Links for Later 7-26-13

1. SF writer David Brin's response to NSA surveillance. 
2. James Altucher's advice on how publishing 3.0 worked for him, and how you can publish a best selling eBook.
3. How Welcome To Night Vale became a phenomenon thanks to Tumblr, and other uncanny stories.
4. The Rape Joke.

John Zorn - Hermetic Organ, St. Paul's

Opening up all the pipes.

John Zorn's Book of Angels, Live, Marciac 2012

Posted due to this New York Times article on John Zorn turning 60 and writin 300 pieces of music for his Book of Angels project at a rate of 100 per month, with a goal of releasing a new CD of the music every month.

ASMR Update

More articles on ASMR, also known as "the head tingles": The Village Voice, The Verge, & This American Life all recently covered the topic.

Previously: ASMR

Blog All the Foxeared Pages: Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics

Part 2 of online notebook for the readthrough of Synergetics, an online version of which may be found at:
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
I am reading the 1982 version of the 1975 text from MacMillan.

400.06 Thought is systemic. Cerebration and intellection are initiated by differential discernment of relevance from nonrelevance in respect to an intuitively focused-upon complex of events which also intuitively suggests inherent and potentially significant system interrelatedness.

400.07 Human thoughts are always conceptually and definitively confined to system considerability and comprehension. The whole Universe may not be conceptually considered by thought because thinkability is limited to contiguous and contemporary integrity of conformation of consideration, and Universe consists of a vast inventory of nonsynchronous, noncontiguous, noncontemporary, noncoexisting, irreversibly transforming, dissimilar events. 400.24   General systems theory is another example of evolution by inadvertence. It developed fortuitously to accommodate the unprecedented and vastly complex undertakings of the late twentieth century, such as the 10 million separate and only partially overlapping "critical path" tasks that had to be accomplished and tested to foolproof reliability en route to countdown to eventual blastoff, Moon landing, and safe return to Earth, which found all conventional mathematical theory wanting. It required the development of the computer and star-focused instruments and computer programming arts together with operational research, which guess-improvises the inventory of parameter of variables that must be progressively programmed into the system in order further to reduce the magnitude of tolerated errors consequent to trial "bird" (rocket vehicle) "flight" (trajectory) control as the vehicles are progressively zeroed-in to progressive target rendezvous with celestial entities. Neither differential and integral calculus, nor "probability" statistics, nor any branch of specialized hard science has accredited synergy as an a priori assumption. General systems theory, which recognizes synergy as inherent, was discovered and named by the biologically inspired Ludwig von Bertalanffy. 422.10 Force Distribution: In the three-way grid octet truss system, concentrated energy loads applied to any one point are distributed radially outward in nine directions and are immediately diffused into the finite hexagonally arranged six vectors entirely enclosing the six-way-distributed force. Each of the hexagon's six vertexes distribute the loads 18 ways to the next outwardly encircling vectors, which progressively diffusing system ultimately distributes the original concentrated energy force equally to all parts of the system as with a pneumatic tire. Thus the system joins together synergetically to distribute and inhibit the forces. 422.20 Geometry of Structure: Considered solely as geometry of structure, the final identification of the octet truss by the chemists and physicists as closest packing also identifies the octet truss and vector equilibria structuring as amongst the prime cosmic principles permeating and facilitating all physical experience. 502.31 The difference between synergetics and conventional mathematics is that it is derived from experience and is always considerate of experience, whereas conventional mathematics is based upon "axioms" that were imaginatively conceived and that were inconsiderate of information progressively harvested through microscopes, telescopes, and electronic probings into the nonsensorially tunable ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. Whereas solids, straight lines, continuous surfaces, and infinity seemed imaginatively obvious, i.e., axiomatic; physics has discovered none of the foregoing to be experimentally demonstrable. The imaginary "abstraction" was so logical, valid, and obviously nonsolid, nonsubstantial in the preinstrumentally-informed history of the musings of man that the mathematician assumed abstraction to be systemic conceptuality, i.e., metaphysical absolutely devoid of experience: He began with oversight. 502.50 Experiment 502.51 A voluntary experience is an experiment. To be experimental, we must have an observer and the observed, the articulator and the articulated. Experiences include experiments: there are experimentally demonstrable cyclic regularities, such as frequencies of the occurrence of radiation emissions of various atomic isotopes, which become the fundamental time increment references of relative size measurement of elemental phenomena. 502.60 Happening 502.61 An involuntary experience is a happening. To be experiential, to have a happening, we must have an observer and the observed. 503.00 Happenings 503.01 A happening is an involuntary experience. You cannot program "happen." 503.02 Happenings contradict probability. That's why they are happenings. Probability is not a reliable anticipatory tool; it is stronger than "possibility" but crude in comparison to "navigation" and "astronomy." If probability were reliable, there would not be a stock market or a horse race. 529.03 Newton said that time was a very specific phenomenon, assuming that there was a specific and finite time that permeated Universe and that everything observable in Universe was occurring at the same time. It was Einstein who discerned that time might be relative to the individual observer. A majority of academic people and the vast majority of nonscientists are still thinking in terms of the classical Newtonian scientific conceptioning of "instant Universe." While light's speed of approximately 700 million miles per hour is very fast in relation to automobiles, it is very slow in relation to the "no time at all" of society's obsolete instant-Universe thinking. It was part of the classical scientist's concept of instant Universe that Universe is a system in which all parts affect one another simultaneously in varying degrees. Contemporary science as yet assumes that all local systems in physical Universe are instantly and simultaneously affecting one another in widely ranging degrees of influence. (And the degrees of influence are governed by relative proximity.) Whereas radiation, i.e., entropy, casts shadows and gravity, syntropy, does not; and whereas the tensional integrity of Universe and all its substructurings is continuous and omniembracing__while compression is islanded and discontinuous__it may also be that while light and radiation has a velocity, gravity is timeless and eternally instant. 529.32 Intuition derives from the approximate instantaneity of intellect, which is much faster than any physical phenomenon like the brain lags. Intuition is the absolute- velocity insistence of the intellect upon the laggingly reflexed brain to call its attention to significance of various special-case, brain-registered, experience relationships. Intuition is intellect coming instantly in at highest speed into dominance over lower-speed, lagging brain reflexing. 529.33 Eternity is simply highest speeds: not "at rest," because it gets there in no- time-at-all: Complete intellection + Otherness + No-time-at-all. Afterpiece  The phenomenon lag is simply due to the limited mechanism of the brain.We have to wait for the afterimage in order to realize. The norm of Einstein is absolute speed instead of at rest. "At rest" was what we called instantaneous in our innocence of yesterday. We evolute toward ever lesser brain comprehension lags__ergo, toward ever diminishing error; ergo, ever diminishing misunderstandings; ergo, ever diminishing fear, and its brain-lagging painful errors of objectivity; wherefore we approach eternal instantaneity of absolute and total comprehension. The eternal instantaneity of no lag at all. However, we have now learned from our generalizations of the great complexity of the interactions of principles as we are disembarrassed of our local, exclusively physical chemistry of information-sensing devices__that what is approached is eternal and instant awareness of absolute reality of all that ever existed. All the great metaphysical integrity of all the individuals, which is potential and inherent in the complex interactions of generalized principles, will always and only coexist eternally.

Links for Later 7-1-13

1. Sourcing Grigua's Prayer, as mentioned by John Maynard Keynes and Jan Smuts, "for the Lord to come himself, and not to send his Son, for this is no time for children."
2. Jason Everman, one-time Nirvana and Soundgarden bassist who joined the Army Special Forces.
3. Shrewdest business maneuvers, including Herbert Dow's method for dealing with price dumpers in the bromine market and Raphael Tudela's many-sided international trades to enter the oil & gas markets.
4. Intel's new chips: 3-D transistors, embedded lasers, up to 1.4 terabyte/sec cables, more.

Annals of Notable Baby Names

Artist and polymath Natalie Jeremijenko likes to name her children in unique ways:

Jeremijenko’s experimental streak extended to the naming of her kids. Her oldest daughter is Mister Jamba-Djang Vladimir Ulysses Hope (Jamba for short); her daughter with Conley is E (what “E” stands for is up to E, but so far she has decided to stick with the initial); and their son is Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles. “I had wanted to give our boy an ethnically ambiguous name to challenge assumptions about race and assimilation,” Conley wrote in a 2010 essay. “For all the Asian-American Howards out there, shouldn’t there be a light-haired, blue-eyed white kid named Yo Xing?”

Previously: Dash Snow's child's name

All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.

Wikipedia article on dialectical materialism
See also Heraclitus, Hegel & Marx

Blog All the Foxeared Pages: Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics

Online notebook for the readthrough of Synergetics, an online version of which may be found at:
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
I am reading the 1982 version of the 1975 text from MacMillan.

141.00 There is a corollary of synergy known as the Principle of the Whole System, which states that the known behaviors of the whole plus the known behaviors of some of the parts may make possible discovery of the presence of other parts and their behaviors, kinetics, structures, and relative dimensionalities.

152.00 Synergetics is the exploratory strategy of starting with the whole and the known behavior of some of its parts and the progressive discovery of the integral unknowns and their progressive comprehension of the hierarchy of generalized principles.

153.00 Universe apparently is omnisynergetic. No single part of experience will ever be able to explain the behavior of the whole. The more experience one has, the more opportunity there is to discover the synergetic effects, such as to be able to discern a generalized principle, for instance. Then discovery of a plurality of generalized principles permits the discovery of the synergetic effects of their complex interactions. The synergetic metaphysical effect produced by the interaction of the known family of generalized principles is probably what is spoken of as wisdom.

162.00 There are eternal generalizations that embrace a plurality of generalizations. The most comprehensive generalization would be that which has U = MP, standing for an eternally regenerative Universe of M times P, where M stands for the metaphysical and P stands for the physical. We could then have a subgeneralization where the physical P = E^r· E^m, where E^r stands for energy as radiation and E^m stands for energy as matter. There are thus orders of generalization in which the lower orders are progressively embraced by the higher orders. There are several hundred first-order generalizations already discovered and equatingly formalized by scientist-artists. There are very few of the higher order generalizations. Because generalizations must hold true without exception, these generalizations must be inherently eternal. Though special-case experiences exemplify employment of eternal principles, those special cases are all inherently terminal; that is, in temporary employment of the principles.

229.02 The notion that commencing the exploration of the unknown with unity as one (such as Darwin's single cell) will provide simple and reliable arithmetical compounding (such as Darwin's theory of evolution: going from simplecomplex; amoebamonkeyman) is an illusion that as yet pervades and debilitates elementary education.

229.06 Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special cases in local time-space transformative evolutionary events. Humans are each a special-case unfoldment integrity of the complex aggregate of abstract weightless omni- interaccommodative maximally synergetic non-sensorial Universe of eternal timeless principles. Humanity being a macromicro Universe, unfolding eventuation is physically irreversible yet eternally integrated with Universe. Humanity cannot shrink and return into the womb and revert to as yet unfertilized ova.

308.00 Universe is finite because it is the sum total of finitely furnished experiences. The comprehensive set of all experiences synergetically constituting Universe discloses an astronomically numbered variety of subset event-frequency rates and their respective rates of conceptual tunability comprehension. It takes entirely different lengths of time to remember to "look up" different names or facts of past events. Universe, like the dictionary, though integral, is ipso facto nonsimultaneously recollectable; therefore, as with the set of all the words in the dictionary, it is nonsimultaneously reviewable, ergo, is synergetically incomprehensible, as of any one moment, yet is progressively revealing.
 

In reading Synergetics, it becomes abundantly clear where the Wachowski brothers got the speech mannerisms for the Architect.

Sometimes you read this and think that Buckminster Fuller was a genius and cometimes you just think that he really liked tetrahedrons more than is entirely appropriate.

Matt Smith Sends Goodbye Message to Dr. Who Fans

Didier Sornette at TED: Predicting Financial Crashes, Dragon Kings

Links for Later 6-14-13

1. An idea whose time has come: adaptive Bayesian testing and approval of therapeutics. How personalized medicine will look in the coming years.
2. Edward Snowden to South China Morning Post: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."
3. Russian lawmakers are really afraid of gay people.
4. Hugh "Wool" Howey: why all authors should self-publish.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Rice Commencement Speech

Joss Whedon's Wesleyan Commencement Speech

Links for Later 6-5-13

First, three from The Browser:
1. Notes on war and return from a soldier's wife.
2. Patrick Leigh Fermor makes fun of W. Somerset Maugham's stammer, and other stories. Third in a series.
3. What it's like to be gay in Moscow at the moment.

Next, one from Jonathan Coulthart:
4. Shoryu Hatoba, modern kamon (crest) artist.

5. Nikola Tesla's productivity hacks.
6. "Erick Erickson is derpy."
7. Dutch postal art.

Nihil est quod perstet in orbe.
There is nothing in the world that does not change.

Kevin Smith v. Grant Morrison

On Batman and how to gain enlightenment in this life.

Erased Advice for College Grads

This month, hundreds of thousands of new college graduates will be swamped with advice, from "plastics" to "follow your dreams", as well as some very nice engraved pens. Much of the advice is, as Garrison Keillor called it, "self-erasing", particularly that delivered by well-meaning relatives and commencement speakers. I've given and received my share of this advice, but there's one thing I forgot to say: right now, you're in the process of dumping not only the self-erasing platitudes, but also a lot of the knowledge and skills you've built up to this point. Instead, you should be thinking about how to store them more effectively. Somewhere in the confusion of starting in a real job, moving to a new city, getting a first real apartment, we regularly discard or ignore some big skills we've built up to this point. We lose the musical instruments we've played, the foreign language, the sport we lettered in.

I know a lot of thirty and forty year olds who used to play the piano, used to speak French fluently, used to be nationally ranked swimmers. Then, one day, the last recital, final exam, or swim meet happened, and they never used the skill again, only to miss it ten years later. It takes a lot of effort to recover at that point; the better course is to continue to do somewhat less practice of the skill, rather than none at all. Somewhat less doesn't seem like a particularly attractive option at first, but it's the option that keeps the skill alive and on backup without taking up huge amounts of time. It's also a good deal more fun to spend twenty minutes in the water than it is to have a full-on two hour practice with a coach, or twenty minutes playing pop songs rather than hours practicing scales. So, do somewhat less of the things you've been doing, because it's somewhat more than what you'll do if you try to keep going full bore on everything despite the pressures of life.

The second thing is, look over all the notes for all of your classes, and condense the greatest hits from them. If you've just finished college, the temptation is to pitch everything from your memory and from your dorm room so you don't have to ship it home. The smarter thing to do is to sort out the most useful things, dump them in some kind of word processor file or single notebook, and keep them organized for when they might be useful. Remember, you probably won't need all of this, but something is going to come in handy some time in the future. Write it up with one of those fancy pens they gave you, if it makes you happy.

Space Oddity - Chris Hadfield

Music video rom the International Space Station.

The New Unbanked

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and California cannot access banks (or American Express), and have to either pay taxes in cash, launder their money (legally) through a shell corporatioin, or use the owner's personal accounts.