No up or down in space

 

No up or down in space

No Up or Down in Space

The concept of "up" and "down" is deeply ingrained in our everyday lives. On Earth, gravity provides a clear direction: down is towards the center of the planet, while up is the opposite. This orientation shapes our understanding of the world and influences how we navigate our environment. However, when we venture into space, this familiar framework begins to dissolve. In the vastness of the cosmos, the notions of up and down lose their meaning, presenting a fascinating challenge to our perception of reality.

In space, the absence of gravity creates a unique environment where traditional orientations become irrelevant. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) experience microgravity, which allows them to float freely. In this state, they can rotate and move in any direction without the constraints of gravitational pull. This freedom can be disorienting for those accustomed to the fixed orientation of life on Earth. The experience of weightlessness transforms the way individuals interact with their surroundings, as they can push off surfaces and glide through the air, defying the expectations set by gravity.

The lack of a definitive up or down in space also has implications for navigation and communication. On Earth, we rely on landmarks and directional cues to guide us. In the vast expanse of space, however, these references are scarce. Astronauts must rely on instruments and technology to orient themselves. The stars, while beautiful, do not provide a consistent frame of reference. Instead, they serve as distant markers that can help with navigation but do not define a specific direction. This reliance on technology underscores the importance of adaptability and precision in space exploration.

Moreover, the absence of a clear up or down challenges our understanding of human behavior and psychology. In a microgravity environment, the body undergoes various changes. For instance, fluids in the body redistribute, leading to a puffy appearance in astronauts' faces. This physiological shift can affect mood and cognitive function, highlighting the intricate relationship between our physical environment and mental state. The experience of floating in a weightless environment can evoke feelings of exhilaration, but it can also lead to disorientation and discomfort. Understanding these effects is crucial for the well-being of astronauts during long-duration missions.

The philosophical implications of a space devoid of up and down are equally intriguing. It invites us to reconsider our place in the universe and the constructs we have built around our existence. The idea that orientation is a human construct challenges our perception of reality. If up and down are merely products of our planet's gravitational influence, what does that say about our understanding of space and time? This perspective encourages a broader exploration of how we define our experiences and the frameworks we use to interpret the world around us.

As humanity continues to explore the cosmos, the lessons learned from the absence of up and down in space will shape our future endeavors. The challenges of navigating a weightless environment, the physiological effects on the human body, and the philosophical questions raised by this experience all contribute to our understanding of what it means to be human in the universe. Embracing the complexities of space will not only enhance our exploration efforts but also deepen our appreciation for the intricate relationship between our planet and the vast, mysterious cosmos that surrounds us.

Dada art

 

Theosophy

 

From Email to the Universe: and other alterations of consciousness

 

Email to the Universe: and other alterations of consciousness

Chapter 49: The Relativity of “Reality”

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The Relativity of “Reality”

 

      1. From the viewpoint of semantics, “reality” is a multi-ordinal concept, having different meanings on different levels of abstraction. On the lowest level of abstraction “reality” refers to immediate sensory consistency. “Is there really a kangaroo in that chair?” can be answered by obtaining the consensus of the group; or, if everybody is stoned, by bringing in some objective observers with objective instruments, etc. On the highest level of abstraction, “reality” refers to logical consistency with a body of established scientific fact and theory. “Is entropy real?” can be answered by consulting a reliable textbook on thermodynamics. Between the level of kangaroo and the level of entropy, there are many other levels of abstraction and, hence, many kinds of “reality.”

      For instance, “Is the Gross National Product real?” is a question on a certain level of abstraction; and if equally intelligent people can, and do, argue about this, it is because they are talking on different levels of abstraction and are not aware of the fact that there are different levels of abstraction and different kinds of “reality.”

      I call this the semantic relativity of “reality.”

      2. Every tribe has its own “reality — map,” or worldview, or What is “real” to the Eskimo is not what is “real” to the Zuni Indian or the Congolese or the Japanese Buddhist or the German businessman or the Russian commissar, etc. If you travel around the world with the naive assumption that everybody is living in the same “reality,” you will make numerous embarrassing mistakes, insult countless people unintentionally, make a splendid ass of yourself and generally contribute to the worldwide belief that tourists are a Curse of God sent to punish people for their sins. To recognize that every culture, and sub-culture, has its own “reality” is the prerequisite of sophistication, tact, and true tolerance. Otherwise you come on like the Englishman who claimed all Chinese understand English if you just shout loud enough.

      I call this the anthropological, or cultural, relativism of “reality.”

      3. Every nervous system creates its own “reality.” Out of the billions, or billions of billions, of energies intersecting the room in which you read this, your brain, performing 100,000,000 processes per minute (almost all of them unconscious to those circuits called the ego and recognized as “me”) arranges a few hundred or thousand into the Gestalt which you experience as the “reality” of the room. To demonstrate this, in my Info-Psychology classes, I will have the students describe the hall outside the lecture room; no two will describe exactly the same hall.

      Or, I will have everybody write down what they hear in the room during a minute of clock-time; no two lists of these sounds will be identical. A variety of chemicals introduced into the nervous system, or direct brain stimulation with electrical impulses, or yoga, etc., will create an entirely different neurological “reality” while you are still sitting in the "same” room.

      I call this neurological relativism, or the relativity of perceived “reality.”

      4. Two scientists moving at different accelerations can measure the same phenomenon with equally accurate instruments and obtain totally different readings of its extensions in the space and time dimensions. (Einstein, Special On the quantum level, a variety of different philosophical reality-maps, or “models,” describe equally well both the experimental data and the mathematical equations that are known to “fit” the data. Any attempt to get around this by adding more sophisticated instruments leads to adding still more sophisticated instruments to monitor the first set, and so on, forever. (Von Neumann’s “catastrophe of the infinite regress.”)

      I call this physical Relativity, or the relativity of instrumental “reality.”

      In conclusion, “reality” is a concept borrowed from the theologians who, being bankrupt, are in no position to loan anything to anybody. We would do better to restrict ourselves to questions that can be answered. Such questions take the form, “At this date, with the knowledge presently possessed by humanity, which model best accords with the facts?”

      When it turns out, as it usually does these days, that several models work equally well, we might then ask: which models are most amusing? most optimistic? most worthy of our time and energy? most elegant and esthetic? And we can keep in mind, too, biologist J.B.S. Haldane’s warning, “The universe may be not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.”

Dada poem

 The great idea is that you wake up with cartoon.

You missed the point.

You are awesome👍!!!???!?

If you don't want to carry a gun and we don't have a problem with it, 

You missed the point.

If Alice had one side of popcorn and the other Bill of popcorn and the other day e raw the same name too,

You can get back in your mouth.

How many times do you have to use?

When you wake up with cartoon friends and you wake up with cartoon characters you will have to use the same name as the math and we don't have a problem with them.

Remember Oleksandr Oles 1931

 Remember

Oleksandr Oles
1931

When fighting invaders for the right to exist,
Ukraine was living, suffering, and dying,
Sympathy – all it was waiting for,
But Europe was silent.

When bleeding to death in an unequal fight,
And crying its eyes out in anguish,
Ukraine was waiting for help from its friends,
But Europe was silent.

When chained and exhausted and being enslaved,
Wounded Ukraine was screaming in terror,
When even rocks were moved by its pain,
But Europe was silent.

When gathering harvest soaked in blood,
And giving it all to the ruthless tyrant,
Dying from famine, Ukraine lost its voice,
But Europe was silent.

When Ukraine cursed its life, that turned into a grave,
Filled with endless death and violence,
When even the devil was crying in grief,
– Europe was silent.

Lina Kostenko (1930-present) – is a Ukrainian poet, journalist, writer, and leading member of the Sixtiers poetry movement in Ukraine, which was against Soviet totalitarianism and focused on protecting Ukrainian culture and language. Kostenko’s work was not published for many years due to her pro-Ukrainian views and activism. Many members of the Sixtiers movement were arrested, sent to prison camps, and killed. Despite everything, Lina Kostenko continued to write and is considered one of the most prominent Ukrainian poets.

fractal

 

Existence..... what a strange word

 

  Existence..... what a strange word. He, set out by determination & curiosity, knows no existence, knows nothing realevent to himself. The petty destinations of others & everything on this world, in this world, he knows the answers to. Yet they have no purpose to him. He seeks knowledge of the unthinkable, of the indefineable, of the unknown. He explores the everything...using his mind, the most powerful tool known to him. Not a physical barrier blocking the limits of exploration, time thru thought thru dimensions.... the everything is his realm. Yet, the more he thinks, hoping to find answers to his questions, the more come up. Amazingly, the petty things mean much to him at this time, how he wants to be normal, not this transceiver of the everything. Then, ocuring to him, the answer. How everything is connected yet seperate. By experiencing the petty others' actions, reactions, emotions, doings, [scribble] and thoughts, he gets a mental picture of what, in his mind, is a cycle. Existence is a great hall, life is one of the [scribble] rooms, death is passing thru the doors, & the ever-existant compulsion of everything is the curiosity to keep moving down the hall, thru the doors, exploring rooms, down this never-ending hall. Questions make answers, answers conceive questions, and at long last he is content.

“October” by W.S. Merwin

 I remember how I would say, “I will gather

These pieces together,
Any minute now I will make
A knife out of a cloud.”
Even then the days
Went leaving their wounds behind them,
But, “Monument,” I kept saying to the grave,
“I am still your legend.”

There was another time
When our hands met and the clocks struck
And we lived on the point of a needle, like angels.

I have seen the spider’s triumph
In the palm of my hand. Above
My grave, that thoroughfare,
There are words now that can bring
My eyes to my feet, tamed.
Beyond the trees wearing names that are not their own
The paths are growing like smoke.

The promises have gone,
Gone, gone, and they were here just now.
There is the sky where they laid their fish.
Soon it will be evening

The Box is a bit like The Matrix.

 The Box is a bit like The Matrix.

What The Box essentially represents is the societal paradigm of a structured ‘life existence’ framework.  Within the confines of The Box’s parameters, he defines the present, limited human hierarchical order in this this current existence. Yes, I know that was a mouthful – sorry about that but bear with me.  😉

Inside of the large ‘Existence Box’ there is a division of boxes within boxes. Dylan further defines a total of four box subset groups as the “limitations”. Each is a box within a box spanning outward smallest to largest in space. The smallest box being the most densely populated and each consecutive one has acquires larger space yet becomes more sparsely populated.   Even though all boxes are encompassed under one large box (of Existence), Dylan points out that there is ‘limitation’ as each is a group divided from the other: inclusive to those within each box and exclusive to those outside of each box. The first box is densely populated and labeled  “Most” but it’s also the smallest box. In short, it includes many but it’s small in space.  This signifies that the acceptable majority within society are also the most select, exclusive group and tucked away within the corner of the box almost as if it’s harder to obtain that special, designated space. There are many within it but it will only hold, or include, so many citizens that are ‘lucky’ enough to be deemed a part of it’s community.  It is also the smallest box in the literal sense because it represents the small minded sorts that rely on thinking inside the box at the most limited, confining sense of existence.   Spanning out from the smallest, elite  “Most” box is the larger box defined as  “Some”.  This grouping is next in line to have a sense of belonging in a fairly acceptable existence group yet the box is a bit larger, less crowded (like the cattle or herd of “Most” )and more liberal in space but also in terms of societal rules and regulations.  Outside of “Some”, are the “Few”. This third box essentially represents ‘the outcasts’ category from the two previous acceptable degrees of the societal majority.  The “Some” have a esser sense of community or belonging here inside “Existence” but it’s also a larger box and containing the free-thinker, the unconventional citizens embracing less acceptable liberal minded views to that of the herd mentality of the “Most/Few” society. While the ‘Some’ are misfits they have their own opposing brand of ‘special’ to the elite “Most”; they are unique individualists that think for themselves and do not follow the masses.  They do not need a mass of others to set the rules and help define them.  Outside the “Few” is the vast box of “None” which represents…..no one… it is the no man’s land of  “the nobodies”, the “nothings” , the bottom-of-the-barrel losers of society that don’t even amount to a mere blip on the radar of human societal existence.

Dada poem

 Really good does belief in the dark tower.

I am so sorry for your loss of popcorn!

You missed a sci-fi movie about Trilobites and zombies

It depends on what you want.

How about the birds of popcorn and water in your mouth?

You can just learned about that after 9 minutes of playing games.

She didn't even if not.

You are awesome👍!

If Alice was weird enough to get a shot of popcorn, you can do a teleportation with potato potato potato potato potato potato potato potato potato salad for reason and not a dream of your favorite thing?

It's not for info on this site but 8 hours of popcorn and water and water and cold food and never really mind going to conceive them to get the water and cold turkey with potato salad for breakfast and never really eat anything else!

I love you!💖

I like how harry Potter goes into the series and the movie about Trilobites and zombies and other Bill Gates and never really eat anything else from outer space but one thing it down to bind the door of my religion.

Have fun😜 and never really eat anything about Trilobites and zombies and other games in your game of thrones and we get to play with potato potato potato potato potato potato salad for breakfast and never really eat anything else from outer space but one day with no food and water and cold turkey with potato bread and cheese and vegetables and rice and veggies and eggs and food and water and cold turkey with potato salad for breakfast and cheese and vegetables in my mouth?

Science is not in the business of establishing truth

 Science is not in the business of establishing truth. Science is in the business of establishing the believability of theories. If a theory satisfies the criteria of the scientific method it does not mean it is true but it can be incorporated in the body of science as being sound and believable.

 

No matter how successful a theory may be it will always be a theory; a story that we humans share to help us come to terms with the world in which we live. As Harari points out in his masterpiece, Sapiens our success as a species is due, in large part, to the myths and stories we share. I believe this is especially true in the sphere of science.

 

Science is evidence based. But science is also based on a story; the story of materialism. Science can only improve on religion if there is a willingness amongst scientists to drop the philosophy of materialism in the face of incontrovertible evidence that it is unsound. Science is only credible if scientists treat all evidence with the same degree of impeccable impartiality. If evidence is rejected, because it doesn’t fit the myth of materialism that most scientists happen to believe, that is stark prejudice and prejudice has no place in science. In science all systems of belief are hypotheses and theories which should be dropped immediately in the face of irrefutable contradictory evidence. If we lose sight of that fundamental rule in science we are liable to become lost and deluded. The time has come for this rule to be applied to the 19th Century theory of evolution. -_from Vortex cosmology

Time, Space, & THOUGHT

  Within the known limits of time… within the conceived boundaries of space…. the average human thinks those are the settings of existence… Yet the ponderer, the outcast, the believer, helps out the human. “Think not of 2 dimensions,” says the ponderer, “but of 3, as your world is conceived of 3 dimensions, so is mine. While you explore the immediate physical boundaries of your body, you see in your 3 dimensions—L, W, & H. Yet I, who is more mentally open to anything, see my 3 dimensions, my realm of thought—Time, Space, & THOUGHT. Thought is the most powerful thing that exists—anything conceivable can be produced, anything & everything is possible, even in your physical world.” After this so called “lecture” the common man feels confused, empty, & unaware. Yet those are the best emotions of a ponderer. The real difference is, a true ponderer will explore these emotions & what caused them. Another… a dream.

Love songs

 

: "As we have learnt from Freud, there are no jokes

 The New Yorker, October 2, 1971 P. 36

A Scottish girl in New York, Emm McKechnie, asks about an apartment in an unfinished building, but the landlord refuses to rent to her, saying unmarried girls get roped on the way to the laundromat. She describes her employer, Simpson Aird, who works at home, and his family. She returns to the unfinished building where the landlord is arguing with the construction foreman. She has lunch with the landlord, Murray Lancaster, and soon marries him. She describes his habits, his possessions, and relates a bit of their life together. He dies. She is on holiday at the time and tells what she does to fill up the time. She becomes neurotic, talks to strangers on the bus. She returns to work, becoming an au pair girl for the Airds, doing secretarial work and mothering two Great Dane puppies. Mrs. Aird thinks she ought to get married again, ought to see a psychiatrist. She tells the psychiatrist she wouldn't mind living in a commune. The doctor says that people can get over-individuated in communes and she laughs, asking if that means lonely, The doctor wants to know what she is avoiding by laughing: "As we have learnt from Freud, there are no jokes." She meets a Bulgarian at a party of the Airds, goes out with him. Everything reminds her of her dead husband, but the Bulgarian, with his "dogged clasp on difficulties," blots out her husband's face. The Bulgarian calls her over and over: She is wrecking his life, she is ruining him by saying no. She laughs and hangs up, thinking to herself: "What if he wasn't faking, what if he wasn't funny?"

“I confess I do not believe in time

 “I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”

― Vladimir Nabokov

💗💗Why did you write Lolita ?

 💗Why did you write Lolita ?

« It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all ? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message ; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions. » What was the genesis of Lolita ? « She was born a long time ago, it must have been in 1939, in Paris ; the first little throb of Lolita went through me in Paris in '39, or perhaps early in '40, at a time when I was laid up with a fierce attack of intercostal neuralgia which is a very painful complaint—rather like the fabulous stitch in Adam's side. As far as I can recall the first shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted in a rather mysterious way by a newspaper story, I think it was in Paris Soir, about an ape in the Paris Zoo, who after months of coaxing by scientists produced finally the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal, and this sketch, reproduced in the paper, showed the bars of the poor creature's cage. » Did Humbert Humbert, the middle-aged seducer, have any original ? « No. He's a man I devised, a man with an obsession, and I think many of my characters have sudden obsessions, different kinds of obsessions ; but he never existed. He did exist after I had written the book. While I was writing the book, here and there in a newspaper I would read all sorts of accounts about elderly gentlemen who pursued little girls : a kind of interesting coincidence but that's about all. » Did Lolita herself have an original ? « No, Lolita didn't have any original. She was born in my own mind. She never existed. As a matter of fact, I don't know little girls very well. When I consider this subject, I don't think I know a single little girl. I've met them socially now and then, but Lolita is a figment of my imagination. » —

To Vladimir Nabokov on His 70th Birthday

 To Vladimir Nabokov on His 70th Birthday

That nymphet’s beauty lay less on her bones
Than in her name’s proclaimed two allophones,
A boned veracity slow to be found
In all the chanting of recorded sound.
Extrude an orange pip upon the track,
And it will be a pip played front or back,
But only in the kingdom of the shade
Can diaper run back and be repaid.
Such speculations salt my exile too,
One that I bear less stoically than you.
I look in sourly on my lemon trees
Spiked by the Qs and Xes of Maltese
And wonder: Is this home or where is home?
(Melita’s caves, Calypso’s honeycomb).
I see a cue or clue. Just opposite,
The grocer has a cat that loves to sit
Upon the scales. Respecting his repose,
One day he weighed him: just two rotolos.
In this palazzo wood decays and falls;
Buses knock stucco from the outer walls,
Slam shut the shutters. Coughing as they lurch
They yet enclose the silence of a church,
Rock in baroque: Teresan spados stab
The Sacred Heart upon the driver’s cab,
Whereupon, in circus colours, one can read
That verbum caro factum est. Indeed.
I think the word is all the flesh I need –
The taste, and not the vitamins of sense
Whatever sense may be. I like the fence
Of black and white that keeps those bullocks in –
Crossboard or chesswood. Eurish gift of Finn –
The crossmess parzel. If words are no more
Than pyoshki, preordained to look before,
Save for their taking chassé, they alone
And not the upper house, can claim a throne
(Exploded first the secular magazines
And puff of bishops). All aswarm with queens,
Potentially, that board. Well, there it is:
You help me counter the liquidities
With counters that are counties, countries. Best
To read it: Caro Verbum Facta Est.

One of the great 20th-century British novelists, Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was also a prolific poet. His interest both in poetry as an art form and in the psychology of poets is expressed in several works of fiction, for example, the quartet of Enderby novels, and ABBA ABBA. Both contain poems by their protagonists. Burgess’s last novel, Byrne, is in fact composed in ottava rima.

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Burgess’s Collected Poems, edited by Jonathan Mann, is a hefty volume, displaying both strengths and limitations. Burgess is at his best in the role of 20th-century “Augustan” poet: the 18-plus pages of An Essay on Censorship bear comparison, in their power of logical argument and mastery of the rhyming couplet, with the verse essays of Alexander Pope. This week’s poem, written to celebrate Vladimir Nabokov’s 70th birthday, is rather shorter, but shares some of its characteristics.

Censorship is more obliquely addressed, but it’s of the element underlying Burgess’s sense of connection to Nabokov. Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange and Nabokov’s Lolita had both been subject to its tyranny. The opening lines of the Birthday poem reflect, however, a more significant artistic relationship between the novelists, the shared preoccupation with mining the richest resources of their language. Lolita, the so-called “nymphet”, owes her “boned veracity”, Burgess punningly declares, to her creator’s sensuous virtuosity with words. The allophones savoured in line two (and in Nabokov’s own text) are the first two phonemes of “Lo-Li-Ta”.

In his the second volume of his autobiography, You’ve Had Your Time, Burgess explains that the Birthday poem’s sourness of tone was partly the result of a recent negative review by Geoffrey Grigson. The bigger discontent for Burgess, though, was his “exile” on Malta, a country in thrall to the narrow Catholicism that, as a lapsed Catholic, he particularly detested. Censorship flourished and curtailed his access to literary material there. The island where Calypso detained Odysseus for seven years, Ogygia, has been identified as Gozo in the Maltese archipelago, hence the reference in line 14, “(Melita’s caves, Calypso’s honeycomb)”. The poem dryly notes that the image of the Sacred Heart in the bus-driver’s cab, bears the quotation announcing “in circus colours”, “That verbum caro factum est…” (“The Word was made flesh”). Burgess adds the sarcastic “Indeed” to make his point.

The Birthday poem is a strange, dry, bracing cocktail, partly grumpy personal letter, partly a display by Burgess of the qualities he most admires in Nabokov. He emphasises symmetry and pattern, for example: see the reference to the diaper (nothing to do with babies’ nappies) in line eight. This repeated patterning is significant for Burgess, the poet-novelist, and has a more existential, Nabokovian connection – to the re-routing of time and the recovery of the past through memory. It’s further fleshed out in the poem by images of a local farmer’s black and white fence and the chess-board.

Creating chess problems one of Nabokov’s passions. Burgess seems tempted at times to make up word-problems in a counter-cadenza. He honours James Joyce in passing. “The crossmess parzel” is from Finnegans Wake, “a cross between a crossword puzzle and a Christmas parcel”. While the Latin quotation from St John’s gospel in line 26 declares that “the word was made flesh” and the poem’s ultimate tribute to Nabokov is that the word has become flesh (through the power of his literary art), there is a counterpoint of abstraction in some of the wordplay, the effect of which is to de-incarnate language. It’s another complex flavour Burgess adds to the celebration cocktail. Nabokov liked the poem, Burgess reported.

I leave you with a question, reflecting I hope the mischievous spirit of two great writers, and not only my own inability to solve maths problems. Was the grocer’s cat overweight at 2 rotolos? You might find a clue here.

Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977 was born in St Petersburg, Russia on 22April. Burgess’s poem was published in a special Nabokov issue of Triquarterly.

Some additional notes:

“The kingdom of the shade” – see Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire. There may also be a reference to the scene in the 19th-century Russian ballet, La Bayadère (The Temple Dancer) in which lovers are reunited after death in a starlit Himalayan Nirvana.

For more on the Maltese language.

Melite – Malta

Chassé – a dance step used in many dances in many variations. All variations are triple-step patterns of gliding character in a “step-together-step” pattern.

Pyoshki (Russian, plural of pyoshka ) – pawns.

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