Information

What is the informational density of a piano?  It's primarily known for 88 distinct sets of data (not specific frequencies as each note is impure: containing different overtones), with a specific access mode.  Here's an  example of information retrieval on a piano, so what is stored here?  Clearly the piano brings some base set of information from which one may extrapolate the performance using a set of meta-information.  This meta-information would consist of data as to how the keys were pushed.  If we knew nothing about the instrument we might assume a list of total presses for keys might do it.  Perhaps greater insight would lead us to a list of the keys in order: but even that's not sufficient.  We begin to approach a situation in which way be able to actually grasp the desired output when we include time as a recorded factor.  But we also discover the speed at which each individual piece of information is recovered is also an essential part of the overall effect, and now more data is needed.  A complete set of retrieval information (or meta-information) would include the time of any key-press, press-intensity most likely measured as velocity of key depression, and release time.  In a standard piano knowledge as to pedal action would also have to be included.

Armed with this meta-information we would now be able to recreate past knowledge events (play pieces) given a specific knowledge set (the piano).  The meta-information we've obtained has no inherent value, it is useless to use directly and can only be accessed itself through the use of the base information.  The fact that likewise the base information is useless to us without the meta-information is not a paradox but a wonderful example of symbiosis of knowledge.  Once applied appropriately we find a piece played that goes beyond the meta-information we brought to the appearance: resonance between strings, as an example, not being expressed in the text itself.

The actual information has a real physical appearance in the form of the strings, the soundboard, the case, etc... But the meta-information we've discussed is purely abstract, having no physical reality.  It may be stored on paper in the form of sheet music (a rather impure form) but then the reality is the ink and the paper and additional meta-information is required to translate that to our version of knowledge.  This sets up an infinite recursion of required knowledge that has not been explained.  No true end point has been found, we only know there is one, and that it is not infinite, because we are capable of making sense of these things, and we can translate information.  But for the time being we see that the piano itself is the only "true" information, and the rest is an abstraction that requires the piano to become a physicality.

So what information does a piano really store?  We discussed its 88 notes, but is that the reality?  What if we did not know what information to look for, how many ways could we attempt to access the information locked within?  We could put the piano in a compression test in which we loaded the top and bottom until it failed, deriving a force versus strain curves and giving us all sorts of information like elastic constant, plasticity and ultimate load.  Is not this information 'stored' in the piano just as much as musical notes?  Burning it we would determine caloric makeup, speed of combustion, chemical composition and so forth.

Perhaps a question that should be asked is: what does a piano mean?  What's the totality of its meaning, what is it in and of itself and what does add up to?  Most likely any intelligence would recognize in a short time that it was designed, and that the purpose of the design included use of the keys (cats certainly prove this with frequency).  Is that it's meaning?  Would it be more meaningful if it were later to be used to perform an notable task?  Is a piano more meaningful if it has in the past performed a meaningful task (which we each must decide the definition of)?  If so what information is stored that has value?  If none then how could meaning be determined if a zero change in information allowed a change in meaning?  That would force us to admit that an object does not contain its own meaning, or that it is impossible to determine the meaning of anything as it may or may not have been impacted by the events that generated its meaning.

How does this apply to the meaning of us, of a person?  Do we contain meaning inherent in ourselves or must it be forced upon by another intelligence?  If so then where does that recursive process end?  If we do contain meaning, where can we find it, how can we determine our own sum total?  What must we look at, and how would it be stored as it happened to use?

Part II, it needs some work

To strangers he'd talk about the silence you experienced, not just some earth bound conception of audio-implacability but silence of all the sense: a true removal from the constrains of the citizen soldier's Possible. To those friends of whimsy and drink he would clamor about the disconnection and connections one let oneself find down amidst the darkness: ideas that had never been able to surface due to some subjugation by light. The religious heard claims of both God and Mammon ruling below, finding bonds with each far more substantial than one could develop topside. But in moments of reflection, when speaking only to himself, he saw in his journey the conflation of realities down there in the blackness; moving from one to another as he so chose. To some the reason was the question, and for them no answer was mystical enough to satisfy; some saw only deviance and shunned even their own curiosity on the subject. The more level-headed knew that each answer was only a facet of the overall Truth of the situation: each one representing some given line-of-approach to the unseen center, shrouded by these causes. They knew to understand, one must move past reason to reach that center, but none had succeeded in removing their logos sufficient as to reveal what lies hidden. Perhaps he had seen below the level of understanding, and had been attracted down into it. Living down there in attempt to become the center, not being able to approach it from the outside but only subsume it into himself. That is why the mystics came, monks of some arcane order traveling to those solitary outposts of humanity on the edge.

The first tip-off to management was the continual appealing to the winds.  Everyone knew any mine would have wind developed by isomorphic atmospheres, energy gradients and general machine chicanery.  It was the breath of the monster, the mine’s respiratory system pumping in and out with regularity.   Braulio was feeling something else: typhoons and pressure systems, weathers blown in from the West with a night-long gale.  At first the conversations occurred in hidden localities away from the more sinister ears of upper-division, but as time progressed his declarations became unbounded until the fascination was generally known.  When they begin to send the more serious types to question him, out came the quizzical face and some baffling phrase about counter-winds and ethereal planes coincident with our own.  This kind of Eastern nonsense never went far with those running in dialectic modes of thought who reported back to management general competency and ingeneral irrationality. Never enough to frighten anyone in-office, but it would go on the chart.

His typical pontifications on the subject took the form of some sort of muddled, sailor-ese.  Speaking of currents and eddies out in the blackness, putting up allegorical jibs and insisting on sleeping on the leeward side of walls and posts.  These eccentricities wouldn't put him in the forefront of the mine-crazies, merely part of the effervescent unsettled, part of the movement for spiritual clarity in the midst of temporal pursuit.  Large congregations of restless souls finding respite from their temporal drudgery: mild insanity was pleasant form of relaxation.  A kind of anti-Freudian relief: replacing repression with exaggeration of emotion that could take mysterious paths in this darkness common in the extremes of professional life.

This particular manifestation of psyche reversal was notable at first not for the man but the brief following he enjoyed.  Some a bit more sensitive to the spiritual æther noted right off that Braulio was aware of things not yet found, or strictly speaking, not yet occurred.  Those more adventurous of the workmen began to question him about it, trying to find that elusive wind themselves.  Some sat up nights in shoddy boats made of timber and oar scrounged from waste piles discovered on sly expeditions to levels yet unearthed from history.  Often claims would be bandied about as to trips taken under this new-found wind power, some giving accounts of visions with token guest appearances from the likes of King Magnus III, bestowing approval on their own paltry efforts of emulation.

As time slipped by and the those wind ship adventures peaked at some climax of penetration into the quietistic, leaving unanswered questions of wind truth, and tunnel vortices.  The movement ended as most such expeditions do: a bigger clamor elsewhere had drawn away the gaggle of fair-weather followers.  Some soul, levels above was discovered to have lips that mapped  out the ore-veins not yet found; letters to a chief up on ground, sealed with a kiss was recognized by a young topologist working in a part-time secretarial calling.  Saw the lines meld together with the maps he kept, finding common center at the crest of the lower lip, a new vein having opening up just that day.  The crowds soon shifted out to engage in some oral perversion of spirituality: seeking maps to El Dorado amidst those minute crevices on every face they could locate through use of tarot or other, more seamy devices.

Braulio remained at post, still passing along tales of the moving stillness, and was forgotten for a time pounding out poissonian distributions of history salvage.  Temporal excursions, journeying into the lost corridors of ancient mineralogies.  The Mine had been closing the moment ground was broken ages ago.  A monument to human progress: detailing the search for minerals at the edge of understanding.  Corridors running down at seemingly random patchworks of madness, countless miles of understanding lost to the passages of eternity.  Now Braulio is discovering again, never sure it was ever truly known as he has come to know.  It was a unique position in mining; discovery of what once was.  So many shafts closed, so many blasted off discoveries that could now be unearthed.  Braulio was to find what had been lost and what could be recovered.  A journey inwards for the mine if only management’s epistemology included self-realization it might be thought of as grand adventure instead of merely profit recovery.  Not that they hadn’t chosen correctly in picking out Braulio to head the project, upper-division having some mathematical Ouija board from which to set all their schedules without the tedious necessity of understanding.

The original Mine entrance was seen first by Marie Esclane while living in North Carolina with her cousin Dyan in a two story, plantation house built as part of an experiment into the properties of phlogiston.  Exotic combinations of iron, copper, topaz, and corundum were found in large quantities amidst basement fortifications against the aggressive ground water of the region.  These alchemical innovations thought to provide insights into motive force had been abandoned with the house when its owner finally succumbed to the caloric theory that had threatened his work since the beginning of the century.  Picked up for a song by her parents, Dyan found the house to be ideally suited to a life of ease for two young maidens and thus promptly invited her relative Marie, whom the rest of the family regarded with reserve, to room with her.

Though unmolested in their mostly harmless dalliances at country parties for the first months of occupation, the pair soon found their pleasures arrested by nighttime scares and vivid images of soft-focus terrors.  For Dyan the nights became an unrelenting cascade of childhood fears which required doctors of all stripe and healers ranging from Pastoral intercessionsests to Indian Shaman summoned at no small expense from reservations a nation distant.  Finding no release, a prolonged trip to the country Northward was proscribed which led to an unsightly marriage proposal from a rather rowdy Shan Rutling.  From there it was a short journey to removal from family inheritance and finally from family memory.

Marie stayed longer, occupying the house alone for two more years.  Nightmares settled into patterns, recurring images of caverns losing their ominous glow, doorways that seemed to no longer lead into hell, but paradise (or its earthly equivalent).  Forces Marie never fully understood began to intervene in her life, bringing strong desires to investigate Westward into the mountainous world that was still being explored by the likes of Edwin James and Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.

Infinity

We often get around judging others through actions by pointing out that we all have flaws and our own personal struggles.  Some may be more evident than others but it's about a direction and a goal more than a measure of current position.  All well and good but it underlies that common belief that actions are good or bad: definable; as well as the truth that when perfection is reached our actions will be limited to only the Godlike actions.

Let us class these actions together as a set of all possible actions for those who have achieved perfection.  Then let us create a set of all actions an eternal individual takes from the moment perfection is reached ("the perfect day").  This latter set must be infinite as the actor is infinite, so we have one infinite set containing a series of subsets of actions. Now let us write out each possible 'god-action' as a string of digits.  However many it takes is irrelevant as long as it's finite.  Some unique code of digits, even hundreds of digits long, will be used in place of an English descriptions.  Now we know from infinite set theory that the set of numbers which  do not contain every possible, arbitrary finite set of numbers has measure zero.  Or a zero probability that any number selected from the infinite set of numbers (real numbers, thus including the irrational) wont contain every possible number set.  Or to simplify once more, than there's a hundred percent chance that any number chosen will contain every possible combination of digits.

Combining this knowledge with our original set-up we write out the set of all actions taken by an eternal being as a string of digits which represent their actions.  This being an infinite number, there is now a hundred percent chance that it contains any arbitrary set of of actions within it (all in the subset of 'god-like').  Thus no actions of any other being can be unique in any way.  Instead it is provable that all actions taken by all other beings are a subset of those actions taken by this being, thus rendering all others redundant.  Not very happy, right?  The only escape being if the set of measure zero contains all actions of these beings which would require endless repetition thus moving the redundancy from other beings into the self.  If we can not be mere replicas of other eternal beings then we are doomed to self-repetition and become ourselves redundant.  What is the solution?  Or are we truly redundant, and thus without necessity or purpose?

There are two assumptions made which may not be correct to arrive at that proof, can you find them?

Here's something to think about:
Even if both assumptions are wrong it is still provable that all positive (above called 'god-like') actions we perform in this life are redundant if we become eternal beings.  Unless our actions are not truly good, gods do not perform good acts, or gods are not eternal any arbitrary, finite set of actions (such as that set we perform here on earth) will be found in the infinite set of actions we perform after the resurrection.  In fact, at some point, they must be performed in the same order as we performed them here on Earth!

We attempt what we can not complete

To strangers he'd talk about the silence you experienced, not just some earth bound conception of audio-implacability but silence of all the sense, a true removal from the constrains of the citizen soldier's Possible. To those friends of whimsy and drink he would clamor about the disconnection and connections one let oneself find down amidst the darkness: ideas that had never been able to surface due to some subjugation by light. The religious heard claims of both God and Mammon ruling below, finding bonds with each far more substantial than one could develop topside. But in moments of reflection, when speaking only to himself, he saw in his journey the conflation of realities down there in the blackness; moving from one to another as he so chose. To some the reason was the question, and for them no answer was mystical enough to satisfy; some saw only deviance and shunned even their own curiosity on the subject. The more level-headed knew that each answer was only a facet of the overall Truth of the situation: each one representing some given line-of-approach to the unseen center, shrouded by these causes. They knew to understand, one must move past reason to reach that center, but none had succeeded to remove their logos sufficient to reveal what lay beneath. Perhaps he had seen that below the level of understanding, and had been attracted down into it. Living down there in attempt to become the center, not being able to approach it from the outside but only subsume it into himself. That's why the mystics came, monks of some arcane order traveling to those solitary outposts of humanity on the edge.

The first tip-off to management was the continual appealing to the winds. "There can't be wind, it plain don't exist for us", our more rustic characters would insist. "That don't mean nothing down here, your realities can't trump my truth" he would invariably reply. His voice always full of those cheery melodies of jest, but not fanatically enough as to ensure a total lack of the sanning. When they begin to send the more serious types to him, out came the quizzical face and some baffling phrase, "well there is and there isn't, it ain't exactly what you know to be wind." This kind of Eastern nonsense never went far with those trapped into dialectic modes of thought, which may have just been the inspiration. They reported back general competency and ingeneral irrationality. Never enough to frighten anyone in-office, but it would go on the chart.

His typical pontifications on the subject took the form of some sort of muddled, sailor-ese.  Speaking of currents and eddies out in the blackness, putting up allegorical jibs and insisting on sleeping on the leeward side of walls and posts.  These eccentricities wouldn't put him in the forefront of the mine-crazies, merely part of the effervescent unsettled.  Some a bit more sensitive to the spiritual æther noted right off that he seemed aware of things not yet found, or strictly speaking, not yet occurred.  Those more adventurous of the workmen began to question him about it, trying to find that wind themselves.  Some sat up nights in shoddy boats made of timber and oar scrounged from waste piles discovered on sly expeditions to levels yet unearthed from history.  Often claims would be bandied about as to trips taken under this new-found wind power, some giving accounts of visions with token guest appearances from the likes of King Magnus III, bestowing approval on their own paltry efforts of emulation.  Time slipped by and the those wind ship adventures peaked at some climax of penetration into the quietistic, leaving unanswered questions of wind truth, and tunnel vortices.  Some soul, levels above, was discovered to have lips that mapped  out the veins not yet found; letters to a chief up on ground sealed with a kiss recognized by a young, entrepreneurial topologist working in a part-time, secretarial calling.  Saw the lines meld together, finding common center at the crest of the lower lip, one vien opening up just that day.  The crowds soon shifted out to engage in some oral perversion of spirituality, seeking maps to El Dorado amidst those minute crevacices on every face they could locate through use of tarrot and other, more seemy devices.

Braulio remained, still passing along tales of the moving stillness, and was forgotten for a time pounding out poissonian distributions of history salvage.  Temporal excursions, journeying into the lost corridors of ancient mineralogies.  The Mine had been closing the moment ground was broken epochs ago.  A monument to human progress: detailing the search for minerals at the edge of understanding.  Corridors running down at seemingly random patchworks of madness, countless miles of understanding lost to the passages of eternity.  Now Braulio is discovering again, never sure it was ever truely known as he has come to know.

Cause and Effect

For most of scientific history we have attempted to break any system down into its component elements; then, understanding those, build the system back up from our understanding in order to predict its behavior.  This reductionist approach began to be challenged by Chaos supporters who declared the reductionist approach to have a crucial flaw.  A truly chaotic system, which so many real one are would require a theoretical (and not just practical) impossibly detailed amount of information and processing power.  Even if it were theoretically possible to predict behavior (which it wouldn't be) the computation required would be equivalent to actual computation.  In other words, the model could never exceed the speed of actual reality unless it contained more computational elements than every element involved in the system (in one cubic foot of air that would be about 10^24 elements).

Perhaps more interesting is the challenge Bohr issued to science, that due to uncertainty in quantum reality, cause and effect were no longer directly correlated (specifically, that a wave function collapsing would be given a choice as to its properties, and that choice would not depend upon any actual conditions, but would be truly random).  Einstein wasn't happy for the obvious reason that cause and effect are the foundation of science, without it nothing could be determined as correlation between realities are lost.  It would also destroy, to some extend, true agency.  As choice loses validity if its consequences are unpredictable.  Of course with quantum physics we lose effects as we transition to the classical world at some unknowable boundary between the quantum and the macro.

Yet determinism has even more obvious conflicts with agency, and ones that are more frequently explored.  If all actions in the physical world are truly predictable then agency is lost and our lives are determined by history: they were written before our birth.  Unfortunately the discussion usually ends with the beginning axioms.  Either agency is a given and thus determinacy is jettisoned or determinism is just the way of things and agency is ruled out.  I find it very difficult to chart a path between determinism, which eliminates agency, and true unpredictability (not just colloquial chaos) which destroys the consequences of agency, and thus agency itself.

Perhaps the latter issue may be dismissed by reliance on God.  If we trust Elder Maxwell's words that God sees, rather than foresees that means that a source of future knowledge is available at some level.  Even subconsciously the point is that decisions can than be made in a frame of reference that includes consequence.  This allows choices to be contemplated without determinism and yet still given meaning.

What this requires is a disconnection of any one moment from the one preceding, or following.  History is not our mother, no matter what Nixon may say, instead we are born anew each instant, keeping with us only ourselves.  Cause and effect is removed, as each action springs not from the physics of the situation but from within the actor.  We must be our own motive force, not relying on the world to impel our action, nor casting the blame outwards, even to other prime actors.  Each action is independent, separated from every other, and each soul is its only source of cause.

Deceit

Words, by there very nature, are deceitful.  Mere abstractions of reality they can not contain truth, they can not contain anything.  Actions are never deceitful, always representing reality and containing the truth within themselves.  What is the merging of words and action?  When a person attempts to lie with their actions, what really occurs?  Words are lies by their foundations, and actions likewise truths.  These things exist in contrary worlds, unsure of the existence of the other.  Neils Bohr would say 'complementarity', the reverse incapable of dependency.  Only a foolish creature would assume he could falsify action, only an ignorant man would believe he could express the truth through his language.  Truth is a part of the world, not to be destroyed by human imprint, pigeon-holed into some fabricated world in which the reality of any item is anchored by a shifting tide of opinion and understanding.  Truth can not be held hostage by our imperfections, but exists independently of any attempt to discover or define.  We add to its vaults when we act, language will forever be transitory.

What world, and with it what reality, is represented by language?  What is actually described, and what occurs when words are interpreted by another?  Does the inclusion of a listener alter that reality, or create a new on top of the old?  Truth can never be vanquished by lies, yet can lies and truth meet?  If one were to truly combine words and action, what would occur at the front?

Perhaps a beginning

Moments recede into history so quickly it is often difficult for one to distinguish one flash reality from another.  Is it now, or have we run into the past?  What's the scale against which we measure?  As our attentions shifts downwards time spins off into infinity, transforming seconds into epochs: no longer within the realm of comprehension.  Events expand and retract separating each snap of certainty into uncorrelated pictures of madness.  How far down must one venture in order to discover truth, and once unearthed, how long will that truth last?

Flashes of powdered blue and crimson scorch the scenery that surround me.  Violent explosions and interminable reactions mixing in a cacophony of movement are interwoven into the landscape.  Dreams and desires sweep around and around: lighting up my night sky.  If only he could control it, if only he could understand the symphony that underlies this insanity!  It shall never be, he has neither the strength nor the wit and so I find myself in this most detestable of positions; I see the beauty that may be but lack the power to bring it forth.  Oh muse, must thou so torment such a genuine disciple?  What cause have ye to send the vision yet withhold the scepter from this bedraggled soul?

Day comes with all its vaunted glory to crown these gray hills with rosy dawn.  The angels and the anguish of the night recede to that starry underworld which lays continually just beneath his reality.  Motion, pain and pleasure come spilling out: measured, calibrated and then restrained.  Emotions flood the world around me and then pull back into their assigned spheres and proper allotment.  Drenched in hate and torpor, I begin to wander about through mundane memories of his everyday minuta.  The acrid stench of consumptions dances amongst the ruins of years well past.

Books

Books completed under my 'book-a-week' regime:

Gravity's Rainbow
Though I was biased towards this result before I read the book, this is one of the best books I've ever read.  Incredible language and very thought provoking.  Also lurid and perverse.

The Crying of Lot 49
I wish there were more Pynchon novels of this length, it was great.  A friend just gave me Against the Day which I do want to read, but 900 or so pages of Pynchon takes the equivalent of 3,000 pages or more of a standard book (based on my reading speed).

Moby Dick
Very good, and very thematic.  I got less of it than a smarter reader would've I'm sure but I did enjoy it.  However, I have to say that I did get bogged down by the continual distractions into whaling lore and technology.  I think I would've preferred something a bit more direct.  But who am I to criticize a classic?

The Alvin Maker Series
Actually six books by OSC that I haven't read in a while, and quite enjoyable to go over again.

Chaos
Fascinating.  I think anyone would be greatly benefited by reading this book scientifically inclined or not.  Though I doubt anyone not so inclined would read it I found it incredibly mind-expanding (whatever that means).

Big Trouble
Another re-read, this is Dave Barry's first novel and quite hilarious.  It isn't as good this time through already knowing pretty much what will happen, but still funny.

The Age of Entanglement
A book on the formation of quantum theory and the advent of Bell's inequality with non-local hidden variables.  It was well told through conversations of the great minds of the 20th century: the whole book being made up of mostly just dialogue.  I felt its approach could be a bit scatter shot but overall I liked it and certainly learned from it.

Chaos

As you most likely recognize, this is one of thousands of videos showing the amazing complexity of the Mandelbrot Set.  This 'set', or collection of 2D numbers is created using one equation:

z --> z^2 + c

Where 'c' is the original number.  If this series converges it is in the Mandelbrot set, if it diverges it is not.  In other words, if you take a number, square it, and add that to the original number over and over and over will it go to infinity or not?  1^1+1 becomes 2, 2^2+1 goes to 5, 5^2+1 goes to 26 and this quickly runs up to infinity meaning that 1 is not in the Mandelbrot set.  This set here is plotted in the complex plane, meaning real numbers are on the x axis (horizontal for those who haven't had math in a long time) and imaginary numbers on the y axis.  Imaginary numbers being some multiple of 'i', or the square root of negative one.  As a note this is a binary output, the different colors in the video (which based on this theory there should only be two) are based on how fast the number diverges.

This is not an explanation of mathematics, it's an example of chaos.  One of the most famous examples of chaos from one of the best known names in the field.  The larger point isn't the equation in and of itself but the simplicity of the equation.  The above video shows us diving into the results of this equation and finding complexity at every level.  Generalizations about behavior from a classical standpoint are rendered meaningless.  The set never simplifies into generic groupings no matter how detailed your plot gets.  This means that in a similar real world system predicting the outcome based on given input is rendered impossible.  No matter how accurate your initial readings, this shows that even when hundreds of decimal places of accuracy is achieved, being off by that much can and will change how the system acts.

It's an interesting mix of determinism and unpredictability.  Any 'chaos equation' is by definition determinate, it's an equation!  Given a certain input there is a certain output.  Now this does break down when non-linear differential equations are introduced as we don't really know how to solve those but that's not the point.  The point is that laws don't have to be violated and results are repeatable numerically.  The identical input can still give identical output so we become Calvinist in a sphere of predictable destiny.  Yet identical input is a myth of binary technology.

In engineering achieving 5% error would be considered either luck or very good modeling (structural engineering anyways) in the hard sciences more precision is needed.  Yet chaos proclaims that in systems under its control there is no level of precision sufficient to truly model outcomes.  In fact that hard barrier of Schrodinger's uncertainty principle is hit and deterministic systems are made non-determinant by creating a fuzzy input even in reality.  Bifurcations at miniature levels beneath the realm of even the theoretically measurable ensure that accurate predictions are rendered not merely impractical but truly impossible.  The weather can only be predicted approximately three weeks in advance before quantum physics joins forces with chaos (sometimes referred to as 'highly non-linear systems') to render prediction unmanageable.

Yet we know climates and temperature variations over centuries.  I may not know the high for three days from now but I can still predict the general temperature trend for July in 18 years with a rather surprising degree of accuracy.  It gets warmed in the summer and colder in winter.  This is the so called 'order in chaos' a prominent feature being 'strange attractors'.  This shows that though any finite piece of data may be unpredictable the overall system has trends, has character.  Patterns emerge not of true repetition but shapes begin to repeat.  Lorenz's infamous figure eight, in the above video the two unequal circles that appear at the beginning make appearances through-out the infinite orders of magnitude.  Phase space of so many equations show order emerging within the equations even when the data seems to have no discernible pattern.  This is why chaos can be a science and not a permanent road block.

This also has no direct bearing on my life except that after reading Jame's Gleick's Chaos it i a subject that has occupied a very great deal of my time.  What does it mean when it comes to plotting a course through life?  What does it imply about our universe?  Are there direct applications either to research I'm doing or to myself in general?  I don't know but I've been thinking a lot about it.  I may post more on the subject in which case I hope to use this as a springboard.  But I may not, it's unpredictable.  Chaos at work.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

A reassuring way to validate our existence, yes?  Yet the validation is incurred to the thinker himself: hardly an improvement on Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum as the thinker only clarifies his reality through further self-projection.  Perhaps the use of material substance ensures that the mental projection of ourselves is indeed a physical reality, with the added appeal of not being forced to endure the imposition of outside sentience on our personally crafted, pseudo-reality.  I think most will find that this added luxury will forever deny the mirror from being a true substitute for interpersonal relationships.  Without the ability to transform our own thoughts we are stymied in a limited universe that's incapable of being either transformative or informative.  Without other intelligence we may never see beyond the borders of our current selves; this must be at least an element of why all people crave people.  Even the most isolated and seemingly alone.


Perhaps a rather esoteric and self aggrandizing way of explaining the need for a blog, yet isn't that the very purpose of web logs?  To become self-focused, self-obsessed, or more positively at least self-aware?  A journal serves as a private outlet and a place for personal reflection in the written form.  Phone calls and conversations allow for an even exchange of ideas and emotions (though they by no means guarantee it).  A blog though is by definition narcissistic.  It declares that the day-to-day minutia of your life is not only worth writing down (perhaps only a statement on the importance of your time) but is important enough for others to read and respond to.  Which of course is exactly what people do so perhaps this vanity is not without a corresponding reality.


Whatever the case may be, I have now joined the growing throng of bloggers, thus can not escape being by hit whatever criticism I or other may level at them.


Beware, O' soul of peril,
We run beneath the eyes
That seek to find the Heavens
And receive instead a herald
Of the dawn below the skies