Sunday, June 3, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
... Gahdd, Gawd, Godd ....
The Nine Billion Names of God
This short story tells of a Tibetan lamasery whose monks seek to list all of the names of God, since they believe the Universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which they calculated they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about 9,000,000,000 ("nine billion") and each having no more than nine characters. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another 15,000 years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly.
They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are sceptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear starlit night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. They notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." ++++++++++++ He had an active imagination, which helped him generate useful mnemonics. His condition often produced unnecessary and distracting images or feelings. He had trouble memorizing information whose intended meaning differed from its literal one, as well as trouble recognizing faces, which he saw as "very changeable". He also occasionally had problems reading, because the written words evoked distracting sensations.[1] Things were far worse when he, for example, ate while reading. An example of the difficulties he faced in daily life: One time I went to buy some ice cream ... I walked over to the vendor and asked her what kind of ice cream she had. 'Fruit ice cream,' she said. But she answered in such a tone that a whole pile of coals, of black cinders, came bursting out of her mouth, and I couldn't bring myself to buy any ice cream after she had answered in that way ...[3] His mnemonic associations were so strong that he could recall them after many years. After he discovered his own abilities, he performed as a mnemonist; but this created confusion in his mind. He went as far as writing things down on paper and burning it, so that he could see the words in cinders, in a desperate attempt to forget them. Reportedly, in his late years, he realized that he could forget facts with just a conscious desire to remove them from his memory, although Luria did not test this directly.[1] *** Uncanny synchronicity, Fleag. I clipped the above, was gonna post it on the hose, remembered this was happening, came here, and you've cited the stars twinkling off thingie, and there's this guy realizing he can erase his world (his memory). Chills, I tellz ye. Amazing Stories wrapped in an old Borges cigar.
This short story tells of a Tibetan lamasery whose monks seek to list all of the names of God, since they believe the Universe was created in order to note all the names of God and once this naming is completed, God will bring the Universe to an end. Three centuries ago, the monks created an alphabet in which they calculated they could encode all the possible names of God, numbering about 9,000,000,000 ("nine billion") and each having no more than nine characters. Writing the names out by hand, as they had been doing, even after eliminating various nonsense combinations, would take another 15,000 years; the monks wish to use modern technology in order to finish this task more quickly.
They rent a computer capable of printing all the possible permutations, and they hire two Westerners to install and program the machine. The computer operators are sceptical but play along. After three months, as the job nears completion, they fear that the monks will blame the computer, and by extension its operators, when nothing happens. The Westerners delay the operation of the computer so that it will complete its final print run just after their scheduled departure. After their successful departure on ponies, they pause on the mountain path on their way back to the airfield, where a plane is waiting to take them back to civilization. Under a clear starlit night sky they estimate that it must be just about the time that the monks are pasting the final printed names into their holy books. They notice that "overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." ++++++++++++ He had an active imagination, which helped him generate useful mnemonics. His condition often produced unnecessary and distracting images or feelings. He had trouble memorizing information whose intended meaning differed from its literal one, as well as trouble recognizing faces, which he saw as "very changeable". He also occasionally had problems reading, because the written words evoked distracting sensations.[1] Things were far worse when he, for example, ate while reading. An example of the difficulties he faced in daily life: One time I went to buy some ice cream ... I walked over to the vendor and asked her what kind of ice cream she had. 'Fruit ice cream,' she said. But she answered in such a tone that a whole pile of coals, of black cinders, came bursting out of her mouth, and I couldn't bring myself to buy any ice cream after she had answered in that way ...[3] His mnemonic associations were so strong that he could recall them after many years. After he discovered his own abilities, he performed as a mnemonist; but this created confusion in his mind. He went as far as writing things down on paper and burning it, so that he could see the words in cinders, in a desperate attempt to forget them. Reportedly, in his late years, he realized that he could forget facts with just a conscious desire to remove them from his memory, although Luria did not test this directly.[1] *** Uncanny synchronicity, Fleag. I clipped the above, was gonna post it on the hose, remembered this was happening, came here, and you've cited the stars twinkling off thingie, and there's this guy realizing he can erase his world (his memory). Chills, I tellz ye. Amazing Stories wrapped in an old Borges cigar.
Friday, September 3, 2010
let's blog
Methinks we are seeing something wildly wicked and strange coming this way into a sea change.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Arthur C Clarke
"Communications satellites can bring to every home on earth sadism and pornography, vapid parlor games or inflated egos, all-in wrestling or tub-thumping revivalism. Yet they can also expose lies and tell the truth; no dictator can build a wall high enough to stop its' citizens listening to the voices from the stars."
The Social Consequences of Communications Satellites, 1945, Arthur C Clarke
The Social Consequences of Communications Satellites, 1945, Arthur C Clarke
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
yet another moron
Ruben MNavarette, Jr., is scared of justice creating animosity
Aw, so the CIA and FBI won';t be best friends, maybe.
As if they ever were.
Moron.
Aw, so the CIA and FBI won';t be best friends, maybe.
As if they ever were.
Moron.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Tesla, Einstein, squaring the circle
Tesla was critical of Einstein's relativity work, calling it:
"...[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists ...[76]”
Tesla also argued:
"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.[7]”
I think one reason Tesla didn't like relativity is that it removed the Cosmic Backdrop, the Cartesian grid of properly abstract space, and replaced it with a world where everything is local, everything is the center of its cosmos, every atom a solipsist. This appeared to Tesla, I believe, as removing the great bedrock of inertia from which Tesla theorized we could draw virtually unlimited power from the very air.
But Einstein was right: there are no straight lines. The only straight line would be an overall lambda wave looping on itself, just as walking on the ground -- a curved surface -- is the only straight line there is in relation to Terran gravity.
As I walk the curved surface of this flat earth, I also move 1k mph as the planet spins, move ? fast as the planet orbits the sun, ? fast as the solar system orbits around the center of the galaxy and in whatever (round!) eddies form in the turbulent galactic tide.
Circles, circles, circles.
Saying space cannot be curved because it can't have properties, being a mere abstraction of human thought, assumes that space is simply a product of human thought.
And human thought is the most roundabout thing in the cosmos.
Every standard 3-d map of any space of the cosmos using rectilinear grids, will suffer circular forms to be imposed upon it as soon as the Four Forces (gravity, electromag, weak nuke and strong nuke) are accounted for. Classic blackhole visualization shows a round vortex forming within a grid of squares. The curved forms caused by gravity and the other forces are real: it is the Cartesian grid that is entirely abstract.
Einstein didn't square the circle but he circled the squares.
Tesla also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by Ruđer Bošković, stating in an unpublished interview:
“...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum ...'.[78]"
Let's hear it for our illustrious countrymen!
"...[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists ...[76]”
Tesla also argued:
"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.[7]”
I think one reason Tesla didn't like relativity is that it removed the Cosmic Backdrop, the Cartesian grid of properly abstract space, and replaced it with a world where everything is local, everything is the center of its cosmos, every atom a solipsist. This appeared to Tesla, I believe, as removing the great bedrock of inertia from which Tesla theorized we could draw virtually unlimited power from the very air.
But Einstein was right: there are no straight lines. The only straight line would be an overall lambda wave looping on itself, just as walking on the ground -- a curved surface -- is the only straight line there is in relation to Terran gravity.
As I walk the curved surface of this flat earth, I also move 1k mph as the planet spins, move ? fast as the planet orbits the sun, ? fast as the solar system orbits around the center of the galaxy and in whatever (round!) eddies form in the turbulent galactic tide.
Circles, circles, circles.
Saying space cannot be curved because it can't have properties, being a mere abstraction of human thought, assumes that space is simply a product of human thought.
And human thought is the most roundabout thing in the cosmos.
Every standard 3-d map of any space of the cosmos using rectilinear grids, will suffer circular forms to be imposed upon it as soon as the Four Forces (gravity, electromag, weak nuke and strong nuke) are accounted for. Classic blackhole visualization shows a round vortex forming within a grid of squares. The curved forms caused by gravity and the other forces are real: it is the Cartesian grid that is entirely abstract.
Einstein didn't square the circle but he circled the squares.
Tesla also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by Ruđer Bošković, stating in an unpublished interview:
“...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum ...'.[78]"
Let's hear it for our illustrious countrymen!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
On pending healthcare reformlegislation...
Some wise guy at the Poor Man summed it up well:
"They really need to rewrite the bill(s).
If you are dumb enough to believe in Death Panels, you go before a Death Panel. Which doesn’t think highly of stupid people.
If you have a modicum of smarts, will then, as you were, carry on, keep up the good work.
Is that so hard?"
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