*impulse

Fractal Geometry To Guide Reactor Construction

Fractal Reactor, 2000, model/sculpture

As opposed to design, architecture and engineering's typical limiting factor, Euclidean Geometry.

Such are the premises and theories, aspirations and promises, of the scientartist, Todd Siler, a creator whose ideas and works I was first exposed to earlier this century.

It is sort of like he is whirling in an endless loop, circa 1974, with a push from 1999, that finally came around in its angular gyre to be monumentally relevant today.

Prius meets Logan's Run.
Chaos theory meets Three Mile Island.

The style and aesthetic, which may be an acquired taste for some, but is worth it, is generally close to O'Keefe meets Frankenthaler meets Kandinsky meets Duchamp meets earth science text book illustrations meets senseless doodling.

Some more of Siler's art for technology's sake:

Below Clouds Of Consciousness

A Truizm

The Lazy Quantum Cup Rinse Paradox

   

Let's say I have two cups from the night before, one that contained soda and one that contained dry cereal, and I want to have soda and cereal again tonight, and, most importantly, I am lazy, so I do not feel like washing both cups.

So, I will wash, at most, one cup.

What should I do?

Solution below:

Wash the cereal cup and use it for soda.
Rinse the soda cup and use it for cereal.

Why? It is easier to wash the cereal cup, and, thus it will take less energy to clean and make ready for any usage, including a beverage, whereas the soda cup will take more energy to clean thoroughly, but, with just a rinse, it becomes usable for cereal, which does not absorb the cup's residue the same way that a beverage does.

There is something deep and universal here.
There is a law of nature that I do not see but feel. The inversion. The dreamstate.
Rods. Champ. Inner Earth Beings. Steve Wozniak.
The surreal holographic redundancy.

They make me walk along the moonlit path and look up at the stars in wonder, with carnival-adoring Whitman as my guide.

Soda: Cherry Coke Zero
Cereal: Honey Nut Cheerios

Even Spiders Are Getting Into This Vegetarian Thing

Bagheera kiplingi steal vegetarian food items, such as nubbins, from the ants that co-habitate acacia trees with them.

Read about it here.

Renaissance Geek Learning Aid, Part I

A few summaries, lists, binary couplings, and silly mnemonics to gently reinforce knowledge and understanding of the arts, sciences, and humanities:

Very very short history of early man:
Paleo-Neo-Bronze-Iron

This one's painful but, perhaps for that reason, almost unforgettable:
'Lipids aint fun. Their O to H aint 2 to 1'

Some gauzy contrasts:

1. Impressionism :: Post Impressionism ... Fleeting :: Permanence
2. Rationalism :: Empiricism ... Deductive :: Inductive

Said in a whiny voice:
'Species change over time, Cuvier.'

Because they kinda sorta rhyme:

1. Genus Linnaeus
2. Vesalius the Anatomist
3. Leuwenhoek the Microscope
4. Evolution Hutton

Copernicus' biggie:
Using math to prove his heliocentric hypothesis.

Classicism vs. Romanticism:

1. objective vs. subjective
2. Inspiration: Greco-Roman vs. medieval-folk-dream-exotic
3. reason vs. imagination

That crazy unconscious:
Schelling knew it was there and that it was big, but Freud mapped it.

Three noteworthy characteristics of DaVinci's paintings:

1. mysterious landscapes
2. atmospheric perspective
3. scientific study of facial gestures

Victorian glimpse of the alienation and disillusionment of the modern world:
Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach

A few critical perspectives:

1. Structuralism: relative difference
2. New Criticism: all interpretations are equal

A mnemonic to help remember three of the main themes of the romantic period:
'I freely express my feelings as I commune with nature because I am a visionary genius'

Ancient Athens was democratic, but what was missing?
The social contract: The Magna Carta, The Constitution

Heard of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but not quite sure what they admired so much before Raphael?
'Twas the detailed depictions of nature.

Thus ends this brief sampler.
Coming soon: Part 2.

A Delightfully Fractallized Universe

Fractal Universe at New Science

Is this similar to finding patterns in clouds, cut wood, and ink blots? The metaphysics of fractal patterns is difficult to really 'get', though, in a basic sense, fractals are quite simple.

Fractals, holograms, cellular automata, mechanical clocks: all the models that are the universe, all that are clanking, sweeping, quantized and analog, are quite beautiful in their own peculiar ways. They are all Newtonians. They are all light.

Though having lost some of their freshness appeal, fractals will yield surprises for decades to come, and, long after novel abstractions and mechanisms yield new galactic analogs, the universe will pulse.

Jade Use in Mesoamerica

Similar in color to water and vegetation, the Mesoamericans associated jade with life and death.
Trace element types and amounts present affect the overall color of jade.
Jade ranked high on the Mayan Mohs Hardness Scale, being the second hardest material known to them.
Opacity ranges from nearly transparent to fully opaque.

A fascinating History Channel-style featurette on Wikipedia.

Link: Jade use in Mesoamerica - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Photo is by John Hill and is of a jade Mayan pectoral decoration from the classical period.

Doubting Daydreams

When the hermit doubts the complexity of the psychic machines he conjures when he is not in an elevated intellectual state, it is similar to doubting daydreams from an unprepared vantage.

This will be developed and expounded upon. What is the correlation between daydreams and psychic constructs, their elaboration and their relevancy, all based on how consciously focused and souped up you have to be upon their genesis.

For now, I will leave it to the discerning metaphysician and the poet. What are thine insights into this  matter?

Past Life Recall

It always seemed to defy a sense of self and of personality, nature, long term memory, etc., but, today, I saw it from a useful vantage:
How one can be the same person from day to day and week to week, but change viewpoints, have abrupt mind alterations brought on by trauma, mental illness, etc., and yet, still be the same person?

With this in mind, it is easy to subjectively become the person who suddenly realizes he was someone else in a past life, who suddenly becomes more like that someone else, while still being the same self. I am who I am now. It bothers me that I will think wholly different things in an hour, but that person in an hour will be me.

Do these mysteries lean toward brain=mind or toward mind>brain?
Not sure because I am foggy-minded and cannot coalesce concise thoughts, but, I am not fighting this, just sort of letting mind drift unfocused. Not quite negative capability, but quite useful for the muse in my realms.