Tag Archives: nature

A magnified view

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Can you believe this is a magnified view of a subterranean (actually, submartiansurface? [ 😉 ]) ecosystem captured in a photograph by a secret Mars exploratory mission sent by the Committee several years ago and just now returning to Earth with valuable data for us to get started on negotiating mining operations that’ll destroy life on Mars we never got to know personally?:

Just wait until we try to sell you underground warm mineral springs timeshares on the red planet!

And if you can’t/won’t visit our celestial sister, we’ll rent our virtual Martian surrogates to give you the experience of living there in hourly/daily/weekly slots, able to print 3D surrogate versions of you in no time flat!

Give us a call!  Availability is limited!  The first 50 callers get a special bonus just by mentioning this advert!

Usted es un colombiano experto en SEO, ¿no? Por lo tanto, hermanos, os encomiendo.

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Here lies an outlier

As we get to know more and more about each other, we will grow more comfortable accepting each other’s subcultural differences, appreciating how the definition of success can vary so widely that it almost seems impossible seven billion varieties point to the same thing: our species’ survival and growth.

Yes, it includes fear, crime, ecosystem disasters, economic failures and myriad ways in which the universe we live does not always point toward our survival and growth.

Dust particles — small fibers, short hair, unidentifiable tiny, twisted objects — seemingly oblivious to gravity, float through a beam of sunshine propped up between the writing desk and the dirty window.

A few days ago, I visited with some friends whose father recently died.  My friends and I had spent a few years together in primary and secondary school over 30 years ago.  One friend I hadn’t seen in at least 35 years.

Needless to say, we knew little about one another except what we have seen in the past couple of years while sharing space on a computer server farm spread across data centers around the world dedicated to an online social media website called facebook.

In other words, we had little to say to each other in person that we didn’t already know, or should have remembered seeing in our online personality profile.

The moment was there for comfort at the time of loss of the family patriarch.

Soothing words.

Fond memories of our youth spent under the guidance of a chemical research/sales engineer and literal/figurative father figure.

I cough, sending dust particles on a swirling dance out of and back into the sunlight, which then disappears with clouds passing overhead, reappearing a few minutes later at a new angle, attached to the bright, yellow glob amidst the blue-painted dome high above.

An airplane swoops and circles the patch of sky nearby, making the sounds of the television playing a movie called “The Longest Day” seem live and in real 3D viewing/listening closeness.

After visiting with the friends, my wife and I returned to her mother’s house, continued our sorting through physical reminders of my wife’s mother, father and brother, all deceased.

My wife’s nuclear family is no more, except in her memories.

Her brother’s widow and children still live.  She has cousins spread around the globe.  And her family by marriage — my blood relatives, including nuclear family (father, mother, sister), as well as extended family (nieces, nephew, cousins, aunt, uncle, etc.).

My friends’ father lived for 84 365-day, 24-hour cycles around our local star.

As the planet spun, my friends’ family influenced those they met, all of them tied to Earth by gravity, the curvature of spacetime, we surmise.

We can see the familial influence through the eyes of the intersection of sets of states of energy, adding meme upon meme, including the word “meme,” to build physical representations of ideas like “idea,” to arrive at the point where schoolmates meet 30+ years later to reminisce about a few years spent in growing up together toward adulthood.

Did any of the dust particles floating in the air at the church where, due to one death, we met to talk about good times in childhood attach themselves to me and then re-enter the airspace in the sunbeam not far from this computer?

What about the particles I can’t readily see, such as water molecules, bacteria, dead skin cells or other microscopically miniscule minutiae?

We are connected in ways we rarely take time to notice, if we can see the connections at all.

How do I explain a blog post composed only of pictures to a blind person who uses a Braille keyboard and automatic audible reader?

How do I explain wireless radio pathways between a notebook computer and wireless router to people who can’t feel or don’t communicate signals at a wavelength of 0.125 m or about 5 inches?

Although… you know, some people say they can feel 2.4 GHz radio waves and other phenomena they claim causes them radiowave/EMF sickness.

But let’s get back to the global story of our lives, where financial gurus want to prop up a system that is no longer a viable connection between the macro and microeconomic levels…

What are you selling?

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Do you want the codewords of your subculture to join the repertoire of the general [regional/national/global/solar] culture?

Are you a member of a guild?  You know, a craft/workers union, a medical association, a political party, a corporation, a sports club, that sort of thing.

Do you share a set of words solely around something like Earl Grey Tea?

What do I share with the bird pecking on the shagbark hickory tree outside my window?

What do I call the bird?  Do I give it a common name?  A botanical/Latin name?  A list of descriptors?  The sounds that it makes?

Black and white feathers.  Tends to hop up the tree.  Can’t hear what, if any, sounds that it makes from its throat.

Should I say downy woodpecker?  How about Picoides pubescens?

As I drink a cup of water which contains a prepackaged bag of Twinings Classics Earl Grey Tea I zapped together in the microwave oven, what else do I observe that doesn’t necessarily pass by the viewhole-cut-in-the-wall called a window?

Today, I am alive.

Thoughts left over from previous days’ influences vie for my conscious action to record them here.

One to remember: [“Fascism under the guise of democracy is the rule of financial capital itself.” — Laibach], ironically read and recorded from a video on the commercial website, YouTube, along with [“What is art?  Art is the goal and the end of progress.”], “Stop the parahuman” and the fact that art both creates a new mythology and should take the system more seriously than the system takes itself seriously.

Which means a performer like Jimmy Fallon is just another fascist propagandist, if you follow that line of reasoning.

IF, that is, you take art seriously and believe that politics is in the service of theatrical performances.

Global absurdistcynical art means nothing to the bird looking for a few bites to eat on this cool, late winter day.  The larvae and other insects being eaten have no philosophical funny point to make in sacrificing their lives to feed the bird.

Can you protest against a government that provides the roads and education that brought you to the steps of the government building to wave legible signs of protest?

Of course you can.

What is education?  Is it not our way of tricking people of all ages, not just children, into adopting a set of codewords to increase their success when interacting with others who most often use the same codewords; i.e., share the same [sub]culture?

A white breasted nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis, clears out an old nesting hole in the same tree on which the woodpecker was searching a few minutes ago.

How do we train ourselves to observe our codeword sets and our behaviours so we can make changes before we get to the point where we feel our only recourse is to generally protest the system that got us to that point?

How do we enhance our [bio]feedback system to protect ourselves as individuals, giving easily-accessible new routes for those who wish not to perpetuate the codeword set of the [sub]culture in which they/we feel trapped?

In other words, how do we take those who are mostly followers and readily give themselves over to hypnotic leaders, who aren’t interested in promoting more than one subcultural codeword set, and give those followers the ability to break their trances and follow the leaders they are best predisposed to emulate?

Those who can follow themselves, are able to self-hypnotise belief in the power of nonconformance, no matter how much the self is a product of mass hypnosis and thus not completely individualistic/unique, just a unique combination of mass [sub]cultural codewords, we need not worry about, but should still give them the same protection under the law as conforming, hypnotised followers.

No matter how much we adore/abhore the prevailing system of social interactions, we all contribute.  In fact, diversity of beliefs is an inherent part of species survival.

We can still belong to our codeword groups — our clubs, corporations and associations — creating entrance exams and other means of excluding codeword noncompliers, including official denial/rejection codeword sets (“that person is an enemy of our [religious/political] belief system,” “your team sucks,” “you are not qualified to be an official member of our witchdoctor medical practitioners,” etc.), if we wish.

In the end, we are all selling something, ourselves in opposition to or ourselves as part of a system.

How do you/I buy or buy into a system?

That’s a question the birds would understand.  Sometimes, they’re species-specific, mating with others of their kind, and sometimes, they’re members of a bigger flock, taking advantage of numbers, a group of different species gathering to elude a predator and feed upon the fat of the land.  Safety in numbers as prey while the predator simply gets a wider variety of food to choose from.

That’s all we are, too.  You/me/us.

Laserline News

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In a shock that has reverberated across all socioeconomic classes in Canada, word spread that the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, often tagged the “Anti-Environmentalist” and the “Pipeline Piper of Oilands,” has been caught in a personal relationship with a moose.

When reached for comment, Harper’s spokesperson adamantly denied the prime minister would interact with anything remotely resembling nature.

Over the past two days, Clath Colkarch, a famous moose whisperer, has spent time with me to translate some of what the moose has finally decided to confess.

LN: So, Clath, tell us more.

CC: Is your name really LN?

LN: No, but our publication refuses to let journalists use their real names or initials for posted interviews.  The editors feel, and are backed up by the publisher, that putting the journalist into the picture distracts from the main event.

CC: Oh, well, then, what do you want to know?

LN: How do you first discover this relationship?

CC: Well, “LN,” I was working with the US branch of the IMWAUVAAA — that’s the International Moose Whisperers Association of Unemployed Veterinarian Assistants’ Associates, Amalgamated — which, when pronounced correctly, sounds like the call of the Albertan Pinstriped Moose.

As you may have heard, the heavy snows in the north this year have caused quite a few moose to go starving.  Well, I tagged along with a group of Fellows who wanted to feed moose that were in the public eye…you know, to build a lot of goodwill.  But mainly, they were wanting to find moose who weren’t too emaciated but were on the edge of death so they could put them out of their misery and take the meat back home.

In this economy, even the Fellows, life members of the Fellowship of Professed, Confirmed Fellows of the Vegan Dinner Table are resorting to eating meat, preferably from the carcass of a beast that has died naturally.

Well, we was hunting…I mean, we was assisting moose in weather-related recovery efforts not far from the PM’s place in Calgary when I felt a presence.

LN: A presence?  Do you mean something spiritual?

CC: Oh no.  There was definitely a large female moose stepping my right foot.  It felt quite painful, that presence.

LN: I suppose as a moose whisperer you must experience these kinds of feelings often, this close presence with moose?

CC: Not really.  The job of a moose whisperer is actually quite lonely.  Ain’t much call for moose whispering.  But it’s a duty I’ve sworn to uphold, at least until my wife gets tired of me sleeping late at home, when I’m home, that is, and not wandering the woods to shirk my household maintenance chores.

LN: I see.  Let’s return to the story.  Was this female moose the one in question?

CC: No.  She was a beauty, though.  Had my eye on her for quite some time so I was pleased she made the first move.  I can tell you most female moose expect the male to be aggressive but I ain’t like that.

LN: Uh-huh.  Before you continue, let me remind you this is a family-oriented publication and we may choose to edit out any questionable content.

CC: Oh, no problem.  Wasn’t like the lady and I took our relationship much further than a few nudges and feet stomping.  Besides, she was the one who told me about Harper’s mistress.

LN: Go on.

CC: I introduced the lady to the Fellows…

LN: Does the lady moose have a name?

CC: Yes, but she prefers to remain anonymous.

LN: Anony-moose, did you say?

CC:  Ha-ha.  That’s a good one.  Well, the Fellows, they got one look at her, how healthy she was, and wanted to know if there were any more like her around.  She being the trusting beast that she is, she led us to a harem out behind Harper’s country estate.  Hidden, it was, in plain sight.

LN: Our readers will certainly be interested in that revealing tidbit.

CC: As soon as I walked up to the lady’s friends, they started talking to me the way moose do, knowing me and hearing about my reputation ahead of time, mostly.

LN: I bet you heard some good tales.

CC: Actually, the tails don’t talk.  It’s from the mouth and from body language where I carry on the conversation.

LN: Yes, good point.  About Harper’s mistress?

CC: Oh, she was shy to begin with.  She was afraid she’d be ostracised by our species if the word got out.  I explained to her that I’d keep her secret as long as she wanted.  After feeding her a few snack treats that my wife has perfected for just these tender moments, the moose just opened up and told me everything.  Everything!

LN: I bet you were shocked.

CC: It’s not every day that you get to hear all the gossip that a harem of locked-up moose has been sharing and re-sharing until they’re about to burst.

LN: I’m sure the readers would like to hear one or two tales…err, I mean stories the moose told you.

CC: Apparently Harper, tired of moose, has been eying a panda.

LN: You don’t say.

CC: Yeah, and he’s willing to risk his relationship with the United States to get his hands on a panda.  The moose say that Harper and his wife want to make a threesome this time.

LN: A threesome?  Now THAT is news!  Anything else?

CC: The lead moose in the harem, Harper’s main squeeze, so to speak, says that rolling in the hay with Harper is not as great as you’d think it would be.  All Harper wants to do is talk about which politician he has it in for next.  Takes away from the romantic mood.

Harper’s mistress says that she misses the days of the strong, silent types that most male moose have become, even though at the time she thought she wanted more conversation and less competition amongst the guys about who has the largest set of antlers.  Now that she has a male who’s more conversation than antler, it’s less thrilling.

Besides, she fears he’s left her for a panda.  And that’s about as low an insult as a moose can take.  I’m afraid she’s going to try to starve herself to death to get down to the size of a panda.  I tried explaining to her that pandas are big-bellied and never shave but she won’t listen.  She just repeats the height and weight comparison between female moose and female pandas.

I think the straw that broke the back on this one was when the mistress overheard Harper referring to her at “that cow” on a mobile phone.  At that point, she lost it and put the word out to find me.

LN: Thrilling!  Absolutely thrilling!  Now, one more question.  I know your reputation is gold but do you have any solid evidence that backs up what this ‘mistress’ of Harper’s has told you?

CC: Of course.  We set up several webcams.

LN: Webcams?  That’s marvelous.

CC: But the video is rather explicit.  We have images of Harper brushing his mistress’ coat, feeding her by hand, and…

LN: Is that it?

CC: You did say this was a family publication, didn’t you?

LN: Yes.

CC: Well, the rest of the video has been edited for your readers.  If you want more, you’ll have to buy a copy of “Moose on the Loose: the untold story of Stephen Harper and his harem of ‘female cows,'” available for sale next week.

LN: I know our readers are anxiously awaiting the release of that book.

CC: The profit from the book goes to repatriating Harper’s harem to their natural surroundings.

LN: Great idea.  Thank you, Clath, for taking the time to talk with us.

CC: My pleasure.  Is my mike still on?  No?  Good, ’cause I’ve got a case of itches from these moose fleas that’d make a bear cry.

LN: Next week, we interview Chun Li, world-famous panda whisperer, about allegations of a ménage à trois taking place at the highest rank of political office here in Canada.

Until next time, keep those rumours pouring in and we’ll investigate the ones that increase our readership the most, which, in turn, make me a very rich person who wouldn’t dare consort with any of you readers unless you, too, ride in limousines and take baths in champagne.

Check our website for videos of today’s interview as well as in-depth analysis of the shocking sight of Harper intimately interacting with his moose mistress!

Learning Methods

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Not found in a catalogue, encyclopedia, handbook, guide or dictionary are learning methods established 1000 years from now.

We, or those of you who were alive in the early 21st century, can remember hints of the push/pull technology that enabled us to grow as one.

In your time, it was the concept of re/search, often coined as SEO or search engine optimisation, reducing the time between an entity’s desire to fill a gap in learning by maximising the profit and minimising the cost to push the desired information to the entity.

It took a while to place a value on the quality of the information by paying attention to how much the entity kept looking before feeling satisfied and moving on to other tasks.

Of course, patternmatching was used to anticipate the entity’s next desire or gap in learning and queue the information ahead of time, pushing without shoving the data into the entity’s inner circle of influence.

The corporations that thrived during this period of our species’ growth were the ones that best applied the various learning methods to entities.

First, by trial and error.

Finally, by evaluating the quality of data and the level of data retention per entity.

How, you might ask?

Well, it took quite a bit of work.  We had to subliminally convince Web page designers to incorporate test questions associated with the Cattell-Horn-Carroll theory.  Then we had to create a virtual maze that gave people the sense they were discovering new ideas on their own but were slowly being channeled toward the Web pages we wanted them to view.

As the people…entities, I mean, were answering the questions subconsciously, we determined their cognitive abilities, plus how those abilities changed over time and through the random experiences over which we had no control (in other words, our fully meshed supercomputer network, including the entities (you), had not been finished by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, and thus we could not anticipate every movement and interaction the entities and their environment made (although we did expand our algorithms that estimated the probability of future events)).

That’s why it was so important to reach critical mass with the intersection of the majority of entities in our species to an electronic social media device (mobile phones, computers, etc.).

We no longer were satisfied with the passive interface between entities and one-way devices like radios and televisions.

We needed more predictability to ensure our crowdsourced, one-species plans would move forward as easily as we hoped.

We wanted both those with cast-in-stone beliefs and those whose beliefs changed with the flowing breeze of social change.

We wanted those in opposition to one another and those who cooperated with one another without question.

All of this we needed to make Earth the birthplace of a new species destined to explore the solar system, which in turn led to new entities, outside the definition of species, exploring our galaxy.

Some of you were more closely aligned with this idea than others.

Some never knew they were contributing to the idea and they wouldn’t have cared if they knew.

Some fought, kicking and screaming, in the moment and into the future where the whole species was under control of itself.

Concepts like freedom, democracy, communism, capitalism, religion, sports, fashion, business, and technology became less and less distinguishable as they merged for the purpose of establishing a stable base from which our species jumped off Earth, forming new colonies and new rules for survival in what began as hostile environments.

Entities — sets of states of energy to us — still considered themselves individual people for many decades, reinforcing their reasoning that their beliefs, wants, wishes and desires were theirs and theirs alone, no two people exactly alike.

And that’s what we wanted them — you, me, us — to believe.

It took a long time, probably close to 100 years, before most of us saw ourselves not as individuals but as nodes in a web, the web the true “person” or superentity that was self-aware and self-consciously spreading tentacles/threads outward from the gravitational pull of Earth and its closest star.

One thousand years later, it seems that these changes were so quick and made so easily that I can hardly believe they were recorded for historical research.

To you, of course, it was a turbulent time as individuality became a quaint notion while the former method of alpha males/females leading the species gave way to crowd-based thought patterns.  You often joked that you couldn’t tell if the head or the tail was wagging the dog during those years.

The few yoctoseconds I spent (and as you can guess, “I” is a construct for your reading convenience but we can get to that later) to fill a previously missing gap in a centillion-sized matrix built to compute the next 1000 years of development in this part of the outer solar system helped me write this explanation, or blog entry, of language changes needed to estimate the symbol set that will be used 1000 years from now.

I’m done now.  On to the next task assigned to me, this node, decades ago.