dmitri’s project The Total Library Text that redefines...Now playingSpaceCollective Where forward thinking terrestrials share ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction.Introduction Featuring Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, based on an idea by Kees Boeke.
It's the first true 3D representation of the famous mandelbrot set. Here's the classic 2D version zooming into forever for those who don't have a clear idea of what the mandelbrot set fractal is (It's probably familiar to you):
This 3D version has been dreamt about for around 23 years. Rudy Rucker, famous computer scientist, science fiction writer, and Hegel's great-great-great-grandson, came up with the idea in 1987 with a fictional story entitled "As Above, So Below" that's worth a read. It's about a hacker who gets way too fucked up on some kind of hell's angels mystery pill and has a vision of the thing that goes beyond.
The UFO came lower and then some of the thicker tendrils were brushing against
me. They felt shuddery, like the metal on a shorted out toaster. I figured the prickly feeling I'd been getting was from invisible fine tendrils that I couldn‟t see. Could it be possible the thing was going to eat me like a Portuguese man-of-war that‟s got hold of a small fish? I screamed out, “Don‟t hurt me, I‟m an intelligent being like you!” and the thing hissed louder, and then suddenly the hissing Fourier-transformed itself into a human voice. A woman‟s voice. “Don‟t worry, William, I am very grateful to you. I wish to take you for a ride.” I tried to stand up then, but I was too fucking zoned. So I just smiled and stretched by arms up to the big UFO ass. UFO? This had to be a hallucination. Slowly, slowly, it came lower. The tendrils were thick as vines, and the fireflies on the tendrils were as big as grapefruits and baseballs. Since this whole ship was a fractal, each of the firefly globs was a three-sectioned thing like the main body: each of them was a dimpled round ass part with a little antennaed head-sphere stuck onto it. This was absolutely the best graphic ever. I was really happy.
To determine whether physiologic responses to a drug could be changed by expectation, and what role placebo effect might play, 14 medical students were given
either epinephrine or placebo. Measurements of subjective response and response
of plasma free fatty acids, blood glucose, and heart rate were made, Stimulant
expectation was engendered by suggestion of epinephrine-like effects, and sedative
expectation by suggestion of barbiturate-like effects. Of 8 drug subjects, 8 had a
greater FFA response under stimulant expectations, and 7 had greater subjective,
blood glucose, and heart rate responses. In 6 placebo subjects, there was no dis-
cernible effect of expectation in any measure.
The title of the above abstract is from an old research paper from the 60s entitled Drug-Set Interaction: Psychological and Physiological Effects of Epinephrine Under Differential Expectation. It's something I see cited a fair lot. In plain English, the study went like this: They told a bunch of folks that they were being given either a sedative or a stimulant, but gave them either adrenaline or placebo. The people who were given placebo didn't really feel anything special, but the folks given adrenaline felt what they were told - The sedative-expectation people felt sedated, and the stimulant-expectation people felt stimulated, even though it was all the same chemical being administered... Everyone knows what that chemical feels like, because everyone (save for some head cases) has had an adrenaline rush, so imagine having one but thinking it felt like a sleeping pill just because you were told so!
I always thought that this had a lot to do with not just psychosomatics and pharmacodynamics, but everyday experience. I don't know how that idea can be scientifically validated, but bet some analogous studies have been done somewhere out there on the idea that your expectations prior to the event of any experience determine more than anything the outcome of what you feel about the experience. Outside of science, I've found that my own nonscientific experimentation throughout everyday life inspired by this study has been significant towards making me a happier person. I've also found that certain aspects of spirituality and philosophy (Particularly buddhism) have something to say about this. Not to say that I'm one of those 'the secret' dorks who believes with anything close to absolute conviction that expectations, attitude, and vapid 'positive thinking' have EVERYTHING to do with "manifesting" reality - Just that it's a subject worthy of actual scientific consideration outside of pharmacology. If anyone has any links or anything like that which has to do with non pseudoscientific consideration of this, that would totally make my day! :)
Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main
benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.
We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network.
The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of
hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing
the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of
events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As
long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to
attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The
network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort
basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest
proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.
It's been implemented for a couple of weeks, seems like the kind of thing that could go somewhere!
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. Anonymity means that the real world identity of the parties of a transaction can be kept hidden from the public or even from the parties themselves. Advantages:
* Transfer money easily through the internet, without having to trust third parties.
* Third parties can’t prevent or control your transactions.
* Be safe from the unstability caused by fractional reserve banking and bad policies of central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by the banks.
I'm reading a copy of Douglas Rushkoff's 1994 book "Cyberia" on my computer (Click link for full text). It's a pretty good book.
I took a picture with my iphone today of something I found really funny in an old January 1995 issue of National Geographic - The world's first "Virtual reality wedding".
There's a quote from Cyberia by Timothy Leary:
"By the year 2000, the I.C. (inner city) kid will slip on the EyePhone,
don a form-fitting computer suit, and start inhabiting electronic
environments either self-designed or pulled up from menus. At 9:00 a.m.
she and her friend in Tokyo will meet in an electronic simulation of Malibu
Beach for a flirtatious moment. At 9:30 a.m. she will meet her biology
teacher in an electronic simulation of the heart for a hands-on `you are
there' tutorial trip down the circulatory system. At 10:00 a.m. she'll be
walking around medieval Verona with members of her English literature
seminar to act out a scene from Romeo and Juliet. At 11:00 A.M. she'll walk
onto an electronic tennis court for a couple of sets with her pal in Managua.
At noon, she'll take off her cyberwear and enjoy a sensual, tasty lunch with
her family in their nonelectronic kitchen.''
What the hell happened? Why don't I have an eyephone? Are those people even still together?
The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water.
Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.
NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole.
This is an acoustic levitation chamber I designed and built in 1987 as a micro-gravity experiment for NASA related subject matter. The 12 inch cubed plexiglas Helmholtz Resonant Cavity has 3 speakers attached to the cube by aluminium acoustic waveguides. By applying a continuous resonant(600Hertz) sound wave, and by adjusting the amplitude and phase relationship amongst the 3 speakers; I was able to control levitation and movement in all 3 (x,y,z) axis of the ambient space. This research was used to show the effects of micro-gravity conditions that exist in the space shuttle environment in orbit, but done here on Earth in a lab. This is not "anti-gravity." So don't waste time arguing something pointless.
Supposedly, Tibetan monks figured this out ages ago. I don't really buy anything beyond a probability of %1 or less likelihood of truth that doesn't have the backing of the scientific method and empirical evidence and all that, but who knows what kind of stuff they pulled before the commies came along and messed everything up? Apparently, looking at his youtube page, Dr. Deak (who did the NASA experiment in the video) above started getting into UFOs. I find this all kind of amusing. (it won't let me format strikethrough text here, but consider all that italic stuff redacted)
> From: Dr.David Deak
> Date: December 16, 2009 12:12:20 PM PST
> To: missioncontrol@spacecollective.org;
> Subject: SpaceCollective.org - contact
> Reply-To: dr.deak@gmail.com
>
> Dr. David Deak said:
>
> Thanks for placing my acoustic levitation video on your site, but I have no idea what you mean by my getting into UFOs. I am not involved nor interested in UFOs. I dub them Universally False Observations.
>
> Dr. Deak
Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
-Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger Volume I
The nature of prophecy is absolutely that of the nature of 'self fulfilling prophecy' and nothing else. The insanity of "confirmation bias" comes into play heavily here. Confirmation bias is when someone looks for answers to their beliefs ignoring any information which doesn't confirm that belief.
The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.
-Robert K. Morton, Social Theory and Social Structure
A prophecy held as an absolute by anyone with power leads to problems because their power makes that prophecy come true.
A couple of examples that I can't stop thinking about these days:
Montezuma in 1519 saw a comet in the sky. He believed that this was a prophetic omen that his reign was coming to an end, and therefore he surrendered to Cortez. I read about this in Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" years ago, I think.
The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.
-Robert Anton Wilson
This was written before this situation came along...
“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
Now, what I want to do in—certainly this first part of the seminar—is to call in question, very fundamentally, all of our basic ideas about what is sickness, what is health, what is sanity, what is insanity. Because I think we have to begin from this position of humility; that we really don't know. It's reported that shortly before he died, Robert Oppenheimer, looking at the picture of technology, especially nuclear technology, said 'I'm afraid it's perfectly obvious that the world is going to hell.' It's going to destroy itself, it's on collision course. The only way in which it might not go to hell is that we do not try to prevent it from doing so. Think that one over. Because it can well be argued that the major troublemakers in the world today are those people with good intentions. Like the professor of theology, University of Seville, professor of psychiatry at wherever you will. The idea that we know who is sick, who is wrong. Now, we are living in a political situation right now where a most fantastic thing is occuring. Everybody knows what they're against; nobody knows what they're for. Because nobody is thinking in terms anymore of what would be a great style of life. The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There's no earthly reason; there's no physical, technical reason for there being any poverty at all anywhere. But you see, there are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money. They don't know how to use it, they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
My family line goes back on one branch of teachers. My dad recently became one without knowing that our family in Chile has teachers, teachers, teachers going way back - Teaching is in our blood. I think one big thing I want to do with my life is to follow yet transcend my heritage and teach people that we can learn in so many better ways than the way most people are forced into doing it.
This is probably my favorite thing these days. RJDJ is an augmented reality application for the iphone/ipod touch which uses digital signal processing to take input from the microphone, accelerometer, and touchscreen, and then spits it back out in insane ways, effectively turning your environment into what is truly the most trippy music you've ever heard in your life. I like to hand the headphones to people without telling them what it is, the result most of the time is them not knowing what it is at all with a puzzled look on their face, then to them asking me, then to their eyes going very wide ripping out the headphones from their suddenly frazzled heads all freaked out because it's too much to handle. My favorite rjdj filter i've played with so far is the one that comes with it, it's called 'echolon'.
The app is described as 'mushrooms without the mushrooms', 'the soundtrack to your life', and other such fun stuff.
What I'd really like to get going is combining this technology with holophonic sound! Go grab a pair of headphones (essential), check out this audio clip, close your eyes and prepare to be amazed:
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