Next slide, please

As you can see on slide 3, there will be 7 years of seals, trumpets, and bowls after the Rapture but before the Return of Christ - in Glory, at that. Not sure why he's gotta wait 7 years - why not come back right away? Maybe he's got other plans. Anyways, it's all here in this chart, which as you can see is very scientific. Next slide, please.

Maybe Jesus doesn't want to smell all the dead - in 7 years, one would expect the industrious survivors of the Rapture to have properly disposed of the many billions of bodies, as shown in this slide. Please note the last step which is properly filling death certificates and other information at Central Registration. Thank you, any questions? No? Thank you again.

NOW on ROBOT NEWSTANDS!

Oprah's conquest of all known forms continues unabated. Soon, there will be nothing left that is not "O'S".

This is our future in short order - artificial enhancements to the human body. First for need - bad needs/legs, amputated arms, but soon enough it will be done by choice, by people looking for upgrades. Imagine having a full tool kit contained within your robotic arm - what Contractor would not get it done? Or looking 25 years old for the next 100? It's coming, and the only question is how will we deal with it as a species. Cuz it's gonna get weird.

New Year's Eve in the Dawn of Apocalypse

Happy New Years! One of my favorite holidays, tainted only by the fact it's based on a Christian calendar. But I can rise above that. Of all the holidays, people are most open and friendly on this night, willing to kiss strangers in the Common - when else does that happen? Mardi Gras in New Orleans, perhaps. The best night - Halloween might run some competition, but it gets a little too serious and demanding. New Year's is all about the part-aying. But don't drink and drive kids! Except on rural country roads, then it's cool.

And why not drink and drive? We've got less than a year left before the dreaded MAYAN APOCALYPSE! December 21, 2012, and the World ends, by some means which is not clear. But there's a cosmic alignment involved for sure. So feast and and be merry while ye can, for surely DOOM is nigh.

I'll admit I used to half believe in this Mayan Apocalypse bullshit - but it was a long time ago, 1998 or so, and I happened upon a Weekly World News article that was quite convincing. After further research, it seemed likely the world would end in 2012, due to a MAGNETIC POLAR SHIFT.  Because it's true, the magnetic poles on Earth do shift on semi-regular schedules, with North becoming South and South North. Think what that would do to our electronics were it to happen? Frazizzled.

There are lots of ways, in fact, our World (that being our human existence, and not the World itself) could easily end, tomorrow in fact. Herewith is REDSHIRTS TOP TEN APOCALYPSES (not in order):

1. Asteroid Impact. This is inevitable. It will happen at some point, the only question is when. Tomorrow? A million years? Sometime in between? Who knows. We might have years of warning, or, even with our awesome technology, a killer asteroid could sneak up on us unawares and be on our doorstep in days.
2. Super Volcano. Also inevitable. There are a dozen or so super volcanoes on Earth that when they explode, are powerful enough to darken the skies with ash for years. Can you imagine how tough it would be to live on this planet without sunlight for 10 years? We'd starve.
3. Nuclear War. The most likely doomsday scenario. All it takes is some dumb Repuglican with his/her finger on the button and we're all doomed.
4. Solar storm. Also inevitable. Our reliance on electronics would cripple most of so called "modern" society. If strong enough, could toast most living things.
5. Gamma Ray Burst. If a star of certain mass goes supernova and happens to have one of its poles pointed directly at us, we could be in the line of a sight of a high mass, super powerful gamma ray burst that would fry most life on Earth.
6. Global Warming. Happening right now. The real deal and we'll find out how well we can deal with Change - no thanks, once again, to Repuglicans, the crazy fucks.
7. Magnetic Polar Shift. Also inevitable. An event that would have zero impact on a tribe living in the Amazonian rainforest, but which would devastate "modern" society.
8. Ice Age. One of the consequences of global warming could be a new ice age, ironically. Snowball Earth would freeze most life to death.
9. Geologic Instability. Also inevitable. Imagine all the plates of Earth undergoing a vibratory effect that levels anything over 30 feet tall.
10. Super Virus. A bacteria that proves lethal to any human that comes into contact. Easily enough to conceive of, and gosh darn we've got people researching the subject worldwide.

Scared? You should be (but of course shouldn't be). Life is a tenuous proposition on this planet, and we could be shaken off like so much lice. And so, take nothing for granted! There is nothing permanent here at all, in the least bit. Every moment is a gift and you should treat it that way. Let us pray:

Dear ambiguous New Age God, give my Chakras the Crystaline Energy to survive the coming Tribulation.

I don't believe in a prophesied apocalypse at all anymore, in case you can't tell. I worship Science now and believe you me, it's the only Faith that delivers.

Escape from your self

As always, click for big. It's glorious - all the colors of Trek nerds you could imagine. Look at the Boy Borg in the upper right.

When we dress up in costumes, we leave our normal world behind. This is a literal, physical feeling, one you can sense even when dressing up for a dinner at the Chez Fancy or going to one of them there Broadway shows. Different costumes for different events, as you fit the new mold of who you are supposed to be, then, and there. Going to a sporting event, for instance, requires a different costume than one for the opera, and it will make you feel like a different person. Perhaps.

If you agree so far, than, ask yourself this: What does this say about us? That we - the individuals we think of as "us", or, "I" - are actually largely constructed from the clothes we wear, and the circumstances we normally find ourselves. How could you argue for a permanent "you" if "you" can change simply by wearing a different costume? 


I would argue we, knowingly or not, use this dynamic as a social and personal release valve. Halloween, for another example, allows you to confront the darker side of life, in a fun and socially accepted way. You delve into it, knowing you'll be right out. You get to take a break from your own life, escape from your self, and perhaps see the world with new eyes.


It's like a battery recharge, and the more often you can break out of the mundane, the more fresh you'll be. This is the point of many of our costumed rituals.


So, live long and prosper, Star Trek (and all affiliated) nerds. Enjoy the liberation which is the release of self. 


This is the near ultimate aim of Buddhism, by the way: Letting go of the ego, understanding what it really is in the process: An illusion. A costume. A mask.

Also, too: I was on this same not London Bridge back in the banner year of 2004:

Scales of Perspective (Let's Go!)

Here we go - let's bring it home. Here we have the proton and neutron, the building blocks of the nucleus, which, combined with electrons, make up all atoms. Inside the proton and neutron are quarks, which come in colors. What makes up a quark, you might ask? So far, according to standard theory, nothing. According to String Theory, strings. Now, at this scale of perspective, quarks aren't really "things", but like electrons, they exist, believe it or not, more like "probability waves". Here's another picture that might illustrate that better:

 See? They're kinda there, kinda here, kinda moving all around all the time. Anyways, quarks make up protons and neutrons, protons and neutrons make up the core of an atom:

 Again, with the fuzziness - the gray clouds outside the nucleus are the "probability waves" of the electrons, which, like quarks, are kinda here, kinda there. But the nucleus is our first "real" thing that we can understand at our macro level. But consider! Every atom that makes up every bit of matter you see is 99% empty space. It is only the Electromagnetic field generated by the electrons that gives it the impression of solidity - fields, not "things". Atoms make up everything we know, so let's skip way up to the next level of this thesis (Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form), the stellar realm:

 Its our new friend, the Oort Cloud - but, like the atom itself, each star is just a tiny bit ensconced in a far larger cloud - a shell - of particles that are here and there. In this case, frozen ice and rock, but you see where I'm going with this, yes? Next up, a picture I just posted!

 So, again, like the stellar neighborhood, and like the atom itself, our galaxies exist as tiny specks amongst a far larger sphere of Dark Matter. And just as a reminder at the scale of perspective we are currently talking about, here's a yearbook photo:

Every little box here is a picture of a galaxy, and this is just a tiny sample. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies out there (maybe many, many more), each containing hundreds of billions of stars. Some perspective, eh? But we're not stopping there:

 The Multiverse - just a theory at this point, but everyone seems to be heading towards acceptance of it quite quickly. Note, that our entire Universe might just be a small part of a larger sphere which in turn is contained within a still larger sphere which itself is contained within an even bigger sphere of existence.... and where it ends, who knows? Maybe it goes on forever. 

Have I blown your mind yet? I just blew my own - in fact, I've been living in a constant state of awed wonder since coming to appreciate these levels of perspective. This is where we live! This is our existence - we are part and parcel of this grand construction.

And in this scheme, does the guy who cut you off at the light really matter? Does anything really matter? No - objectively, how could it? We're all just dust in the wind.


Or, different answer. Better answer: All that matters is what you want to matter. In fine Existential tradition, we - humans - bring meaning to these scales of perspective. We choose how we want to perceive it, how we interpret it, how it makes us feel. You may not be able to change the multiverse we all live in, but you can change how you think about it, how you feel about it.


And that's all the freedom we can ever have: How we choose to deal with these infinities.

Yeah?  So choose wisely. And this is the task I've chosen for myself, and am sharing with you if you're willing to follow: The exploration of perspective. Hope you enjoy the ride.

From the diary of a madman

I scribbled this in between Rummy 500 games, and it reflects my take on the current thought in physics on the shape of the local spacetime bubble we live in (click for big). And remember: this is where we live, our home, our reality. There are also, no doubt, other spacetime bubbles, both separate from ours, and so far apart they can't ever be seen. And that too is our environment, our reality - our entire Universe might be just a bubble in sea of other bubbles in a higher dimension. But let's just focus on our Universe, our bubble.

In the picture above, 1. represents our expanding spacetime bubble, our Universe. From a conception point of infinite density and almost zero space, no time, all was born in an "explosion", then vast inflation. This expansion continues, and on the largest of scales, all matter is spreading apart. Give or take a trillion years and our Universe will be a vast bubble of emptiness, with all matter/energy degraded to it's least energetic, least dense form. Nothingness.

Simultaneously, in 2. above, as a subset of 1. gravity creates vast spiral depressions in spacetime, and at the largest scales these depressions encompass billions and billions of galaxies, and perhaps even more. Everything falling down, always orbiting something deeper in the hole. From the Earth we live perched on the edge of a Universal whirlpool, swirling ever further down - this is the inherent reality to all spacetime we could ever exist in. And remember, that with increasing gravity is slowing time, and thus time stops somewhere in our reality. But where....

Leading to 1a., purely hypothetical, which shows that at every black hole - and they get ever bigger and bigger - a new Universe is "Big Banged" out the other side, and thus expanding and creating stars and other black holes and galaxies and thus other Universes that "Big Bang" out of these black holes, so and such forever. This, too, is our reality, our environment, what we exist in. We are part of it all.

2a. is just a more basic illustration of the gravity well we're all and everything perched within, and you can think of it exactly like a great whirlpool in the ocean, and we're all spinning along at some level of it. Except of course this whirlpool exists at all points, all times in space. It's everywhere and everything. Falling.

The middle section graphs some divergent relationships - and that's what our reality, our very existence is all about: Imbalances. We exist because of imperfections, flaws in a perfect design. Because one side is hotter than another, because one little bit of space is denser than another, because there were basic imbalances at all levels of reality as we "Big Banged" these imbalances expanded as the Universe itself expanded, and became our reality of Motion - imbalance creates motion, as hot seeks the cold, less dense seeks the dense, high frequency seeks low... everything seeks the perfection of balance, I suppose. But if we ever get there, it will be in that trillion years hence when all matter/energy is spread out, completely and evenly throughout a vastly larger Universe. Nothingness. So who needs perfection? Embrace the imperfect, as it is the very reason we're here.

And thus we reach the end of a 40 minute quickie. I don't claim to propose anything new with this, just a summation of what I've gathered is current thought on "our reality".

Which, again, is just one of many. It's mind boggling to me when I consider the truth of our existence - so ever small, and yet, here we are, talking about it. Big big.

Precious Little Snowflakes

As I've said many times in many ways, the closer you look at something, the weirder it gets. In fact, when you focus on anything directly, it's always weird - you ever really look at your ears, for instance? Anyways, some fun lovin' scientists - in the name of Science - started collecting snowflakes under a high powered electron microscope, and here are the results. They've got a website! In the picture of above, we're going smaller and smaller. But we can always go smaller still:

Go Saints! The Seahawks don't deserve to be in the playoffs.

 Further magnification - and gosh darn, it's hard not see these pictures and think someone was building these structures. They look incredibly man-made like.

Speaking of - look at this incredible microscopic ice crystal. Damn! As you can see in the chart below, with decreasing temperates/water saturation, the crystals take a variety of different shapes:

 Which leads me to my conclusion: Ice 9. Remember that? Read "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut if not. One of my favorite - perhaps THE favorite - book ever. But in sooth, there are different types of ice. Imagine a world where ice is as hard as granite, and methane flows like water - no need to imagine, as it really exists: Titan. Sirens of.

Tiny Octopus

Look at this cute guy! But don't be deceived: Octopi are wicked smart, and if we don't keep a close eye on 'em, it's likely they'll eventually form some alliance with the dolphins, whales, and monkeys to overthrow us. BE PREPARED!


Seriously, though: Wicked smart. I saw a special on octopii and it showed how one octopus in a tank, watching another octopus in a separate tank navigate a puzzle to get a treat - time and time and time again the octopus who was watching would instantly solve the puzzle, proving they ability to learn by watching: a powerful ability.

Also, look how translucent this guy is. The chameleon powers of some octopus are simply amazing, but when I look at this little guy, I can see right through him, which reminds me of a fundamental truth: We (all life) is empty. Empty spaces in atoms, in molecules, in organs, in skin. We are 70% water! If you were told anything else was 70% water, you'd instantly conclude it would be a very liquid, but perhaps viscous substance. I bet you don't think that about yourself though.

Perspective, as always. It's the key to wisdom, I think.

Defined by Nothing (and Everything)

This is a brand spanking new simulation of how scientists think quasar jets behave. First, some definitions: It's now believed that quasars, blazars, and radio galaxies are all actually the same phenomena: Jets of matter streaming away from the active black hole at the center of the galaxy (as pictured above). We give this phenomena different names due to where in relation we are to this jet - head on, and it's a blazar; at an angle, it's a quasar; at 90 degrees, it's a radio galaxy. A nice analogy is the old saw about blind men describing an elephant - each will have a different description for the same thing.

Anyways, black holes are no longer thought of as simple engines of destruction - as shown above, not only do they spit out a great deal of matter, but they are active agents in the creation of not only stars, but galaxies of stars. Come back with me, to the beginning of time.....

It's a little bit after the Big Bang. Shit is hot, and dense, but uniformly blah. Stuff keeps spreading out and cooling down bit by bit, until the first atoms form (hydrogen and helium). Cooling and spreading continues, and now we have incredibly large clouds of hydrogen and helium, which begin to form denser pockets. These dense pockets continue to get denser as gravity draws matter to matter, until POOF! A star is born (consider: There was a 1st star), and another, and another, and so on. But these early stars lived fast and hot, and died young. Not long after they started forming, we enter the era of the Supernova, which must have been extreme. All these young stars exploded, creating all kinds of new elements in the process, but also, and most critically, creating the first black holes.

This is still not long after the moment of creation. Black holes start doing their thing - sucking down matter and energy. In so doing, many, many, many more stars are created, and some of these explode, forming more black holes, which merge with other black holes, and so on and so on until we have a supermassive black hole, and with this, we have our first Galaxy, which is really nothing but a collection of stars in orbit around a central black hole.


So, in conclusion for now, everything about our reality was formed in large part during this era of black hole creation. We owe our existence to this phenomena of apparent absolute destruction, which has "nothing" lurking at its core.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Also, more spirals.

Form equals function

The function is to inspire awe and wonder. Also will work well for Hollywood Pew-Pew Movie.