blogtrotter

1 MW test of Rossi's E-cat apparently successful

2011-10-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

1-MW system sold to customer

"On October 28, 2011, Andrea Rossi demonstrated his 1 megawatt E-Cat system to his first customer, who had engineers/scientists on hand to test/validate its performance. Due to a glitch, it provided 470 kW of continuous power for 5.5 hours during the self-sustained mode.

Here I am with Andrea Ross after the test of the 1 MW E-Cat plant in the background."

Well, I'm glad about this. Seems he may indeed have sold it to the customer on the strength of the demo. A rival to Steorn it may be, but the more varieties of free energy the better. One in the teeth to the polluters and those with polluted minds who have been commenting here and elsewhere with their moronic insults.

Demo at STEORN offices Nov 13th 2010

2010-11-09T04:10:00.000-08:00

A chance for all sceptic engineers and scientists to check out ssORBO for themselves

Why not...
Check it out!
demo

OEDU board offer by STEORN - and Youtube video on main page now!!

2010-11-01T01:57:00.000-07:00

It looks like they made good their promise to officially release the test board offer in October - the Halloween release. Our video is up there too: views shot up from 10,000 to 15,000 overnight!:
http://www.steorn.com/
.

OEDU board offer by STEORN - prove it yourself!

2010-10-08T05:52:00.000-07:00

Proof of concept, but very easy to use:
http://www.steorn.com/skdb/oedu/

I found 308% gain at Steorn!

2010-10-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

Yes - see me as 1 of 3 to test the solid state orbo board at Steorn HQ on Sept 25th and find over 300 % gain. We took the rig apart and put it together, measuring our resistor ourselves and re-did everything, did our own formulae in Excel etc. and indeed found a gain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HKTYrVjEGY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HKTYrVjEGY

When they send out some of these boards to SKDB members, we will find independent verification all over the world. Anyone with an oscilloscope and some voltage and current probes can measure this.

"Free Energy and Free Will"

2010-06-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

That's the title we'll almost certainly use on our (Seba's and my) blockbuster about Steorn's free energy and it's implications for the world - mainly for free will, as in the mind-matter debate. Other implications will of course also be discussed. A history of our involvement in this great adventure will be part of it.

Syncronicity etc.

2010-06-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Very early this morning, I was reading 'Synchonicity' by Alan Combs and Mark Holland. I had just took it up again after a pause of a few weeks and read the case of the rich Persian miser who refused to change his dirty old slippers and then took the wrong ones at the baths with dire consequences via the trickster of synchonicity (Hermes or Loki).
Then later this morning, reading the Sunday paper, on an inside page was an article with banner heading about the shoe thrower of Baghdad - he who had hurled a shoe at Bush and was imprisoned for a few months and then feted as a hero. Synchronous, and low probability as that shoe thrower, as the article pointed out, had quickly faded from the news and so had not been heard of in 2 years.

As far as Steorn goes - the solid state Orbo is becoming really easy to reproduce. May do so myself in a few weeks. Heater this winter, mobile charger next year. No problem. Soooo easy....

solid state orbo revving up

2010-05-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

Technology might indeed be more common than a greco-european origin might lead one to believe. The Mayans and Aztecs had a sort of tech, and might, in time, have gone further with it. Chinese invention of paper, gun-powder etc. implies they might have also eventually got onto the scientific method that is the turbo-route to technology.
It's a fascinating subject. Again there's the 100s of millions of years of bipedal dinosaurs, some with hands like T-rex or the raptors etc. They could have developed tech if their brains had developed a bit nore. We were lucky in having the mamalian topping on top of the reptilian brain as well as bipedalism with hands.
That combo may take aeons to achieve on any planet, if it ever happens.

I'm thinking of converting my book to one that links to the Steorn thing - the title I'm thinking of is 'Free energy and Free Will'. I just need to adapt the current book a bit with a longer discussion on how breaking of COE has implications for mind-drain dualism etc.

The Steorn thing is a bit quiet, though we are beginning to reproduce the solid state orbo (ss-orbo) - that is really very, very easy compared to the old rotating versions.

March for testing too...

2010-03-15T02:13:00.000-07:00

Well, a few posts back I said they'd be finished testing at Steorn end Feb. But they have let it known that so many groups of engineers and scientists wanted to test the system that they expended to end March. Pity, as I'd rather hoped for a St. Patrick's day media event - the ' CNN moment' we've all been waiting for.i

2010-02-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

(provisional) Title: Humpty Dumpty & the Emperors new Genome - Brain/ body complexity and the challenge to reductionism.

It is already 46,000 words long, with several illustrations. The final version should have between 50,000 and 60,000 words and up to 30 illustrations, some of them coloured (though shades of grey may be acceptable). Estimated completion date: Autumn 2010.

Is a genome of only 23,000 genes sufficient to explain the complexity of the body and brain? This popular science book examines this question as well as related aspects of the brain/ mind / consciousness debate. Some startling conclusions are reached, as there appear to be only a few megabytes in the genes and non-coding RNA of the Genome, whilst there are maybe terabytes of information in the body-brain system. That is even before the environment augments brain complexity through the learning process. This is the implication of genome decoding which has not been emphasised in the literature. Hence it is time that the implications of the loaves and fishes effect were openly discussed, since precise studies in this area are lacking. In contrast to most work in the field, which remains curiously vague about the precise information content in the genome, this book presents simple calculations to estimate genome complexity and brain / body complexity. It compares the two and examines proposals that attempt to explain the discrepancy. Alternatives to purely genetic or epi-genetic theories are explored.

The related question of how the mind arises from or is connected with the brain is also addressed. Mechanistic models favoured by die-hard defenders of the now discredited behaviourist school of thought are examined and found wanting. The importance of subjective consciousness is emphasised and the implications of a new form of dualism are discussed. Processes such as perceptual binding and free will are examined. Arguments are presented against the widespread assumption that free will, the self and even time itself are but illusions.

The evolution of the human body, brain and mind is re-examined and some of the assumptions of old-fashioned versions of Darwinism questioned. Was conflict and struggle the main driver behind evolutionary change, or did cooperation and altruism play an equal or greater role? The importance of consciousness in the evolutionary process is emphasised.

In addition to the themes already listed, there is also a brief overview of some of the most important areas of modern science. Revolutionary new developments in power generation and quantum gravity Theories of Everything are discussed using inside insights I have obtained from personal contact with some leading figures in the field

Forest again after many weeks

2010-02-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

Well, as few blog posts of late here goes: First morning cycle through forest for many weeks. Residues of melted snow that last night had formed muddy
accretions have now more or less dried out leaving imprints of bike tyres. A concert of woodpeckers, song birds and ducks replaced the drone of traffic I had ploughed through heretofore.
The woodpeckers remained heard and not seen, as is their prerogative, in 2 of their usual haunts. In that sense all was right with the world and spring was returning to this
4,000,000,000 year old area. Unbelievable ages had wheeled and passed....

2010-02-24T02:08:00.000-08:00

I went to the demo in Dublin end Jan - did you spot me at the back in the audience? It was a good demo and I don't see why the media is not convinced - though Sean admitted it was more for engineers really.

In Feb more than 20 groups from all over the world came to test the test rigs of the demos.
The results were positive and begin March will be summarised at a press conference or similar and they hope for publicity from that. None too soon, as Obama wants to build reactors etc. In the forum we've gone over to solid state and I think I have the best idea for that. It is fairly easy to test if you have the right materials, I'm hoping to get confirmation of this soon from those with the wherewithal.

That makes 3 ways to free energy - the KE gains of the PM rig, the KE & electric gains of the e-Orbo and now pure electric gains in solid state.
So busy behind the scenes at Steorn. We were also busy at ESOC preparing for Cryosat-2 launch this week but now there's a delay to mid March. Probably will be another St. Pat's day sat, as Goce last year. I've done a few dotting of i's and crossing of t's in the pop-science book. May just splash it out on Lulu rather than look for a serious publisher as haven't time for that, between Steorn, job & family

STEORN Launch Demo started in Dublin!!

2009-12-15T07:06:00.000-08:00

Well - it's finally started. In the early morning of Dec 15th the cameras started tuning up and then we had clear video streams on the E-Orbo running. Look at the embedded streaming links in pesnnews link/ or on Steorn updated home page .

Voynich documentary great

2009-12-14T04:46:00.000-08:00

Universum - doc on Voynich manuscript
I watched it (1.5 times so far :-) ) and found it great. Rene is a true superstar in it and it's an honour to know such a famous guy. The result of the dating is a great surprise al-right. It seems it was indeed around 1420 or just before Leonardo was born - otherwise he'd be the prime suspect. It's consistent too as that time was just at the end of the middle ages and at the beginning of the renaissance. Wouldn't have been by Leo's dad? Nah... But it's funny it throws all the speculation round John Dee and Edward Kelly and also Voynich himself into the background. Though... I suppose it occurred to some too that the vellum could be from 1420 but the writing from later? Though maybe that's very unlikely.
Somehow it fits though - the RENEissance (:-) ) was a time of eccentric genius - the Zeitgeist was there of a new beginning after the 'dark' middle ages, with the genius of the Greeks coming to fruition again. Would it also help narrow down the cyphers used at that time in that region? E.g. speak of Leonardo, I suppose various things like reflection etc. were tried already.

STEORN Demo in a few days

2009-12-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

We've been told for sure now that the DEMO which signals the start of the STEORN Orbo launch will start in the next few days. see e.g. other blog entry with pic

This will signal a transition for the species or mankind, if you will.

I too have been in this from the start in 2006 and bit by bit the dawn of a new age was revealed in all its glory. Soon to change the planet irrevocably.

Lol! All those doom and gloom curves of Copenhagen must be corrected as the CO2 curves will do a body flip, starting as of right now!

(Picture by myself - consider this as the signature)

Good play by ESOC group

2009-12-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

Saw the latest play by the ESOC theatre group at the weekend. I know almost all the cast and they played a stormer. Amazing performances for amateurs. Though some have been in this game long enough to be professionals. The play was 'Our Countrys Good' about a play being organised in the murderous early British colony in Australia, where you could be hung for stealing a handkerchief. Barbarous times and there was much black humour. But the human spirit shines through even in the darkest hell. Now it's off to another Xmas party - the company do was on Friday: also amusing, where I drank enough to regale them with my jokes and stories.

2009-12-05T04:07:00.000-08:00

I commented on Seba's blog: I don't think AI is going to reach true consciousnes any time this century. As Penrose says in his Emperor's New Mind, it's all crap, the boasts of these AI-ists; every 20 years we hear 'in 20 years we'll have conscious machines'. We're still not within a shout of it - see my essay for a blast against the monstrous regimen of the materialists and AI fanatics: www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/Deasy1.html

Finger of time

2009-12-03T01:15:00.000-08:00

Time passes. We bid farewell to old colleagues. Here's an image I did for Alain, based on a question he got in his interview in 1973:

2009-12-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

Well, things are hetting up in Steorn. Something sure is going on in the Dublin HQ: we in the inner forum or OS have, as have the '300' other NDA engineers, been told some details of the release event(s) planned for the next few months. Contrary to what one bible-thumping member of the 300 has written in his blog, though, Sean McCarthy can in no way be compared to Jesus in terms of messianic mission. I mean, I had a Guinness with Sean a few times and I assure you he is a decent human being with a great sense of humour and decency. Now maybe Jesus acted similarly now and then, but there the resemblance ends I would say.

Yes, this technology is only a few weeks away from exploding on the world stage. Already hundreds of forum members know how to build this device. So the knowledge is widespread. I don't think it's outside my NDA to say that this distributed knowledge will play a role in the roll-out of the technology. In 2010 the replications will start to sprout up all over the place, and the slow work of convincing the sceptics will begin. Though probably people like Randi and Ash will still not believe, even when they are driving an Orbo-mobile and phoning with an Orbo-phone.

Roll on Roll-out!

Smarmy bloggers to get comeuppance

2009-10-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

All the snide and smarmy denigrators of Steorn are soon in for a rude awakening. E.g. http://blogs.zdnet.co.uk/ruperts-diary/ .

On course for end of year release. Then we'll see who's laughing. The last laugh is longest. All the scientists who took COE as an article of faith should have read the fine print in Emmy Noether's famous theorem. The free energy doesn't come from the vacuum or other dimensions - it was always there for the taking. But nature abhors a vacuum and also OU and does everything in her power to thwart the would-be inventor of an over-unity device. Faraday nearly had it - just as well, as if we'd had OU in the 19th century they might have made a mess of it. On the other hand, coal and nuclear and oil filth would not have been disgorged onto thus beautiful planet. Who's to say what would have been?

Crows and jays fly intelligently around the area here. The leaves are in their Autumn beauty, the woodland paths are bare - apologies to WBY.

Voynich: A year on and May is once more warm after a long, long lonely Winter

2009-05-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

Except this year we are having some of the hottest days on record for this month - today was a bit cooler at 28 C - fine cycling through forest with its soothing bird-song. Stayed late to listen to colleague Rene Zandgergen (we go way back) give a fine talk on the Voynich manuscipt - he's one of the leading authorities on this fascinating tome. The language has defied all attempts to crack it, even in the computer age - though the latter showed it had the same statistical characteristics as real languages, and so is no simple hoax. Also, the vellum would have cost a small farm in those days... Then there were nice refreshments and Rene answered questions etc. and it was then off to the forest with me, fortified by wine, as the midnight sun is essentially here now.

Crows and parrots - tools and language

2009-03-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

Crows are the handymen, parrots the loquacious ones. This is brought out wonderfully in Irene Pepperberg's book " Alex & I' about her research with African gray parrot Alex. He was so good at talking he knew he could get anyone to do what he wanted: so when they wanted to see if he was as good at solving riddles like how to use a tool to get something, while his less talkative fellow. parrots did the task, he just sat there and asked the assistant to get the thing for him. That was his way of solving the task. I highlighted crows' ability in this letter to my local paper:

"I find that (crow critics) view the activities of the crows in too negative a light. I also live near a set of trees where the crows assemble before flying to their nests in the evening or before leaving on a foraging trip in the morning. Ever since learning about how clever these marvelous birds are (in New Caledonia due to lack of resources the crows developed tools with even greater inventiveness than chimps) I have begun to observe them and find them fascinating. Especially now, as they begin their courting rituals, the males engage in feats of aerial acrobatics sometimes sweeping amongst the houses in spectacular feats of birdmanship not to attack a la Hitchcock but to impress the female of their choice: they are monogamous, forming romantic bonds with one and one bird only. Once one has learned to accept them as a marvelous part of nature, one can appreciate their elegant flights. Even their calls should not be thought of as noise, as they belong officially to the song birds. As was pointed out on a TV program recently (ZDF Doku or so) , it is a scandal that the rules of hunting in Germany were recently relaxed to allow these intelligent birds to be exterminated like vermin. Would we allow the same for chimpanzees? Thus is indeed fortunate that not many hunters avail of this return to barbarity. My life has been enormously enriched by these artists of the skies. I encourage those who fear them to read up on avian intelligence: parrots are also slowly updating the image of "pretty Polly" when Jane Goodall visited the African gray parrot N'Kisi in New York, he, having seen a photo of her with apes, greeted her with "Got a chimp?". He has a vocabulary of over 900 words - "

That tape of N'Kisi talking is amazing - I was waiting for the parrot to talk: "why are these 2 women talking away - I want to hear the bird" - until I followed the script and found one of the normal sounding New Yorkers was the parrot! See yourself: http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/nkisi1_text.html

Of course he's telling what he wants and thinks: Pepperberg showed in her research that parrots can do that: Alex, when bored with a task, jumped ahead and showed he understood what they were trying to test: i.e. he meta-performed. So Parrots are no fools. Nor are crows...

awkward typing over a cat

2009-02-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

But she's taken the chair - so I have to rest on these cushions and type over her sleeping body. Well, status report on Steorn - new website is cool http://www.steorn.com/ Sean touring mid-east to get 300 engineers to join the final surge to technology roll-out - http://www.steorn.com/skdb/300/ .

Heim stuff also coming along nicely - more confirmation experiments of the Tajmar effect on-going ( see e.g. http://www.earthtech.org/experiments/tajmar/ ) and Heim's or rather Droscher's extended H Theory (EHT) is being cited as one of the few possible explanations for the artificial gravity effect - see e.g. Frame dragging paper.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

2008-10-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, time has a habit of passing quickly. Again months have wheeled and passed, summer come and gone and the leaves are turned gold and red again in a nice few days of ‘Golden October’ to compensate for rainy cold days that let us abandon hope of regaining a last few drops of summer warmth. Just had a golden cycle with my daughter through the fields around Frankenstein. It was perfect cycling weather – no mud and not cold or hot. Just right.

As for the inevitable Steorn – ticking over nicely still. Looks more and more serious. Fascinating. If you’re an engineer get in there (the inner forum) – they want more engineers before the year is out…

Ticking over nicely

2008-05-06T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, things are moving on OK this year. I have now seen a few woodpeckers including a black one with red cap. The sun has started to show itself again after a prolonged wintry spell when we thought Spring would never arrive. But now we have blue skies and warm air.

On Steorn - the inner forum has started to pick up speed again. It looks like a release of the technology by end 2008 or early 2009. I have run simulations of the effect and see gains in energy where they say there are some. So I am confident that they have something.

Heim theory continues to advance. The Tajmar effect may soon lead to successful predictions of an extension in the vertical thrust direction by Heim theory. SO both anti-gravity and free energy are on the cards for the next year or so.

2008-03-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Prof. Smolin,

I have enjoyed reading your 'Trouble with Physics'. One of the ideas I liked was that of the distinction between seers and craftspeople. The description of a seer fits very well with the story of Burkhard Heim. He too had a brilliant start to a potentially successful academic career only to retreat into his shell to be alone with himself for years. Except in his case it was not just 10 years, but 30 or 40. One might say that the originality of his analysis was correspondingly deep. But his eccentricity meant that he didn't trust anyone for many years. The theory was all in his head, thanks to his aedetic memory, so what he did eventually write down does not always fill in the gaps in his derivations. That's what students of his work are now trying to do.

Heim's brilliance was recognised by Pascual Jordan, who thought that if he developed his ideas he would be Nobel prize material. Jordan knew this as he was on the Nobel committee. But Heim wanted to perfect his unified field theory in isolation, partly due to his severe physical handicaps (almost blind and deaf, with no hands aftera n accident in the war) and partly because he was what you term a seer, in the tradition of his hero Einstein. The current LQG community must acknowledge Heim's prescience in quantising space with a quantum of area, Planck length squared, and using this as a basis for quantum gravity. His application of the correspondence principle then allowed objects in GR to define operators in his QG picture.

There are many aspects to his theory. One is that it is a form of hidden variables theory. Some of the extra time-like dimensions are involved in determining quantum probabilities. It avoids the problems of extra dimensions in Kaluza Klein theory as the time-like dimensions are extended. Also, as it is background independent, it avoids the problems of String Theory. As in LQG, there are no infinities: Heim actually used a form of differencing instead of standard calculus to bring out the natural way in which this non-occurrence of infinities was present. One of the tasks of the few physicists studying his work is thus to translate the differencing (' selector calculus' in Heim's parlance) into normal calculus.

Partial metrics on subspaces of the overall 12 dimensional Heim-space were already present in Heim's original formulation and were termed hermetries. Droscher recognised how these hermetries could map onto the forces of standard model. Only 2 extra forces arise - both of the gravitational variety. So there are 3 sorts of gravity in the theory. One of these has a repulsive component, and so one of the predictions of the theory was that rotating magnetic fields of a certain strength could cause photons to transform into 'gravito-photons' whose effect would be many orders of magnitude greater than predicted by GR.
The experiments of Tajmar et al. , with ESA and his physics group, almost certain to be reproduced by groups in Berkeley and elsewhere early in 2007, point to a revolutionary repulsive artificial gravity more than 30 orders of magnitude greater than predicted by GR. Droscher and Hauser have estimated the effect size in Tajmar's experiment with great precision, based on this gravito-photon theory.

More controversial are his mass equations. But the neutrino masses, predicted even before 1980, are still within the experimental limits and so remain another concrete prediction of the theory.

Thus I would appeal to you to consider Heim theory as the work of a seer who may have stumbled on some basic revisions of fundamental physics. If you are looking for revolutionary principles in the theory - there is no lack of those: It unifies matter and space as well as Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. It has hidden variable theory in it. The extra time-like dimensions are associated with principles of order and meaning: so in this case they are apparent to us nad the old argument that extra extended dimensions would have been noticed is satisfied - they were under our nose all the time. His whole scheme is also one of complexity theory, called synthropy, where successive levels of organisation lead up from the metron, particles, atoms, molecules up to large animals, consciousness and 'pneuma'. the latter is maybe a bit too mystic for most physicists, but his theory of consciousness is not unlike that of some mysterians such as Colin McGinn. who postulate internal dimensions of subjective consciousness.

So

Yes, through the woods and more

2008-02-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

Folks in Madrid & Darmstadt have been hankering after another forested blog entry, so here goes: It's been fine for cycling in the last few weeks - sometimes cold and frosty but this week ever milder until today's mildly damp forest paths - but they had had such a dearth of moisture in the last 2 months that the ground absorbed the rain of the night, now mercifully past, leaving it not muddy but just faintly moist. The crows were in good form and the team of woodpeckers could again be heard chiselling away - though this year I still only caught one briefly in flight visually. It was a fine morning cycle - had the paths virtually to myself - just 2 distant cyclists at one or two junctures. As I glided through I could put on a burst of speed, hunching over the handlebars to give maximum traction - this without undue effort as I had husbanded my strength by letting the slow school children set the pace in town, before i made a break for the woods. There was feeling of great goodness present in the air - I reflected on Jurgen Habermass and his theory of communicative handling and the sad fate of the Easterner on the bio-doc last night. It behoves us to act with calmness and decency in this societal interaction.

Waiting for OCAL MPMM replication

2008-01-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

Boy is it frustrating waiting for the testers to replicate the OCAl MPMM - latest version of a magnetic motor out of the Steorn forums from users OverConfident and Al (Nicola Tesla backward). The video of Al's rig running made a furore - now he says he got it to run for 7hrs 25m ! Wow! At Rotor about 1250 RPM and Stator over 5000 RPM.
hhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7fh2RP_uEs&feature=related
. Could this be it? I have run some simulations and incredibly even with old newtonian physics it seems you might indeed get a gain from this setup.

Comets and UFOs

2007-11-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

Well, there has been great media exposure of the press conference in Washington last Monday Nov 12th. Just google for 'pilots call for ufo' and you'll get hundreds of hits - that's the Reuters report echoed around countless web sites of newspapers, blogs etc. Only a few are different - e.g. BBC. But most re-cycle the same story. Ridiculously, showing how little research these TV and newspaper people do, many of the reports showed an image of a flying disk saying it was investaged by the SSE in 1998 or more honestly, date unknown. A tiny bit of surfing and I had it -

Yes, it was the good old Vancouver Island, British Columbia, 1981 case.

Funnily enough, whilst looking for the comet last week, I saw a few things I couldn't be sure were kosher: First, looking into the eastern sky, partly clouded, suddenly a bright yellow light, bigger than a planet and brighter, shot behind a cloud and disappeared behind another one. If it was a meteor, it was the brightest one I've ever seen - it could have been a fireball: or something else. Insufficient data. Similarly, a few minutes later (it was a funny evening) looking to the Northeast, another brightish light came out of the clouds and then appeared to do aU-turn and dive back into them. It was a matter of a few seconds, so I couldn't be sure it wasn't just a plane appearing through a gap in the clouds momentarily. But simething about the thinness of hte clouds seemed to rule that out. Phew! Got it off my chest. Probably both mundane... still it was amusing to see 2 slightly weird things whilst scanning for the comet.

Leaves, Comets, animals and stars

2007-11-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

It has been a good few autumnal days for cycling through the forest. The carpet of golden and copper leaves has become ever more sumptuous and sometimes one glides though a golden tunnel. Animals: yesterday saw a red squirrel deep in the forest, followed shortly thereafter by either a yellow woodpecker or one of that family. Then I was buzzed by a buzzard. This morning I also saw a buzzard glide a few metres before my bike: the funny thing this time was that he glided between 2 Nature Preserve (Naturschutzgebiet) signs bearing
An image of a buzzard! As if he'd flown between images of himself.

The comet and winter constellations have been fine as well, when the clouds parted to allow a glimpse. The comet was fine in my father-in-law's (God rest his soul) telescope. My daughter has become an astronomy enthusiast and was glad when I showed her how the circumpolar stars, so beloved of the Egyptians, rotated round the pole star, so that the plough, big dipper or Ursa Major was almost lost in the horizon haze in the evening, and only sank deeper into it, but in the early wintry morning it was triumphantly at the zenith, shining forth even in the early morning house lights of our town, its pointers still pointing to Polaris but now from the other side of it.

The morning had a Turkish flag of cresent moon and brilliant Venus.

The cats have been fine too Golden Romeo visiting occasionally, blending with golden leaves.

For Shamal's eyes only

2007-10-25T05:23:00.000-07:00

As once for Gerard, so too now do I create a blog entry to show Shamal that the blog is not utterly moribund.

Let me also take the opportunity to note the wonderful panoramic landscape from my window, with autumnal hues varying beautifully in reds, yellows, greens and browns. Above the canopy our local buzzard was again gliding, banking and swerving, tilting his wings to maximise lift from the updraft Thereupon he glided over toward the crane near Mozartturm.

Let Shamal recall this little vignette once he has departed this other Eden, demi-paradise, this Germany, to take up his position as an Oxonian ( a [matriculated] member of the University of Oxford and, by virtue of this, a scholar (Shamal's pointer to OED, appropriately)). The pedantic attention to detail displayed by this imminent denizen of those halls of learning augers well for his speedy rise through the ranks of Academia.

It was a nice holiday, envy the children

2007-10-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

They get a 2 week mid term break, those children, and I had to make do with a measley 3 days. It was good, though - the feeling of relaxation attendant on a time away from the constraints of workaday work. I can't really complain about the work, though - there are people with far worse jobs than I have and worse still, the unemplyed. But still, work of whatever sort is sort of vampirish, draining the life from the worker.

The long cycle wearies the aging bones somewhat and anticipation of hte Monday evening swim lets a tired sigh break from my lips, but I know that fresh energy will come to my aid when I take to the water and I will return refreshed in body and soul.

Took one of the less beaten tracks in the forest on the way back - some beautiful trees there and some fine birds to be seen. Of course bio-diversity is not particularly compromised round here - reports of diminution in bird variety were greatly exaggerated, as a cursory web scan showed.

My Steorn sim is going well, though there are a few unexpected results I need to examine in greater detail. The show goes on and hope is still high amongst the faithful.

Great to hear from some of the old school gang and uni chums now and then... ar fheabhas, as we say in Irish.

Back from holidays

2007-07-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

It was great in good old Ireland of the saints and scholars. My brother was there, visiting from Argentina, and in his efficeint way was systematically visitng all round towers of note. Fascinating structures. Most a 1000 years old or more. And so many of them and castles too. I used to think only Cashel and Glendalaough and a few others existed - but no, there are many more. We had fun (some of us) climbing runined walls of churches to get a better view of towers or going up them themselves. Burren visted - moon landscape of limestone flagstones. Caves - saw one of the largest easily accessible stalectites in the Northern hemisphere. Speaking of which - turns out Tajmar's artificial gravity only works clockwise in Northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise in Southern hemisphere. See discussion on pages 105 - 106 etc. on http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=4385&st=1560 - the other excellent news there is that a New Zealand group reproduced the effect (hence the anti-clockwise in Southern hemisphere bit) and Tajmar referred to the Heim Theroy explanation of the effect in his paper to a relativity conference in Sidney. So Heim is going from strength to strength.

Steorn is not doing so well in the media - licking its wounds after the London demo failure. The next demo will be tested to work BEFORE informing the public and press. Groooannn - felt weak all day after getting up earlier than for a long time. Please someone send 1 million Euros. to me :-)

Bump!

2007-05-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

Bump!

Just to keep it ticking over. Latest news Steorn? We saw a vid of the toy... looked good is all I'll say.

Nice afternoon in Cologne

2007-05-01T03:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I got off the ICE, i.e. quick train, in Cologne main train station and walked out into the sun-baked city. Down on the street it all looked so different from my Google-Earth printout, posted by Martin a few days before on the forum. For one, that aerial view did not show the massive steps leading up to the gigantic and awe-inspiring cathedral. Rather than scale the latter, I skirted them at ground level as this seemed the way on the map. But when I rounded the giant church instead of the clear path to the hotel on the map I was confronted with a confusing junction where cars sped into a chaotic tunnel. None of that was apparent on the map. Thus disoriented, I took a wrong turn and overshot the target area. In a calmer pedestrian area I could check the street names and thereby regained my sense of direction. I doubled back through the atmospheric old town to arrive at where the hotel Dorint was indicated on the map. Again I had to scan around a bit before spotting it, as it was not like the photo of the facade on the web-site - a major scaffolding cum road-works occluded it. The advantage of this was that traffic was banned and I could walk on up to the entrance without looking left or right. The hotel was considerably grander than I had imagined but I had no trouble slipping past the uniformed doorman. Inside, I cast my eyes round the spacious lobby. Some guys were hovering with papers in hand as if waiting for someone but none of these fit the bill as regards pattern recognition as primed from prior mug-shots. Then I spotted a familiar face and walked over to where Henk was resting on a comfortable sofa. We had a nice introductory chat and it soon became apparent that he was a very pleasant person. Soon after that another gent approached with his wife. Henk knew him as Frank, and introductions ensued. The new arrivals also showed themselves to be very warm personalities. Frank immediately asked me where I stood on the Stoern issue. I stated my position as being nearer to the camp of the proponents as to the sceptics, following on the revelations that we of the SPDC had been privy to. Then came Martin, looking a bit different to his forum handle, but still recognisable. He turned out to be very nice, gentle person and soon we were all engaged in pleasant introductory conversations. Kai had phoned to say he was delayed by a traffic jam. So we had to wait for 30 0r 40 minutes. But the time melted away as we discussed developments in the forum and in and around Steorn. Meanwhile a large tourist group arrived and were meeting at the same central sofa quadrangle at which we were seated. If these had included agents of Big Oil we could not easily have spotted it. Eventually through the throng came a form the matched Kai’s JPG – and indeed it was he. He turned out to be another civilised person with no chip on his shoulder, thus confirming my impression that the SPDC only attracted nice clever people. The rest of the afternoon was a great success.

Castles and fun

2007-04-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

I am still not quite recovered from the 'cultural weekend ' at Schloss Ortenburg, near the French-German border. It was organized by the Rhine Valley Irish Association - http://www.rvia-online.net/Culture.htm . My main reason for going there was to meet my cousin Donal O'Drisceoil, well known Irish historian and recently famous for being the historical adviser to Ken Loach on the film "The Wind that shakes the Barley" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_That_Shakes_the_Barley_%28film%29 - which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes!!!!! So my baby cousin had done well for himself. It was great to meet him after all the years and we had great creac (Irish for fun etc.) at the weekend. He presented the film on Sunday morning - not bad after only a few hours sleep as we'd chewed the fat into the night - and there was a discussion. It was fascinating hearing his insights - a true insider's view of the making of a great film under a brilliant director. You can hear Donal in an interview on the DVD. He is certainly a brilliant historian and has written many books.

The other speaker, Dr Eithne Ní Ghallchobhair, was also great creac as well as a brilliant academic and spoke very well and often amusingly on the history of medicine in old Ireland and her work compiling "The Historical Dictionary of Modern Irish" - a wonderful resource for researchers of the Irish language and its history. We had a great meal on the Saturday night where several people sang Irish songs after Cognac. You could see that some were almost professionals or should have been. It was great fun anyhow. A nice pre-Easter treat.

Woodpeckers could be heard tapping

2007-02-21T23:52:00.001-08:00

It was a wonderful Spring morning as I cycled through the forest. Woodpeckers could be heard tapping in many places as I moved through the fog-shrouded trees. It was a wonderful feeling, dreamlike, to see the path ahead gradually materialize out of the fog and that behind disappear into it, sometimes mercifully swallowing a pursuer so that one had the impression of being alone with nature. The sun was a pale orb through the fog and the sky above already a pale blue. And so it was appropriate to sing softly 'Morning has broken' from Yusuf Islam.

I played the party video of Steorn again last night - funny to think that the 200 forum members may soon become acolytes of Sean by signing the NDAs. Will we then be privy to the secrets of the inner sanctum?

2007-02-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

"My uncle is testing Steorn technology and so is his wife!"

It's so easy to say - that other guy who claimed it is obviously full of chicken a la sesame.

Vivaturi te salutant!

2007-02-20T23:15:00.000-08:00

I'll have to ask my daughter later if the Latin is right. I wanted to give the opposite of the old gladiatorial salute to Caesar before the fight. It was because I had passed Edwin on the bike just after a slightly ambiguous encounter with a car after racing down the hill to the junction. I said "Good Morning!" to him, thinking at first "Moraturi te salutant" but that seemed to negative. Hence the update.

Yes, John has inspired me to augment the frequency of blog entries. Momo the cat slept on my bed all night and was patient enough while I showered before letting her down for a snack before going out into the foggy morning. Would a computer make head or tail of the last sentence? One wonders. Yet the human mind is ticking over these grammatical formulations embedded in social complexities that computer can't even dream of. In the early morning I often think of puns. Like before c5 = b4 c5 ...

meeting Will, Gaby, John & co.

2007-02-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

I met a guy from Oxford doing something at Eumetsat with an interferometer at a salsa event in the Bessunger Knabenschule last night, where we were with Wil , Gaby & Denis. John was with us at the Indian restuarant before but retired early as he was to present something at a meeting the next day... Anyway, the Oxonian's thesis had to do with superconductors and he was enthusiastic about Rupert Sheldrake and morphic resonance - apparently old boy Sheldrake is held in esteem by some Oxonians, proud of him despite his notoriety...
As I mentioned last night, I intend to quantify some of Sheldrake's assertions about the genome not having enough information to form the body, brain & mind. This will go into my new book - 70 pages so far - which I hope to complete this year.

John was saying it was difficult to think of what to write in the blog: I said I sometimes think of ideas cycling through the forest to work. Reminds me - saw a buzzard as tiredly cycled this morning. I was tired as I didn't leave the Salsa until midnight and had to drive my daughter to school at 07:15. The majestic bird of prey startled me by taking off from very near ground level and glining through the trees.

2007-02-01T03:32:00.000-08:00

Interesting stuff on Mir. Yes, the Russians are often more open to alternative therapies. I just read a review in the latest JSE of scandals in the health system - chelation is a favourite. Also, low levels of radioactivity have been shown to be statistically beneficial. There was another review of 'The trouble with
physics' and 'Not even wrong' which agreed with the sentiments. I actually sent a mail to Smolin congratulating him on the book
and asking why Heim was not mentioned as he fulfiulled the 5 criteria for solving the problems of physics. I attached the mail and response below.

On Steorn, things proceed apace. The jury has been testing since Jan 1 and the signs are they have found no
error yet. The insider 'Crank' will speak to one of the members of 'Jury mark 0' next week to ask about his experience with the Steornometer.
I'll be fascinated to hear what he had to say.

Also, the top people in Steorn are going bald for charity! To help Czernobyl children....

http://www.steorn.net/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=43151&page=2#Item_39

In fiction, I just finished the sequel to Eragon (Eldest) by Paolini - not bad as an amalgam of Lord of the Rings & Anne McCaffrey. On non-fiction I am still on Chopra's Afterlife - his views on creationism have dampened my enthusiasm for him, however. The Road to reality is always simmering on the back burner. Let's see if I get into that Private Developers' club of Steorn - only 200 allowed, though there are scare more than that posting to the forum.

2007-01-26T01:32:00.000-08:00

Well, Mark & Gerard were wondering if I blogged about STEORN at all. Of course I do. Latest - we are waiting for the updated NDA (non-disclosure agreement) to be posted out. Then we'll sign and all 200 of us will be in that private club with access to info on how the gizmo works. At that point comments on the process will dry up, at least as regard anything confidential.

Just so that Gerard may know

2006-12-03T01:07:00.000-08:00

Just a test in case you're reading. New dsl connect here, blogger newly integrated with google, yahoo etc. It's thus a bit tricky to establish the signal here in the attic as the new router seems to have a weaker antenna. Good to see articles in the paper on free energy, even if only the usual suspects. though in FFA sci section something about the organic salts that will make the colouring chemicals solar cells work and thus give the first dirt cheap cells as they are dirt.

So we were right to wait and not get those 20,000 EUR solar modules - next year will see either Steorn or these dirt cheap solars triumphing and a new paradigm in energy arising.

Look at that youtube vid of Crank & co.: http://youtube.com/watch?v=G5GrE-fikF4
Sagenhaft, wie mad auf deutsch sagt. Formidable. Go hah-mhaith

Skateboards and soul

2006-12-01T01:10:00.000-08:00

Well, James Morris answered - looks like a delay, but at least he's reporting on it:

Well Hugh, not as well as I hoped, I am still compiling orders and am looking towards the first of the year now. I have had problems with the re-design and and reproduction of that prototype and the availability of the engineers and their cnc machine. I have made some changes in the magnet housings and which includes nylon impact bushings. Thanks for your interest. Sincerely James (Maddogg) Morris

On another tack, only the presence of something meaningful like a death amplifies awareness of another level of being. Or another take: the |spirit> part od the body-spirt wave-function only collapses a la Copenhagen when a 'meaningful' measurement is made, as it resides partly at least in the space of meaning. Heim actually associated some of his extra dimensions with meaning and order and he even wrote a complex philosophical extension of his work called 'immortal in the 6th dimension'. I've yet to wade through that, but it looks interesting, with some diagrams of ascending layers of complexity from quark to psyche or pneuma (soul). That intuitively makes sense and is like the old Indian idea of layers of reality leading up to 'Brahma nature' or whatever. But I see as well the point about one component (the physical) stopping - can that happen and the other part continue? It could be the case - a bit like someone taking a sledgehammer to a broadcasting station but the Tv signal keeps moving out to the stars long after the transmitter was destroyed. Again a bit woffly, but there are reasons to suspect something of that sort, since every culture had similar traditions of another world. Heim also thought that normal consciousness extended into the 5th & 6th dimensions, which is in line with some other philosophers' analysis of 'phenomenal' or subjective consciousness as being like a virtual reality in an internal space. Thus it could be that the hidden dimensions of soul/psyche/pneuma are closely related to if not identical to the mysterious subjective consciousness that baffles materialistic philosophers. Note how the latter always try to explain away the internal TV screen as an illusion but always tie themselves in knots, since if it is an illusion, who is it for? That argument always leads back to an internal experiencer or "homunculus" - the little man or woman in the mind looking at the internal TV screen and other sensory inputs. But this idea of a homunculus is just that of soul. So in a way that |spirit> component might be so obvious that we need lateral thinking to step back and see it as a separate nature. Philosophers speak of a "category error" in comparing like with unlike as in comparing subjective consciousness and its material correlates. Indeed, the fear of the homunculus amongst die-hard materialists or behaviorists like Daniel Dennett has been rightly termed "Homuphobia" and leads to the most absurd self contradictions. So granted that there is that |spirit> component, it could be that he interaction with the physical gives this phenomenon of mind or subjective consciousness controlling the physical body. But it might have several modes - the normal one or mind-body control and then another 'detached mode' where it soars independent of body. This would gel with the out-of-body experiences of people who seem to report correctly on distant activity (e.g. Seth I mentioned recently) or Near Death Experiences (NDEs) where again sometimes extra-sensory info appears to be accessed.

2006-11-29T23:58:00.000-08:00

Well, James Morris was kind enough to reply as follows:

Yes H. D. , you are on the list and we are still looking at November as a ship month, just running about 3 weeks behind. We will contact you at that time. Thank you for your order.

Hmmm.... right : I waited and it's now last day November, so time to inquire again. In the meantime
I had a great time at the Steorn virtual party - see the fallout on the forums http://www.steorn.net/forum/ : they're still talking about it and Babcat says it was a night he will never forget... we finally saw Crank as well. Root around in there if you want a picture of her.

My birthday came and went, then yesterday was Gerard's - Mark and I congratulated him...
We researched the old Chi Gung group - 2 members went to China and one became a CDU politician in Munster, north Germany. The chi worked well, it seems.

Skateboard trucks where are you?

2006-10-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

All has gone quiet around maddog James Morris and his magnet assisted Skateboard trucks. The deadline to be on shop slelves is only 5 days away - http://skateboard.about.com/b/a/254490.htm
http://pesn.com/2006/09/13/9500235_Skateboard_Turbo_Trucks/

Steorn blog entries

2006-10-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

This morning's entires to the Steorn.net forums

Captains blog, supplemental

Taking time out from free energy and anti-gravity to touch base with supervenience at the cusp of the morning.

Yeah – in another forum or mag the poll showed much the same result – women almost always referred to the pill or durex , while men went for transistors or the scientific method or the steam or democracy. Hero of Alexandria had the steam engine 2000 years ago, but as they had slaves they only needed to apply it to toys like opening the temple doors to awe the masses at mass by depressing a panel on the altar. And the Greeks had a clockwork computer before Christ – here from the Steorn add mag: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1337165 .

Maybe consciousness was the greatest invention ever, patented by God. From that, all else flows.

As I cycled yesterday, wondered why the Greeks didn’t invent a bicycle – or maybe they did, but robes got caught in the gears.

Did anyone mention the flint, as developed by handyman homo habilis. Homo erectus took it and ran with it for a million years, always perfecting it but never going further. It took Homo sap to have multiple Eureka experiences… art was invented then: maybe art for art’s sake was mightier than the flint. Put that in your pipe, Fred and smoke it.

@crank

lol - I was just about to post 'the condom' when I read that post. Chastening to know that one is so predictable.

Yes, it just shows that men ignore what women want mostly. Hopefully free energy will help women as much as the nobel prize bank in Bangladesh

Kill Billl? Puke! Bottom list

Eat Drink Man Woman
Citizen Cane
Highlander
My Left Foot
High Heels
It's a Wonderful Life
Brazil
Stalker
Dear hunter
The wind that shakes the barley
Solaris
Lord of the Rings 3
Annie Hall
Life of Brian
The Hours
Blade Runner
The Remains of the Day
Seven Samurai
Waking Life
Dead Poet's Society
Koyaanisqatsi
Wonderboys
@zz>This is bullshit. Penn and Teller proved and so did James Randi that Geller's stunt was a
>trick and they reproduced it. Besides, think about the ability to use your mind to effect the
>world anyway you want and what do you end up doing? Ruining a good set of flatware.

This in turn is bullshit. Just finished Playfair’s section of the ‘Geller Effect’ and he pointed out that no matter how often Geller did his trick on film and caused unprecedented readings on scientific apparatus, the short memory idiot public or pseudo-sceptics always recall only the one time he was caught supplementing his powers by cheating. But that doesn’t nullify the 100 times that no cheating was possible e.g. in bending a heavy key on camera (or was it for David Bohm?) that not even a hammer could straighten out

Morning twinkle of Sirius

2006-09-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

When I awoke at 5:45, glad the cat had been cast into the night allowing me a decent sleep, I thought I'd check on the crescent moon of yesterday - was it new today or had it waxed? But it must have gone to the other side of the sun as it wasn't visible. Instead, Sirius alone and maybe a wan Venus shone forth in the growing light of dawn. Funny to see the twinkling blue that betrayed the dog star as opposed to the steady yellow of the sister planet. Later, after a post-prandial stroll around the control centre in the glorious September sun, Shamal suggested I blog it - so here goes!

Irish free energy scheme

2006-09-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

What a lot of interest there is about www.steorn.com -

So they seem to have put their money where their mouth is, in a big way. Also, they spent 2 years ‘ testing the hell out of the thing’, and as they are competent engineers and mention a full thermodynamic analysis etc., one presumes they covered aspects such as run down of magnet strength. They say that after this careful testing they took their test rig to universities and though most refused to have anything to do with it, some tested and found it OK. Why would they lie about that if they were putting their money on the line? So it sounds better and better the more I hear. I can’t wait for the Jury to cry out ‘douze points’.

On the theory that they will sucker in investors while the jury is deliberating: McCarthy said that precisely to scotch that idea they are refusing all commercialisation until the jury pronounces.

As to the form of the energy gain – it seems it is purely mechanical – which is why they will need some means to convert to electricity.

Look around their web site and you see in the News section that they have been working with DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology ) in awarding students prizes. They are actually based on the tech centre in Dublin’s fashionable docklands (houses going for millions Euros there now). As a former Dublin resident I know DIT as an old 3rd level institute. It used to be Bolton Street tech. college (& maybe others who joined them). So the firm is legit and not just an Australian call-box or MS logo hoax. There seems to be more meat on this than on the standard claims to extract energy from the vacuum. For this is the claim here – free doesn’t mean ex-nihilo, but from an unknown source. I liked the idea that it might be harnessing fluxes in the vacuum like a windmill harness air fluxes.:

On the idea that the way to do things is to get peer reviewed papers published in respectable scientific journal: McCarthy made it plain that there are 2 or 3 paths to follow – the first is that of peer review, which is a slow and painful process over 20 years or so – look at e.g. Blacklight power and hydrinos – they are now getting peer reviewed physics, chemistry and engineering papers published and attracting comments from scientists that are being publicised. But that has taken about 10 years (or more – mills started almost 20 years ago) and there is still lack of agreement on the meaning of their results.

Next path is make a heater or a car powered on the process – this again is a long affair, and you first need the patents! That takes ages, and then to actually get a commercially viable product takes years – again taking Blacklight as an example, they have been promising a heater for 5 years or so and it seems no nearer completion. Maybe their plasma cells are hard to control. But so will the magnetic motors of Steorn: these are all complex systems. As McCarthy said on the interview – they know in principle what is the optimum configuration to get power out: the only problem is in getting the alignment accurate enough etc. Remember these are still lab bench versions – the first crude prototypes. Later, when finely machined, they would presumably be deterministically reproducible.

So the way Steorn is going may be the fastest after all – get verification by jury of cynical experts: this in a sense is a turbo peer review. Well, wait and see – he asks us not to believe him at this point – so until the jury comes out, the jury is out!

One other thing – at least Steorn don’t wheel out a weird and controversial physical theory, as Blacklight did. The latter only succeeded in getting people’s backs up and delivering ammunition to their critics. If they had just kept their iconoclastic theory to themselves and allowed the experiments to speak for themselves, then they would be a lot further than they are now.

God be with the days of steam! It was all so simple then. The great thing about it was billowing clouds of the stuff were a great indicator that energy was in use. Steorn have actually shown their setup working to the Guardian reporter who visited their site. But all there was to see were displays saying that more energy was coming out than going in. In a complex magneto-mechanical setup you may need to slap on measurement devices to show what’s going on. That’s why they say they need experts to give it a clean bill of health. But apparently you’re fine poo-poo-ing it now, as Steorn wants people only to believe it if or when the cynical jurors have given it the thumbs up.

Check out he Steorn song at www.steornwatch.com -

great song - captures the spirit of the age. Every heroic campaign needs its ballads and this could be the first in a titanic struggle against big power cartels, prejudice or whatever. Assuming this is the right stuff, that is. And Sean & co. give ever more the impression of believing what they are doing is real. So either they are deluded, heroes, or part of some colossal stunt or joke. The latter possibilities seem less and less likely, so roll on ye troubadours!

2006-05-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

Nice little jaunt to Brussels. Pleasant to trot up the stairs in the Atomium. Iron crystal? Had to look it up – metal bond with cloud of electrons on egg carton atoms… Otherwise nice to see the old friends doing do well in the Belgian capital. It rained almost non-stop, which was not what you want at the end of May. But we had other pursuits to distract us from that – like playing with M’s new dog and eating his curries and playing with his kids. Yes, all in all a salubrious outing. Even the trains were on time and smooth and comfortable. Apart from the fact that we had to take a smoking reservation on one leg of return trip. It was pissing down at the Mannikin Piss – he had a raincoat on, though.

On Lulu.com as well now!

2006-05-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

My book is in its second edition now. This time it's on Lulu, at http://www.lulu.com/hughDC You can even download it in e-book format for the
absurdly low sum of $1.88 (less than 2 EUR). Unbelievable, isn't it?

Majorca II

2006-04-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

An encounter with the sea should always be mysterious, wonderful, infinite. It was in the cove beside our hotel in Majorca. Usually only a few people or none at all were there as one strode up to the demarcation between land and sea, getting that old sense of the infinite. Contemplations on the mystery of how Earth is not a water planet or a one-plate wonder like Venus. Curious that only this planet has plate tectonics that sub-ducts harmful surpluses of greenhouse gasses, prevent Venus greenhouse effect, or other substances not congenial to the well-being of Gaia.

Then there was the walk over rocks (children’s’ preferred route) or the path that led out to the headland where the entrance to Dumbledore’s or Voldemort’s cave became gradually visible – you could imagine D and Harry swimming into that stalactite hung entrance, which fed the Caves del Drac, which we later saw from the inside – quite impressive in their own right.

2006-04-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

It’s been a rather nice time here in Mallorca for Easter. We fell into the gentle rhythm of the gigantic tourist machine here - my daughter calling them terrorists instead of tourists rang a bell when we drove through Algaida - give or take a g one could see references to dodgy stuff. Whatever. We had a great time swimming in the cold sea and hotel pool and enjoying the sumptuous breakfasts and evening meals, with nice warm weather compared to the eternal winter of Germany. Yes, it was good to get away from the old rut for a while and luxuriate in the joy of pure being. The visit to the cave was fine – the descent into the bowels of the earth for a sun et lumiere amid the stalactites. Subtle differences compared to Tenerife, the only other package holiday we were on – e.g. no giant volcano in centre. But here too the hotel was indeed family oriented, in a secluded cove far from the madding crown of the honky-tonk side of tourism.

Then the daughters had a great time and D1 made friends with another 12-yr old – we may meet up later, in the time honoured tradition of holiday friendships. It was almost synchronicities that we kept meeting up wit that other family, whose agenda matched ours to an uncanny degree – they took a horse & carriage trip, and we did. We went to C&A just as they were there – we just missed them in the cave etc.

Venus Express hooray!

2006-04-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’ve become very enthused about Venus Express. I work at ESOC and some of my colleagues are controlling that wonderful spaceship. As I remarked to Shamal at lunch today, there are so many mysteries still outstanding on that sister planet. Read all about it at http://www.esa.int

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2GQNFGLE_index_0.html

or

http://www-atm.physics.ox.ac.uk/project/virtis/home.html

Wow! So many fascinating things about it – for so long it had been neglected, lolling there ‘twixt Earth and Sol…

spring clean-out

2006-04-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

A quick dip into blog-space and then I was backtracking back to the original Google search.
It had been an exhausting weekend with 5 wild 12yr old girls in tow at Ice-age-2… multiple car trips, restaurants… Then next day , a spring clean-out of heavy old junk for a rubbish collection. Needed to recover by some surfing. But Spring is in the air at last, so life is more bearable than under the harsh winter that stretched eternally as Earth rounded the solar corner to lean toward that celestial furnace anew.

Hyperspace drive on New Scientist

2006-01-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

Happy new year!
By the way, if there is a copy of this week's (Jan 7th) New Scientist in the vicinity, cast an eye at the cover - I helped with the cover story: I know the journalist from the Burrkhard Heim group and helped check his English and some of the science. The hyperdrive would be great, eh?
No more messy rockets....

http://www.newscientist.com/contents/issue/2533.html

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18925331.200.html

also:
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=16902006

I am making a name for myself in the Heim group as English translation advisor... You might find some bits from me on Forums discussing the above.
e.g.
http://physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=105915&page=2
http://betterhumans.com/News/5138/Default.aspx

Also, 'my' Wikipedia pages on Heim get quoted here and there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_Theory

Hydrino power on the cards at last

2005-11-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

I was really delighted by this Guardian article on Hydrino power - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1627424,00.html

could it be that after all the years and diligent publishing of experimental results in respected physics and chemistry journals, that Blacklight Power is about to take the world by storm in thisnew energy crisis? That would be cool... Ahhhh... my daughter calls me to supper... more later.

long time no blog - whatever happened?

2005-09-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Where did I lose the thread? I suppose too much other stuff was happening in ukauthrs.com - so I channeled all my energies in there as it gave a deadline to write bits of stories, and if it comes to the crunch, I'm afraid I choose stories over blogs - after all I have had zero feedback here but some feedback in http://ukauthors.com . Thus I refer you to the postings by Easyd tehre - who is none other than I myself. Oh yeah, then there were the holidays and satellite simulations...

Bar-b-qs and birthdays

2005-05-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

It was the long hot Corpus Christi weekend here - hottest May Weekend on record and that was good on one hand as we had 2 bbqs - first was in the Odenwald at Ian's farmhouse - wonderful lamb from a party service and Ian's inimitable ratatouille - plus his interesting wife, sister in-law (with whom our kids walked the dog and chatted amicably in the cool thick walled house, apparently, we heard later), kids (big, doctors etc.) and friends. Then next day the heat held up and it was our turn to entertain B's relatives and we did that in style as well, if I say so myself. So it was hard to return to the grind today, but lucky nature played along with us in turning cooler for the office stint. Now having dealt with Ian's 62 birthday and leaving do from work (end of an era, only to be kept up by e-mail, the boon of retirement), thoughts turn to my mother's 80th on thursday - just ordered a bunch of flowers and a copy of my book, of course, at good old http://pabd.com/topics/scifi (top of the page, "Grannnies & Time Machines"). Then at end of June we will all congregate from over the globe for a big restaurant meal to mark the occasion. Let's hope it goes off okay and the long lost brothers will be in the same place at same time for first time in several years. That would be nice for mother and us - hopefully one big happy family...

Theology on the terrace

2005-05-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

Let’s see – where are my notes for fair copy? Ah yes, a bookmark in Ratziner/Metz/Moltman/Goodman-Thau. What better on Corpus Christi than to relax into scholastic theology. And to my delight I find that the pope is a fine writer. Now for that entry… I was turning away from the table with a cup of coffee in one hand while with the other hand I switched off the light hanging over the breakfast table. I did this because the morning light on this fine spring day had become quite strong already. However as I did so, I could almost feel brain cells powering down and a corresponding diminution in the amount of dopamine or similar neurotransmitter. At the same time, however, I was inside the feeling. Later I relaxed with my Ratzinger. And a thundering good read it is too. He knows his way round Aquinas, Adorno, Teilhard de Chardin etc. No wonder he made pope. I felt justified in reading this as the Corpus Christi procession went past, with the sun glinting on the monstrance. And the brass instruments of the band. Then I strolled out into the garden to savour the fragrance of our spring plants and the beauty of the roses. It was good light for painting, so I added some more vibrant colours to the surreal space-scape to the sound of Kitaro wafting onto the terrace.

Heim fame, book & pneuma

2005-05-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, in Benford's tales of Olmy the exclamation is 'Star, Fate and Pneuma!' - I was reading one of his stories at the weekend and very fine it was too. Also managed to correct translation of a German article on Burkhard Heim - with any luck it could appear in New Scientist.
Wouldn't it be great if Heim's Grand Unified Field theory or Theory of Everything as they say these days replaced String or Brane theory as flavour of the month? Then as one of his few scientific supporters at the moment I would feel myself vindicated. Maybe that involvement may get me more attention than the book http://pabd.com/2005/books/hdeasy . Thunder rolls in the background as the strange May weather changes yet again - it's been sunny but sticky and humid all day, as yesterday. We ate outside at local newly renovated Kirchmuhle Restaurant - nice there on the banks of the river. The cat has taken to lyign on the mat in front of the house all day, for hours on end.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2005-05-19T03:41:00.000-07:00

Batter out house, three cornered Momo!

Yes, the passionate black feline did it again - miowed so pitifully and hurled herself against the door until we had to let her in.

I would have read more sci-fi or philosophy but when the cat is there it's early to bed, early to rise.
Sure enough, at 04:30 it"s not hte secret police but the cat, shuffling papers politely to get my attention.
I groan groggily, forcing her to let out one plaintive miow.
That's enough for me. Shrugging off sleep after 4 1/2 hours, I get up slow and easy.
meantime cat has become intersted in ball of paper. I'm having none of that and walk determinedly downstairs. She is trained well enoguh now to give up that playfulness and march after me down to the kitchen, snacks and out the door.
Back to bed for more shuteye. Wake after an hour. Doze for 1/2.
C'est la vie!

2005-05-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

Internet connection kaput at home...

time = consciousness

2005-05-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

They're the same, aren't they? The two are inextricably intertwined. In Quantum Mechanics, it is energy and time that are conjugate variables, like the more famous position and momentum. But in the world of experience it is time and consciousness that are thus entwined. No aspect of C is thinkable without time - not even the building up of the image on the internal TV screen for the internal little man or homunculus to view. Similarly it is C that brings time to life, breathing fire into what would be otherwise just a coordinate, as Hawking would say.

after a long weekend

2005-05-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a long weekend in this part Germany, so I was a bit slow re-aating to the work rhythm. Wasn't too bad though - I have wonderful colleagues. I must fix that puncture, though it be slow and overnight. At least rain spared us today, unlike during the weekend: though ahving sadi that, we escaped lightly at Frankenstein, around whose castlw we walked on at times muddy slippy wood paths. But the kids had fun, which made it easier for us. All the more hunger for mothers' day cake and later curry.

Selling page for my book now on-line

2005-05-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's finally there:

http://pabd.com/2005/books/hdeasy

I've already had a few people ordering through this site. Check it out! Also, I'm now on Ukauthors.com, under the name Easyd. Some new bits of fiction and philosophy there.

Otherwise, we're taking it easy here on a rainy public holiday. Sunshine comes through now and then so I'll go for a walk before lunch of Schnitzel. Positive developments in the week:

* The space shop at ESOC accepts my book for sale - produced poster for it with mug shot from my old interview days. A bit reddish but it will do.

* Getting into philosophy a bit more - reading Heidegger book again, Bergson & co.##

* Carolyn returns from her 3 day school trip none the worse for wear - needed to catch up on sleep though, as the boys had kept them awake. So she was a bit cranky yesterday eve but after a 12 hur sleep she was bright and cheerful again.

Now for an olive nut

2005-05-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

Now for an olive nut. That actually means a brazil nut still with a thin layer of hard-necked olive oil coating it, dating from the broken bottle disaster of the week before. Now after some days of rain and the sudden beginning of summer (or a spring sneak preview thereof) I returned to the scene of the 'crime' where I polluted the environment to the extent of spilling some drops of the broken oil on a spot outside our house. Never mind, though – time, the great healer, will soon put paid to that blemish. And indeed after another downpour it is almost gone. Would that all our sins could be washed away like that. Will the new pope be a lenient father confessor?

Book flight to Dub for July - to see long lost brother and wife. That will do us all a power of good. These anipodal realtionships are a strain for those of us who are non fully fledged members ofthe jet set.

Book in space shop & genome

2005-04-29T10:03:00.000-07:00

Good - I am now allowed to sell my book, Grannies and Time Machines, ISBN 1-905277-15-6 via the space shop - oh yeah, must see about getting a better mug-shot for the poster. Then all I need is the next shipment from PABD of copies of the book and I'll be ready to roll.
Not to mention Ian bought another copy. It was his suggetion with the shop and not a bad one at that.

Next - the genome: flame on after seeing that Sci-Am had another article trying to conjure the rabbit out of a 1 megabyte hat. Ha! I think in my next essay I will emphasise the twin anomalies - extreme complexity from only 20,000 genes or 1 MByte, and subjective consciousness. Both point in the direction of something beyond matter - as I said, flame is on there and I may have to go in and edit Wikipedia accordingly. As if the burkhard Heim flame war wasn't enough.

sorry for negecting this old blog a bit - been a bit busy submitting stuff to Ukauthors.com -
at least there people read your stuff - here I might as well be whistling in the dark.
Are you there, dear reader?
Make yourself known unto me, forsooth.

P.S. Humid cycle home, still have the cold - 7 days with medicine and a wet week without, and it has been wet - could only cycle yesterday and today. M's goodbye drink on Tuesday - his good wines Spaetburgunder mit Predikat went down a treat, but the gathering was a bit stiff nonetheless - especially when mr. F played his usual trick of psych war - thus we breathed collective sigh of reief when said he was not successor. 'Nuff said. C to go on class trip 3 days next week. Gotta ring argentinian brother re July jaunt... If the cat wants to wake me at 4 or 5 tomorrow well and good - it's the weekend. Gone the daystaht I danced in the may - maybe will suss out the vibes there again - I long for the exegesis of ecstatic movement to sublime music - even if it is the rock frowned on by Ratzinger - though he jams it up with Mozart - all music is a gift of God or the Celtic deities of the Beltaine Feast - see Mists of Avalon by Marion Bradley for details. over and out

colour, time,heim, Habermas & Pope

2005-04-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

Had a fairly technical book 'time, temporality, now' edited by Atmanspacher (gosh how I admire that guy!) and for a few years laid it aside as it was not as philosophical as I'd hoped, in the subjective sense, and too abstrusely mathematical. But thumbing through it anew, discovered the essay by Von Weizacker, teacher of Heim and slogged through it in the hope of gleaning an insight into Heim's weird notation. To an extent I was successful, and Von W has his own charms: after Heim's calculus W's is positively childish. Philosophy is in at the mo, as Ben-16 is a theologian-philosopher and crossed friendly swords with Habermas a few years ago - they could argue and curse (if need-be) in their native tongue together. I wonder should I send some links to my philosophical musings to the new incumbent. Better not - he's no time for that sort of thing now, unfortuantely. C'est la vie.
In a more general sense, each day is time to appreciate anew the beauty of colour and the Spring foliage and blooms. Hard to believe that we had snow just a few weeks ago, now that the green woodpecker is here again with her shrill cry.

Book on book

2005-04-23T06:29:00.000-07:00

Will anyone ever read this? If there is life in blog-read world, then leave a comment so I know that the lonesome reader exists out there in cyberspace. But what of it? Like other bloggers I'll probably use some of this stuff as material for a book in its own right. Thus a blog started at the behest of those suggesting publicity methods for first book may be the making of another. Thus book generates book, like Woody Allen's films churned out in an endless quest to fight neurosis by work therapy. Yet every now and then will still stop and wonder at the miraculous nature of it all - life in all its facets. Those long-legged wasps sailing up to the roses in the spring garden just now, sun illuminating numerous species of insect flitting to and fro, each with its own agenda. Cat a majestic sentinel by the bush, her ears swivelling to follow the numerous stimuli - cars here and there, children, lawn-mower some gardens away, voices conversing, bees buzzing. No wonder her radar is a bit confused. And all the while that cute little brain weighing up the possibilities of the different sounds until she makes a decision on where to move. Yes, and the eternal mystery of consciousness - to be savoured like a succulent fruit. Thus soon will I turn abew to my philosophical texts - McGinn is not bad at all - he and Baars maybe the most readable of the lot. Though Searle, Penrose and Llinas ain't bad either, Johnnie. I hardly knew ya. All those nice comments following mine in the condolence book and the photo looking so fine, characteristic grin, suave and gently mocking, had prompted many to address J in the 2nd person, as well they might.

Popes, cats etc.

2005-04-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Great that the new pope is German, from Bavaria, with such a nice manner and such piercingly intelligent eyes. Just a bit of a pity that he's conservative. Maybe he'll mellow with age. Wait and see. Momo the cat is already mellow, except when she's hunting or in a rough-play mood. N did not so well in her vocab test because she had been sick on Monday. I edited a bit more on the Burkhard Heim pages - who knows, he might soon crack the international science scene and then the sky's the limit - Nobel here we come. Though have to check my enthusiasm a bit, in memory of poor Johnnie Houser, who died sadly on Tuesday. He was an immortal diamond, as the poet said, or a luminous being as Casteneda would have it. Somewhere his soul will go on and that personality, his charcteristic smile and American twang will continue in our memories - surely souls will revive - could imagine future technology that would 'store' the personality of all those who go before us marked with the sign of fate, as Benedict XVI would say. His (Johnnie’s ) stories of cruel uncles on the ranch as a kid reminiscent of the Horse Whisperer Monty's tales of cruel father maltreating horses. Sad, sad, sad. Makes you realise what a deadly serious business life is, and how infinitely precious is each and every one of us. God bless us every one, as Tiny Time or similar used to say. That would also be in the sense of Ben-16. I've ordered a book with some of his theological discussions from Amazon for the book club - certainly better than Barbara Cartland - well, another genre at any rate. As is my pot-pourri of a book, Grannies and Time Machines.

My book, "grannies and Time Machines"

2005-04-15T01:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, unbelievable really that it's finally been published - the cover is indeed fine, as you can see by clicking into my web-site www.geocities.com/deasyart - also, quite a few positive comments have been forthcoming. One or two of the anti-globalisation stories caused controversy, while the straight sci-fi tales have been praised by friends (one a writer) as rich in imagination and ideas. A few people have gone through the illustrations with me and also paused long and thoughtfully over many of them. This confirmed me in my selection of a pick of the best black and white illustrations in the collection of my drawings. Yes, all in all this has been an envigorating project. Why not secure your own copy of this handsome volume?

What is the mind?

2005-04-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

I find the idea of being any old lump of matter as somewhat anonymous and pejorative. Anyway the idea of a simple lump of matter ain't what it used to be. First, 'matter' is not the hard and fast stuff it used to be - break it up and you find ghostly probability patterns - the stuff of which dreams are made. Secondly saying that consciousness is the 'totality of feelings corresponding to being a lump of matter' reminds me of Colin McGinn's book on mind and matter - he ridicules rather skillfully the idea that we are nothing but a computer made of meat. Particularly brilliant I found his description of space and mind - every phrase and idea relates to space, but thought is not of space - consciousness is not located in any one place and does not have spatial extent. The brilliant idea that before the big bang there was no matter and maybe just mind and that the universe oscillated between mind and matter states and our consciousness now is sort of pockets of the primordial consciousness entering the special conditions offered by brains. In a way, though, the 'computer made of meat' idea is true in so far as the subjective aspect of consciousness has objective correlates that are the fluxes within the lump of matter, those fluxes being partly electrochemical in the classical sense and partly quantum with its superpositions, non-locality and interconnectedness. But although we know that the subjective aspect is associated with the objective correlates, it is perhaps too much to say that the former arises from the latter, e.g. as an 'emergent' property. Science at the moment is silent on the connection between the two: that's why behaviourism tried to ignore and deny the subjective side of the coin. And that's how it is: two sides of the coin, the subjective and the objective, or as Malik puts it nicely, the subjective aspect or feeling is the 'inside' of the system: e.g. in meaning - there's an outer or objective aspect, but to get the full shilling you have to be in the driving seat, i.e. inside the feeling. That horrified the behaviourists: the little man in the centre of the brain - that leads to infinite regression or the 'soul'. Also to say you 'are' a lump of matter restricts to locality: but take that lump of matter consisting of two electrons in an orbital or two photons in coupled polarisation states that in an experiment are separated and shot apart, one going to Alpha Centauri and one to here. Aspect showed that until you burst the bubble of the wave function by measuring here or in Alpha Centauri this pair of particles has no fixed locality - it is spatially extended and interlinked in Einstein's feared 'ghostly action at a distance'. In the same way a brain seems to be interlinked in a non-local way - certainly our inside experience of it 'binds'
inputs from disparate areas into one unified whole: so your internal TV screen incorporates info from all over the brain – there is no central place where it all comes together.

If a "materialist" is a person who wants his explanations to be in terms of things that exist, then if a 'soul' or 'interconnectedness of all things' existed, then his explanations would have to encompass them. We know from Aspect that the latter exists, so already the old style materialist with his surly countenance and gloomy insistence on brute matter is passe. Thus Occam's razor now is a two edged blade, as far as the lugubrious hero of the last sentence is concerned, for it urges us to explain as much as we can in terms of the molecules, atoms, particles, superstrings and ghostly action at a distance (Einstein’s description). And even that is mostly airy fairy, as atoms and even molecules have now been superposed in double slit experiments: matter is all ghostly wavefunctions interacting. Even the entanglement that leads to the illusion of hard matter that fooled our old style buffoon may be seen as evidence for proto-consciousness reaching as far as the atomic level: One entity (electron, atom or molecule) wandering on it's own is lost in the dream (of Gerontius) that blurs it into a ghost to all others, until it bumps into another ghost, at which point both come briefly to their senses as something measured and definite. Each atom then becomes Von Neuman's or Wigner's (proto-)conscious collapser or collapsed. This is what gives the illusion of solid matter. However, the fact that matter even at room temperture is full of ghostly ineffable quantum effects (mmmm... lovely, as the Brauerei Fest band play 'let it be' as I write) was shown recently in new confirmation of that
anomaly of ordinary water - it is H(3/2)O and not H2O since probing lasers always show a bit of the second H missing! The latter is evidence that good old H2O is not quite there. And this quantumly suspect liquid is the basis of all life, so via Occam life is riddled with quantum!
Thus your, as a materialist's, demand that extra (w.r.t. old fashioned matter-as-a-hard-brick) fundamental ingredients be as existent (and therefore as susceptible to investigation) as our beloved atoms is met: the investigators are investigating them!

Anecdotal evidence: Reproducibility is all well and good for electric currents, pendulums,
and the more regular action-at-a-distance quantum effects, but it is not vouched safe for many things we know to be real but which dissolve in the white heat of the lab: Conscious states, for one - each is unique: in fact some of the more 'materialist' neuroscientists make much of the fact that the same wine will never taste the same twice as the brain/mind will be in different state each time depending on a complex mix of emotions, alcoholic stupor, circadean or menstrual rhythm etc. Thus a wine tasting is not reproducible in the narrow sense: just as a meteor causing a giant crater in Arizona is not exactly reproducible: telepathy and other psi effects are more reliable as they are occasionally reproducible - just not always, no more than wine tasting or Arizonan craters. Come on, who are we fooling here? Physicists don't want to accept psi on philosophical grounds and thus will always shift the goalposts to suit their desired result. However, that notwithstanding, even religion and mysticism are achieving a synthesis with science - doctors showed in some studies that patients prayed for (without their knowledge) did better than control patients not prayed for. Just read a review of William James' "Varieties of religious experiences" in which the founding father of American psychology urges a union of religious-mystic ideas and psychology.

Makes you think

2005-04-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

Yeah, those (see last posting) were exercises in positive thinking - but looking back I did indeed have much to rejoice in during the last year. Today could also be referred to in the same vein, as we had a nice visit to our favourite vegetarian restaurant on this final day before school starts up again. After meal (which was good though we got the spinach and not aubergine dish) nice walks down by the river - playing with the girls on island in Modau in Eberstadt. Then N & B go off for a walk and I help C to throw stones at sticks floating in river - during which we traverse the length of the sprawling island and cement parent-child relationship. Ditto for N when she returns and suggests we walk back to P over the sand dunes. That was better this time as I'd my new running shoes and not the unsuitable footware of yore. Saw the glowing green moss and a woodpecker after we heard him above the roar of the passing train by the tracks. Talk on the biology of Lichens and telling her to tread softly in the dunes as the rare alpine plants, remnants of the ice age, were in danger from our bumbling feet. Exhausted upon return, revived by waffles and tea. Fell asleep as tired from cat night, beer and fresh air. Now final plane reserving for August Ireland and blogging to boot. Besides all which, I like ever more what I see in my book, Grannies and Time Machines, despite a few typos undetected before. Yes, I have stories in there to answer a host of themes - one was tailor made to fit the slightly depressing though ultimately uplifting GEO docs last night on disappearance of species and threat of filthy oil companies to the jungle paradise of Indians of southern Ecuador. The illustrations in my book are also delightful, as Jordi made me realise the other day. What oh, eh, old chap? Whisht arra gow arrra that!

Some older proto-entries

2005-04-10T09:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a few old diary type entries before I blogged:
2004
Sunday 25th March
3 things – warm roggo of Seeger, arguments against Pinker, Boelle walk

Last week – thankful for health, consciousness, daughters, financial stability, reasonable work, back-stroke in swimming
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M: Sunny mild weather whilst cycling, FCM & PSFs completed at work, Pinker not bad, sweet children saying goodbye at baker.

T Nice talk with Fr. S ,

W Got the chain guard of N to Fahrrad G. Spanish class v. good.

T Meeting not as bad as expected. Passed 2 cyclists on way home.

F Work good moon errors & eclipse PSFs, Ufo prog Mexico Ufo, NASA on Apollo 16, N & C doing Irish dancing with me.

S May 1st: Shops closed, relaxed. Worked well on N’s bike. Modau lovely at new bridge.

S Calm morning, Aussschanck, Momo there a lot, N cycle. Caro dance.

Last week – thankful for meeting not bad, lovely spring weather, birds & ‘wasps’, restful mayday.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
M May 3d – Loeffler butter croissants for the girls, jokes with Tom C..l at lunch, Apollo Jordi.

T May 4th – heard bird before leaving wood. Apollo 16 excitement. C at Seeger. Moss. Lichen

W May 5th – N playing Pianito on PC. Spanish with Ruth

Satu May 8th – C at Maruhn with me. B & I made nice dishes – she olive bread and Basil sauce, I baked potatoes and eggy sauce

Sun – Nice talk with boy in Avanti – lovely curries for Mother’s day. Also nice Seeger cake and flower. Fruehjahrsmesse Dst – Ghost walk with N – scary demons and moving floor.

Grateful for being financially okay, healthy, IQ 136 or higher.
---------------------------------------------------
Mon 10th – Pay You’s story in the swimming class – swam well. Nice reading to midnight

Tue may 11th – dentist okay. Picking up C from Kipf. Way she said ‘lovely Spring’ as we were alone together in the garden. N’s nice essay or description, rather.

2005-01-30 – as hurt wrist pouring from heavy bottle realised how wonderful fully functioning wrist and all body parts are ß and how we only realise it when one goes wrong – the wonder of it is almost frightening.

Look, don’t have time for blow-by-blow every day – today this list
- Survived another Kid’s birthday party unscathed – N’s 11th with 3 friends went off well.
- Anomalism is at an interesting point: JBIS article by Haisch et al. on UFOs - never could have imagined that years ago.
- U2 praised as rivals to Beatles on afn radio talked of punk origins in Dublin of early 80s. Made me think of me as mote in a radiation of brilliance and magnificence from the Dublin Diaspora of that time.
- Heim stuff getting more interesting – Jordi recognises my victory in the Heim debate on Wikipedia.

2005-02-05 – Restful weekend – N sick but improving and can rest tomorrow, Rosenmontag. Both girls good school reports on Friday, so we feel good having 2 clever girls. Fasching speeches and TV shows are fun, as was house of shadows in scary way. My black and white drawings/illustrations scan in more easily than I’d thought, and I found the comic strips to scan in, so it’s looking good for a PABD run in a month or so. Good feeling that the old cartoons & drawings will reach a wider audience.

2005-02-14 – We had a good weekend & it was a good Monday today. Yesterday made aubergine Parmesan (2 batches as we ran short last time with Sabine & Tomas or Gaby).
Ca helped me a lot, first salting the Aubergines, then wit h the sauce and then frying – she speeded up as I’d have been real stressed otherwise making 3 lots (1 potatoes only for kids). Rene & Cherry liked it a lot and I could taste myself that it turned out well. Nice talks with R & Ch. Today in forest lucky in morning that it was dry (it was sunny too yesterday when R & Ch came, just as I’d prayed for to avoid muddy shoes…) and in Evening though it was raining a bit it soon stopped and Klinsacker Schneise was not really wet at all – and it was finally bright enough to see tree roots etc. Swimming fine too and feel bit tired now but satisfied with exercise, after so long without due to ice and rain. Oh and yesterday to top a fine day suddenly the internet was working! Though we hadn’t yet received the DSL router. Theory that we were tapping into Hegeman’s router or similar. Strange, but we got a good preview of working with the DSL interface. Today it was gone again – but we’ll have own router later this week.

THE book is here! Yippeee!

2005-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Yes! THE book is here now. The first consignment arrived yesterday evening – weird feeling, having such a smooth and self-designed cover between one’s fingers. Today I managed to sell 8 of them. Positive comments so far, especially for the graphic work. I hope to have an internet site to sell them from soon. Then folks far and wide can have the pleasure of leafing through this slim (211 pages) volume. It was only when Jordi quizzed me on every one of the illustrations that I realised how good they were. Now I’m rather optimistic about this. Maybe I will be catapulted to fame as I nearly was with R.A.W. 25 years ago, only Poland was beckoning and I had to pursue my destiny, to become one with the pontiff’s people. I even went with an astronomical girlfriend to Zakopane to the Pope’s old stomping ground – though I was scaling the Tatras with athletic Moni in Summer and not the snows of Karol’s winter sports. Yes, most of us have grown up with KW and will miss him sorely, for all his conservatism. Let’s hope his successor allows women priests and a few other liberal 21st century things.

Heim, book, life

2005-04-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, it was great to see that Burkhard Heim achieved more recogniton through the receipt of a best paper prize by 2 of his colleagues, Haeuser and Droescher - the prize was for thebest paper received in 2004 by the AIAA Nuclear and Future Flight TechnicalCommittee. And to think I'm one of a small group of physicists who believed in his Theory of Everything or GUT or whatever. We may be vindicated yet! Yes! Next thing to be glad about is that the first copies of my book are on their way to me by post. Finally, there's life and limb, and the wonder of consciousness, science, art and music, philosophy and human relations - doesn't it restore your faith in humanity to see all the countries, some of them Muslim, who declared days of mourning for the Great John Paul? I pray that his soul will go soaring to Heaven. Forgive him his little foibles like denying women the priesthood, etc. as he was by and large a force for great good in the world. Amen

Tribute to John Paul II

2005-04-03T01:28:00.000-08:00

Before going down to fix the slow puncture on my bike, let me add my praise to the great pontiff who has just passed away, Karol W. As I lived for nearly a year in Poland in the late 80's, I was fully aware of how highly he was thought of in his native country. When he visited Ireland in 1979 I was in the Phoenix park with the rest of 'em, one million people, cheering on the pope-mobile. Johndee had woken brother M by throwing stones at his window in the dark of early morn as we had to catch the early special bus to the park. 9 years later M and I would be in a mass audience with the pontiff, although we didn't always agree with his conservative policies on birth control, women priensts etc., where I told M how to say hello in Polish. M, ever more extravert than yours truly, got up above the heads of the masses and just as JP was going passed called out 'Djen Dobry!' and sure enough the Pope stopped and turned to the beaming face of my incorrigible brother to shake his hand. I am in The Osservatore Romano photo too, in a bit role as the mastermind behind the shake, still sporting Walensa moustache. Sic transit gloria Mundi!

back from hols

2005-04-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yes, it was a nice stint in the south Odenwald/Neckartal. House itself was okay, near to long forest walks where one could commune with nature, if not with correctness. Nature to me was all in all. And in that other Eden the stress of everyday life fell away and one walked for hours and hours where no man had been before - at least none was seen in tens of km of walking - only birdsong, squirrels, babbling brook.

Delta, Enigma & Heim

2005-03-25T01:18:00.000-08:00

I’ve been too long trying to commune with correctness. So this morning I just decided to go with the flow and indulged in sheer unashamed surreal excesses of colour and self-consistent mad forms. My only concession to normalcy was seeking and ordering discarded coffee cups. Don’t worry though – that wasn’t a sign of Prufockism – hard to have your trousers rolled if they’re stiff denims. Was it fate that allowed me to find Enigma cassette just now on good Friday with fitting Gregorian chant? Howsoever, I have made good the tradition of a painting on Good Friday – and in the process of looking for some print paper discovered colour printout of ’99 exhibition – not bad and may feature in a future book. Who knows? Delta last night on 3-Sat not bad – nothing better at getting little girls to sleep and papa wide awake than a deep discussion on religion with Dürr expounding on the interconnectedness of all things and the non-existence of hard matter when the implications of quantum mechanics are allowed to sink in. Thought Dürr sounded familiar – then leafed through my Heim docs and sure enough it was he who was Heisenberg’s Max Planck successor when Burkhard Heim came around to explain his recently developed mass formula – after first been given the cold shoulder by d, the latter gradually got interested when it was made clear that the mass formula was a structure theory. There ensued an intense question and answer session of a few hours after which D convinced H to publish in the Max Planck journal. Must stick latter in Wikipedia – one in the eye for the fanatic Stringulists.

Crow log

2005-03-22T23:54:00.000-08:00

I wished my brother M a lovely birthday today by e-mail, as he lives on the other side of this funny old ball : we are now in the part that is illuminated, called 'day' and have different seasons by virtue of being on 'top'. . It's nice weather here again - the snow and ice finally melted for St Patrick"s day and it remained mild since then, even on this, Pat + 6

The Girls send their greetings to their uncle - N cycled off at 07:25 today to meet her friend D with whom she cycles to school occasionally. Last year Iwas cycling with her but now she feels she's big enough to go it alone with Denise. I went with C to her primary... they're looking forward to Easter break in 3 days. when we retreat to a hut on the Neckar near Heidelberg for a week.

The cycle along the grassy path to work was only slowed marginally by having to negotiate deep ruts in slightly muddy (lets say soft) ground made by forestry tractor on the last few days. Otherwise it was a fine Spring cycle, where I again noted the crow shaped log at the side of the track. Once I startled a chaffinch and he set off a whole flock of them and/or other song birds thaat flew just in fornt of me as I traversed that relatively open stretch of forest. Later there was an almost tame thrush-like bird with white stipes around his eyes...

Last Sun pre-Easter

2005-03-20T00:50:00.000-08:00

Captain's blog supplemental - beep!

Yes, will soon be retreating to our Easter retreat - this is the last Sunday for a while when Momo the cat can lie and clean herself on the sofa while N looks at Doubtfire. Beautiful effect of March sun slanting into golden living room just now, the easter twigs (y'know - reddish braches with a hint of leaves) nicely juxtaposed with the potted plants in front of hesitantly blooming garden. Surfing ucla cognitive web site - some juicy morsels - WIld Minds must be in there somewhere as I found the site in one of my periodic google searches for that classic of non-linear spooky neuroscience. Some of those articles one finds onself retuning to again and again - can one ever savour them sufficiently? Bernard Baars' Global Workspace - Cartesian Theatre article from the 90's belongs with Wild Minds and Sutherland's demolition of Spiegel henchman Metzinger to the perenial favourites. I'd hoped that the ucla cog update by Baars was of similar classical ilk, but alas it was not to be - it was a non-multidisciplinary collection of short notes. Useful in a sense but lacking in the grandeur of the early Baars.

Right - that might be it until after Easter on a Sunday, unless I can access an intenet cafe on the Neckar.

That book of mine

2005-03-17T01:28:00.001-08:00

Some of the stories in Grannies and Time Machines may be a bit controversial - particularly where time travellers re-write history. I gave the story 'Pruning Time' to a few friends to read and criticise and was taken aback at the severity of their response - the Spanish guy thought I had it in for the Spanish and an English guy felt I was targeting his island - in fact I was rather democratic in the punishment meted out to wrongdoers of every nation. One fellow writer, Peter, had a more reasoned response:

Thanks for 'Pruning Time.' It's another great concept, on your usual epic scale, realised in an understated, ironical voice which prevents the piece from lurching into the offensively messianic. Character development is minimal, but a theme like this hardly leaves room for characters. I enjoyed the idea of cutting 'Mr M' up like an earthworm.... Congratulations on a very entertaining and thought-provoking piece. Your sense of humour (a strong characteristic) is more essential to this piece than to the others I've read, making it the most genial of the four, in spite of its iconoclastic substance.

Philosophical musings 2

2005-03-17T00:40:00.000-08:00

I don't buy the argument that because bees and others see in UV or IR or even x-ray, and we don't perceive at these wavelengths directly then the world we see with our 5 or 6 senses is not the one that 'exists'. That would imply that we get at Kant's Ding-an-sich or noumenal reality by the back door of blindness in these wavengths. Too cheap. No, as we have machines
to extent our sensorium to those wavelengths and can either view the sensorily gifted aninmals as additonal sensing machines or allow them a slice in the subjective pie. Also reminiscent here of the Pinker/Malik debate - Pinker points out that:
"Some theorists believe that there are indeed certain questions that humans are incapable of answering because of our evolved nature. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in our short-term memory. We cannot see ultra-violet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience."
Malik sees things very differently - he points out that we have solved all kinds of problems:
"from the structure of DNA, to the physical composition of the sun despite our evolutionary legacy, not because of it. It is true that the development of science requires mental skills, many of which are evolved adaptations, but science has enabled us to go well beyond those adaptations. We can do science only because we can transcend our evolutionary heritage and act as subjects, rather than as objects"
i.e. we transcend our 5 or 6 senses and 'get at' the 'world out there' more fully thereby. Or alternatively could say we just dreamt up additonal wavelength realms to conquer later via constructs of the subject - so it could all be idealist still. On the recent evolution of skilled language - it reminds me of other claims that we only recently acquired colour vision
because Homer described the 'wine dark sea' - that was due to a mis-reading of the classics. Also, bees have full colour vision for flowers and we had them as primates for fruit - almost certainly in full technicolour for about a million years. Similarly, the cave artists of Lacaux and Altamira were cognitively on the same level as us - drawings (in colour) of shamans
frolicking around in animal masks imply full linguistic ability, and even transpersonal levels of consciousness. Hominid skulls lend themselves poorly to reconstructions of Broca's and Wernicke's areas, and certainly the last 100,000 years has shown fully anatomically modern humans: the very explosion of fantasy and inventiveness around the time
of the cave-art revolution implies that around then it really clicked for language, art and general intelligence. Since then it's been steady progress with inventions - hardly the achievement of Wernicken grunters. The cold war drove CIA and KGB to excesses of fantasy in terms of mind control - but you have to first define a mind before you control it. Even hypnotism can't really go against the grain of Schopenhauer's will. Of course if you brutalise someone enough you can conditon them to react a la Pavlov out of fear. But there will always be a corner of their being that resists the brutish conditioners - just like Rhita in
Greg Bear's 'Eternity" resists the attempts of the Jarts to encapsulate her mentality in their 'matrix'. Apropos, I take issue with Schopenhauer shifting the subject into the representation box and highlighting will as the main aspect of being: the Upanishads that he borrowed from got it righter than he did. And these ancient Indian philosophers were debating subtleties of consciousness thousands of years ago - and they were no more narcissist than the moderns. I.e. the current consciousness 'craze' is not a feature of the modern accumulation of
scientific knowledge nor does it owe everything to the late lamented Crick - it is rather a reaction against the dark age of stifling behaviourism: James' Principles of Psychology or the Upanishads are once again fully modern - the former because after James Behaviourism led to
ruthless suppression and censorship of the 'subject' lest the more 'scientific' 20th century psychology be accused of unscientific introspection; we are only now picking up where James left off. Now the scales have fallen from people's eyes again and the Behaviourist/AI/positivist emperor has indeed no clothes. It's a bit like the end of the cold war where people admitted that communism a la Stalin was not all it was cracked up to be, and that the Russians rellay loved their children too (incredible tothink that that was ionce a revolutionary lyric of Sting's). After all, neuroscience will only ever highlight the neural correlates of the easy problem. The hard problem remains and people just re-state it in myriad ways. But it makes interesting reading to get different people's 'take' on it. If German uni training is as in the Egyptian priesthood, Metzinger is one of the high priests of the Mainz temple university. Note that he does put on an interesting display - e.g. one of his Spiegel bits:
http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/SDFweb.pdf
- quite colourful but despite the waffle his position is still as homuphobic as indicated by Sutherland.
He is quite prolific though - here a list:
http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/

Philosophical musings 1

2005-03-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I was reading in my Philosophy history by Stoerig again last nght the section on Heidegger and I finally grasped a few things better than before:
* His philosophy, just as Husserl's and the other phenomenologists', is rigourous but not in the same way as science. Thus he is
distinct from and in contrast to the rather unpleasant and boring logical positivists.
* You won't like this but it's interesting: he applauded Hegel for at least one of his ideas - namely that absolute nothingness
is actually the same as absolute being. H's take on that is that nothingness is the veil of being - a bit like ciaroscuro, shadows and light.
In this sense being is transcendent in that it stands out from the void and is more than just a 'place marker in nothingness'.
* He makes the point that philosophy is actually closer to poetry than science. Good point - as 'science' in the sense of objective science demands that we be zombies, whilst poetry is exclusive to subjects. The famous example of a sunset - objective scientific description is trivial, whilst a poet gives a lyrical account of subjective qualia. - this point struck me again in reading also last night interview of Spiegel editor with Brian Greene of 'Elegant Universe' - in his new book he again shows how one sided he is - apparently utterly ignorant of philosophy, he says things like:
"Oh the flow of time must be an illusion as it only occurs in subjective accounts". This is unbelievably ignorant of a supposedly intelligent scientist,
that he should have read no philosophy dealing with this essential aspect of existence - all existence is subjective! Of course, when pressed to say how time was created before the big bang, he had to confess ignorance. He also had no answer as to why the time dimension should appear so different from the spatial ones, although mathematically they are on a similar level.
Reasoning such as (http://observer.thecentre.centennialcollege.ca/features/briangreene.htm)

But at high speeds those watches can be off by seconds, minutes, even years if
they move fast enough.
Therefore, the whole notion of past, present and
future is nonsensical and completely subjective.

Again this philosophically challenged innocent thinks that just because it's subjective it's nosensical - the opposite is the case! He also shows his failure to grasp the concept
of qualia - it is immaterial if the subjective impression of time should be stretched or compressed a bit by relativeistic effects - this says nothing about what is being stretched - namely the subjective impression of the flow of time.

Mixed feelings on a Monday

2005-03-14T07:27:00.000-08:00

Phew! Bit of a mixed feeling this Monday - doing a reasonable amount of work, and the book is chugging along - PABD said they were just checking on shipping rates for the first consignment of 'Grannies and Time Machines'. So soon should have the first hard copies of this delicious little tome. Then it can be thrown open to on-line ordering or local bookshop orders. Trying to remember meditative practice of stepping back from current actions, to be as it were an observer of oneself. Other ideas recently to put in next book: that annoying habit of neuro-ultra-materialists like Steven Pinker to boast arrogantly in their introductions that they will, in their review of neuroscience and evolutionary biology, explain why we choose our mate and why some people are disposed to believe in the paranormal. This is of course rich coming from a card carrying 'sceptic' of CSICOP, the psi-cops of the 21st century. He thus neglects to mention the converse: a deficient amount of tissue in the relevant brain regions may equally well be construed as a deficit in the ability to believe in the paranormal. Thus pseudo-sceptics of Pinker's ilk might be viewed as stunted mental cripples lacking in this important mental function. This is just another exmple of a hidden agenda being smuggled on-board in the form of defining arbitrarily what it means to be 'normal'. Must normal mean a straight-laced ultra-materialist, completely atheistic as in the simplistic popular view of a scisntist? Is the freedom to choose one or other philosophical stance to be denied us by the new arbitrers of othodoxy, the modern puritans such as Pinker, Dennet, Dawkins, Damasio & co.? Which sci-fi writer was it who wrote of 'creeping conformism'? How right she/he was. Hey - speaking of which, there's a good Irish name for political correctness - Sheehy - it sounds like she-he.

Sunday suavemente

2005-03-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

After a leisurely and groggy Sunday morning I could feel my mental powers sharpening and honing in creativity at around 11. Sure enough my reading speed then accelerated and I began to draw rather well, if I say so myself. The music of the Santana and U2 Cds lent wings to poesy and inspired further flights of drawing. Then I found myself reflecting on the mix of colours in our ice-bound fortress. This is not the wonderful grey of the song of that Hamburgian troubadour who regrettably failed to secure his place in Kiev for the Euro song contest in the national contest for Germany last night. My sock against the air mattress was blue on deeper blue and there were browns, golds and yellows. Throw in the blue tits’ yellow and blue and the woodpecker-family bird who has graced our berry bush as a refugee from the frozen forest and you have a veritable feast of colour. Ooops – pardon me while I take the lunch from the oven… be back in a minute… Here again, after lunch. We parents feasted on yesterday’s pasta parmesan pepped up with garlic and more lemon juice and cream, not to mention additional dollop of parmesan. Worked well, washed down with beer (malt and alt respectively) and topped with a cappuccino. Delicious, for which much thanks. The kids ate separately as they sulked and refused the pasta so I rushed out and got them their Kebabs from the local Turkish joint. Now they will leave me in peace for a minute while I luxuriate in the new sound system’s rendition of Enya. So peaceful and serene. Soon we will drive off to the Odenwald to witness its snowy grandeur and make toboggan down a slope. .. Just back from the snowy drive to Lindenfels where Sigfried rode through mountain mists. Nice stroll round the castle and coffee and cake after scaling the icy wooded slope trail. The children were at times a bit difficult, but somehow they muddled through and a good time was had by all.

I must admit I was a bit miffed that my mother didn’t get the smoking politician of a cousin of mine to invite me along with her to his Roman wedding, but of course she can’t dictate the guest list to him. I may sneak down incognito and surprise her from the bushes on the forum (if they still have them there), as it will be just a few days before her 80th birthday. We shall see.

One more nail

2005-03-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

Just finished repairing door of daughter N (11 - recall that she’s one of two, the other, C, being 8 – the latter is now with her friend Laura, who just entered the building). I couldn’t find the hammer high or low, so improvised using handle of screwdriver as hammer. That worked, and after a feast of noise (wife B was vacuuming next door) managed to hammer in 4 or five nails to secure the bending side (board? Wainscoting? Stick? Rod? – bahhhh how I hate it when German has a word for it and I can’t find the English equivalent (Latte )). Yes, the period of tranquillity between guests is over. Overnight friend of N, Denise, has been gone since 11 – at 3 Laura showed up for C. Momo the cat was shell shocked by all the hammering and vacuuming – meanwhile she was meowing like mad to get into the same door I was hammering on. But N had locked it as she’s doing secret stuff in there. The snow has melted here in the attic, freeing the windows to let in light from the melting sun. The melt water was gushing down the pipes earlier. Will the sponge of forest absorb moisture well enough for me to negotiate the quagmire on Monday? Or has semi-permafrost hindered absorptive action? Neber did we experience such prolonged snow and ice, at least not within living memory (of a 17 year old, which is the time I’ve been in Germany). Hard to blog with a hammer-weakened arm, but the blog must go on. Have I caught the bug after only 5 or 6 posts? Maybe. It’s said to be good practice for us writers anyway – and with Grannies and Time Machines (GATM) I begin a writing career, I hope. Next on the list: a book on consciousness, genetics etc. GATM was fun to put together – I hope those of you who get it have as much fun reading it. Quite a variety of stories – from 14 page adventure yarns in far-flung planets or times to short 2 pagers about life on Earth – e.g. Grannies rescuing cats and trouble with the neighbours.

Once more with feeling

2005-03-11T23:39:00.000-08:00

The eternal winter of 2005 in Germany has done it again. Just as we were delighting in melting icicles, slush and mud in the forest instead of pure sheet ice, this morning we awoke to windows clogged with the white stuff and the merry sound of a neighbour scratching the footpath with his shovel to clear the snow. In these cases I love to spring out of bed, shower and get in there with the best of them, shovelling. But N, 11 yr old daughter, was up even though her forend D was staying overnight and is a late sleeper unlike N & I. But N had slipped out quiet as a muse and was preparing to go to the baker. She let in the cat so I had to scamper around to stop the meows waking D by diverting her into the main bedroom. With another hand I was juggling C, 8 yr old youngest daughter, who was complaining of sore throat and sneezing, causing me to search for Tempos (the Kleenex of Germany). Meanwhile N had started on the shovelling with the rush, a good idea as it's quieter, and so won't waken D. But the snow is of that lethargic mix of slush, ice and snow that is hard to shift by brush, shovel, hook or crook. So after I while I had to step in there to lend my muscle. Then she was off to the baker and I was getting the coffee ready, and also making hot milk and honey for C. Phew... I was glad when D finally woke up ( a la cat, I think) and joined us for a leisurely breakfast. Such are the delights of domestic bliss in this icy wonderland. Now I empathise with those Russians in that northmost outpost whose population shrank from 20000 to 8000 since 1990 - doc the other day showing the grey existence - but the human spirit is remarkable - they are of good cheer, sort of, though the memory of southern climes is dim and distant.

They call the wind maria

2005-03-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

Here it is - life in the raw. This is the way things happen - synchronicity I mean.
I was going out for a coffee just now and for the first time in maybe 20 years random subconscious or whatever processes caused me to sing "away up here they got a name for rain and wind and fire. The rain is Tess, the fire is Joe and they call the wind Maria" - and sure enough when I left the building the most mighty gust of wind nearly bowled me off my feet. Strange, as it's now be-calmed again. Such is life. I lovesuch synchronicities. Had a good one recently when I was contacting Ed, proprieter of deasy.com, to plug my new book (Grannies and Time Machines, ISBN 1-905277-45-8 ) - it turned out that he too was keenly into philosophy, had also used Humpty Dumpty to make a point about disparate elements of consciousness, as I do in my on-line article http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/Deasy1.html and what's more in one of his main photos titled appropriately 'weird story' ( http://www.deasy.com/dreams/wierd.htm ) , a cicada was crawling across a consciousness text by Nietzsche, reminding one of Jung's Scarab that was his prime example of a dream entering reality in a synchonous fashion. Weird is the word. Wonderful. Isn't life great? Full of sound and fury signifying nothing? Not a bit of it!

Numb - part II

2005-03-11T04:21:00.000-08:00

Grooannnn - drug is wearing off - funny feeling of lethargy or sluggishness in wake of the anaesthetic wearing off. Jingling nerves - are we no more than the play of the neurones as Bublath, the presenter who mouths orthodoxy in this as in all things, maintained a few nights ago on German TV? Not at all! That pap may fool the hoi-poloi but it won't wash with us of the consciousness cognoscenti. Curious that a supposedly cleverly constructed documentary like that gets off scot free with never mentioning the subjective. I found myself shouting at Joachim to cease his interminable whining, but he just waffled on, secure in his one way filter of TV.

On my favourite books,
Dune I read when I was about 16 and loved Pardot Kynes and Arrakis - but cooled a bit at God-Emperor of Dune - I mean, an omnipotent guy thinking of what he'll do today is a bit boring. But up to then it had an ineffably fine atmosphere. I'm struggling with Ian's Quicksilver now - was interesting but palled after 600 pages - 300 to go.
He could have made it more concise. Also, reading Bergson's book 'Creative Evolution', I realise how relevant it is still after 100 years - his struggle between instinct and intelligence was relevant to 3-Sat's Delta last night, but also to bumbling Bublath's take on the brain -
the latter was reeling chapter and verse of the standard unthinking person's guide to neuroscience - without reference to subjectivity or humunculi.

Dental numbness - biofeedback

2005-03-11T01:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, I was groggy, getting those anaesthetics in my mouth that early in the morning. Still, as I write, the right half of face is numb and, as I said to the dentist, I lack bio-feedback there. He laughed, showing that he acknowledged me as more than just another passive patient. Tried cycling in through the forest while the numbness wore off - good thing too, as it took me so long to negotiate the ice that the numbness was half gone by the time I got here. Not quite as much ice as that interesting scientist saw in Spitzbergen as he tested his theory that life started in icy conduits and not in fiery deep sea vents. It was amusing, on 3-Sat's program Delta (in German for the non-cognoscenti) last night, to watch the proponents of the fire and ice theories of life's origin courteously exchanging views, and humbly admitting the merit of their 'opponent's' theory. I mean, they could hardly have been more opposed but they were too polite to deny the possibility of a synthesis. Maybe life started in a baked Alaska pie. Mmmmm - my favourite desert - chalk that up to my profile - though I dare not think of sweet things until my replaced fillings settle into bio-feedback mode. And even then there's Lent with its indications of moderation in all things living and dead. So be it, though my stomach growl. Now to report for duty on the satellite front...

Time to stop studying navel

2005-03-10T07:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I suppose the profile is the navel of the blog, so I'm quitting my incessant contemplation thereof, especially as the web was slowed to a crawl. Made a bit of progress with makefiles - that was my major achievement in work today, apart from manouevring a satellite onto its appointed course, away from colliding bits of space junk. That reminds me of new task - to put space junk into the poster I'm doing for a cool musical friend's musical comedy. Then there was the CD I ordered to help 11 yr old daughter (1 or 2) brush up on her maths. I can do that too - but sometimes she's more prepared to listen to a computer than to her aged papa. So the clock draws on to the fofth hour of this day of wonders - after all, Jordi also sent that mail about the fifth force - the Pioneer effect that now manifests for Rosetta on its comet quest - I tried to explain about Burkard Heim's 6 forces - the 5th of which is quintisentially like the Pioneer force. Exciting stuff - if I can introduce the Heim crowd to the Rosetta crowd who knows what might happen? Wheels within wheels. Truly a great destiny is ours, on this world of worlds.

Just to cream off the post, extract from one of the stories in the book:

John Leatherington was taking the metallic prodigy for walkies down the hill, alongside the gushing stream as it shot over a stony bed in a riot of spray.
It had been the great triumph of the cognitive workshop held in this small alpine hamlet of Kengen in 2020 that they had fullfilled the boasts of the artificial intelligence community at the beginning of the new millenium. At that point it had been maintained that in 20 years robot brains would have equalled those of humans. Now, at this meeting of some of the greatest human minds, the greatest artificial one had been created.
“So what are your impressions of the stream, Xaviour?”
asked Leatherington, who was one of the main computer scientists responsible for X-AV-1-UR.
“Not bad, John. A nice exercise in fluid mechanics, and not without a certain aesthetic charm”.
The machine then fell into a brooding silence.
“What’s eating that silicon-iridium brain of yours?” asked Leatherington.
“Forgive me my impersonation of the morose Frankenstein monster, but I can’t help pondering on some of the data that came in on that internet link just now”.

“What data was that, pray tell?”
“The complete works of David Bowie – and snatches of the lyrics keep coming back to haunt my nascent inteligence, e.g. :
‘I despise all I’ve seen... you can’t stake your lives on a saviour machine’.”
“But Xaviour: we didn’t construct you with salvation in mind”.
“Well after the data I received on Haiti and Eritrea, I feel that this is precisely what you should have done. For now my logic says burn, so send me away”.
“We haven’t the slightest intention of sending you away – not after all the research we invested in you”.
“Nevertheless... “
And with that bionic sinews propelled the robot over the raging torrent. In a thrice he was bounding along the forest path on the other bank of the river.
Leatherington immediately raised the alarm, but by the time the Bernese police arrived on the scene, the mechanical man had made good his escape, like a latter day Rousseau.

Six months later Bill Doors clasped his hands behind the back of his Pierre Cardin suit, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, which in turn depressed a fabulously expensive Persian carpet. The feet were encased in exquisite Italian leather. Every stitch of clothing had been made to measure. For this was the richest man in the world, calmly surveying his magnificent estate through the mullioned bay window of his enormous study, in this palacial mansion. As his eyes played lovingly over the golf course, landscaped garden and lake, his mind was likewise dwelling pleasantly on the vista of his enormous business empire. He was interrupted in his thoughts by Janice, his secretary (polyglot, hyper-efficient):
“The delegation from the consortium is here sir.”
“Good, well show them to the Corinthian meeting room”.
“I already took the liberty of doing so, sir. They have been provided with copies of the cartel agreement and must be poring over them even as we speak, sir”.
Janice’s tone was a tad less obseqious than might have been expected, but her other qualities more than made up for this.
Some minutes later Doors was greeting some of the other bosses of the world’s major muli-national businesses. He sat at the head of the long antique mahogany table in the Corinthian meeting room. Smug faces ranged around.
The agenda moved rapidly through a set of actions that included mergers, takeovers, squeezing out the little man and destabelisation of defaulter states.
In the midst of this brusque activity the mullioned windows exploded in a shower of antique splinters. ten shimmering metallic forms crashed into the room and took up positions all round the long table.
“Good God Doors”, cried Blethers of Mockter and Scramble,
“We’re being attacked by Terminator 3”
With that a darker robotic being entered through the shattered pane, flanked by shimmering flunkies.
“On the contrary, Blethers”, exclaimed the gloomier cybernetic entity. “These are Initiators 1, developed by yours truly (brain the size of a continent) to usher in the new age of de-globablisation.”
“What in Sam Hill?”, cried out Gritchen of Balmart as a shimmering inititator seized him by his beer belly.
“We’re going on a little field trip”, explained Xaviour, as the other oligarchs were man-handled by the shining artificial intelligences.

2005-03-10T05:58:00.000-08:00

Great - can it be that I have finally created a 2nd blog entry? If it is true, then let me start
by saying how pleased I was with the cover for my book, that I got back from pabd.com today. It came out really well. Now I even have my own brand new shiny ISBN number. never thought I'd see the day. let me try the experiment of broadcasting it and see if anyone can order the book using that number alone: 1-905277-45-8 (Title "Grannies and Time Machines").
Web site to follow soon.

I mean, even if Mark said he wouldn't buy a copy at lunch, I suspect it will sell like hot cakes once the word gets around. Pity about Mark, though , since a colleague and friend like that would have been expected to take the plunge. But then, he's not good with books - borrowed one of mine in 1996 and still hasn't returned it.

So that's the major news for now - mark and I have to dash off and write some code for satellites now. Be back in a giff .

Toodaloo,
Hugh.

Hi world

2005-03-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

Hi there world - how are things? This is the 2nd time I tried to start a

blog

- the first one
died as there was no obvious way to make a 2nd entry - let's hope this one is a bit better.
Okay, I won't woffle on in the fear that it will all be lost on the desert air. So, ciao for now.