'The universe is made of stories, not atoms'
(Muriel Rukeyser)
so is it that we run a simulation of numbers on a computer, and think we've come up with a set of data that coincides with the ACTUAL beginnings of the universe...!? but the model by which we run them by is made up by US -- so if anything in our model changes, it means these values would have to be recomputed from scratch should any 'universal constant' in the model happen to change.
but who says the universe is composed first of atoms? and then somehow, out of the movements of these indifferent bits of whirling eneregy, then we should then miraculously experience a qualitative change due to their mutual whirling -- and then somehow by the movements this way, and that that way, all of the sudden we should become AWAKE...!?!?
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. * Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
* My contention that we must think before we can examine thinking
might easily be countered by the apparently equally valid contention
that we cannot wait with digesting until we have first observed
the process of digestion. This objection would be similar to that
brought by Pascal against Descartes, when he asserted that we might
also say, 'I walk, therefore I am.' Certainly I must go straight
ahead with digesting and not wait until I have studied the physiological
process of digestion. But I could only compare this with the study
of thinking if, after digestion, I set myself not to study it by thinking,
but to eat and digest it. It is after all not without reason that,
whereas digestion cannot become the object of digestion,
thinking can very well become the object of thinking.
(Rudolf Steiner, PoF3) ";
sure they had mice -- but neither xerox nor englebart had a mouse ball...:-P (just two rotary wheels along X/Y axis) -- the point being relavant to the development of input devices.
when douglas englebart invented the mouse (and windows, and networking, and hypertext, etc.), he made the first machines to use a mouse and a one-handed keyboard so that both hands would be utilized.
then xerox parc had the alto, but their mouse didn't have a mouse ball -- it was apple that invented the mouse ball, and shipped the first commercial computer that came with a mouse as standard.
one of the devices that came out in the late 1980's was a device called 'the bat' -- a one-handed keyboard -- you can still by this device here.
> Microsoft understands money and they know how to fight it and with it. > What they don't understand is how to fight something which doesn't show up > on their financial slide rule.
conventional wisdom looks at the heart, and sees a pump. yet, realising it is contrary to everything has ever told me, i can think of another possibility: like the build-up of sand by the action of waves, we could explain the heart such as -- THE MOVEMENT EXISTS, AND THE ORGAN FORMS AROUND IT.
everything that you rely upon that is external to yourself will fall away and crumble to dust. the only thing that remains is what you make the effort to retain in the memory of your experiences.
to spread FUD about AC electricity, he went around electrocuting dogs to scare people away from using AC.
During the 1880s, electric service was just beginning to be sold to towns and cities. Thomas Edison and his companies used direct current (DC). George Westinghouse and his companies used alternating current (AC). Both Edison and Westinghouse tried to convince potential customers of the superiority of their systems. Edison and his staff used an AC generator to electrocute dozens of dogs, cats, even cows and horses in an attempt to demonstrate that Westinghouse's equipment was dangerous. Edison's lobbying was successful and the Medico-Legal Society, charged by NY Department of Prisons with designing the Electric Chair...
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. (Thomas Alva Edison)
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour.
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
Re:legal grafitti..
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 4, Informative
we have something of the same here in toronto. there are places which are known for their grafitti, and i've seen the artists work right on the 'designated' (if i can say that) buildings, frame and square it up nice and leave the buildings beside them alone (like apartments).
there's a place that runs up behind queen street which we call 'grafitti alley' -- it always gets the best work, and there's a grafitti convention every summer, where the best artists come and do their stuff. when the pope came to visit, one of the people commisioned some of the youngsters to do their garage door -- and they did a nice job of guys playing basketball; another fellow did an incredible memorial to martin luther king and gandhi -- i see people going down there with cameras taking pictures, some of them are so good, and they're always changing. quite a number of the local restaurants have commissioned local grafitti artists to do the signs for their stores - hand painting, allows them to practice their craft -- a lot of the grafitti artists are quite good, if you give them a chance and a place to paint, why not help them be their best? when they're supported by the local community, these artists can also make a positive contribution to the urban landscape.
seriously -- why waste money on gadgets that fail -- a goat will keep your lawn trim, eats weeds first and grass last. just like bikes are faster and more reliable than a segway.
-- Interview with Jonathan Ive (designer of the iMac) --
Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good, stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'
By contrast, he says, 'you won't be able to find a single thing on an Apple that hasn't had thought put into it'...
With the first iMac the goal wasn't to look different, but to build the best integrated consumer computer we could. If as a consequence the shape is different, then that's how it is. The thing is, it's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to do with the new iMac.'
(THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, Interview with Jonathan Ive,
Charles Arthur talks to the designer of the iMac, January 14 2002)
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it.
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
(Muriel Rukeyser)
A song ain't nothin in the world but a story
just wrote with music to it. (Hank Williams Sr)
music is composed of notes and sounds, yet they are the substance of expression, and not the music itself.
stories -- you love someone, they leave, you feel loss, pain, grief. something happens, you're happy, joy, love - your father may aggravate you, you have an argument, you try and listen, you resolve it; you find a friend, you get along, because of empathy of points of view -- our lives are composed of stories.
in the happy and the sad, in the alternation of major and minor notes, the making and leaving of spaces, in the harmony and disonance, sympathy of feelings aroused by the experiences in story of our lives gives rise to stories in the expression of music.
music - like fairy tales - doesn't tell the story in a realistic photographic form, but tells the story from the emotional aspect. empathetic sympathy and identification with ones own story and life experience within the sequence of notes gives rise to enjoyment of a song.
while algorithms provide a structure that is used by musicians in telling their stories, good music comes from the expression of these experiences, and the greatest musicians were able to do this with the greatest eloquence.
an algorithmic pattern may certainly be the producer of a sequence of notes in time -- in which one can find more or less musical pleasure depending on what one brings to it -- yet without a life history of experience to inform these notes with stories -- the music is left dead and lifeless -- the facade of song -- a charade of music; and that is true of any music that isn't played with FEELING behind it.
All one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
(John Ruskin)
most users hate passwords -- its just one more useless piece of information they resent having to remember in order to get things done.
for example, i was trying to migrate my dad from mac OS9 to OSX, and he refused to use OSX because it required a login whereas OS9 didn't - in his home situation, it was just an extra impediment standing between him and using the machine to geth things done. of course, i set the auto-login feature for him, but the passwords fundamentally annoy him.
he complained that as far as he was concerned that he already had a password for his email, and adding a second password on top of that for a login (what!? a password to turn the machine on -- i don't want it!) was just going from bad to worse. so i reminded him that if he gets email, he already uses a password, and with the keychain, he would still need to remember only one password for the login, and the email would pick-up off the keychain -- meaning that his password load would not double as he feared.
he still refuses to to switch to OSX from OS9, 'because of all those #$%#$% permission passwords -- why can't i just get at my own hard disk in my own house!?' -- to a geek on the internet, the necesity of passwords is clear. but for the average home user they're just a pain that gets in the way.
http://www.thebreeze.org/archives/4.14.03/news/n ew s1.shtml | | Senior John Templeton in his thesis entitled "Bioremediation | of Diesel Contaminated Soil with the use of Mushrooms," | discussed his research with the oyster mushroom and how | he used it in attempts to remove diesel fuel from contaminated | soil specimens. | | According to Templeton, diesel fuel is made up of complex | hydrocarbons, which have double carbon bonds, thus making | them hard to degrade. However, he said mushrooms are a type | of decomposer and are known to both breakdown and absorb | various compounds, including certain petroleum products.
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour. "
| THE SUDDEN FLASH OF INSIGHT OCCURS WHEN solvers engage distinct | neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections | that previously eluded them.
maybe its the other way around -- perhaps the distinct neural processes occur when one has the flash of insight.
(but anyone who starts with the kantian presuppositions must reject that idea).
Slashdot Mirror
> The basic cosmological assumption that the universe is homogenous
> has been falsified by observation.
true! everywhere it is differentiated at every level of detail.
j.
'The universe is made of stories, not atoms'
(Muriel Rukeyser)
so is it that we run a simulation of numbers on a computer,
and think we've come up with a set of data that coincides
with the ACTUAL beginnings of the universe...!?
but the model by which we run them by is made up by US --
so if anything in our model changes, it means these values would
have to be recomputed from scratch should any 'universal constant'
in the model happen to change.
but who says the universe is composed first of atoms?
and then somehow, out of the movements of these indifferent
bits of whirling eneregy, then we should then miraculously
experience a qualitative change due to their mutual whirling --
and then somehow by the movements this way, and that that way,
all of the sudden we should become AWAKE...!?!?
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation
of thoughts about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins
with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so,
it is already confronted by two different sets of facts:
the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place
in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
in the animal organs. * Just as he attributes mechanical and organic
effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances
with the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem
from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter
instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting point.
How does matter come to think about its own nature?
Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject,
his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and
indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic
conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from
one place to another.
* My contention that we must think before we can examine thinking
might easily be countered by the apparently equally valid contention
that we cannot wait with digesting until we have first observed
the process of digestion. This objection would be similar to that
brought by Pascal against Descartes, when he asserted that we might
also say, 'I walk, therefore I am.' Certainly I must go straight
ahead with digesting and not wait until I have studied the physiological
process of digestion. But I could only compare this with the study
of thinking if, after digestion, I set myself not to study it by thinking,
but to eat and digest it. It is after all not without reason that,
whereas digestion cannot become the object of digestion,
thinking can very well become the object of thinking.
(Rudolf Steiner, PoF3) ";
sure they had mice -- but neither xerox nor englebart had a mouse ball... :-P
(just two rotary wheels along X/Y axis) -- the point being relavant to the development of input devices.
j.
when douglas englebart invented the mouse (and windows, and networking, and hypertext, etc.), he made the first machines to use a mouse and a one-handed keyboard so that both hands would be utilized.
then xerox parc had the alto, but their mouse didn't have a mouse ball -- it was apple that invented the mouse ball, and shipped the first commercial computer that came with a mouse as standard.
one of the devices that came out in the late 1980's was a device called 'the bat' -- a one-handed keyboard -- you can still by this device here.
regards,
j
> Microsoft understands money and they know how to fight it and with it.
> What they don't understand is how to fight something which doesn't show up
> on their financial slide rule.
"In this your Nothing I hope to find my All.
(Goethe - Mephistopheles in Faust)
all the way -- with you steve.
the world has a lot to thank you for,
a lot of people are glad that you are well!
like this...
conventional wisdom looks at the heart, and sees a pump.
yet, realising it is contrary to everything has ever told me,
i can think of another possibility: like the build-up of sand
by the action of waves, we could explain the heart such as --
THE MOVEMENT EXISTS, AND THE ORGAN FORMS AROUND IT.
best regards,
j
everything that you rely upon that is external to yourself
will fall away and crumble to dust. the only thing that remains
is what you make the effort to retain in the memory of your experiences.
> your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success
that's why its called 'the collective'...
edison was the bill gates of his time.
to spread FUD about AC electricity, he went around
electrocuting dogs to scare people away from using AC.
During the 1880s, electric service was just beginning to be sold to
towns and cities. Thomas Edison and his companies used direct current (DC).
George Westinghouse and his companies used alternating current (AC).
Both Edison and Westinghouse tried to convince potential customers of
the superiority of their systems. Edison and his staff used an AC generator
to electrocute dozens of dogs, cats, even cows and horses in an attempt to
demonstrate that Westinghouse's equipment was dangerous. Edison's lobbying
was successful and the Medico-Legal Society, charged by NY Department of
Prisons with designing the Electric Chair...
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
(Thomas Alva Edison)
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once
with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found
the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings,
knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him
ninety per cent of his labour.
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
we have something of the same here in toronto.
there are places which are known for their grafitti,
and i've seen the artists work right on the 'designated'
(if i can say that) buildings, frame and square it up nice
and leave the buildings beside them alone (like apartments).
there's a place that runs up behind queen street
which we call 'grafitti alley' -- it always gets the best work,
and there's a grafitti convention every summer, where the
best artists come and do their stuff. when the pope came
to visit, one of the people commisioned some of the
youngsters to do their garage door -- and they did
a nice job of guys playing basketball; another fellow
did an incredible memorial to martin luther king and
gandhi -- i see people going down there with cameras
taking pictures, some of them are so good, and they're
always changing. quite a number of the local restaurants
have commissioned local grafitti artists to do the signs
for their stores - hand painting, allows them to practice
their craft -- a lot of the grafitti artists are quite good,
if you give them a chance and a place to paint, why not
help them be their best? when they're supported by the
local community, these artists can also make a positive
contribution to the urban landscape.
best regards,
j
if they're 'thinking for themselves', then why'd JPL have to programme them?
'ignore that man behind the curtain!' (the wizard of oz)
j
the 'Die Warteschleife' post is really quite good, funny and relevant,
if you are a german-english slashdot reader. why is it marked 'Score:0'?)
run it through babelfish, or listen to the mp3 that is linked in the post.
its hilarious!
j.
seriously -- why waste money on gadgets that fail -- a goat will keep your lawn trim, eats weeds first and grass last. just like bikes are faster and more reliable than a segway.
regards,
j
-- Interview with Jonathan Ive (designer of the iMac) --
Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky
beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real
function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good,
stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think
that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'
By contrast, he says, 'you won't be able to find a single thing on an
Apple that hasn't had thought put into it'...
With the first iMac the goal wasn't to look different, but to build the
best integrated consumer computer we could. If as a consequence the shape
is different, then that's how it is. The thing is, it's very easy to be
different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to
do with the new iMac.'
(THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, Interview with Jonathan Ive,
Charles Arthur talks to the designer of the iMac, January 14 2002)
so many people think that art is just about how things 'LOOK',
but true art arises where form and function are integral --
-- design is not veneer - steve jobs interview in fortune magazine --
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer.
It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa.
But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design.
Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up
expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.
The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or the shape of the shell.
The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer
in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it
is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
like it.
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
(Muriel Rukeyser)
A song ain't nothin in the world but a story
just wrote with music to it. (Hank Williams Sr)
music is composed of notes and sounds, yet they are
the substance of expression, and not the music itself.
stories -- you love someone, they leave, you feel loss, pain, grief.
something happens, you're happy, joy, love - your father may
aggravate you, you have an argument, you try and listen,
you resolve it; you find a friend, you get along, because of
empathy of points of view -- our lives are composed of stories.
in the happy and the sad, in the alternation of major
and minor notes, the making and leaving of spaces,
in the harmony and disonance, sympathy of feelings
aroused by the experiences in story of our lives gives
rise to stories in the expression of music.
music - like fairy tales - doesn't tell the story in a realistic
photographic form, but tells the story from the emotional aspect.
empathetic sympathy and identification with ones own story and
life experience within the sequence of notes gives rise to
enjoyment of a song.
while algorithms provide a structure that is used by
musicians in telling their stories, good music comes from
the expression of these experiences, and the greatest
musicians were able to do this with the greatest eloquence.
an algorithmic pattern may certainly be the producer of
a sequence of notes in time -- in which one can find
more or less musical pleasure depending on what one
brings to it -- yet without a life history of experience to
inform these notes with stories -- the music is left dead
and lifeless -- the facade of song -- a charade of music;
and that is true of any music that isn't played with FEELING
behind it.
All one's life is music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time.
(John Ruskin)
You can't say civilization doesn't advance,
for in every war they kill you a new way.
(Will Rogers)
j
bikes will ALWAYS be cheaper, faster, and more reliable than a segway.
some day they're going to build whole village based around those things (bikes!)
best regards,
john
toronto commuter - winter and summer - three years.
most users hate passwords -- its just one more useless piece of information they resent having to remember in order to get things done.
for example, i was trying to migrate my dad from mac OS9 to OSX, and he refused to use OSX because it required a login whereas OS9 didn't - in his home situation, it was just an extra impediment standing between him and using the machine to geth things done. of course, i set the auto-login feature for him, but the passwords fundamentally annoy him.
he complained that as far as he was concerned that he already had a password for his email, and adding a second password on top of that for a login (what!? a password to turn the machine on -- i don't want it!) was just going from bad to worse. so i reminded him that if he gets email, he already uses a password, and with the keychain, he would still need to remember only one password for the login, and the email would pick-up off the keychain -- meaning that his password load would not double as he feared.
he still refuses to to switch to OSX from OS9, 'because of all those #$%#$% permission passwords -- why can't i just get at my own hard disk in my own house!?' -- to a geek on the internet, the necesity of passwords is clear. but for the average home user they're just a pain that gets in the way.
john penner
(toronto).
low-tech oyster mushrooms eat diesel fuel:
n ew s1.shtml
Bioremediation of Diesel Contaminated Fuel with Mushrooms
http://www.thebreeze.org/archives/4.14.03/news/
|
| Senior John Templeton in his thesis entitled "Bioremediation
| of Diesel Contaminated Soil with the use of Mushrooms,"
| discussed his research with the oyster mushroom and how
| he used it in attempts to remove diesel fuel from contaminated
| soil specimens.
|
| According to Templeton, diesel fuel is made up of complex
| hydrocarbons, which have double carbon bonds, thus making
| them hard to degrade. However, he said mushrooms are a type
| of decomposer and are known to both breakdown and absorb
| various compounds, including certain petroleum products.
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once
with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found
the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory
and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labour. "
(Nikola Tesla, New York Times, October 19, 1931)
"Just as the eye percieves colours and the ear sounds,
so thinking percieves ideas; it is an organ of perception. "
(Goethean Science)
| THE SUDDEN FLASH OF INSIGHT OCCURS WHEN solvers engage distinct
| neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections
| that previously eluded them.
maybe its the other way around -- perhaps the distinct neural
processes occur when one has the flash of insight.
(but anyone who starts with the kantian presuppositions
must reject that idea).
regards,
john
If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it,
and spend your time serving it.
(Marion Zimmer Bradley, 'The Forbidden Tower')
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems
of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
(Antoine De Saint-Exupery)
regards,
john