistry as to illict a response in the host…a “desired response” (not to personify the concept too much).

Maybe I’m not making the connection here as effectively as I could be.

My point is simply that in a world where viruses can “brainwash” us (a little dramatic but not untrue), how can we really think that we know much of anything. How can we be so sure that our view of the world is the only view? That our God is the only God? That my red is your red?

We can’t. And we shouldn’t. We’re all wrong and all right at the same time. It’s the abstraction that is real. The idea. Not the manifestation of it. Kinda like Plato’s forms, except without the pretense.

We should simply try to find what connects us. Not what separates us. We’re not that cool. We don’t know it all. We don’t know anything. We simply uncover what has always been there. Everyone knows the same things. We simply express them in different ways. Only the zealot truly believes that his vocabulary is the only vocabulary.

That’s why relationships and connections are so important. It allows us to understand and incorporate different vocabularies into our imperfect pursuit of understanding (in the bigger sense). This is why ideas such as chaos, network effects, and the like are so refreshing to me. They require us to zoom out of our localized existances. They allow us to everything as unimportant and essential at the same time.

Anyway…I’m starting to ramble…stream of consciousness soapboxing is starting to take over this post…so I’ll sign off.

But one last thought…if only educators could use this concept when teaching our children. If teachers could find ways to truly resonate with our children so that they could speak in the vocabulary (bigger sense) of each child, then the child would be able to begin to understand and untap the potential that he/she has. No one is stupid. They simple haven’t found the way to translate their own personal vocabulary with one that is more “mainstream”.

I’m probably making no sense now.

Oh, well…maybe I need to readjust my vocabulary.

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.

I just read this on The Telegraph (via Drudge).

Lord Stern, the World Bank’s former chief economist, said governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables.

“Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint because it has not been priced properly,” he said.”

Really?  Isn’t the world 97% water?  Isn’t the issue more of desalination than renewability?  I’m confused here.  Does water somehow break down spontaneously into hydrogen and oxygen atoms and then diffuse out to the atmosphere?

WTF is this dood talking about?

Originally published December 01, 2003.

I am astounded by this awesome explanation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity by Brian Raiter.

He actually explains the background, history and thoughts behind the theory using only 4 letter words or shorter. He refers to Albert Einstern as “Big Al”, Issac Newton as “Izzy” and Aristotle as “Ari”. Good stuff.

More importantly, this short story (only 6 printed pages) brings one of the most complex thoughts in human history down to a level that the average person can understand (well…almost). Since it ignores technical terms and speaks with simile and metaphor that most of us can follow, it does what much didactic texts do not.

It’s actually frickin’ teaches something.

What is most important in education are concepts…the whys of our world…not the whats. I learned more in these 6 pages than I did in 4 years of college (including college physics) and 3 years of graduate school (although my training wasn’t in physics…it was biochemistry…but for Christ’s sake…shouldn’t all scientists have a working understanding of the fundamental laws governing the behavior of the world around us.)

I highly, highly recommend a read of this. Take it with you to the crapper. It’s a lot more interesting than People magazine.