Piercing My Paradigm

Deep in Microspace

Bursting Forth

Looking up in a deep forest.

     The chill and dusk of winter has inspired me to dig out my Extreme Fractal Program and spend some weeks zooming in and out through mathematical algorithmic iterations for which we can thank Mandelbrot and Julia, and these are tied to computer programs that allow me to cruise through hypothetical universes at many scales and with an awesome complexity of colors and textures.

     Just after listening to Carl Sagan and Steven Hawkins describe multiple universes with multiple scales and dimensions, perhaps even laws of physics, I find my Mid-Twentieth Century academic mind was not prepared for this.     

     Only in 1980 when Benoit Mandelbrot put his fractal algorhythm to an IBM test, did we learn that there is order in chaos...that when we see chaos, it is because we haven't found the pattern; we're not looking at the right "ZOOM"   This expansion of my imagination allows a paradigm that says...

"Don't see order?; 

Then change your perspective!"

     For me, Mandelbrot set in motion a liberating chain of thoughts, for if the same fractal geometry that creates a spiraling spring fern has similar properties when seen as far away as a galaxy, then we can no longer deny a certain unity  between human ability to understand how nature programs creation...emergence as we now call it.

     Were all that not enough, the power of color to influence what we think we see is overwhelming is shown by the three images above, which are essentially from the same zoom, but have three different set of instructions for color and background.  It reassures my spirit to know that even in the infinite zooms of my cells, emergence of potential awareness exists.

• Rant relief, man with love for earth, for life, watching dysfunctional corporate leadership f____k with every personal right our forefather came for when the abandoned plutocratic European cultures with their Royal Corporate Domination of the world.
• --------------------------------HEALING________________________________
• 
  
• Stick your hands in the ground, 
• wet ground,
•  cold ground, 
• rich ground...
• ground you made to soil,
• with your own composted cow manure
• hauled by wheelbarrow.
• 
  
• Rub the mud on your nose, 
• and inhale your surrounding,
• Poke a hole in the soil, 
• push a spinach seed into the still,
• night frosted ground.
• Dream of bing cherries from the blossoms,
• Dream of heirloom tomatoes in the fall.
• 
  
• Push your filthy thumbs in your ears.
• Drown out that illusionary civilization 
• Brainwashed with advertisement and lobbying.
• 
  
• Shut out the noise of sirens!
•  the outer squabbles,
• The filth of political dialog in elections.
• Be  prepared to shout your anger,
• 
  
• As freedom,
• loses out to paranoia,
• and becomes virtually Illegal.
• 
  
• I'm thankful for a life
• Before surveillance cameras,
• Physically invasive airports, 
• Assumed guilt drug testing,
• Internet identity theft,
• Cell phones compulsively interrupting our lives, to drive us to compulsive response disorder 
• and the ability to focus for any length of time.
• A life before computers and drones,
• 
  
• Thanks, too, for our native ancestors
• Prior to us Caucasoids (White People) 
• To remind us what it would have taken,
• To have lived here sustainably.
• 
  
• As we've turned their garden of Eden only a few hundred years ago,
• Into quadratic subdivisions of green laws monoculturized by Roundup.
• 
  
• Enjoy the sun, 
• the rainbow, 
• the snowflakes, 
• the bowing trees,
• the moods of clouds,
• the scent of flowers, 
• the croaking of frogs, 
• the chirping of birds,
• for they could be gone tomorrow.

Contemposcribe 4-27-12

The Thinker 

Rodin

I am, therefore I think.Especially when I sit,What I see is then still.Details emerge.New associations sparkle.New perspectives light up.
Man am I and I am ManTwenty digits,Two arms,Two legs,Hands and feet.Self-mobilizing,
Now stationary,Now fist to chin,And hands to knee.Being,Not doing,An ancestral icon for me to ponder.

Peter Prehn

Apostrophes

'

     The apostrophe, like all punctuation, has a purpose in writing, but disrupts computer programming. and as such can't be used in an e-mail address.  But someone who didn't know that O'Ryan wasn't a geekspeak name, put an apostrophe in the name of one of my student's e-mail adresses, blocked the web pages I needed, to know the names and data about my students who were registered already 2 days into the quarter for my GED class. It was fixed a day later, but spun in motion another catastrophistic prophesy.

     Now an apostrophe may seem like a small matter, until you ask if a misplaced apostrophe could bring down the global network?  Creating network dysfunction is the mission of a whole new younger generation  of rebels with anarchistic tendencies, as in any era of dysfunctional societies.

     That network relies on Vigintillion (and yes that means:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  yes/no bytes, or ten to the 120th power, as defined in Europe, anyway.  These infinite numbers of yes/no bytes now rule the globe these days, to run our banks, our tax system, our finance system, our military, our electric grid, our communications grid, etc. etc.  Did I mention Nuclear bombs.

     Cataclysmic things can happen when someone can't or won't program.  And the solar system could also have a sun with nuclear energy having a flare or two at two or three times higher than usual, which for most knowledgeable people is not an if but when  event of a gigantic solar flare with intense magnetic fields crashed against our electrical/communication infrastructure the apostrophe wouldn't matter anymore, but in the meanwhile, any small error in programming has potentially huge consequences...especially when a hacker works hard to make it happen.

All of which is to say, from my perspective, that we've become more vulnerable to global collapse than at any time in our history, short of nuclear war.

It is really incredible to think of this global network  which is operating with a collective knowledge globally but which depends on nearly microscopic chips to contain more data than that unimaginable number of "yes-no" decisions...it's hard to believe this way of life can ultimately continue...yet we do nothing to plan for an alternative...is that sanity?

Hibernation Therapy

Cold feet,

The symbol of hesitation.

The Time for Sitting.

Feet against the heat,

Careful not to burn myself.

Coming is more darkness.

Coming is more cold.

Coming is an inner spiral,

Spinning out the new

Web of my paradigms.

Hibernation isn't necessarily,

Sleeping.

Sleeping isn't a coma.

Off comes all the camouflage,

The inner genuine me rules.

Thinning

     Thinning the lettuce, radishes, beets, and the other excesses of growth in the garden is a very challenging job.  Deciding which plants are healthyest, which ones need more room to grow, and which ones are the likely Darwin losers takes a lot of thought.  In this realm of my own Garden of Eden, I become the overlord that decides who will live and who will die.  Perhaps there should be an overlord for our planet as well.  Certainly, there will be no lettuce on the table if the remaining plants don't have all they need.  It's a little eerie to make these life and death decisions.

Poking Through

Poking through the debris of the past, leathery veins of a former year, dried cells once transforming sunshine to vitality of matter.

Easter has passed, I've only associated it with spring, flowers, egg hunts and a sense of renewal, while many see it primarily as the resurrection of God's offspring.  

Clutter in my house, clutter in my mind, past realities clinging like cobwebs and leaf skeletons make it harder to sort the electrons from the clutter in the closet.  Hard drives full of jpegs, files full of tax forms, closets full of clothes no longer apropo for the current lifestyle.  

But, inspired by spiky red shoots ripping through the  blanket of duff, ready to test the air and the season for another turn at the horizon.